344 Lotus blogs updated hourly. Who will post next? Home | Downloads | Events | Jobs | Twitter | Bookmarks | Pods | Forum | Blogs | Search | myPL | About 
 
Latest 7 Posts
This blog is moving to www.NotesDesignBlog.com
Wed, Jul 23rd 2008 170
IdeaJam, Release cycles, and a culture of instant gratification
Mon, Jul 21st 2008 89
Reschedule the Lepofsky-palooza to August 6!
Fri, Jul 18th 2008 46
You are invited to the Lepofsky-Palooza!
Wed, Jul 16th 2008 149
Better large font user experience coming to you in Notes 8.5
Fri, Jul 11th 2008 105
We're all in this together....
Wed, Jul 9th 2008 130
Update on the Symphony Icons
Tue, Jul 8th 2008 138
Top 10
For a Notes 8 look and feel just use this template
Wed, Jun 4th 2008 275
New Startup Sequence for Notes 8.5
Thu, May 8th 2008 180
New icons make lists of e-mail easier to scan in 8.5!
Tue, May 13th 2008 178
This blog is moving to www.NotesDesignBlog.com
Wed, Jul 23rd 2008 170
Announcing the Lotus Notes and Domino Wiki
Fri, Mar 7th 2008 167
FINALLY! My first-ever actual conference t-shirt made for a woman!
Tue, Jan 22nd 2008 151
You are invited to the Lepofsky-Palooza!
Wed, Jul 16th 2008 149
Update on Notes 8.5 on the Mac
Sat, Mar 15th 2008 144
A .png dilemma
Tue, Apr 8th 2008 143
Update on the Symphony Icons
Tue, Jul 8th 2008 138


Mary Beth Raven
Blog Title Mary Beth Raven
Blog Description Designing the User Experience for Lotus Notes and Sametime
Blog URL http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/marybeth
RSS Feed http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/rss/marybeth?flavor=rssdw
Validate Feed feedvalidator.org or validator.w3.org
Feed Last Checked Jul 03, 2009 7:19:52 PM EST. Realtime Update:
Twitter URLhttp://www.twitter.com/MaryBethRaven
Landed Here Nov 28, 2007
Location New Hampshire
Posts: # / 1st / Latest 118 - Oct 18, 2007 - Jul 23, 2008
Total Hits 7,149. myPL RSS Selections: 72

Mary Beth Raven's Planet Lotus Keyword Cloud

R5 admin administration ajax apple application applications archive atlantic blackberry blogger blogging bug collaboration community competitive composite connect connections consulting css database designer desktop development dhtml document domino dwa eclipse email enterprise expeditor facebook firefox forms google ibm id vault idea jam ideajam ilug inotes integration interface java javascript laptop ldd linking lotus lotusphere lotusphere2008 lotusscript mac macbook mashups microsoft mobile myspace mysql network networking notes notes client ntf office oracle outlook password php planetlotus policies portlet profile quickplace quickr rich text roaming sametime sap script library security server sql symphony template twitnotes twitter web 2.0 websphere websphere portal widget widgets wiki workflow workspace xml


Total: 550 Average per Post: 4.6610

Blog Posts
170


This blog is moving to www.NotesDesignBlog.com
Wed, Jul 23rd 2008 10:51a   Mary Beth Raven
Hello Lotus Notes Community, As of today, this blog about the design of Lotus Notes is moving to:www.NotesDesignBlog.com The contents of this blog will remain here for your reference. www.MaryBethRaven.com should already be redirected to www.NotesDesignBlog.com I'd like to thank the developerWorks folks for hosting us for over 2 years. They have been very responsive to our requests. As a team, however, we decided to move to the new blog for a variety of reasons, including the fact that we'd h [read] Keywords: ibm lotus notes template community ideajam planetlotus
89


