If you have an iPhone and a premium Jott account, then this trick is for you…

You can add Outlooks tasks and create draft emails from your iPhone app!

Here’s what to do…

1) If you haven’t already, download the Jott for Outlook add-in.

2) You’ll see three lists appear on your Jott account, and on your iPhone app: Outlook Calendar, Outlook Tasks, Outlook Email Drafts.

3) From your iPhone app, open the Outlook list you’d like to add something to.

4) Tap the record screen and say your message.

5) Once the iPhone app syncs with your account, and your account syncs with your Outlook, the tasks and/or email drafts you created will appear in your Outlook.

This post was written by Alicia Power, VUI Design Engineer

When we speak in person, there are environmental, context and body language cues which help others understand what we say or mean even if our words are not crystal clear. Voice recognition on the phone has none of these advantages, and it helps to keep that in mind when calling Jott. You really are talking to a machine! Here are a few tips to help with voice recognition:

Avoid bad connections
As we all know from having conversations with others on cell phones, it can be hard to hear the person on the other end if there is bad reception or background noise. Voice recognition when calling Jott is no different. If your voice can’t be heard well enough, it won’t get through to the system and you will hear: “Sorry, didn’t get that.”

Speak loudly and clearly
If you hear “Sorry, didn’t get that” intermittently, try speaking louder. It sounds simple, but it is really the first step to good voice recognition. Shouting or over-enunciating is not necessary and will not help the system understand you. Just speak with a bit of projection to overcome any unconscious tendencies to speak quietly, mumble or slur your words together.

Be careful of name pronunciation
If you hear the message: “Sorry, we couldn’t find that name in your contacts”, it means that your words were heard, but we couldn’t match them with a contact, list or Jott Link. Often, trying again and saying the name slowly and clearly fixes the problem. Listen carefully to the way the name is read back to you when it asks “Is this correct?” as this can give you clues as to how the voice recognition system expects to hear the name.

Try the Sounds Like feature
If you are always having a hard time getting Jott to understand a name, it may be because you say it differently from the phonetic pronunciation. There is a really easy remedy to this! On the Jott website, go to the Contacts tab, and click on the contact this is happening with. You will find a Sounds Like text box. Fill in this text box with the phonetic spelling of how you say their name and the Voice UI will use this instead of the First and Last names to find your contact. For short names, add a word or two, like “doctor” or “mister”. It sounds silly, but if a name is really hard to recognize, you can simply fill in the Sounds Like field with a fun phrase or a few words which are easy to pronounce.

Just a quick post to let you all know that the Jott service will be down tonight starting at 10 p.m. pacific time for some scheduled maintenance. The whole thing shouldn’t take longer than 20 minutes, but we wanted to let you all know in case you had a big Jott evening planned.

A new feature I haven’t written about yet is Jott for Outlook. In a nutshell, it lets you add appointments to your calendar, add items to your task list, and create email drafts… all by using Jott. If you have a premium account and haven’t given it a try, you can download it here, or watch the video below for a short demo of how it all works.

For a little more insight into this new application, I asked Dan (the application’s developer) if he wouldn’t mind sharing the thought process that went into developing Jott for Outlook. So, how do you go about developing an application at Jott? In his own words…

“Hmm, the quick version is that the features are targeted to give the most valuable things that our service can provide in the framework that Outlook provides to us. There is always more that any application can do (that’s what keeps all the millions of software application developers busy around the world). We felt the integration of our technology with Outlook would match with how people most want to use the the valuable service we provide.”

So, there are tons of options out there what can we expect for the future of Jott for Outlook? Dan says…

“We have limited resources being the start-up that we are, and we picked the biggest target we could for this that we thought we could do in a reasonable time-frame with the best results possible. We continue to try to improve our product quality and also look to the future with adding more and cooler features as time and resources permit.”

In other words, there is even more to come! As always, feel free to send your feedback and thoughts our way. Since there are endless possibilities about new ways we can integrate with Outlook, it’s very helpful to know exactly what it is that would work best for you!