November 14, 2011

Lucatec MASK 4.0.0 released!

We are very happy to announce the immediate availability of our latest major release!

Lucatec® Mask 4.0

You can now download and purchase or upgrade it from the usual places.

As for what’s new, we have once again pushed the Signature functionality to a new level, specifically the ability to use dynamic placeholders a.k.a. Signature Macros. With this release we give you…

Active Directory Integration

$$UserDetail$$ Signature Macro in Action

Using the two new macros UserDetail and SenderDetail you can now make signatures even more versatile, essentially enabling you to use a single, centrally stored set of signature files for all employees in your organization. Instead of hardcoding things like department name, phone numbers, job title, etc. you can now simply refer to the corresponding attributes of the Active Directory user object associated with the current user or the sender used for the current message respectively.

Of course that’s not all. Besides numerous minor fixes and improvements we’ve also added a couple of subtle usability enhancements.

Lucatec MASK Message Options showing the Target History dropdown list in action

“Alternative Target History”

If you occasionally need to save sent messages to a different folder than the one that is defined as the default for the relevant context so far, you had to browse for that folder every time. With Lucatec® Mask 4.0 you only have to do this once: The next time you send a message from the same context (i.e. using the same sender) you will be able to simply pick the previously used alternative folder(s) from a dropdown list.

Enterprise-oriented Enhancements

We’ve also made some improvements that should benefit users who keep their Outlook sessions open for multiple days, weeks or even months, which is quite common for example when Outlook is actually running on a server rather than a physical workstation (e.g. Citrix/Terminal Server or VMware ESX Server). To this end, we’ve implemented an internal task scheduler: Tasks which the addin so far only performed on Outlook startup, most notably Signature Synchronization, will now be run in the background periodically (daily by default).

Furthermore, customers of the special Enterprise Edition will be happy to hear that it is now possible to enforce the contents of message signatures via a new option to always overwrite the local signatures with the external ones on synchronisation. Previously, this only happened when the external signatures were newer than the local ones, thus allowing users to individually customize their signatures.

May 26, 2011

Lucatec MASK 3.0.3 and 2.3.9 released!

These last two months we’ve been busy with (among other things) implementing some customer-requested features. The result of this work is now available to the public (actually, a release candidate has already been available for a couple of weeks via MASK’s Update Check option).

Lucatec® Mask 3.0.3 introduces “PolyGone” – a new feature that we will likely also make available as a separate product in the future (if you’re interested, drop us a note to speed up that process). It allows you to control the Out-of-Office state and auto-reply text of any additional mailboxes you might have in your current Outlook profile. In this first release this still takes an “all or nothing”-approach: When the relevant options are activated, the addin will make sure that the out-of-office status (and optionally the auto-reply text) of all additional mailboxes is always in sync with that of the primary mailbox. The current plan is to extend this in the future so that you will be able to configure this at the individual mailbox level and also to explicitly set the status and auto-reply text for mailboxes rather than just synchronizing it with the primary mailbox.

Another thing we put some work into was adding an alternative mechanism for monitoring the “Sent Items” folder for new items in need of moving. This is mainly to work around an issue that occurs when using Outlook 2003 to connect to an Exchange 2010 server with Cached Mode disabled. Unless you are working with a similar setup and your sent items do not get stored in the expected places, you should simply ignore this.

See what else is new…

It should also be mentioned that we released another service release for the Lucatec® Mask 2.x product line, containing many of the bug fixes and stability improvements that were added while producing the new version 3.x releases.

Release History for Lucatec® Mask 2.3.9

March 29, 2011

Lucatec® MASK 3.0.1 released!

We are happy to announce the immediate availability of a new Service Release, Lucatec® Mask 3.0.1. Besides a number of bugfixes this release contains two experimental new features for advanced users to try:

  • Replied/Forwarded Status icons on items in Public Folders:
    Replied/Forwarded Status icons on items in Public Folders This feature mimics Outlook’s behaviour in mailboxes: Items you forward or reply to will be marked with a corresponding icon. Please note that this feature requires that the user performing the Reply or Forward has to have the “Edit all” permission (implied by the permission levels “Editor” and above).
  • Improved integration between “Sender Options” and “When replying or forwarding, use original recipient as sender”, i.e. when a sender has been determined by the latter mechanism, Lucatec® Mask will now synchronize the target folder to that new sender based on the list of valid senders.

In this release, both new options are off by default and have to be enabled by adding corresponding entries to the registry. If you are interested in trying these out, please contact us directly for details. We expect these new options to be fully enabled and configurable via the regular configuration interface in the next release.

See what else is new…

October 28, 2010

Lucatec® MASK 3.0 and 2.3.8 released!

Filed under: Lucatec MASK,Releases — Tags: , , , , , — gieseno @ 16:42

It’s been an eventful month for us here at Lucatec: We started by publishing Lucatec® Mask 2.3.8, another Minor Service Release that fixes a number of minor issues as well as one major issue that a small number of customers had been experiencing for a while now: Error messages on Outlook startup like “Cannot set allocations” or “Failed to load core – Invalid access to memory location” should hopefully be a thing of the past with this release. (Lucatec® Mask 2.3.8 Release Notes)

The really big news however is that we also have a brandnew major release!

Lucatec® Mask 3.0

Effective immediately, Lucatec® Mask 3.0.0 is available for download and purchase and it sports the following big new features:

Signature Enhancements

We’ve seriously tuned the signature insertion feature:

External Signature Synchronization

You can now put your team’s signature files on a network share and let Lucatec® Mask automatically synchronize your local Outlook signatures with the external ones, thus allowing you to easily manage your team’s signatures in a central location.