IdeaJam, Release cycles, and a culture of instant gratification
Mon, Jul 21st 2008 9:47p   Mary Beth Raven
Over on his blog, Bruce Elgort asserts that voting on idea jam has come to a halt. And he asks why. The common consensus appears to be that it's because nobody saw that it made any difference with the product. That might be a completely valid assertion. I cannot remember when Idea Jam went live. I think it was right around the time that Notes 8.0 shipped, or shortly thereafter. Let's say it was about a year ago. In that case, it was too late to influence anything in Notes 8.0, and we've shippe [read] Keywords: ibm notes roaming idea jam ideajam
46


Reschedule the Lepofsky-palooza to August 6!
Fri, Jul 18th 2008 10:45a   Mary Beth Raven
Heh. Alan will not be in town on the original date (seems the new job has him traveling already!.. and working hard... he sent me a note about rescheduling at around midnight...) Please join us onat Flat Top Johnny's on WEDNESDAY AUGUST 6 Directions: http://flattopjohnnys.com/contact.htm IBM-ers and non-IBM-ers alike are all invited HOWEVER, please post a reponse if you plan to come so that we can have an idea of how many people are planning to attend. (For those IBMers who received an actual [read] Keywords: ibm lotus notes
149


You are invited to the Lepofsky-Palooza!
Wed, Jul 16th 2008 3:04p   Mary Beth Raven
As you have heard, Lotus guru, strategist, blogger, favorite Canadian and friend Alan Lepofsky has left IBM after 14 years with Lotus. Although he is not going far away (nobody is far away in this socially-networked world!) We simply can't let him slip out the door without a proper celebration. Since the commute to Orlando for karaoke and sake at Kimonos would be a bit rough, and insurance wouldn't cover an ultimate frisbee tournament, we have decided to celebrate in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U [read] Keywords: ibm lotus notes blogger office
105


Better large font user experience coming to you in Notes 8.5
Fri, Jul 11th 2008 10:44a   Mary Beth Raven
Patient users, Notes 8.5 will bring Samantha an improved user experience for setting large fonts. First, as in previous versions, you can go to your operating system and say to use large fonts. And this will make the font in your title bar and menu bar larger. Now, in Notes 8.5, there is a new preference, and she can choose to use normal, large, or extra large fonts, as shown in the picture below. This changes the fonts in the views (including java views) and forms to large font. I do realize [read] Keywords: forms ibm notes notes client java
130


We're all in this together....
Wed, Jul 9th 2008 10:05p   Mary Beth Raven
I wish to extend my congratulations to my friend and colleague, Alan Lepofsky on his new career move from IBM to SocialText. There has been quite a range of blog entries about what his move means... and what it means (to me, at least) is that those of us in the CSCW (remember that acronym? Computer-supported cooperative work) community have a collective mission to support and improve how people collaborate-- by giving them new computer tools and capabilities. It does not matter if we work for [read] Keywords: collaboration ibm lotus community network




138


Update on the Symphony Icons
Tue, Jul 8th 2008 11:25a   Mary Beth Raven
We have received feedback that our family of "yellow circle" icons sometimes makes it difficult to discern the different ones. To that end, we are working on new versions of the entire product family, although at this moment, I am not sure how many we will be able to get into Notes 8.5. However, the good news is that we have been able to change the 3 icons for the 3 Symphony editors (Spreadsheet, Presentation Tool, and Word Processor), as shown in the picture below. [read] Keywords: ibm notes symphony
65


Back from vacation, and John Lance is just starting his, and string freeze was June 30
Mon, Jul 7th 2008 1:46p   Mary Beth Raven
Loyal customers, If you follow me on twitter, you know that I was on vacation last week. We rented this house on the shores of Seneca Lake, in upstate New York, with my father, sister, and their spouses, dogs, children. We had a great time. I have returned just in time for John to take a week off, so our shared design studio is quiet (well, except for Kathy-the DominoDesigner-designer muttering to herself). While I was gone, we had STRING FREEZE for Notes 8.5. This means that all the files with [read] Keywords: designer ibm notes twitter
120


