EMAILER COMPARISON REPORT

Prepared By

Greg Andersen - E-Mail: andersen@cpsc.ucalgary.ca
Guy Bailie - E-Mail: bailie@cpsc.ucalgary.ca

February 21, 1996

Analysis of Word Perfect Office

This report was prepared for CPSC 547 in order to fulfill the requirements of project 2. GGC is a fictitious consulting firm created for the purpose of preparing a software comparison report. Although GGC and company "A" are not real companies, the software comparison data is actual numbers based on trial usage by the writers.

GGC does not guarantee accuracy, adequacy or completeness of the services provided in connection with this report. GGC MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED BY ANY PERSON OR ENTITY FROM USE OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS REPORT. GGC MAKES NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OF ANY PRODUCT MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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Company "A" requested that GGC perform an evaluation on the effectiveness of the software products CCmail , Word Perfect Office and MSmail which will be running in Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

GGC tested the products using preset Evaluation Criteria . These criterion consisted of Administration, Future enhancement capabilities, Ease of use, and some Miscellaneous criteria. Each one of these guidlines contained subheadings which were assigned an importance weight from which the system was then graded.

cc:Mail Results

GGC concludes that cc:Mail offered the most benefit from the Administration standpoint. This means that overall, cc:Mail was the easiest to support from a Network support point of view. Although cc:Mail did not score the highest overall for Ease of Use, it scored high enough to be a contender. For the networked office environment, cc:Mail would be the best choice. Overall, cc:Mail finished in second place behind Word Perfect Office.

Word Perfect Office Results

In the Word Perfect Office environment, Ease of Use was the highest scoring category. From a stand alone point of view, it was the clear winner. It fell behind in the Administration category however, proving much more difficult to support than cc:Mail. Word Perfect Office showed the highest overall score.

Microsoft Mail Results

Lastly, Microsoft Mail scored the same in the Ease of Use category as cc:Mail, but registered the worst Adminstration score of the three. For obvious reasons, it was the hands down winner in the MS Office compatibility category which would make it the clear choice in a stand alone environment having MS Office in use. Overall, Ms Mail produced the lowest score of the three.

OVERALL SCORES

		Rating:			Score:
	Wt.	WPO	MSMail	cc:Mail	WPO	MSMail	cc:Mail
Administration	10	7.00	5.00	10.00	70	50	100
Network	10	8.00	7.00	10.00	80	70	100
Training	8	10.00	10.00	8.00	80	80	64
Ease of use	10	10.00	8.00	8.00	100	80	80
Rules	7	10.00	9.00	5.00	70	63	35
Cost	6	10.00	8.00	8.00	60	48	48
Vendor Support	8	8.00	10.00	10.00	64	80	80
Average Rating:		9.00	8.14	8.43
Total Score:					524	471	507

EVALUATION CRITERIA

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The purpose of this study was to compare and contrast 3 popular MS Windows based email systems. In order to make a fair assessment of the systems, criteria was decided upon that would carry a weight related to its importance as a feature. Each feature could then be rated by the user and given a score between 0 and 10, where 0 indicates a poor rating and 10 represents an excellent rating. These rating sheets were then distributed to the pilot group who tested all 3 systems based on these features. It should be noted that the Administration features were only rated by the information systems subjects.

The criterion used along with their respective features were as follows:

ADMINISTRATION

The administration features were designed to give an indication of how complicated it would be to implement and maintain the system. The features for this category were:

Rules

This criteria gives a rating of how many administrative rules are needed to set up the mail system from an administration level, and how easy they are to use. Importance Weight = 10

Administration Tools

This criteria rates how well the product can be maintained by the use of the administrative tools offered by the product.Importance Weight = 10

Read Network Bindery

This criteria is used to show how effective the product is in connecting with existing networks, such as Novell Netware, or other. Importance Weight = 9

High-Level Security

This criteria rates the product on how secure the administrative tools are from the rest of the network. Importance Weight = 6

