Notes Design Blog

Share files in online meetings?

Velda Bartek — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:00:00 -0400

If you share files in online meetings, I'm looking for you.

I need your assistance in understanding what features are important to you when you share files from your local system, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections, LotusLive, or other file sharing applications in Sametime Meetings.

Your responses will be used to assist the Sametime Meetings UX team as we consider how to improve file sharing in online meetings.

Please take 5 minutes to rate the 16 features in this brief study. The study will be open until Monday, 3/22/10.

I look forward to seeing what you think.

Velda Bartek

How to let users define their own default font for Rich text fields

Mary Beth Raven — Tue, 9 Mar 2010 10:29:57 -0400

Terrific Template users,
If you have users who like to always use certain colors or fonts when writing in rich text fields, here's a tip on how to let them set their own and then make it the default for themselves. (Thanks to Mike Carroll for this tip).

Use this trick in any template to allow users to use their own font for rich text fields. To accomplish this the following must happen.

The Template developer needs to create a Permanent Style (ex. MyRichTextStyle) and apply it to the paragraph containing the rich text field that is going to have this capability.

How to create the Permanent Style in designer template

Place cursor in the paragraph containing the richtext field (will not work in a table)
Bring up Infobox to Text Properties
Set Font properties to be used in the Permanent Style
Set Paragraph Properties to be used in Permanent Style (Note that in this case you skip this step as they will be set already to what you want)
Go to last tab in Text Properties
Select "Create Style..."
Enter the style name StyleXYZ and select "Make Style Available for all documents" (Include Font should be left selected) Press OK

Now user needs to create their version of that Permanent Style. In other words they have to create a Permanent Style with the same name as the one in the template.That's it. Next time the user creates a new document using the form the user's new font attributes will be used instead of the designer's font.

How user is to create their Permanent Style

Create a new document using the form from above.
Place cursor in the richtext field from above
Bring up Infobox to Text Properties
Set Font properties to be used in the Permanent Style
Set Paragraph Properties to be used in Permanent Style (Note that in this case you skip this step as they will be set already to what you want)
Go to last tab in Text Properties
Select "Create Style..."
Enter the style name StyleXYZ and select "Make Style Available for all documents" (Include Font should be left selected) Press OK (Name must be exactly the same)

And, before you ask, while the trick above does work, yes we are thinking about making the ability to set your own default font a little more user friendly. But until we ship that, you can use the trick above.

Please consider voting for the Lil Iguana Children’s safety foundation so that they get a grant

Mary Beth Raven — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 08:08:06 -0400

Hi friends, this is a purely personal post that has nothing to do with IBM Lotus.

My children have benefitted from the "Lil Iguana" children's safety programs. The Lil Iguana foundation is a local (Nashua NH) organization and they are in the running for a grant from Pepsi. People get to vote for the charities they think should receive the money. Please feel free to check out -- and vote for - the Lil Iguana foundation. ( think only USA-based people are supposed to vote)

You can learn more about Lil Iguana, and the Pepsi Refresh project here:

http://www.refresheverything.com/liliguana

Thanks.

Please review and comment on this DRAFT of a CIO persona

Mary Beth Raven — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:03:06 -0400

Customers and business partners:
Please review and comment on my DRAFT of a CIO persona, below. Ideally, feel free to share it with YOUR CIO and see if it fits him or her-- and if not where I can revise it. For example, I am wondering if I am taking a broad enough view of what a CIO worries about -- I do not have much about different operating system worries, or hardware upgrades or organizational issues like whether all the "telephone PBX people" should get retrained as network engineers and report to the CIO.

How we plan to use a CIO persona: We do not plan to use this CIO persona much in the DESIGN of the UI of our products-- the CIO is generally too technical, too much of a power user. Rather, this persona is being created at the request of Alistair Rennie, our general manager, who wants to have a person that the sales and technical sales people can keep in mind as they are crafting presentations, proposals and oher materials and conversations.

So, feel free to provide any kind of feedback that you think would be helpful for a persona that sales and technical sales can use. I look forward to your comments by Friday March 5. Thanks in advance,
Mary Beth

Madison "Gus" Armand - CIO of Renovations

"The closer we get to products and the customer, the more value we add for them"
"The balance between new projects and cost control is the dichotomy of my life"

Madison manages a staff of 16 in the IT Communications organization. Her organization is responsible for things from an External-facing Web Architecture, Web Content, Messaging and collaboration, to application development.

