Recent Contacts View

There is a new view called "Recent Contacts" as per the following screen shot. There is also a view "My Contacts".

Basically the My Contacts view should contain just those people you have actually added yourself to your contacts. The Recent Contacts View will show everyone that you have corresponded with via email/calendar invites etc. The new feature basically automatically adds every person that you email to the Recent Contacts view so that they then appear in your type ahead when sending new emails/calendar invites etc.


I personally quite like this as it means I don't have to add everyone to "My Contacts" in order to then use type ahead for their email. This saves me time in that I don't have to find their email in order to send another email back to them.

However for those that don't like this feature you can stop people being automatically added to your Recent Contacts view thru a user preference. From the Contacts database go to the More-Preferences Action Item (as per following screen shot)


Then untick the following check box:



This will prevent contacts automatically being added to the Recent Contacts view.

Hope that helps. 

Exchange to Notes 8 Migration Case Study - Tasmanian Perpetual Trustees Limited

IBM and ISW has just published a great case study on Tasmanian Perpetual Trustees Limited migrating from Exchange and Outlook 2007 to Notes & Domino 8 as well as their adoption of Workflow-Xpress.

More information here... 

TripIT and Lotus Notes 8.5 Federated Calandars

I have been using the Notes 8.5 beta for a month or so now and one of the best features is the federated calendars.

Essentially this feature allows you to overlay additional calendars with your own. For example you might want to add some of your colleagues calendars or you might have an events calendar for your organisation. Well with Notes 8.5 you can simply select which calendars you want to overlay with your calendar. On the left hand panel of your calendar go to Show Calendars and you can choose to Add a Calendar...

You choose a calendar to add and you have the option of using a user's calendar, Notes Teamroom Calendar, and even a Notes application Calendar. The ability to bring together disparate calendars is awesome. We have been able to look at shared calendars in the past and use Group Calendars to kind of compare different calendars but this is just seamless calendar overlays.

An example of how I am using this new feature is leveraging TripIT. TripIT is a new Web 2.0 type service that enables me to forward all my airline and accommodation bookings to it. When I email a booking to it the clever team at TripIT somehow automagically reads the itinerary and adds it to my TripIT Calendar. Now I can access my TripIT calendar directly via a web browser or via my Blackberry Bold's browser but I can also subscribe to an iCal feed.



 So all I do is Add a Calendar, select an iCalendar Feed as the source, enter the URL to my TripIT feed, select a colour, and their you go. Your flights etc are automatically added to your calendar!!



So all I do now is email all my flights to TripIT, there secret sauce reads the document, and they add it to my calendar!! Now there is a reason to upgrade to Notes 8.5 when it arrives! 

Video Case Study - Lotus Notes 8 Upgrade

Further to the recent release of a case study ISW is pleased to publish (with IBM) this video case study: Please feel free to rank the video well:)



IceTV Guide Via Notes Sidebar

I just purchased a BeyonWiz DP-S1 PVR. It is a Dual HD receiver with 250 GB drive, wireless access, etc etc. For those in overseas etc reading this it probably isn't a big deal but PVR's are relatively new devices in Australia. In particular ones with downloaded TV program guides. The great thing about the BeyonWiz is that it supports IceTV's Interactive service which allows you to program the recorder via a web site. The Beyonwiz then periodically connects to the IceTV service and downloads the current schedule of things to record. So for someone that travels as much as I do and constantly rings home to ask for something to be recorded that is just great.

But it gets even better. IceTV have a service for mobile devices at http://remoterecord.com.au that allows me to log on from a Blackberry browser for instance. But even cooler is that using my Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Sidebar I have created a Widget that automatically logs onto the site and shows me the TV Guide. I can simply select what I want recorded from my sidebar and the Beyonwiz is updated!

Now that is a great use of the Notes 8 Sidebar Widgets if you ask me!