Roaming Rich Text Signature
Mon, Jun 23rd 2008 5:05p   Mary Beth Raven
We're exploring some 'low cost' solutions until we are able to provide a more robust solution to the roaming signature issue. The goal with the designbelow is to provide Samantha with a roaming signature using the Notes client. It does not address all issues (i.e. DWA will still have its own signature, no support for multiple signatures, etc.) and there are some backward compatibility issues. What we need to hear from you, is whether the gain of a roaming rich text signature in Notes outweighs [read] Keywords: dwa ibm notes notes client rich text roaming template
75


Need more opinions of a specific aspect of the new sidebar behaviour
Fri, Jun 20th 2008 9:44a   Mary Beth Raven
Colourful Customers, First, please note that since Paul Mooney and Warren Elsemore gave me the official English dictionary, I have been trying to be sensitive to the spelling needs of the non-Americans, and have been using the letter "u" more often in my blog posts. Now to me real question: In a response to this post about the sidebar, Randy Castle said that clicking on of the little "minimized on the bottom" icons made all of the little titlebars appear. Here is Jamie's response (she's the de [read] Keywords: ibm widgets
78


Symphony Mail merge and Notes: Your opinions wanted about a few details
Wed, Jun 18th 2008 9:45a   Mary Beth Raven
Patient followers:Symphony is introducing Mail merge. As part of mail merge, there's an email feature that integrates with Notes. This feature allows Betty to compose a single document, and insert fields from a datasource (aka list of recipients). For example, the letter would be the same with exception of the greeting and/or address block. One of the options available to Betty after composing the document is to send an email using Notes. The information that will be provided for the email (To [read] Keywords: document ibm notes symphony database email integration
82


The Improved Sidebar scalability in Notes 8.5
Tue, Jun 17th 2008 10:44p   Mary Beth Raven
Loyal readers, In Notes 8.5 the Sidebar will be easier to manipulate. Specifically, it will be easier to:Drag a panel up or down. However, that still left us with the issue that each panel had a title bar that took up space, as shown in the following picture. So we added the ability to drag a panel down to become an icon at the bottom, or drag it up to be an icon at the top. In the public beta , you can drag icons DOWN so that the become an "icon bar" at the bottom. As of today's build, you [read] Keywords: ibm notes
95


Styles in Personal Folders
Tue, Jun 17th 2008 11:50a   Mary Beth Raven
With the advent of Notes 8.0, we introduced CSS styles in the Inbox. The styles set in CSS override the attributes set in Domino Designer. The question we have for you, is how should we handle personal folders? Right now, there are no CSS styles in the personal folders, so the look of these are controlled by the settings in Domino Designer. This has been a problem for some, in that their Inbox style does not match their Personal Folder style. In particular, the look of a 'read' e-mail in th [read] Keywords: designer domino ibm notes notes client css development
85


Notes Client 8.5 beta users: I am looking for feedback about the sidebar
Fri, Jun 13th 2008 11:25a   Mary Beth Raven
Hello to the users of the Notes 8.5 beta client: One of the things we tried to improve in Notes 8.5 was the "manipulatability" of the sidebar panels. So please try out the new sidebar. Specifically, please do one or more of the following: Open 3 or more sidebar panels. More is better. Drag to make them taller or shorter. Check to see if there are any new menu items on the "Panel menu" (the one drop-down menu thing we provide in the title bar of each sidebar panel). IMPORTANT! If you are using [read] Keywords: ibm notes notes client twitnotes
73


A great big thank-you to the organizers of ILUG 20008
Tue, Jun 10th 2008 7:09a   Mary Beth Raven
As a presenter and "speedgeeker" at the Irish Lotus User Group 2008, I want to extend my thanks to the organizers of the event. I am sure that it was a great deal of work, but it ran flawlessley from my point of view. I was able to not only present and speedgeek, but also gather feedback about Notes 8.5 beta from an international audience. That's important to me and the design team, and it was perfect timing since the public beta had just been announced. I know they are all exhausted (and th [read] Keywords: ibm ilug lotus notes community
109


