Last year when we developed Automatic Organizer, our Yahoo! Mail application, we used Browser-Based Authentication (BBAuth) to connect OtherInbox to Yahoo! Mail accounts. BBAuth allowed Yahoo! Mail users to authorize OtherInbox to connect to their email accounts without needing to give up their Yahoo! passwords.

This was great! It allowed us to connect to Yahoo! Mail accounts and still provide our users the safety and protection of never giving out their Yahoo! passwords. In addition, our users could disconnect from OtherInbox from their Yahoo! Mail settings if they desired.

However, using BBAuth to access Yahoo! Mail accounts proved to have a couple limitations:

• If the user changed his or her Yahoo! password, the OtherInbox connection was broken.
• We had to create an OtherInbox account for each user. This meant each user had another username and password to keep track of.

Two things happened after our application was created that allowed us to improve the user experience immensely. Last September, Yahoo! announced support for the OpenID OAuth Hybrid Protocol. This powerful protocol allows Yahoo! users to sign in to external sites and allow for two-way data sharing all in one step. This potentially meant our users would no longer need an OtherInbox login.

Second, earlier this year Yahoo! introduced an OAuth API for Yahoo! Mail for all Yahoo! Mail accounts. Now, we could take advantage of the Hybrid Protocol to offer our Yahoo! Mail Organizer users a greatly enhanced experience.

The advantages?

• A user changing his or her Yahoo! password no longer breaks the OtherInbox connection
• Users can sign in to OtherInbox with their Yahoo! username and password

For our users, this meant no longer needing to remember another username and password. Because of the Hybrid Protocol, the signup process (and setting up OAuth and OpenID) is completed in just one step.

We also experienced some positive changes. When we used BBAuth, we received many inquiries from our users about how to access their OtherInbox account. We had to create an OtherInbox account for every new user with a unique username and password.

Despite our best efforts, many users would still be confused. Some would try their Yahoo! credentials to sign in to OtherInbox and subsequently get locked out. We would receive 100-200 inquiries like this every month.

After taking advantage of the Hybrid Protocol, these inquiries have dropped to effectively zero. We have also seen some evidence that our deactivation rate has dropped, especially amongst new users who have had Organizer installed for less than 30 days.

Overall, we believe switching to OAuth and OpenID allows us to provide our users a far superior experience and provides us with a product that will have higher conversion and retention rates.

Since we launched Organizer for Yahoo! Mail a year ago, the application has undergone several makeovers. It got the job done, but as with most applications in their first generation, it was definitely in need of some polish.

Below is what Organizer for Yahoo! Mail looked like when we launched the application just one year ago. Senders were listed in alphabetical order and not by folder. The sender's name could not be changed. Even the folders a sender was organized into could not be changed.

We've come a long way from these humble beginnings. There have been at least three complete redesigns of the application in the past year.

Our most recent redesign gives Organizer a fresh new look. As a Yahoo! Mail application, we wanted to reinforce how Organizer works with Yahoo! Mail. For example, you may notice the folder icons and the font for the folder names match how Yahoo! Mail presents folders. 

New features we've introduced in the past twelve months have also influenced the design. Grouping senders by folder allow you to drag-and-drop a sender from one folder to another. Since the most common action a user is likely to take is turning off the organizing of a sender, we've made this Folders page the first thing you see when you open the application.

What do you think of the current design? How can we make it better and easier to use?

It's even easier to invite your friends!

We love that so many of our users want to share Organizer with their friends and family. To make this even easier, we've added a new Invitations page right inside the application. Just click the Invitations tab to get started.

Click "Suggest people" and we will make some suggestions based on your sent messages. Or, just enter in the email addresses of your friends and family in the designated spaces. Review the message and click "Send invitations" and we will send your message with a link directly to the signup page. You can even track the status of your invitations in the column on the right. 

How many usernames do you think that you have today? It seems every web application out there has yet another username to remember. Sometimes, you can grab your usual username if you're early enough. However, if you're too late, you have a decision to make:

I want hoonpark, but it's not available. Do I change it to hoonpark1? hoon_park? Something completely different like AZNbieberFAN? Will I even remember that?

With this frustration in mind, we are looking at multiple ways to address it. The first we have implemented is a new login feature for our Organizer product. Since Organizer is connected to a user's existing email account, it makes sense to allow users to log in with their email address.

All Organizer users can now log in using their email address. For example, if you installed Automatic Organizer for Yahoo! Mail, just use your Yahoo! Mail address to log in.

Please note, your password for OIB is not necessary the same as your email account's password. If you do not know your password, check our support site for instructions for our Yahoo! Mail and Gmail users.

We had a lovely surprise yesterday. One of our partners, Yahoo! Mail, was kind enough to write a blog post about Automatic Organizer for Yahoo!: Spring into a Clean Inbox.

But then we realized, is it already time for spring cleaning?!

The blog post put it best:
“Tired of spending countless hours on cleaning up those emails that have piled up over the years? Spring is just around the corner and you know what that means – spring cleaning. Don’t suffer from the stress and get a jump-start on spring cleaning with an organized Yahoo! Mail inbox.”

When we connect OtherInbox to a Gmail account, we automatically find messages that aren't from real people and organize them inside of your Gmail account by labeling them OtherInbox and removing them from the Inbox by Archiving them. We synchronize the messages with your OtherInbox account and send you a daily digest so you don't miss anything important.