Today's tip is another thing to help keep your Inbox more free from meeting updates and notices.
In Notes 8.5.3, you can set a preference to incorporate changes to meetings automatically, so if you've accepted a meeting, and someone makes changes to it, those changes will be incorporated into the invitation automatically, without you having to click a button in an update notice. Combine that with a preference (that's been around awhile) that deletes meeting notices as soon as you process them, and those notices won't show up in your Inbox at all : )
To enable the first preference (update meetings automatically), click File > Preferences, select Calendar & To Do, open the Display tab, and then open the Notices tab. Select the check box for Automatically process meeting updates and apply changes to meetings.
Then (to make sure you don't see the update notices in your Inbox) on the same tab, select Remove meeting notices from my Inbox after I process them.
Now you'll get see update notices in your Inbox if they include comments, since those messages are meant to be read.
Hooray, for less clutter!
Julia Brown | 20 January 2012 11:40:40 AM ET | | Comments (2) | Permanent Link
We've heard a lot of feedback that you like unread messages in your Inbox to appear in plain red text...or bold black text...or green or purple...
Well, in Notes 8.5.3, you can set any color for unread and read messages, and you can choose whether they're bold or not!
To choose the color and boldness for read and unread mail, click File > Preferences and click Fonts and Colors:
Then, click the color buttons to choose new colors, and select or de-select Bold:
Enjoy your new, possibly very colorful, Inbox!
Julia Brown | 13 January 2012 02:05:13 PM ET | | Comments (3) | Permanent Link
Hello & happy new year, blog readers! As you may know, next week is Lotusphere, and we wanted to tell you about some opportunities there to give feedback on new and future products!
Prizes in the User Experience Lab!
Throughout the Lotusphere 2012 conference we'll be giving out these lovely fashion accessories as door prizes in the User Experience Lab in Asia 4. Come by any day and answer the "Question of the Day" at one of our stations for a chance to win. Increase your chances by attending any one of our special sessions or by following our LotusTechInfo or LotusDesign twitter IDs. We're also giving out collectible User Experience Lab buttons!
(Photo used with permission.)
Here's the list of activities and links:
Participate in activities going on in the User Experience Lab
View the latest product design concepts, experience mobile product designs, talk to our social solutions designers, and provide feedback to improve the information experience. Meet the designers, user researchers, and information architects responsible for the direction of our products. Participate in hands-on activities and tell us what you need.
Lab Hours:
Monday, January 16 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Tuesday, January 17 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM
Wednesday, January 18 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM
Thursday, January 19 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Visit these stations in the lab located in Asia 4:
| Station 1: IBM User Research and Future Studies |
| See how we conduct research and sign up for an opportunity to participate in future studies. Discuss with us what you would like to see improved in the products that you use. |
| Station 2: Connections and LotusLive |
| To influence our future design directions, help us prioritize the most important scenarios in which you would use these products to complete daily tasks. Try out the next version of Connections and let us know how you like it. Give us feedback on our new features, including enhanced community functionality and integration of the social business toolkit. |
| Station 3: Editing in the Cloud with IBM Docs |
| Check out IBM's new web editors and tell us what is most important to you in a document editor, a presentation editor, or a spreadsheet editor. |
| Station 4: Design Your Information Experience |
| How do you use information either as a new or an experienced product user? How can the Lotus and WebSphere Portal product wikis be more effective in giving you the information that you need? Help influence the direction that we take with your product information experience. |
| Station 5: Sametime |
| Real-time collaboration is critical to your business. Come to the Sametime UX station to give us input on future designs and to discuss your requirements for online meetings, instant messaging, and using audio and video. |
| Station 6: Making Your Business Solutions Social |
| Learn about the core design principles that make a business solution into a social business. See the common set of patterns and artifacts that we're designing and help influence their design. Tell us about your favorite business solutions, and we can talk about how using social media can enhance the outcome of the solutions. |
| Station 7: Social Mail |
| View and interact with demos of the social mail beta in Connections 4 and help us shape the future user experience design. Provide your feedback and unique insights on how social mail might best be used by your company or organization. |
| Station 8: What's Next for Lotus iNotes and Lotus Notes |
| See a showcase of what we're considering for the next releases. Let us know what you think of these features and provide feedback on potential improvements. |
| Station 9: Lotus Domino Designer and XPages |
| Do you want influence the future direction of your application development tools? Stop by and give us feedback on Lotus Domino Designer, the XPages extension library, XPages templates, and more. |
| Station 10: Mobile Applications |
| Select a device, select a product, and get a first look at the latest mobile products from IBM. This station features Android and iOS phone and tablet apps for Sametime, Connections, and Traveler. Come by and give us your feedback on future designs and prototypes. |
| Station 11: WebSphere Portal, Social Portal with Connections, and IBM Web Content Manager |
| Provide your input on the new and future plans for integrating IBM Connections and IBM Web Content Manager into WebSphere Portal. Come by and give us your feedback on future designs and scenarios. |
| Station 12: Design Your Video Experience |
| Tell us how you find and use product videos, and what you expect from our videos in the future. Preview the videos that were submitted for VideoFest, and help select a new design for the wiki Video Gallery. |
Special Events
Are you curious about product design? Do you want to get more involved? Join us for one or more of the following special sessions in the User Experience Lab (Asia 4).