Limits on Message Size

This criteria rates the products on their abilities of letting the administrator have control over the limits on message size. Importance Weight = 5

Limits On Copies

This criteria rates the products on its ability to have the administrator limit the number of copies of messages.Importance Weight = 5

Delay Message Delivery

This criteria rates the email products on the delay time for delivering messages to users. In other words how long do messages sit in the mail queue, and its ability to be set by the administrator. Importance Weight = 6

Auto-Delete By Date

This criteria rates the products on how they handle ‘stale’ messages, i.e. wn do outdated messages get deleted, and can this be set by the administrator. Importance Weight = 9

Global Distribution Lists

This criteria rates the products as to whether global mailing lists can be set up or not and how easily the administrator can do this. Importance Weight = 10

Future:

The future features were designed to evaluate potential up coming needs or services which could be easily added on when required. The features for this category were:

Scheduling

This feature allows for individual schedules to be coordinated with others for arranging meetings and / or conferences. Importance Weight = 7

Bulletin Boards

This feature allows the user to communicate with the various BB's available today. Importance Weight = 9

Discussion DB's

This feature allows the user to join a discussion group where they can communicate with other memebers of the group when it is convenient for them to do so. Importance Weight = 5

Multi-media

This feature looks at the multi-media capabilities of the system. Importance Weight = 5

Runs on Unix

This feature would allow the system to run in the Unix environment as well as MS Windows. Importance Weight = 7

EASE OF USE

The ease of use features were designed to give an indication of how user friendly the system was. The features for this category were:

Creating a Message

Looking Up Addresses

Rates on how easy the product is to retrieve an address from a global mail list. Importance Weight = 10

Formatting Message Text

Rates on an number of different criteria pertaining to the message text of mail messages. Including such things as wrap-around text, standard font sets, etc. Importance Weight = 9

Spellcheck

Rates on whether or not the products include a spell checking tool or not and how effective and easy to use it is. Importance Weight = 8

Thesaurus

Rates on whether or not the products include a thesaurus tool or not and how effective and easy to use it is. Importance Weight = 8

Saving Message As a Draft

Rates the mail products on the ease of ability to create a message and save it as a draft copy before sending it. Importance Weight = 10

Carbon Copies

Rates the products on how easily it is to send duplicate copies of the same message to other people. Importance Weight = 5

Printing The Message

Rates the products on their ability to print a message, both on how easy it is to do and the resulting print. Importance Weight = 8

Attaching A File

Rates on how easy the application can attach a file of any type to the existing outgoing mail message. Importance Weight = 10

OLE

Rates the ease of linking objects within the given environment.

Cut/Paste From Other Apps

Rates the product on it’s ability to take a piece of information from some other application and place it in the existing mail message using cut and paste procedures. Importance Weight = 10

Auto Copy Of Message To Folder

Rates the product on whether or not it automatically makes a copy of your outgoing message to a folder for you. Importance Weight = 8

Sending The Message

Rates the mail products on their ease of sending a message. Importance Weight = 10

Getting A Receipt Back

Rates the applications on whether or not they send you back a confirmation that the mail message has been sent, or how easy this option is to set up. Importance Weight = 8

Receiving a Message

Replying To A Message

Rates the applications on how easy it is for a user to reply to a message that has been received. Importance Weight = 10

Forwarding A Message

Rates the applications on how easy it is for a user to forward a received message to other individuals on the mailing list. Importance Weight = 9

Resending A Message

Rates the applications on their ability to take an already sent message and resend to the same person, and how easily this can be performed by the user. Importance Weight = 8

Deleting A Message

Rates the application on it’s method of deleting messages from the users mail folders. Importance Weight = 9

Retracting A Message

Rates the application on whether or not it is able to get a message back after it has already been sent and how easy this can be done. Importance Weight = 5

Searching Messages

Rates the applications on their ability to search through all messages for some search criteria. Importance Weight = 4

Sorting Messages

Rates the applications on the ability to sort all messages in a specified order and how easy and effective this is done. (e.g. by date, alphabetic, message importance, or combination of). Importance Weight = 5

Reading Attached File In Mail Without Loading Application

Rate the products ability to read an attachment from another application without physically loading the application.

