Cozi now syncs with Outlook
29. Nov, 2007 
2 Comments
Cozi, the family calendar, now syncs with Outlook. In itself not a big deal since this is a feature on more calendar systems but for Cozi user a big step. I haven’t looked at Cozi for a while but I will do shortly. I like the fact that they aim for a certain niche with a clear proposal; the site looks nice and fresh and they keep developing.
Do you know anyone with “famnesia?” This dreaded affliction deletes the family schedule from your head as soon as you step foot in the office.
Cozi has the cure…the Cozi Outlook Toolbar. Try it before December 16, 2007 you’ll have a chance to win one of two Apple iPhones.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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(4.50 out of 5)
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Thank you for the mention; we appreciate it.
We are still working hard on getting our web interface up to par with the Windows downloadable version. For those of you trying Cozi out for the first time, I recommend trying the Windows version; in a couple of months the web version will be as good (and better – with some brand new feature areas).
And please send us your feedback at support@cozi.com.
Robbie Cape
Cozi, CEO & Co-Founder
I guess my family is the exact segment cozi is targeting: outlook at work, web-based at home, constant famnesia and its bizarro twin officenesia… yes, family can also forget that one has to work
My review of Cozi the company: Awesome, tech support is supper fast via email, very nice & polite but more importantly very honest about the newness of the service (just like Robbie is on his post)
My review of Cozi the service:
a) Robbie is correct, the web version is not fully ready. This bordered on annoying for a family with Windows & Mac environments. But to be fair the windows app version is super simple and totally cool.
b) The outlook integration/toolbar was the killer app for me (and their key differentiation as far as I can tell from looking for other solutions) but still needs work, it does not know how to work in the background well and slows down the Outlook UI while it’s syncing (probably the reason why there is no automatic update and you have to mannualy hit sync…. reminding me of the old hot-sync button on the first generation of palm pilots).
c)The basic idea behind their server logic to sync with outlook is good but it needs some work for the outlook syncronization: stuff from cozi shows up tagged as “family” in your office outlook calendar. This is fine for simple stuff like kids swimming lessons but when you get into office scenarios it gets confusing: If you want to show your family that you will be late because of a conference call you need to categorize your conference call in the “family” category. I was ok with this because outlook can use multiple categories for the same calendar event (the only annoying part was getting confusing color coding). The unexpected deal breaker for me was that once the calendar item got a “family” tag it lets your family modify it… so my Kids can change the conference call information. Ouch. No thanks. No more family tags for office stuff. This reduced the outlook toolbar value in half and required me to use the windows app or the web interface to update cozi with my “i’ll be late on thursday due to a conference call”.
We will definitely go back to Cozi and give them another try when they release their next version and when either the outlook toolbar gets out of beta or they enable multiple “Family category tags”, I need two so far: “Family stuff everyone can edit” & “Show to Family but only I can edit”.
They seem to be a very honest company so when they tell me it’s fixed I will believe them.
In the mean time my family is giving google calendar a try and will check out SyncCal or something like it for the Outlook synchronization… Will definitely miss the shopping list and the extremely super cool SMS integration on the Windows app.
Dan