In the modern workplace, time is critical. Managing your inbox is still a nightmare, despite technological advances. Knowmail are on a mission to change that landscape. I met with Haim Senior, Founder & CEO at Knowmail, to talk about how Knowmail are incrementally changing the way we manage our day, and how their latest collaboration with Avaya introduces email to the desk phone.
Avaya integration
The reality of communication today is that all communications are yet to be truly unified. Bringing together voice communications and written communications has been combined via UC vendors but email has always been an aside. Knowmail now provides a powerful email and messaging interface for the Avaya Vantage™ series.
Haim said this is perfect for when an employee comes in early in the morning and only has a few minutes before their first meeting. Rather than having to boot their computer and wait for email to load up, they can access a their most important tasks and activities from the handset.
When you are working at your desk, the phone becomes an extension of the desktop. The idea here is to focus your attention on things that matter most now.
Email will never die
Following Slack’s acquisition of Astro and Slack CTO Cal Henderson stating that “email will never die,” Haim reflected on the importance of email and how it will never just disappear. Haim said “Just like the phone, email is a protocol that isn’t owned by anyone, so companies and application developers like to couple themselves with such technology knowing it will stay around forever”.
“Even with Slack, you have to identify yourself with an email address”
Deeper than email
Knowmail works by prioritising your emails and providing you with a predicted next-best-action to get more done in less time. Haim said, “The Knowmail platform creates a personalised Artificial Intelligence. experience for each user by privately and securely grasping patterns and behaviours, to define whether items are urgent, important, actionable or time consuming”.
Unlike other technologies, Knowmail’s personalised AI can understand, time and track intelligent insights like meetings, notes, personal tasks, and follow-ups that are specific to you. Knowmail extracts only what is required for the specific user as to personalise his or her experience. Haim used the example of marketing businesses that use actionable keywords like “call us” or “download our ebook” so that these novice machines will capture those call to actions as an activity or tag these emails as something you should focus on. You may not want to download that ebook but Knowmail extracts only those details specific to you.
Personalised meetings
Haim told me that Knowmail had received requirements to expand beyond email. “We’ve had several requests from our partners and are currently working to expand Knowmail’s AI personalisation platform to meetings, tasks, notes and other work-related capabilities. Thanks to our modular AI architecture, expanding the platform to support those functionalities is a fast process”.
The same engine powering emails is now helping users transform meeting follow up activity. “We’ve combined smart understanding about what is truly relevant to a specific meeting via a machine”. Readers may be familiar with Zapier style “if this, then that” functionality. Knowmail already knows the due dates and required actions so goes a level further than this and introduces genuine machine learning.
Haim gave me the example of being a project manager with a recurring meeting every week. Knowmail will know what items are required for this meeting, so you have prompts, and therefore time, to prepare for that meeting.
From emails to meetings, on laptop or desk phone, the hands-free, always on, every device world has taken over from the traditional office. With this on an undeniable upward curve, the holistic Knowmail experience is sure to take off.
