status on new features.

I was just wondering when the multi-address book feature will be available. When will we be out of the beta stage. Everything from my end works great so far...

Hi Jive,

I just wanted to clarify with you... did you mean multiple address book, or multiple contact folders?

The features according to this thread: http://forum.plaxo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=6268&page=0&view=collapse d&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

As already discussed. Thunderbird does not have contact folders, the contact folder equivelent to outlook express that TB has, is actual address books. So synching my multiple address books from tb to plaxo online should create a contact folder with the same name.

Example: If I had the following addressbooks in thunderbird:

1. friends&family
2.Clients
3.Business Associates

Folders with the same name on plaxo online should be created with there contained contacts.

Outlook uses contact folders, Thunderbird uses Addressbooks.

Got it, Jive. Thanks for the clarification.

Outlook/OE/Plaxo Online Folders <--> Thunderbird Address Books

I'll make sure this gets brought up with the tbird team.

you never did mention when we would be out of the beta stage...

Flippant answer:
When testing is finished /images/graemlins/wink.gif

More complete answer:
When all of us working on this project at Plaxo are confident that all bugs (within reasonable scope) are squashed and major functions are functioning. Our beta cycle tends to be much shorter than Google's, but is often measured in months, not days.

I promise to post a prominent note in the Announcements forum when the product is out of beta.

Thanks for your interest and understanding.

Howdy!

I use Thunderbird 1.5 for e-mail for all of it's features, but I use Outlook to synch with my Dell Axim (because they make me.) I would love to synch all of my contacts through Plaxo, but I now have a problem.

I installed the Thunderbird toolbar first, and it synched just fine. Unfortunately I tried to delete/change/move contacts around, and somehow deleted all of my contacts in Plaxo; when I synched from Thunderbird, somehow it wiped out my contacts in Thunderbird. totally gone. I rebuilt my contacts using e-mails, and sent out requests to them all to update their info, (only 2 back so far) but when I try to send/synch all of contacts to Plaxo, nothing happens in Plaxo.

I also installed the Outlook toolbar (as well as IE) and tried updating THOSE contacts, but again nothing is updated in Plaxo. I KNOW this is user error, but what am I doing wrong?

I had very similar problems during 2005, although fortunately didn't have to email all my contacts for updates. I also have Outlook at work but T-bird at home, and the Plaxo cross-platform solution sounds a great concept. It works well in the office on Windows/Outlook. However, the initial sync with T-Bird resulted in many duplicate addresses being created that took a while to tidy up (I understand this problem may have been fixed in the last update), and now despite saying that a sync is happening, no information seems to be passed either way.

Unfortunately there seems to be no way of debugging/reconfiguring/resetting the T-bird to plaxo sync options. I've tried emailing Plaxo support, but despite comments in this forum that "they have access and can reconfigure at the server end", the response was next to useless. I've not seen a response in the forum here which addresses this problem, which others seem to share. It seems to me that either you get this configuration working first time (and don't change anything!), or it stops working and there's nothing to be done to re-enable/fix it.

I would hold out little hope of being able to get this going again in the short to medium term. That's a shame because this would be a unique, market leading cross platform address synchroniser - the only credible one I've really seen around. It would need Plaxo to invest time and effort to improve the situation though and move this option up their priority list.

I suggest you email Plaxo customer support (as should anyone else with this problem), and persist with further support questions/requests so it gets more attention and consequently might get fixed.

Quandry,

Your singing a tire tune trying to motivate them to get on the horn with the TB Plaxo. Been there, and done that, and quite frankly, I don't even bother any more. I just keep checking back at the forums every week or two.
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That's a shame because this would be a unique, market leading cross platform address synchroniser - the only credible one I've really seen around.


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Dead on. You hit the nail on the head. I don't think they quite realize the community and customer base they would gain by peeking in this corner a little more often. Fact of the matter is, I believe they think they have bigger fish to fry, with their heads turned so far in AOL & Microsofts direction that they forgot everything else. At the moment TB plaxo extenstion for now is not very useful to me untill multifolder support is included, so there it just sits.

They have Dru doing it, who seems very competant- and spread thin. They probably hired him and said "wow you can do all this? cool. Heres a list of work we have for you to do- And oh, bye the way, on your spare time if you have any, maybe you can try to create a plaxo extension for this thunderbird thingy...."

our loss I guess.

jive - I hear your frustration and wish we there was more we could do at this time.

The truth of the matter is that it's a balancing act. Unfortunately, we don't have the resources of a Microsoft, Yahoo, or Google. By making proper decisions, we one day hope to get there, but that's is likely well into the future.

It is true that much of our focus the past 6 months was working on our integration with AOL. This was a tremendous opportunity and undertaking for a company such as ours and we wanted to make sure we did it correctly. Unfortunately, this did mean that other projects such as Thunderbird had to take a lesser priority for the time being.

But hopefully this will not be interpretted as a lack of commitment to this community. Relationships such as the one we have with AOL should help Plaxo to grow in both membership-base and revenue. This revenue can then be reinvested back into the company to support additional development resources to focus on things such as Thunderbird, Mac OS, etc...

Obviously it is prudent we pay close attention to the MS environment, but beyond this, the Thunderbird client was the first client we released. Despite limited resources, work was done to support Tbird 1.5, as Dru noted in an earlier post, which was handed off to QA for final testing and verification. The holiday season slowed down the verification process, but now that everyone is back to work, things should be moving along again. Once the release passes QA, we can release it to the general community (I believe this will still be a beta though).

The bottom line is this: we are committed to the vision of providing Plaxo functionality across multiple platforms, applications, and services.