One interesting little feature that we have in the 3.2 release is the Zimbra Assistant. This comes up by hitting the “~” tilde key in message or conversation view. This allows you to quickly add a calendar appointment, a contact to your addressbook, send a quick message or interact with a zimlet. The Assistant autocompletes your command. So as you type “ap”, it autocompletes to “appointment” and gives you the agenda for the day so you know how your day looks like before you schedule the appointment (see screenshot below).
Zimlets can register themselves with the Assistant. Zimlets have an init method that gets called. In that method, they pass in their assitant object, which contains their command name, like “sms”, and a short description for help. The assistant then calls back into that object when that command is invoked. By default, the following Zimlets register with the Assistant - sms, play (the pacman zimlet), map and salesforce. You can SMS out with the Assistant using the SMS zimlet or quickly map a place by saying map 1500 Market St, San Francisco ca. The Salesforce Zimlet and its interactions are particularly interesting - it allows you to autocomplete email/contacts from your salesforce.com database directly. So you can quickly add a note to a salesforce contact using the Assistant with “salesforce c:contactName(which is autocompleted from salesforce) n:had a call - Customer is ok with the quote for this quarter”. This was hacked up by Roland in his copius free time and he calls it CLI for web2.0 :-). Check the flash demo of using the Zimbra Assistant. And here is a screenshot …
on August 3rd, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Nice features, but the italian keyboard do not offer the “~” tilde key.
ALT+96 or just change the shortcut in some way?
Bye
MOD: You can use “$set:a” in the search bar until we make the keyboard nav a config setting.
on August 5th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
great site with very good look and perfect information…i like it
on August 6th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
It’s good waiting for the 3.2 GA
on August 13th, 2006 at 7:26 am
Is the key configurable? Spanish keyboards don’t have a readily avaliable tilde key. Most produce ‘º’ or ‘|’ instead…
on August 13th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
Yes - all key shortcuts are configurable using a keymap. Keyboard nav is yet another feature in 4.0
on February 12th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Thank you for this helpful information
on March 25th, 2007 at 4:25 am
Excellent article it’s realy helpful, keep up the good work!
Thank you.
on April 20th, 2007 at 6:54 am
Thanks, i was desperately looking for that info!, great article covering some points I really needed, some good usability info for.
on June 26th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
It´s a great assistant: Useful and tim-saving!
on July 31st, 2007 at 7:10 am
Thanks for this many useful informations!
on October 10th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more. So please keep up the great work. Greetings
on October 12th, 2007 at 1:21 am
I think Trackback is a very good function for Weblogs to exchange under each other.
on October 21st, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more. It’s really good written and I fully agree with You on main issue, btw. I must say that I really enjoyed reading all of Your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view…
on October 31st, 2007 at 7:12 pm
thanks for this information i will try this
on November 5th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
wow, great stuff. keep up your nice work!
on November 7th, 2007 at 7:14 am
very good
on November 13th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Wonderful Aassistant, thanks for sharing with us and keep us informed about the developement!
on November 23rd, 2007 at 1:16 am
I follow your posts. I´m always interested in new ideas. Greetings!
on December 30th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more. So please keep up the great work. Greetings
on May 29th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
great assistant and thanks for sharing with us. greetings from germany