Renovations is a chain of home improvement stores. For more information about Renovations, see here: https://camdb07.lotus.com/u_dir/UXAssetLib.nsf/Companies/Renovations

Summary
Madison "Gus" came on board as the CIO of Renovations 3 years ago and quickly rolled out a BES server and Blackberries to all the execs. This prompted VP of Marketing Ted Amado to call her a "Gust of fresh air". Thus, the "Gus" nickname was born-- along with the expectation that she was going to achieve a lot, and quickly.

Gus sees her job as mainly balancing cost cutting in IT with adding value through technology. She thinks it important to balance a few other things, for example, being pragmatic while also being a visionary. She is also struggling to balance being an inspiring IT manager (which she loves to do and is excellent at) and being a collaborative business leader for Renovations as a whole (this is a challenge for her).

Work Goals
Gus's broader work goals are to:

Achieve a higher return on IT investments
- Cut costs
- She's actively looking at which capabilities to move to "cloud"/SaaS", what the security issues might be and how to integrate them into what Renovations already has on premises. (Her friend, the CIO of a local university just moved to a Google suite, and Gus is following that closely)
- She's investigating how many employees she can convert to "Web-only" users. She hopes having fewer installed clients mean less support work for her dwindling staff)
Investigating whether to suggest a move to IBM Lotus Symphony -- initial cost savings are great, but needs to quantify learning costs, etc.
Is trying to justify getting rid of all pagers; she feels they are obsolete
Find new ways to meet customers needs
- Her team has "duelling pilots" of Lotus Connections and Jive to see which offers better "social networking" integration into their current infrastructure. The infrastructure includes not only Notes/Domino but increasing amounts of Sharepoint. These tools have GOT to install and integrate quickly and easily with what Renovations already has. (This project worries her more than any other-- the whole "Social networking" thing is the rage now, bit it's difficult to get solid data on ROI for this.)
Give employees new technologies that will make them more productive
- Her team in researching Unified telephony and unified communications (including video) across several vendors.
- Her team is setting up an "Alloy" pilot - Notes and SAP to see what kind of a productivity boost it might cause
Plan for future IT needs and have the data necessary to support her plans.
She is constantly evaluating whether to build custom apps or buy, and from which vendors?
Assimilate recent acquisitions (sometimes small, sometimes large) and standardize their IT processes and tools to be in line with the corporate ones
Be able to proactively advise the business and do things differently to realize greater returns

Her narrower goals are to make sure:

Her staff keeps the website securely up and running with a good response time (Portal), and the web content up to date and accurate.
Her staff keeps the servers (Sharepoint, Domino, BES, Sametime, SAP, other app servers) securely up and running
Her application developers are assigned to the right projects and build apps that have real return for Renovations (using the right technology. Xpages? .net? )
Be a good manager, and provide career opportunities for her staff

Work Life
Gus took this job because she saw that Renovations already had a strong centralized IT organization, but had not yet really leveraged the centralization to standardize or automate processes. She also felt strongly that she could provide better business intelligence so that the organization as a whole could take marketing analysis to a higher level and improve buying behavior, and increase advertising ROI. Gus usually works a 60-hour work week, coming to the office all 5 days of the week, and often putting on late and/or early hours based on which remote subsidiaries she needs to meet with. She spends about 20% of that time generating buy-in for her plans. The Blackberry roll-out was a clear and easy "ROI" thing; now she needs to plan the future for their custom app -- should she "web/Blackberry" enable her Notes apps? Redo them in Xpages? Move them entirely to Sharepoint? She focuses a little over a day a week on cutting costs.

Work Tools
Gus has several machines-- a T61p laptop running Windows 7, a Macbook ( to understand the needs of the marketing dept), and a desktop running Redhat Linux - right now, mainly as a proof of concept.
To do her job she uses the following additional things:
Tools

Software

VPN connections
Lotus Notes: mail, calendar, contacts, to dos, databases
Microsoft Project
Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010
Sametime Instant Messaging
Sametime Meetings
Audio Conferencing
Video Conferencing
Web Browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, although Renovations standardized on IE

Hardware

Desktop computer
Laptop computer
Wireless connections
Telephone: land line, mobile, and pilot VOIP device
Blackberry (email, calendar and Sametime IM)
Multi-function device (for scanning in expense reports)
She also has her own personal iPhone