Expandable Macros

To make those signatures even more versatile and resuable you can now also use expandable placeholders, e.g. to dynamically insert the name and address of the current user or even to include content from an external file, for instance a common legal disclaimer or rotating ads.

Default Naming Rules

Rather than adjusting the Folder Options of every single mailbox and Public Folder, you can now simply define a simple rule to determine the name of the signature to use. This can massively reduce the configuration effort: All you have to do is consistently name your signatures: For instance, inside a mailbox called “Support”, Lucatec® Mask will by default try to insert a signature named “Support Signature”.

Screenshot of Lucatec® MASK 3.0 running in Outlook 2010

Enhanced integration with Outlook 2010

As already glimpsed in the previous blog entry Lucatec® Mask 3.0.0 now fully integrates with Outlook 2010′s new Backstage View, thus allowing you quicker access to Lucatec® Mask‘s configuration. So far we are quite happy with the new experience. How about you?

Lucatec® MASK configuration in German

Multi-language user interface

The language of the user interface can now be switched at runtime. Also, multiple languages are supported by a single installation. This is especially useful in multi-user environments like Citrix- or Terminal Server.

We’ve also already prepared the system for integrating user-supplied translations. If you’re interested in translating Lucatec® Mask into your language: Get in touch!

Stay tuned as we update the site with more details about the new version in the coming weeks.

June 24, 2009

Lucatec® MASK 2.3.2 released!

Filed under: Lucatec MASK,Releases — Tags: , , , , — gieseno @ 11:02

Minor service release containing a couple of improvements to stability and behavioural consistency as well as minor compatibility fixes for the latest Office updates.

What’s new…

April 9, 2009

Lucatec® MASK 2.3.0 released!

Filed under: Lucatec MASK,Releases — Tags: , , , , — gieseno @ 22:35

We are happy to inform you that we have released version 2.3.0 of Lucatec® Mask. This is a major technology release with significant changes to the way the addin works “under the hood” as well as major updates to our development stack. It also adds a couple of minor new features, such as improvements to the installer and improved handling of multi-user environments like Citrix or Terminal Server.

New Options dialog in Lucatec MASK 2.3.0

The most visible change however is a redesigned configuration interface. As the regular tab on Outlook’s Options dialog was already getting a little crowded and as we are fully intending to add more features in the future we decided to move the options to their own sub-dialog that could more easily be adjusted to additional configuration options.

Oh yes, and Lucatec® Mask 2.3.0 has been fully tested under Microsoft® Windows 7 Beta 1! ;)

Please refer to the Release Notes for a more detailed list of changes.

To install the update,  just download the installer from our Download page, login as Administrator and run the setup program. You do not need to uninstall the previous version. Please make sure that Outlook is not running while you install the update.

Besides the new release we have also begun adding new content to the Lucatec® Mask product pages. There is now a Feature Matrix available, allowing you to easily compare changes between different versions of Lucatec® Mask. We have also set up a Blog which should allow us to publish new information, tutorials, best-practices, etc. in a more ad-hoc fashion than the existing pages allowed. This will also eventually replace our old News page.

Kind regards,

Oliver Giesen
Chief Software Developer

January 30, 2009

Lucatec® MASK 2.2.3 released!

Filed under: Lucatec MASK,Releases — Tags: , , , — gieseno @ 17:35

Minor service release containing a couple of third-party updates and stability fixes.

What’s new…

December 3, 2008

Lucatec® MASK 2.2.2 released!

Filed under: Lucatec MASK,Releases — Tags: , , — gieseno @ 16:27

Minor service release containing a couple of third-party updates and bug fixes.

What’s new…

August 29, 2008

Lucatec® MASK 2.2.1 released!

Filed under: Lucatec MASK,Releases — Tags: , , , — gieseno @ 13:48

We are happy to inform you that we have released version 2.2.1 of our Outlook Team Tool, Lucatec® Mask. This is mainly a service release fixing a number of rarely encountered issues.

Furthermore, it is now possible to add an additional column to your folder views to display the name of the person who actually sent a message (rather than the account that it was sent on behalf of). In order to start recording and displaying this information bring up any folder’s Properties dialog and look out for the button labelled “Add Sender Column” on the Lucatec® Mask tab.

Please refer to the Release Notes for a more detailed list of changes and possible upgrade issues.

To install the update, just download the installer from our Download page, login as Administrator and run the setup program. You do not need to uninstall the previous version. Please make sure that Outlook is not running while you install the update.

Kind regards,

Oliver Giesen,
Chief Software Developer

December 14, 2007

Lucatec® MASK 2.2.0 released!

Filed under: Lucatec MASK,Releases — Tags: , , , , , , — gieseno @ 17:30

We are happy to inform you that we have released version 2.2.0 of our Outlook Team Tool, Lucatec® Mask. This is mainly a compatibility release finally adding support for Outlook 2007, Windows Vista and WordMail (i.e. the option to use Word to edit e-mail messages in Outlook 2003 and earlier). As a side-effect of the changes it is now also possible to use embedded images in signatures. Furthermore there have been lots of subtle improvements all over.

Please refer to the Release Notes for a more detailed list of changes and possible upgrade issues.

To install the update, just download the installer from our Download page, login as Administrator and run the setup program. You do not need to uninstall the previous version. Please make sure that Outlook is not running while you install the update.

Kind regards and happy holidays!

Oliver Giesen
Chief Software Developer

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