ILGUS 2008 comes to a close
Fri, Jun 6th 2008 11:11a   Mary Beth Raven
The closing sessoin of ILUG is commencing. There's still a lot of energy-- one sponsor is throwing out "stress ball brains" and people are having fun. The "Customising the look of Notes 8" session (Volket, Paul et. a., notice the proper English spelling of "Customising") went well and was well attended for a 9 am session on the last day. Then the "Linking Notes to the world with Live text" was also well attended. It was an after lunch sessoin adn the room was warm, so the session was a bit qui [read] Keywords: ibm ilug notes linking
99


Offline Federated Calendar
Thu, Jun 5th 2008 2:11p   Mary Beth Raven
Hi all, John Lance here. You may remember me from such past blog postings as "All Day Long" and "A Long Day's Journey Into Another Long Day" (In which out hero and calendar designer extraordinaire, the incredibly dashing, handsome, witty, and ever so likeable JACK SPEAR, is caught in a calendar timezone meltdown. Will he and the other operatives of the ELITE organization JCN manage to save the world? Only time will tell....). Moving right along... So, as those of you in the public beta know we [read] Keywords: designer ibm mobile
275


For a Notes 8 look and feel just use this template
Wed, Jun 4th 2008 11:51a   Mary Beth Raven
Hey community, For those of you who want to leverage a Notes 8 look and feel in your templates without building the outline view and action bars etc. from scratch, please note that Chris Reckling posted a Notes template on his InsideLotus blog that pretty must follows the look and feel style conventions that I outlined in the User Experience design guidelines [read] Keywords: ibm ldd lotus notes template community
52


Gearing up for the UGs
Tue, Jun 3rd 2008 2:44p   Mary Beth Raven
It's the eve of DNUG (Deutsche Notes User Group) and ILUG (Irish Lotus User Group). Maureen Leland and I have been corresponding on our various talks-- she's going to DNUG, I am at ILUG. I hope she's having as much fun as I am. (Is it safe to let your boss know you love your job and your user community?) I'm sitting in the conference hotle lobby with 11 over attendees, mainly business partners. I've met a few new faces-- ok, the faces are not new because I have seen them on their own blogs [read] Keywords: ibm ilug lotus notes community twitter
51


Now that the Notes 8.5 beta is public, we focus on the feedback forum, and on usability testing with external people
Fri, May 30th 2008 9:25a   Mary Beth Raven
The Notes/Domino 8.5 public beta is now available. The forum with all the details (download, release notes, etc.) is at http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd85forum.nsf . I and the rest of the design team monitor that forum, and thus, most of the discussoin will move there; this blog might not be that active for a bit because all the action is taking place over on the feedback forum. We are planning on doing some usability testing with external users. We have plans to go to customer sites to do usab [read] Keywords: domino ibm ldd lotus notes server
8


8.5 Public Beta 1 is due to be go live around 9am tomorrow
Thu, May 29th 2008 4:02p   Mary Beth Raven
Loyal Loti, The Notes 8.5 public beta 1 is at the moment planned to be available to you around 9 am eastern time Friday morning. This is not a guarantee, just a heads up, so that those ofyou in, oh, say, Australia, can stay up late and keep pushing the refresh key on your browser so that you can win a beer from your geek mates for being the first one to download it... that kind of thing. [read] Keywords: notes
90


I am in "public beta 1 Central Triage" meetings daily...
Wed, May 28th 2008 4:28p   Mary Beth Raven
The "Central Triage" meetings have been going on regularly for quite some time now. That is, each area has local triage meetings to triage bugs, and then we we get close to things like public beta, we move to a central triage, where representatives come together . We are right now talking about one team (the "single log on"initiative) who managed to get thru this central triage beta process so far without any bugs! Their manager is checking into that to confirm it-- would be cool, and fun t [read] Keywords: ibm ilug bug
45


