OfficeTalk - Sareen Software Plc

Sareen Software Plc was formed by the team behind Deepak Sareen Associates, to publish OfficeTalk, the first workgroup information manager, world-wide.

In June 1995, OfficeTalk won the Best UK Product category in the Ziff Davis European Software Excellence Awards. In the UK PC Magazine's 1995 Technical Innovation Awards OfficeTalk won the Best Office Software category and was one of just three finalists in the Network Software Category. OfficeTalk was also a Finalist in the 1996 SPA Codie Awards for the Best New Business Software Program and is a recipient of a PC Plus Value award.

Award Citations.
Ziff Davis European Software Excellence Awards. 1995
PC Magazine Technical Innovation Awards; Winner, Best Office Application. 1995
PC Magazine Technical Innovation Awards; Runner-up, Best Network Application. 1995
PC Plus VALUE AWARD, Contact Manager review. August 1996

Ziff Davis European Software Excellence Awards. 1995
"The winner of the award for BEST UK SOFTWARE was OfficeTalk, from UK software developer Sareen Software. Up until now, groupware has been dominated by the big names of the computer software industry - Lotus, ICL, IBM and Novell. OfficeTalk bravely breaks this mould by offering a highly functional groupware solution that requires very little investment in money or time to begin using it.

OfficeTalk allows small groups of end-users to make their own workgroup-based groupware solutions, without having to wait for a corporate-wide rollout.

The other finalists in the Best UK Software category were Superbase95 from Superbase, which is an excellent visual database, and CopyControl 1.65 from Microcosm, an extremely innovative multimedia development tool."

PC Magazine Technical Innovation Awards; Winner, Best Office Application. 1995
"OfficeTalk, from Sareen Software, succeeds in making groupware usable, by fully exploiting what the Windows GUI has to offer.

Described as a 'workgroup information manager', the things that make OfficeTalk different are apparent from the moment you begin the installation. The program offers diary, task management, email, project planning and general data management facilities, and yet the whole thing is installed from a single* floppy disk. Presentation is clear and detailed, with obvious icons and well-distributed toolbars that can be labelled for even better legibility.

Along with the usual views, the diary also offers a meeting mode. From here you can schedule meetings by picking resources and participants from a predefined list. OfficeTalk requests the presence of the relevant participants via the email system, giving them the chance to accept or decline by clicking the large 'Can Attend' or 'Can't Attend' buttons. Those who can't attend can even explain why with the aid of a text note.

Along with the electronic wallchart planner, OfficeTalk offers a simple, but functional, project management module. With Project Manager, you can allocate assignments to your co-workers and set deadlines, start dates, completion dates, duration and priorities for tasks. Again, other OfficeTalk users who have been assigned tasks will be informed although you can override this feature.

Central to OfficeTalk is its mail component. This is where all meeting information and task assignments are held. The mail system provides all the usual options including attachments and its unique notify option offers 'Yes/No' dialog boxes that permit the recipient to respond instantly to simple questions.

The very competitively priced OfficeTalk 1.0 is an ideal solution for the small-to-medium sized office, where large, more complex systems are neither practical nor desirable."

*OfficeTalk V1.0.

PC Magazine Technical Innovation Awards; Runner-up, Best Network Application. 1995
"One of the most amazing products we've looked at in the last year, Sareen Software's OfficeTalk does everything a small office or corporate workgroup could expect it to, and more. This group scheduler and personal information manager is easy to use, costs very little and comes on just a single* floppy disk. A rare beast indeed.

The interface is a model of usability. Its toolbar buttons sport unambiguous icons no function is more than a single mouse click away and everything is labelled. It doesn't scrimp on features either, offering diary, wallchart planner, email and more. This is an elegant, intuitive package that more than earns its keep on anyone's hard disk."

*OfficeTalk V1.0.

PC Plus VALUE AWARD, Contact Manager review. August 1996
"OfficeTalk could be used as an example of the way network software should work. It's simple and intuitive to install, links to workstation users are easy to set up and it's very difficult to get lost in the system once you've started to use it.

There are two reasons for this: Sareen Software set out to produce a Workgroup Information Manager (WIM) which was supremely easy to use, and OfficeTalk does less than Commence or GoldMine in some areas. However, for many small organisations, it does more than Organizer and needs much less training for the people who are going to use it. It also costs just ú50 per user.

After you've run the installation program on whichever machine you intend to use as the OfficeTalk server and entered names for your other users, you can download the software across the workgroup. At this stage you can choose to install it on each local workstation or run it all from the server. The program is small, taking barely two floppy disks, and runs quickly and efficiently with little overhead on the workgroup.

OfficeTalk is structured more like Lotus Organizer than either Commence or GoldMine and the main diary screen shows a scrollable appointments diary as well as a task list and calendar for the current day. You can choose to show 'In', 'Process' and 'Out' trays and a waste basket. More than this, a simple drop-down selector enables you to see the diaries for any other user on the system.

Simple button functions like 'Where', 'When' and 'Who' offer information on the location of meetings, when tasks are due for completion and which members of the workgroup are currently logged on to the system. The 'Who' function can be used to tell you when people go off-site, too, if they are conscientious about filling in details before they go.

OfficeTalk is strong on scheduling and contact management. The alphabetically tabbed address book is organised by company and is shared across the system, but each member of the group can also have a personal address book which is private and sorted by name. You can define any number of document templates, which can be exported, together with details from the contacts database, to any program which can accept ASCII or RTF files, such as MS Word.

It's a shame, though, that there's no direct connection with fax software* such as WinFax, so that address and number details could be held in one centralised file.

As with the other two programmes, you can extract a copy of your OfficeTalk database to a notebook machine for when you're away from the office. Any changes can then be reconciled automatically on your return.

E-mail can be sent and received through OfficeTalk, either as notes over a workgroup or through the Internet. As a nice touch, e-mail invitations to a meeting are sent out automatically when the meeting is set up, for all attendees to confirm they can come. External e-mail, sent through an SMTP gateway which must already be set up, is transparent in use. You simply use an Internet address as the destination. Mail can be received into an OfficeTalk client or server in the same way.

OfficeTalk really is like the proverbial breath of fresh air after using the other two programs reviewed here. Although it is restricted in its depth of contact information in comparison to GoldMine and less flexible than Commence, it makes up for all this in its ease of installation and the intuitive way in which it works. OfficeTalk is the ideal workgroup manager for the home and small business.

Both Commence and GoldMine are far too expensive. Contact management isn't that vertical or minority a market and a price of ú1,000 for five users can't be justified. The only product of the three reviewed here that we would recommend is OfficeTalk, which works intelligently and doesn't require its users to understand object programming terms. You can link 20 users with OfficeTalk for the same price as five under Commence or GoldMine. OfficeTalk gets our vote and a value for money award."

*Since the date of this review, Sareen Software have become distributors of the network fax solution, FAXmaker, from GFI. OfficeTalk users benefit from a 30% discount on the GFI List Price of FAXmaker which integrates with OfficeTalk, when purchased through Sareen Software.

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