Personal Information
Gus is a divorced Mother of two boys. Her oldest son is in graduate school at the University of Chicago and lives on his own. Her younger son still lives with her in their house in Glenview, Ill, and has a short commute to Northwestern university. She has a macaw named "Picard" , whom she taught to say "Make it so" and "Tea, Earl gray, hot." He taught himself how to say "Turn off the crackberry." She recently took up golf (to enhance her career opportunities and just for fun).
Picture of Picard hanging out on her son's hand:

Regarding Andy’s blog posting abotu the "going to the wrong replica"

Mary Beth Raven — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:42:58 -0400

Over on Andy Pedisch's blog today he asked about a recurring "goes to the wrong replica" issue
Here is how it is supposed to work.
There was a bug (now fixed but I do not know which release, I think in 8.5.1) introduced in Notes 8.0 in which the last used replica was used even on startup.

There is a location document and it has:

which specifies either use server or local copy.

The behavior is suppose to be:

During a Notes session, the 1st time mail is opened it is based on this document.
Subsequent opens of mail during the session will open the last used replica.

Thanks to Paul Joviak for explaining the history to me.

Talk on the phone? Take 5 minutes and talk to us.

Velda Bartek — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:00:00 -0400

Hi, everyone.

This is Velda and Michelle. We are members of the WPLC User Experience team. We work with Mary Beth and the other User Experience team members that you frequently talk with.

We are focusing on phone support in our Sametime set of offerings.

We would love to hear how you commonly use your phone.

Here's a brief survey that asks you twelve questions about your phone usage. In 5 minutes, you can provide us with invaluable input to the future design direction of the Sametime offerings.

Velda Bartek and Michelle Cooper

Here is an opportunity to tell the internationalization team what you think about Lotus Product "consumability"

Mary Beth Raven — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:00:00 -0400

Customers,
I invite you to take the consumability experience survey (link below). My colleagues in IBM's internationalization tea are conducting a survey, and would like your input. Generally, they are looking for customer satisfaction information related to several aspects of IBM products. You can respond to the survey for any IBM product, but obviously, they've asked me to help gather some additional responses as it relates to Lotus software. The survey questions are detailed and ask about aspects such as the ease of doing business with IBM, finding product information, first impressions of using IBM products, integration with your existing environment, and other aspects of deploying IBM software.

Please forward to your friends who might like to take it in these languages rather than English:
Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, and Italian. We'd *really* value some input from IBM clients in countries where those languages are spoken.
The survey is somewhat detailed and probably takes 20-30 minutes to fill out in full. We would really appreciate your input!
And, in case the request looks familiar-- this is the same request Ed Brill blogged about in October-- we're sending out another request, hoping to get more feedback, IF you already responded from Ed's blog, you don't have to respond again.

Link:Consumability Survey (if it does not auto-populate, please use invitation code DesignBlog)

How to add a web app THAT REQURES AUTHENTICATION to your sidebar

Mary Beth Raven — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:44:28 -0400

My last post explained how to add a web app to your sidebar-- in this post, I explain how to add a web app that requires authentication to your sidebar. This includes web apps like gmail, twitter and so on.
In this example, I'm going to use Twittergadget.

The Configure a Widget wizard opens and detects two options from the context: Configure a component from this web page or Configure a component from a form on this web page.

Choose the first option: “This Web Page…(HTTP GET)”

Check the “authentication required” check box at the bottom and click Next

How to add a web page to the sidebar

Mary Beth Raven — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:00:00 -0400

In this post I explain how to add a web page to the sidebar. Since the aspect ration of the sidebar is "tall and skinny" I find that pages like the Digg iPhone app work the best. Thus, I'll be using the Digg iPhone app.

Review of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1: The Upgrader’s Guide

Mary Beth Raven — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:08:42 -0400

PACKT publishing asked me if I'd like to review their new book: IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1: the Upgrader's Guide. I welcomed the opportunity to see what other people and organizations think are the important parts of upgrading.

The book is written with an informal, easy-to-understand style. It starts logically with a list of the new features in the client, followed by new features in the server, and then application development. It has lots of screenshots, which I think makes a world of different to people trying to understand what is new -- or simply what might be important to their organization-- in a new release.