I am ILUG-bound, are you?
Tue, May 27th 2008 9:10p   Mary Beth Raven
It's one week until BOTH the Irish Lotus User Group (ILUG) and the Deutsche Notes User Group (DNUG)conferences. Which one are you going to? Both will be excellent. Last year I had the privilege of presenting at both. This year, ILUG asked first, so I'm going to ILUG. DNUG speakers include Kevin Cavanaugh, Brent Peters and Bob Picciano. ILUG speakers include Alan Lepofsky, Ed Brill, Myself and a few other hard-working and fun-loving IBMers. Notice how ILUG got all the good IBM bloggers I [read] Keywords: ibm ilug lotus lotusphere notes
34


Memorial service for Cynthia Ice, our colleague who was a champion for accessibility
Fri, May 23rd 2008 11:04a   Mary Beth Raven
The memorial service for Cynthia Ice has been scheduled for : Saturday May 31st at 1:00 pm Fowler-Kennedy Funeral Home in Maynard, Massachusetts In lieu of flowers, the family has suggested donations may be made in her memory to: Joslin Diabetes Center One Joslin Place Boston, MA 02215 (617) 732-2400 and / or that of her beloved guide dogs Ellery and Cashmere to : The Seeing Eye Inc. P.O. Box 375 Morristown, NJ 07963 ( 973) 539-4425 [read] Keywords: ibm
73


In honor of Cynthia Ice, fix an accessibility bug
Fri, May 16th 2008 4:44p   Mary Beth Raven
Our friend and colleague, Cynthia Ice, passed away earlier this week. She was an accessibility expert and tester-- a tireless advocate for accessibility for Lotus Notes and other products, starting with Notes 5 I believe. Every blind user of Lotus products, and every salesperson who has to work with accounts that require accessibility, owe Cynthia Ice a great debt. Her work is described a bit in the following article in USA Today. Her life had great purpose-- to make software usable for [read] Keywords: ibm lotus notes bug
178


New icons make lists of e-mail easier to scan in 8.5!
Tue, May 13th 2008 10:28a   Mary Beth Raven
After Notes 8 was released, we began hearing that users occasionally didn’t notice important items (like meeting invitations) in their Inbox. But why? Was it because the icons were too small? Was it because they were too similar to each other? Or could we improve scanning by removing icons for mail messages that had already been read? To find out, we conducted a timed experiment: 24 participants found target items on 72 Inbox screens that differed from each other in the icon size, d [read] Keywords: designer ibm notes workflow
33


I am at in internal IBM conference May 12-14, so probably no blogging <>
Sun, May 11th 2008 10:07p   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: ibm blogging
93


What types of things do you want to automatically identify in text?
Thu, May 8th 2008 10:31p   Mary Beth Raven
One of our internal teams (LanguageWare-- they provide the spell checker and some stuff for Live Text, and other stuff) is going to be taking a full week out to focus entirely on "entity extraction development" which is geekspeak for "recognizing what a word is" -- "Hannover" being a city OR a development project, things like that. So if you have some entities which you really would like to see included please let us know. By entities we mean any named thing in text, like projects, technol [read] Keywords: connections ibm quickplace quickr community development
54


So, Steve McDonagh wants a Lotus song...
Thu, May 8th 2008 10:31p   Mary Beth Raven
Over on his blog, Steve McDonagh was musing about ideas for the name of a Domino blogger band. My personal favorite is "Graceful Degradation". He also mentioned that we "soooo need a Lotus song".... here are TWO contributions from the Design team! FIRST SONG: "The Heart of Lotus Notes is Still Beatin'" (To the tune of Huey Lewis and the News "the heart of Rock n roll") Workspace, workspace, is everything they say And nothing that I'd rather see Where else can you stack a half a mi [read] Keywords: domino ibm lotus notes sametime applications blogger outlook workspace
180


New Startup Sequence for Notes 8.5
Thu, May 8th 2008 3:28p   Mary Beth Raven
The development team is working on improving performance in Notes 8.5. One of the things they are looking at doing is changing the startup sequence of Notes. The new user experience is as follows: splash screen, login dialog (unless you have "single sign-on"), perhaps a progress dialog and then Client desktop is rendered [read] Keywords: ibm notes desktop development
79


