Ever had a meeting canceled over email…but you missed it since you were already on the way there?  You’re going to love this.

Today we’re excited to announce “People I’m Meeting Today” alerts.  Whether you use Google or Outlook Exchange for your calendar, the setup takes all of 5 seconds.

You can configure it on the web:

You could also grab the latest iPhone app and navigate to Settings—>People I’m Meeting Today

It works automatically—there’s nothing to setup or think about.

If you and Keith are meeting soon and he sends you an email, that email will turn into an AwayFind alert (see first image above).

When you create appointments in your calendar, just note the full name or email address of the person you’re meeting with.  (Calendar invitations sent over email do this automatically).  This can be in the subject, body, or invitations area of the calendar appointment, but here’s an example:

AwayFind looks at your calendar to determine who you’re meeting with today (from the example above, it would look for an email from Bill Gates or Keith Ludlow or even Microsoft partnership).

If any of those people email within a few hours of the appointment, that email turns into an alert.  You can specify the exact time period—from 1 to 36 hours.  Here’s the email that trigered the alert:

So many ways this saves you.

AwayFind’s got you covered for when people email to…

• Say they’ll be late
• Change the location at the last minute
• Ask for you to bring something to the meeting.

You don’t even need email on your phone—we can send these alerts over SMS, IM, or even call you.  Let us know what you think.  And close your inbox!

If your company uses Microsoft Exchange, fear not—we’ve got you covered.  We now support Exchange 2003, 2007, and 2010.  We supported it before, but now it’s super smooth and reliable.

If you’re a new user, it should be straightforward to get yourself setup.  If you’re an existing user, just visit https://orchant.awayfind.com/admin/setup_accounts.php, choose your Exchange version, and enter your email address:

• If you use a newer (2007-2010) version of Exchange (with AutoDiscover) we’ll just need your password (which we store encrypted).
• If you use Exchange 2003 or do not have AutoDiscover enabled, we’ll likely need a few more settings, like the URL you use to check your webmail (OWA server) or your Exchange Web Services address (EWS).

Then you’re all set.  You can manage AwayFind from awayfind.com or with our iPhone application.

AwayFind Orchant is a completely different product than AwayFind 1.0.  I wanted to take a moment to ensure you were familiar with what’s changed and why.

We’re solving the same problem–keeping people away from email without worrying about missing anything–but our approach is completely different.  Then again, it’s exactly the approach our users asked for.  There were two things our users requested most:

• The ability to get certain people’s messages automatically turned into alerts (SMS or otherwise)
• More control over who received auto response messages, and how often they went out

We’ve got both of these features now, in the form of:

1. Filters

Filters monitor your email accounts for whatever or whomever you’re looking for…and then can alert you when those messages arrive.  Here’s a quick demo:

2. Intelligent Auto Responders

Intelligent Auto Responders allow you to send an auto response once every 180 days (or however often you’d like), rather than in response to every message you receive.  Better yet, you can set custom messages to go to specific people, and prevent some people from ever receiving an auto responder at all.  Here’s more:

Those are our biggest changes, and they required us to grow from a small contact form that sent you SMS’s, into an intelligent application that directly interacts with your email accounts.  In brief:

• AwayFind 1.0 allowed others to reach you with their emergencies
• AwayFind Orchant allows you to be reached from the people or topics that you consider to be urgent

Fortunately all of the AwayFind 1.0 features still exist so you get the best of both worlds.  But now you don’t have to worry about missing a message from your boss, family, or an important client—you get to choose what’s urgent!

Along with this, AwayFind got a redesign and a bunch of new contact methods—we can now notify people anywhere in the world through SMS, Voice, IM, or Twitter DM.

We’ve seen that these changes have made a huge impact on our thousands of customers.  But many more helpful features will be coming soon!