Most of the chapters divide "what's new" into what's new in Notes /Domino 8 and then what's new in 8.5, which I think is very helpful. The title of the book is 8.5.1 and I was disappointed that the chapter on what's new in the client did not actually cover any of the new things in 8.5.1 (although they did a good job with what was new in 8.0 and 8.5). Nor did it cover much of anything about Widgets or Live Text (which appeared in Notes 8.0.1). It could be that they didn't think these things were significant enough to warrant the space, but even a simple list of what was new in the 8.5.1 client would have been nice for completeness and for fidelity with the title. Here is a list of what Client enhancements are in Notes 8.5.1

While the organization of the book overall makes a logical progression from Client, to server to application development, it feels like chapter 10 on "Domino 8.5" enhancements was tacked on at the end. I read through chapter 4, entitled "Lotus Domino 8.5 Server Enhancements", flipping through it several times asking myself "where is DAOS? How could they have missed DAOS" -- then I found it -- and ID Vault and a few other things-- covered AFTER the application development chapters, in chapter 10.

For upgraders, I think that the chapters on deployment enhancements, specific upgrading tips, and coexistence between Notes/Domino releases will be the most valuable. No upgrader's guide would be complete with out a hefty section on what's going on with development-- and this book gives a good overview of Domino Designer in Eclipse, Xpages, and even a little section on the blog template (which, of course, I am using to write this review).

I was happy to see the chapter on "Integration with other Lotus/IBM Products. " It provided a good overview of some of the major considerations, and also, simply because the chapter is there, it gets readers to think not only of one product, but also about the various products in the Lotus portfolio.

I was also pleased to see the chapter on "Lotus Notes 8.5 and SOA" because it provides a broader picture of how Notes and Domino plays a part in the overall IBM "Services-Oriented Architecture" approach.

The book is available in English as hardcopy or as a PDF, ISBN: 13-978-1-847199-28-7. More about it here:
http://www.packtpub.com/ibm-lotus-notes-and-domino-8-5-1-upgraders-guide/book?utm_source=notesdesignblog.com&utm_medium=bookrev&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=mdb_002293

How to add a widget from the Lotus Greenhouse Catalog

Mary Beth Raven — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:00:00 -0400

This post explains how to add a widget from the Lotus Greenhouse catalog, Specifically, how to track local gas prices in a sidebar panel.

Go to the Lotus Greenhouse Web site and log on: greenhouse.Lotus.com

You must register to use it

You must use a business email address.

Here's a screenshot of the catalog as it is today (tho do not be alarmed if they change the look; which is what they did the night before my Lotusphere presentation and then, in front of a crowd, I could not find the log-in ling and got totally flummoxed.)

This next step is a bit odd, but drag and drop is the only way we can make it work right now. (I hope to improve this)

How to add any Notes view to the Search toolbar as a search scope that’s alwlays available

Mary Beth Raven — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:00:00 -0400

Serious searchers:
I hope that you are enjoying using the search toolbar in the upper left of your screen (in addition to, or instead of, the "search this view" command.)
This screenshot is what I mean by the search toolbar:

One of the most useful things about this search toolbar is that you can be in one application (like your home-gown app), and search another without going to it, opening the correct view, and starting the search.
We give you a set of scopes by default-- Mail, Calendar, Contacts.
For example, I can be in some CRM app and with that CRM app open, go search my mail for some info I might need as I am working in the CRM app.

The problem I'm blogging about today:
Let's say you are often in Mail, and you want to search some OTHER Notes app. (for me it's the UI spec database, but in my example below, it's the personal notebook--aka journal).
I (or any person who has "widgets" turned on") can add whatever Notes app they want to the search scopes).

This means that I can start a search of the Notebook at any time, up in this toolbar, no matter what other app I am currently in.
This screenshot show that when I have some other app open, all I have to do is click the link "Always Show in Search list" to have it always show up!

When you click it, you get this dialog:

Now, what if you are an admin and your organization decides that EVERYBODY should automatically have the CRM app as a search scope up there?
NO PROBLEM! Just do this:
1. Open the app to whatever view you want as the search scope. ( (if it's a java view,just hold down CTRL+ALT)
2. Click the Middle Widget toolbar button as shown below.

FILL OUT THE WIZARD AS SHOWN BELOW:

Once you have the widget, you can put it in a widget catalog and push it out to people. I'll blog more about that in future postings, or you can read about it by reading the Administration section of the Lotusphere slides (posted on Feb 9).