Great customer visit last week
Mon, Apr 28th 2008 8:04p   Mary Beth Raven
Last week I had a terrific opportunity to conduct some end-user interviews at a ministry of the Canadian Government. I was able to speak to real users who ranged from Administrative assistants to a Director General. This was my first set of interviews with a government agency in my capacity as Lotus Notes designer. Plus is was a "non-US" government agency where bi-liguaglism is de rigeur. (The last time I got to do any kind of interviews with employees of the Canadian Government, I was empl [read] Keywords: designer ibm lotus notes
24


I am on vacation and John Lance and Carrie Tracy are doing the Admin 2008 Conference in Boston
Sat, Apr 26th 2008 12:03a   Mary Beth Raven
Loyal readers, Despair not if you see no blog entries this coming week from the Notes design team. I am on vacation in Virginia with my spouse, his mom, and our 2 kids. trying to educate them about history at Colonial Williamsburg. John Lance (you may know him from such postings as "Mapping Imported Contacts" and "My Favorite Party Animals" (tip: monkeys are overrated, bulls are expensive, and goliath bird eating spiders get you a clear path to the buffet every time (of vital importance for th [read] Keywords: admin ibm lotusphere notes sametime wiki
43


Another great "Lotusphere Comes to you" comes to a close
Tue, Apr 22nd 2008 4:45p   Mary Beth Raven
The last session of "Lotusphere Vient a Vous" Montreal just finished. (Well, there is a 2 hour cocktail/reception in the product showcase, so it's not completely done yet). I heard some interesting new bits of info and received good questions-- in all, it was really good to get out in front of customers after almost 3 months of not doing that (except for one or two special customer visits and the weekly Design partner meeting). It was also wonderful to continue to be thanked by customers for [read] Keywords: ibm lotusphere notes development
7


"no plans to fix" type bug reports
Tue, Apr 22nd 2008 12:50p   Mary Beth Raven
A while ago a blogged that we're in a stage of bug triage, and I go to the triage meetings. Sometimes I lobby hard to fix certain bugs, and other times I do not. I do try to balance business value with the cost to IBM to fix a bug. Now in my case, most of these bugs are usability bugs. And let me assure you, I and the Design team are constantly educating the developers and advocating that "usability bugs are real bugs." And by and large, the Notes development and QE team has got the message an [read] Keywords: ibm notes bug development google
29


Felicitations au Montreal Canadiens!
Mon, Apr 21st 2008 11:43p   Mary Beth Raven
Ce soir, je me trouve dans la ville de Montreal. Et, tout l'equipe des "Boston Bruins" et aussi en ville. Alors, un match d'hockey entre les Boston Bruisn et les Montreal Canadiens vient de finir. Et Les Canadiens ont gagne. Felicitation au Montreal Canadiens! L'hotel est l'autre cote de la stade ou joue les Bruins et Canadiens. Alors, les rues sont replis des voitures, des gens, avec les drapeaux "Canadiens", et qui chant. C'est tres interessant. Apres tout, la raison pourqui je suis venue d' [read] Keywords: ibm lotus notes
92


The J. Lance Scale of Bug Stupidity
Wed, Apr 16th 2008 11:09p   Mary Beth Raven
HI, It's not John Lance here. But I'm posting something he wrote. Here in the Design Studio, today was "one of those days"... the kind when bugs that we've been lobbying for end up getting marked as "NPTF." (Officially that stands for "no plans to fix ever"... and I don't think I can publish some of the other phrases we've made up for that acronym....). John lightened our day with his scale of bug stupidity, so I thought I'd share it here. It would be almost funny... if it's weren't true... [read] Keywords: ibm bug
41


Introducing Paul Clemmons, our new draft persona for a DWA user
Fri, Apr 11th 2008 2:31p   Mary Beth Raven
We have had several requests from customers to interview users of DWA -- Domino Web Access, (aka iNotes)-- and create a persona. We also had requests for us to ensure that we take into account various age groups in our personas, including younger (university-age or just entering the work force) users. To that end, our own intern, Drew Condon, has conducted several interviews of such users and created the following draft persona. Please feel free to comment if you are a member of this target [read] Keywords: connect , connections , domino , dwa , ibm , inotes , lotus , notes , notes client , apple , applications , database , desktop , email , facebook , firefox , google , laptop , macbook , microsoft , mobile , network , networking , office
72