Copying A Message To A Folder

Rates all applications on how easy it is to copy a message into a specific folder and how easy it is to create folders. Importance Weight = 5

Miscellaneous:

The miscellaneous features were designed to evaluate those features that didn't readily fit into one of the othe categories. The features for this category were:

On-Line Tutorial

This feature allows for the user to see how the system works via an integrated on-line tutorial. Importance Weight = 8

DOS Interface

This feature allows the user to access the system from the DOS prompt if Windows were not installed on their machine. Importance Weight = 10

Message Tracking (Work Flow)

This feature allows the users to share projects where a message can be started by one user and passed to the next user for their input. The location of who currently has the message can be tracked for easy communications. Importance Weight = 9

Archive to C Drive

This feature allows the user to archive their messages on the hard drive in personal folders. Importance Weight = 7

Vendor Support

This feature looks at the ease at which support can be obtained by the vendor. Importance Weight = 8

Nicknames

This feature allows for the user to create nicknames or aliases for their recipients. Importance Weight = 6

Creating a Folder

This feature allows the user to create folders for messages that are related to one another. Importance Weight = 7

Absence Message

This feature allows the user to create an extended absence message which would notify all senders to his / her mail box that they were not available to receive mail. Importance Weight =10

Secondary Users

This feature allows for the user to assign another user to read/reply to their mail in the event of absence by the user. Importance Weight = 10

Create Forms

This feature allows the user to create specialty forms which could be stored and used as templates by other users. Importance Weight = 2

Rules Creation by User

This feature allows for the creation of user defined rules. Importance Weight = 10

Private Distribution List

This feature allows for the user to build distribution lists for frequently mailed groups of people so as to avoid inputting several email addresses every time a letter is sent to that group Importance Weight = 10

User Exclusion

This feature allows for the user to exclude individual users from a distribution list while still being able to keep their address as part of the list. Importance Weight = 8

MS Office Compatible

This feature looks at the compatibility between the email system and Microsoft Office tools. Importance Weight = 7

The Results Tables accompanying the analysis show the results for the respective email systems along with a score for each feature. The score value is calculated by multiplying the rating by the weight. The rating values are the average of all the test subjects involved in the study rounded up or down to the nearest integer between 0 and 10 accordingly. The score is calculated using all the raw data and then rounded at the end. This explains why the score may not be exactly equal to the rate times the weight.

ANALYSIS OF CC:MAIL

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CC:Mail performed well in all the categories but clearly stood out in the Administration category. Although it did not score the highest in the Ease of Use category, it still managed to get a respectable score. It also scored well on several of the features which were heavily weighted in the Future and Miscellaneous categories. The results can be viewed in the cc:Mail Results Table

ANALYSIS OF WORD PERFECT OFFICE

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Word Perfect Office was more difficult to support from a network point of view, but was clearly the easiest to use. It excelled in the manipulation and handling of mail documents. The results can be viewed in the Word Perfect Office Results Table

ANALYSIS OF MS MAIL

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MS Mail was the most difficult to support from a network point of view, and rated very close to cc:Mail in the Ease of Use category. MS Mail's strongpoint was the compatibility with MS Office. This was very well received by users wanting to include Word and Excell attachments. The results can be viewed in the MS Mail Results Table

CONCLUSION

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cc:Mail had top marks in the Administration category which makes it an ideal candidate for network environments. It was not as user friendly as Word Perfect Office in terms of Ease of Use but it wasn't difficult to use by any means. cc:Mail lends itself to adding future enhancements, particularly, scheduling and discussion data bases. Microsoft Mail had a reasonably friendly user interface but lacked a little in the Administration features. It was this aspect which hurt MS Mail for this study. The overall winner of the three was Word Perfect's Office, which despite its lower score in the Administration category, produced the highest overall score. This was due to its superior user interface and document handling facilities.