Open Notes Widgets in 4 ways-- not just as sidebar panels

Mary Beth Raven — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:45:22 -0400

In the My Widgets sidebar panel, you can select any of the widgets and choose to open it as a Tab, a sidebar panel, a new window, or a floating window.
By default, when you double-click to open a widget from here we open it in a new window (in Notes 8.0.1 we defaulted to opening a sidebar pane, but that made the sidebar very crowded for power users so we changed it based on your feedback.)

Here is how that Digg iPhone app looks in both a new window and a floating window. The floating one has no window decorations, and it gets dismissed when you click anywhere else on the screen.

Download the app dev chapter from Notes and Domino 8.5.1 Upgrader’s Guide if you want

Mary Beth Raven — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0400

If you'd like to check out a little more about the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 Upgrader's Guide, here's a link to the app dev chapter, which you can download and read.

Chapter No.8 – 'What's New In Notes/Domino 8.5 Development'

Spending the day reading the Notes/Domion 8.5.1 upgrader’s guide

Mary Beth Raven — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:15:30 -0400

It always fun (Ok sometimes heartbreaking) to see what other writers find useful in the Notes client, and how they write about it.
So I'm spending the day reading a review copy of

The IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 Upgrader's Guide

Keep an eye on your Inbox by making is a sidebar panel

Mary Beth Raven — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:00:00 -0400

Here's how you can keep an eye on your inbox as a sidebar panel, while you work in another Notes application.

First, open the non-java view of your inbox, as shown in the following screenshot:

Now click the MIDDLE button in the "My Widgets" toolbar.

The *new* Notes configuration dialog appears! You can choose what type of Notes widget to create. For now, let's add the Inbox view.

Add a Notes View to your sidebar with one click!

Mary Beth Raven — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:00:00 -0400

You can open (almost) any view in (almost) Notes application, and simply click the "Add to sidebar" toolbar button to add that view to your Notes sidebar, as shown in the following screenshot.

The ONLY views that do not work like this are the views in Java-- so that means, no Mail, Calendar, Contacts, blog template.
HOWEVER, you can open the "old, non-java" view of any Notes application by holding down the CTRL+ALT keys when you open the application. THEN once the old view is open, you can add THAT to the sidebar.

How to set your Widget preferences to point to a public catalog

Mary Beth Raven — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:00:00 -0400

I'm resuming my series of posts about the sidebar and widgets. (Regarding my other recent posts about pretty application icons and cache mode... I'll post some decisions/more news in a few days).

To get started playing with the my widgets sidebar panel (without deploying a widget catalog of your own), you can use a public widget catalog, one of which is hosted by the Turtle partnership (thanks!)

Here's how you do it.
1. Choose File - Preferences - Widgets
2. Check ”Show Widgets Toolbar and the My Widgets Sidebar panel”
3. Enter the widget catalog server: 72.51.41.44 (this is a public catalog brought to you by the Turtle partnership)
4. Enter the catalog name: Widgetcatalog.nsf
5. Click Apply and Wait for the “Categories to install” to appear (as shown in the screenshot below) -- select a category or more if you want. But you do not have to. If you select a category, all widgets in that category will be installed (yes I know, you probably want to know the list of widgets in each category; For that you'll have to open the catalog).
6. Click OK

Once you have set up your preferences to point to the public catalog, you can browse it.
You can do that 2 ways. First, if you are using Notes 8.5.1, you can just click the toolbar button, as shown below.

Or you can use the Panel menu and choose Catalog - Browse, as shown in the screenshot below.

The catalog should open, as shown in this screenshot:

Now you are set to add whatever you want!

Here are the slides and other materials from our Lotusphere session: SHOW111: Extending your reach by extending the sidebar

Mary Beth Raven — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 07:25:27 -0400

Jamie Liu and I did a Show and tell session about widgets and sidebar at Lotusphere last month.
Here are our slides and the other materials, in case you'd like a "do it yourself" sidebar and widget tutorial.

The My Widgets Sidebar Panel is a way to add and manage additional sidebar panels

Mary Beth Raven — Mon, 8 Feb 2010 03:00:00 -0400

We introduced "My Widgets" in Notes 8.0.1. The Panel is hidden by default; you have to turn it on. (The Domino Admin can also control it using a desktop policy).
Here is how to turn it on-- and if your organization has not deployed any kind of widget catalog, you can see if you can build your own or pull a few from either Open ntg or the Turtleweb partnership (72.51.41.44). I hope to post more about how to use public catalog and/or build your own in subsequent posts.