SmartZone, an introduction
One of the major things we’re working on as a company is convergence – and, specifically, how we can make our services work better together. Recently, we introduced the SmartZone® Communications Center, which was born from our focus on convergence and enhancing our customers’ communications experience.
In a nutshell, SmartZone is the one place where you can access your email, Comcast Digital Voice voice mail, call logs, calling features, and a “universal address book” with all your contacts’ information in one convenient location.
Since the time we rolled out SmartZone to all our customers earlier this year, we’ve received a ton of feedback (yes, we’re listening, keep it coming!) on what you like, don’t like, what works well, and what doesn’t work so well. We’ve taken your feedback and have already begun fixing and enhancing SmartZone based on your comments. To date, we have fixed and enhanced many areas of SmartZone reported directly by you. For example, earlier this year we released fixes for the problems with forwarding email with embedded images (our bad!) and the ability to sort by ‘from’ in the inbox (our bad again!). Additionally, we’ve enhanced the system by allowing you to stay logged into SmartZone for up to 2 weeks (yes, remember me, finally!) without having to sign in every time you access SmartZone via Comcast.net. These are just a couple examples of the many more changes we’ve made based on your feedback and what you can expect to come as we address the areas important to you.
So what is coming? Well, we have plans to release some exciting and very useful changes to the system that have been requested directly from all of you. For instance, in early July, we’re releasing a feature that allows you to expand your email screen for the entire browser session by collapsing the ad space on the right hand side of the screen. No more of the screen jumping back and forth when you click on an email (yeah!). Shortly after, we will be releasing usability enhancements like improving the readability of email by increasing font size and spacing and implementing email and voice mail preview on Comcast.net so you can get to email and voice mail quicker.
This is just the tip of the iceberg as we work on rolling out many more convenient features such as: allowing secondary email users to access voice mail, call logs, and calling features, a Calendar tab directly in SmartZone, a security feature that certifies email so you can trust the authenticity of the sender, and much more.
Last, we see a lot of questions and requests from customers for features which exist today in SmartZone. Did you know you can address an email by simply typing in the name or email address of recipient in the To: field and SmartZone will suggest matches directly from your address book? Did you know you can drag and drop email to the trash folder? Did you know you can right click on an email to mark it as read or unread? Did you know there is a SmartZone Lite version? Did you know you can access email from other 3rd party email accounts like Yahoo, Gmail, and AOL in SmartZone? Yes, no, maybe? To learn more, take a look at the SmartZone tutorial and link to SZ Lite tutorial that goes into great detail of all the great SmartZone capabilities available today. Take a look, it just may help answer some questions you may have.
Well, that’s it for now but I’ll be back soon enough but keep the feedback coming as we’re constantly working to provide the best experience possible! Let us know what you would like to see in SmartZone - access your email on your TV? Email notifications on your PC? – you tell us, we’re listening.
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Comments (13)
I would like a calendar feature in SmartZone. I've used Outlook and like it's integration and meeting scheduler with others on the network, but don't see those features in SmartZone. I am also interested in receiving Email notifications on my PC? I understand some of these features are coming, but can you predict how soon or long it will be before they are available? I am also wondering how I can best import or copy my contact list from Outlook into SmartZone. Outlook is installed on my old PC, not on my new one. Is it possible to export them into a portable file (thumb or flash drive) and import them into SmartZone?
Thanks,
PR
Hello,
I am very excited about SmartZone but there is one more feature that I am looking for and it is the ability to "click-to-dial" from my email and either use my home phone or a PC softphone for the call. I am sure you have not overlooked this feature. Currently I have to manually dial the number on the home phone. When is it coming?
Connie Barnes
Smartzone - and email service in general is down again as of 10/20/2009 - and nobody at Comcast will explain when it'll be working, why it's down or what their customers are paying for! Fast speed? We don't get any email faster?? Hmmmm... I'd really like just an answer - even "gosh I don't know but I'll get back to you" and then have somebody actually get back to me - that would be nice.
Hi! The folks I've talked to have been very cheerful and helpful, and the day before yesterday, I was able to get into my e-mail with all the addresses, etc. It was wonderful, and I hated to sign off, but wrote down the address in the top line so I could get back in without any trouble. However, yesterday, nothing worked to get back in. So I called my son in Baltimore, and he helped me get my e-mail through Accessories on the Mac I'm now working on. It pulled up the e-mails, but none of the folders, nor my e-mail addresses. So, I'm hoping to get all this figured out before the school year starts next week because a lot is at stake in doing things efficiently...
Smartzone stinks! I have to click ten times on an email to get it to open. I cannot send pictures either. You need to fix these problems NOW!
The answer to all of the numerous complaints about Smartzone is simple - Gmail or Verizon FIOS.
I used to have access to a calendar; now I don't. is there any way to get it back?
My internet connection seems to be fairly fast with Comcast. However, simply typing an email with my comcast email service (Smartzone) is painfully slow. My wife's slower laptop has no problems typing a fast email. Any idea why this is happening?
Pete
One thing that I would like to see for the ads -- the smaller ad, below the folder list, it should be shrinkable, too. It is barely noticeable, and never gets in the way, until I go to Smartzone on my netbook, which has a 1024x600 resolution. Even in full-screen browsing mode, the folder list is too compact and on an account I have with multiple subfolders, I have to scroll the folder list just to get to some of them! The whole SZ interface is a bit cramped on the netbook, but many sites are the same (out of all email accounts I use, all but Gmail are cramped on the low resolution it has), but that one ad below the folder list makes Smartzone difficult to use efficiently on the screen.
The biggest problem I have with this, is the bloat it has created, and all the bloody advertising that is surrounded around my inbox. This is a service I am paying for, why all the advertising? And yes, I know I can hit the "arrow" and minimize it...Why do I need to do that each and every time.
This is a part of a service that I pay for, and I am not paying for advertising to be crammed down my throat when I check email.
SmartZone comments:
The font issues really need to be taken care of quickly - it's a major issue. If the browser font is adjusted to make the email and folder listings readable, other sections overlap in SmartZone as well as in many other web sites. Additionally, the font size sometimes is large and then randomly changes back to the difficult to read small and fuzzy font. I have no idea what causes this. These issues occur on every machine I have used to access SmartZone so I don't believe the issue is related to the browser or Windows font settings.
Having to click on SmartZone login, wait for a new page to display and then having to click on SmartZone login again has become second nature already but is still very annoying. The new login page is not very intuitive initially if one simply wants to get into their email. I think it should be made much more prominent on the comcast.net splash page - or much better actually would be a direct way of just bypassing the splash page and going directly to a mycomcast login screen - this would be very refreshing.
The ad frame on the right of the SmartZone email screen should be completely removed or at least able to be minimized permanently without it popping back up every time a new email is viewed - this is seriously frustrating.
That's all that comes to mind at the moment.
Thanks for listening - hope you actually do something with these issues/suggestions/complaints.
My biggest issue with SmartZone is that I have multiple accoutns that I supposedly linked to my main account, but frequently email messages from the subs do not appear in the subs list on the main. If I indvidually go to each of the subs all of the emails are there. It is annoying to have to log in and log out to vaious accounts when they should all forward to one place. Is this a bug?
While sone things are nice, the performance seems to be way too slow many, many times! A lot of "server" wait messages and the address book can't load. Is it software or not enough hardware?