| Special Events | |
| Monday 1/16/12 | Date: Monday, January 16, 2012 Time: 5:00pm - 6:00pm Topic: "IBM Collaboration Solutions Future Product Design Direction" Speakers: Chris Paul, Director, User Experience; Ethan Perry, STSM; Brian Utesch, STSM. Abstract: How is the user experience (UX) of IBM Collaboration Solutions products designed? What role does Lotusphere play in ongoing collaboration with customers? The ICS User Experience Director, Chris Paul, and UX Design and User Research Senior Technical Staff Members, Ethan Perry and Brian Utesch, will discuss how design direction is set, the importance of user adoption, and how you are engaged in the design process. Bring your questions to this interactive session. |
| Tuesday 1/17/12 | Date: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 Time: 9:30am - 10:30am Topic: "Mobile User Experience Directions" Speakers: Tyler Walters, Chris Reckling Abstract: Social Business and mobile technology go hand in hand. See where we are going in designing mobile apps for tablets and smartphones in 2012. Provide feedback on the design directions and help prioritize features. |
| Wednesday 1/18/12 | Date: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 Time: 9:30am - 10:30am Topic: "Meet the User Experience Designers" Speakers: Amy Travis, Margo Ezekiel, Ethan Perry, Eric Wilcox Abstract: Join our lead user experience designers and talk with us about our design challenges and future design directions in a fun and lively session. It's your chance to see how we design your favorite products. |
Participate in Online Feedback Activities
| Answer Our Online Question of the Day! | In the User Experience Lab, we'll be asking a "Question of the Day." Visit us in Asia 4 each day to answer the question and to sign up for a chance to win a prize at the end of the day. If you don't have time to stop by and see us, we'd still like to hear from you. Click here to fill out a short survey to give your answers. https://www.ibm.com/survey/oid/wsb.dll/s/ag41e |
| Wiki usage survey | We want your feedback. IBM is continuing to develop improvements and release updates to the wikis. We want to hear what is important to you so that we can prioritize improvements that help you most. The data we collect from all wiki usability and feedback activities is used to influence our priorities for future design enhancements and development. https://www.ibm.com/survey/oid/wsb.dll/s/ag419 |
| Sametime Prioritization Ideation Blog | Help us come up with a list of future features in Sametime. Vote on the ones listed here and suggest your own by adding to the list! Click the following URL to access the Ideation blog in our Online UX Lab in Greenhouse. [You will need to register on Greenhouse in order to participate (using a business email address) but it only takes a minute!] |
Participate in any of these ongoing feedback opportunities - check in regularly to participate, follow or contact us
Online UX Lab:
Join our online UX community and participate in any of the on-going feedback opportunities in our online User Experience Lab:
www.tinyurl.com/onlineuxlab
Sign up to be a Usability participant!
Join our IBM Volunteer database and be contacted about future feedback opportunities!
https://www-01.ibm.com/software/ucd/register.html?wsb39=WPLCdeveloperWorks
Check out our blogs!
| Notes Design | http://www.notesdesignblog.com/NotesDesignBlog/NDBlog.nsf/ |
| Sametime | https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/SametimeBlog/?lang=en_us |
| Inside Lotus Design and User Experience | http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/insidelotusblog.nsf/ |
Stay Connected! Follow us during Lotusphere and beyond!
