Why some users only see Notes as email

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
Lotus Notes 8.51 Welcome screen

For some users of Lotus Notes, that's all they can see, access, or use.  

What an extraordinary waste of resources to pay well for talent and expertise, give workers and extraordinary tool to support them, and then lock it down so all they can use is email.

Today, I worked with a senior executive at a large organization. He had transferred from a global organization that used Outlook. Now, he has Lotus Notes. Like many highly productive executives, he's involved in a GTD community (this one happened to be on LinkedIn) where he learned that Lotus Notes could be transformed into a highly effective information and action management tool. He contacted me for some guidance and I offered to help him. I asked him if he had received any training in how to use Notes. He replied no, so I offered to do a quick web meeting to get him started. It was there that I found out that his Lotus Notes was locked down to the screen above. So, for him, Notes truly is about email and basic PIM. He could not view the Notes workspace or anything else. Strictly email and calendar.

I showed him my Lotus Notes desktop, specifically my Notes workspace where I have over 400 icons on my workspace neatly organized across more than a dozen tabs. It may sound like a lot but Lotus Notes makes it very easy for me to get things done quickly by organizing my work in this way. We reviewed some of the features of Notes and within minutes he said that he could see how Notes could do so much more and that prior to our meeting he had only heard the negatives about Notes. Now, he was interested to learn more about Lotus Notes and what it could do for his organization.

In the short time we had, I did not make him a Notes expert, but I did manage to give him a glimpse into a tool that has served me and many others quite well for over two decades. The very tool he has on his desktop has the ability to transform the way that he and his team communicate, collaborates and coordinate their work.

I am glad I was able to champion the software he already has and give him a new outlook on Lotus Notes.

20110809-DominoPowerArticle.jpg

DominoPower Magazine Senior Technical Editor Mick Moignard shares his experience implementing David Allen's GTD® methodology in Lotus Notes using the free eProductivity Essentials application.

I've toyed around the edges of David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology for quite some time, and I've played with a number of Lotus Notes implementations of it. I've talked with Eric Mack of eProductivity about his company's Lotus Notes implementation, and I've listened to the man himself, David Allen, talk about GTD at Lotusphere. I even bought and had him sign a copy of one of his books, then won a copy of another one from Eric.

But I've not committed myself to the process.

So when Eric asked me to have a look at the new eProductivity Essentials stand-alone version, I thought this would be great opportunity not just to look at his product, but also take another look at whether GTD is really for me.

The first two articles have already been posted here and here. The final installment and a free offer from eProductivity just for DominoPower readers will be published next week.

PRODUCT REVIEW

Using eProductivity Essentials with Lotus Notes
In this article, Senior Technical Editor Mick Moignard shows you how you can use the eProductivity Essentials product.
August 2011 | By Mick Moignard

Getting things done with eProductivity Essentials for Notes
This is the first of three articles evaluating eProductivity's Lotus Notes implementation of David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology.
August 2011 | By Mick Moignard

Via: Inside eProductivity Blog


Correction 8/9/2011: In his independent review of eProductivity Essentials for Lotus Notes, by DominoPower Magazine, Senior Technical Editor Mick Moignard wrote: "... you can't actually follow through the sample actions specified, because there are already more than 25 open actions in the sample data in the database."

For readers of this blog and DominoPower magazine, we need to clarify how this works: When a user first evaluates eProductivity, the product starts in "trial" mode with the full "Professional" edition feature set. During this time, users can process the sample emails (which are strategically placed there to introduce folks to the GTD processes by simply processing a few emails). They can also create an unlimited number of projects and actions. At the end of the trial period (21 days) the user is invited to purchase an activation key to unlock additional features or allow the product to convert to the free "Essentials" edition, which imposes a limit of 25 open actions at any one time.

Apparently, Mr. Moignard had previously evaluated a different version of eProductivity, so his current and thorough review of eProductivity Essentials started out in free "Essentials" mode rather than "Trial" mode - which explains why he was subject to the 25 open action limit. In that case, Mr. Moignard's advice to delete the sample and tutorial emails and actions makes perfect sense. (We have shared this information with DominoPower Magazine so that they can update their review and provide the correct information to their readers.)