Notes on Productivity Home Page

The Workspace is a view that shows all of your IBM Notes apps and databases -- Mail, Notebook, Contacts, and much more -- like so:



I've been astonished to find that many Notes users don't have access to the Workspace by default. Most of my life life in Notes is lived out of this view, and I can't imagine working without it.

Continue Reading "The most useful view in IBM Lotus Notes that you're not using" »

Imagine if, instead of taking a few clicks to do a task, you could to it in a few keystrokes? I'm sure you're all familiar with the shortcuts for copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V).

Imagine doing those manually instead of using the shortcuts, every time. Now are you getting a sense of how much time those little keystrokes save you?

How to use the Alt key (a.k.a. the "magical shortcut to darn near everything" key)

Hold the Alt button.

Notice that this does two things:

1) causes certain letters in your menu items to be underlined, like so:



2) causes numbers to appear over your first nine action bar buttons.

While holding the Alt key, you can press one of those numbers or underlined letters. For example, holding Alt and pressing T will open the Text menu, like so:



See how the k in "Strikethrough" is underlined above? That means that pressing K will activate the Strikethrough formatting.

To recap that example:
Press Alt+T+K
Start typing
You get this: Stricken-through text

Try it! (To turn off strikethrough, just press Alt+T+K again).

The secret Master Shortcut Formula

To access any function on any menu, just hold the Alt key and press the underlined letter of the thing you want to do. This also works with any numbers that pop up when you hold Alt. Go ahead and explore -- find the shortcuts for your favorite functions.

Hint: Alt+W is really handy.

Have fun!

-Nathan

Our company recently purchased several iPhone 5c's for testing purposes and I spent a good portion of the day setting up my  phone and testing various productivity solutions to see how well they integrate with eProductivity.  I set up Lotus Traveler to synchronize my email, contacts, and calendar. Next, I set up the IBM Traveler Tasks application and the IBM Traveler Companion App I was disappointed to learn that IBM Traveler does not provide a solution for the IBM Notes Notebook as this is a key element in any personal information management (PIM) system.  I use my Notes Notebook as my go to Reference Database.  The Reference Database is a key tool in my toolbox and I find myself using it on my smartphone on a regular basis.

Continue Reading "Deja Office for Lotus Notes" »

[Guest blog post by  Jason Spencer]

Eric Mack reached out to me recently and offered to show me how he uses IBM Notes. I wanted top see eProductivity in operation anyway so this was my chance to learn from its creator

My first One on One coaching session with Eric Mack focused on an introduction to eProductivity which I found impressive. Eric Mack and David Allen have created an optimized software package and user interface for IBM Notes.

(As an aside, I believe that it  would behoove anyone working in software development to preview the demo and see what a completely optimized life management tool looks like.) Over a three day period, I implemented all 57 exercises to properly demo the software. In my next post, I will describe more about this experience.

Continue Reading "IBM Notes as a "Trusted System" for Getting Things Done" »

Journalist and professor Jason Spencer is on a quest to use IBM Notes as a productivity platform. I've invited him to share his experience with Notes on Productivity readers.

Jason's first and second guest blog posts are here, here and here.  Jason's fourth installment update is below.

Setting up IBM Notes with the Getting Things Done White Paper

Yesterday, I tried to set up IBM Notes and organize my work according to the best practices of David Allen's GTD methodology. I ran into some snags which I documented.

Today, as I continue my productivity journey, I decided to see if David's white paper on using Notes would provide some relief to the challenges I encountered with vanilla Notes. I spent a day setting up my vanilla copy of IBM Lotus Notes using David Allen’s Getting Things Done white paper for IBM Notes. If you have never used a GTD White Paper before from the David Allen Company, you should know that their white papers give you a complete Getting Things Done Setup for that specific piece of software, turning confusion into clarity.

Continue Reading "Guest Blog: Using the GTD Setup guide for Lotus (IBM) Notes" »

Two weeks ago I shared a link to productivity blogger Jason Spencer'

Jason is a journalist and professor at the Art Institute of Houston and he recently reached out to me to share his interest in IBM Notes as a productivity platform . He said that he was planning to do a long term experiment by migrating his life to IBM Notes/Smart Cloud. I like the way he explores and writes about productivity topics he's passionate about so I encouraged him to share his experience and I invited him to submit guest blog posts about his experience for the benefit of the Notes on Productivity readers.

Jason's first and second guest blog posts are here and here.  Jason's third installment update is below.

Challenges Implementing Getting Things Done with IBM Notes
I'm a long time proponent of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) approach to work and life. In fact, knowing that David uses and recommends IBM Notes as his knowledge platform of choice is what first led me to consider switching from Outlook. When Microsoft emasculated their productivity tools I got fed up and decided to explore the tool that David Allen uses. I understand that David also uses eProductivity but I wanted to first understand what it is about Notes that has kept this program around for over two decades. Using my knowledge of GTD, I decided to see if I could implement this approach to productive work within my vanilla Notes 9 Social Edition Setup.


Continue Reading "Challenges Implementing Getting Things Done with IBM Notes" »

[Two weeks ago I shared a link to productivity blogger Jason Spencer's rant against Microsoft for their emasculation (his words, not mine) of their productivity tools.

Jason is a journalist and professor at the Art Institute of Houston and he recently reached out to me to share his interest in IBM Notes as a productivity platform . He said that he was planning to do a long term experiment by migrating his life to IBM Notes/Smart Cloud. I like the way he explores and writes about productivity topics he's passionate about so I encouraged him to share his experience and I invited him to submit guest blog posts about his experience for the benefit of the Notes on Productivity readers.

Jason's first guest blog post is here. Jason's second installment update is below.]

IBM Notes True Cross Platform Support
Despite all the challenges I faced setting up IBM Notes, I chose Notes as my primary life management application because IBM has tried to make Notes a truly ubiquitous cross platform PIM. IBM chose to pursue simplicity in Note’s mobile device support-- like Google Apps for Business, IBM Notes Traveler (the IBM Notes push email and PIM solution for mobile devices)  embraces Microsoft Exchange Active Sync Protocol for maximum interoperability. Furthermore, IBM Notes Traveler offers software for iOS and Android; and support for Blackberry and Windows phone platforms.  Similarly, Notes also offers a robust web interface far more comparable to its native client then Outlook Web Access 2013 (OWA) to Microsoft Outlook. When it comes to desktop operating systems, you can run the full IBM Notes Client natively on all major operating systems --Windows, Mac, and Linux flavors of Red Hat and Ubuntu.


Continue Reading "IBM Notes True Cross Platform Support - Guest post by Jason Spencer" »

[Two weeks ago I shared a link to productivity blogger Jason Spencer's rant against Microsoft for their emasculation (his words, not mine) of their productivity tools.

Jason is a journalist and professor at the Art Institute of Houston and he recently reached out to me to share his interest in IBM Notes as a productivity platform . He said that he was planning to do a long term experiment by migrating his life to IBM Smart Cloud. I like the way he explores and writes about productivity topics he's passionate about so I encouraged him to share his experience and I invited him to submit guest blog posts about his experience for the benefit of the Notes on Productivity readers.]


Here is Jason's first guest blog post...

Technology Challenges Setting Up IBM Notes

Originally I started working with IBM Notes Smart Cloud edition which includes a free copy of IBM Notes 9.0 Social Edition and huge cloud base document Management Suite for only $10.00 a month. First off, the technical support and the hosting provided by IBM is fanatical – they will, if you have the patience, hold your hand through everything, including adding your own custom domain.

Continue Reading "Setting Up IBM Notes / Smart Cloud - Guest Blog by Jason Spencer" »