On Facebook
Lotus Design: facebook.com/lotusdesign
Lotus Tech Info: facebook.com/LotusTechInfo
On Twitter:
Lotus Design: twitter.com/LotusDesign
Lotus Tech Info: twitter.com/LotusTechInfo
Julia Brown | 11 January 2012 02:56:45 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
Our team has been working on some ideas to make videos more fun and helpful. We've done some example videos for interactive tutorials and a few types of interesting animations, and we're interested in your feedback!
Check the videos out here, and tell us what you think: http://ow.ly/7Ivjh
: )
Julia Brown | 30 November 2011 12:52:40 PM ET | | Comments (11) | Permanent Link
We've had plenty of tips surrounding Recent Contacts, and it's a highly talked-about area. In Notes 8.5.3, we've continued to improve how you can control Recent Contacts/type-ahead.
In the past, we made it easier to remove "incorrect" contacts from type-ahead, by letting you delete a contact from the right-click menu:
But one problem with this method is that if you delete a contact from type-ahead in this way, they could be added back in automatically, if you send or receive more emails from them.
But in Notes 8.5.3, the new method avoids that :) Now, if you see an address that you do not want to appear in the Recent Contacts list, you can hide it by selecting the contact in the Recent Contacts view, and clicking the Hide in Typeahead button.
Then, the address won't appear in type-ahead again, unless you click Show in Typeahead.
(Note: To see this feature, you'll need to have the Notes 8.5.3 Standard client only and the 8.5.3 pernames.ntf template.)
Julia Brown | 28 October 2011 02:10:30 PM ET | | Comments (2) | Permanent Link
Happy Notes 8.5.3, everyone!
Here are some ways you can get up-to-speed on what's new & changed in this release:
For a quick look at the biggest new & changed features, watch the What's New in Notes 8.5.3 video:
Julia Brown | 21 October 2011 02:01:17 PM ET | | Comments (3) | Permanent Link
Here's another tip for people who may be new to Notes:
If you're working in a teamroom or other application, and it's slow, you can try switching to another replica.
A replica is another instance of a teamroom or other application, residing on a separate server. Sometimes, you can find a replica on a server that is faster or closer geographically. By switching to a different replica, you may speed up response time.
To see if the application you're working with has any replicas, look for this drop-down arrow on the application's icon in your Workspace:
To switch to another replica, click the drop-down & select a replica:
Then see if things run faster. We hope they do : )
Julia Brown | 23 September 2011 10:29:37 AM ET | | Comments (1) | Permanent Link
I've heard some people complain that, in Notes, URLs don't automatically turn into links. If you've had this problem, you'll be happy to know that there's a preference you can turn on to make sure URLs do turn into links.
Click File > Preferences, and click Basic Notes Client Configuration. In the nice long list of Additional Options, click Make Internet URLs (http://.....) into Hotspots.
Julia Brown | 9 September 2011 01:43:36 PM ET | | Comments (2) | Permanent Link
To help organize your Workspace, you can put the icons into groups and move them onto different tabs:
To add a tab to your Workspace, right-click a tab and click Create Workspace Page:
To change the color of the tab or the text on it, double-click the tab and a dialog will come up where you can change that information:
Julia Brown | 26 August 2011 01:27:19 PM ET | | Comments (8) | Permanent Link
When you open links to web pages, in emails or other Notes documents, they'll open in whatever is set as your default browser in Notes. It could be the Notes embedded browser (which opens as a tab in Notes), or it could be an external browser, like Firefox, Chrome, Explorer, or Safari.
To change your default browser, click File > Preferences, click Web Browser, and then choose whether you want to use the embedded browser or a different browser.
If you select Use the browser I have set as the default for this operating system, then the link will open in whatever browser you set as the default for your computer.
The instructions for setting the default browser on your computer will vary, depending on your operating system and the browser you want. You should be able to find instructions easily on the internet, by searching for something like "Set ______ as default browser on Mac/Windows/etc."
Happy Friday!
Julia Brown | 19 August 2011 10:42:33 AM ET | | Comments (7) | Permanent Link