Allow Samantha to close the Home page, or not?
Wed, Apr 9th 2008 5:45p   Mary Beth Raven
In Notes 8.0 and 8.0.1 we allow Samantha to close the Home page. This was an intentional departure from previous versions, where she could not close the Home page. Some of the reasons were that we'd heard a few customers who wanted users to be able to do that in order to free up more screen real estate across the top for other tabs. Having a non-closeable home page was not a feature that Xpeditor supported, and the Symphony standalone did not use such a thing, either. So, that's why Samantha [read] Keywords: ibm , notes , symphony
143


A .png dilemma
Tue, Apr 8th 2008 3:59p   Mary Beth Raven
There are two ways to import png data into an Notes 8.x document. One is to directly import a png, and the other is to import png images as part of an HTML. Importing pngs as an HTML is currently not supported. So this is not an issue here. Importing a png directly is partially supported on the current Notes 801 clients by converting it to jpeg. But animation and transparency of png are lost because jpeg doesn't have the features. We can fully support png images on an HTML on 8.5, but then we w [read] Keywords: document , ibm , notes , development
80


How I got started with Notes
Mon, Apr 7th 2008 9:28p   Mary Beth Raven
I used Notes 3.something at "FTP Software" back in 1995. They used it for entering Trouble Tickets. I hated it. Of course, since it was for trouble tickets, I was already always in a foul mood when I saw it. And I remember that the first thing it always seemed to do was ask me what server I wanted to connect to.... and of course I could never remember. TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE... our usability lab machines broke a lot. Eventually we discovered that it was because one of the IT guys had a crus [read] Keywords: connect , designer , domino , dwa , ibm , notes , sametime , competitive , development , office , outlook , server
77


On your workspace-- do you even pick the menu item "Arrange Icons"?
Thu, Apr 3rd 2008 8:11a   Mary Beth Raven
Hey folks, For you Workspace users out there, open up your Workspace to any tab, and then go up to the View menu-- see that menu item called "Arrange Icons"? It will move all your icons to the upper left-- so that there are no extra spaces between the "Chicklets" (tiles). (So if the arrangement of your icons is important, DO NOT PICK THIS MENU ITEM NOW!!! How often you you pick this menu item for "Arrange Icons"? One a day Once a week Once a month Less than once a month? How wo [read] Keywords: ibm , notes , workspace
114


All Day Long
Wed, Apr 2nd 2008 1:06a   Mary Beth Raven
Hi all, John Lance here. You may remember me from such past blog postings as "Mapping Imported Contacts" and "My Favorite Party Animals" (tip: monkeys are overrated, bulls are expensive, and goliath bird eating spiders get you a clear path to the buffet every time (of vital importance for those of us that wear extra large Lotusphere shirts)). Moving right along... We're hard at work here in Lotusville making it so that Samantha can subscribe to other calendars from her Notes calendar (i.e. she [read] Keywords: ibm , lotusphere , notes , google , wiki
114


Truths Revealed
Tue, Apr 1st 2008 5:38a   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: designer , ibm , lotus , notes , community
65


Administering the Sametime Product Suite -- WIll Fred Adams get a promotion, or hire a new person, or??
Mon, Mar 31st 2008 8:36a   Mary Beth Raven
With Sametime Connect, Sametime Gateway, the just-shipped Sametime Advanced, and the upcoming Sametime Unified Telephony, how is Fred Adams, our Messaging and Collaboration System Administrator, going to handle all the growth for this product suite? Will Fred Adams get a promotion or be told to hire a new person? Will Ida Engel be the second line support person for all this Sametime stuff, or will the support staff get expanded? In your organization will Fred’s job grow to include WebSphere [read] Keywords: administration , collaboration , connect , designer , ibm , sametime , application , network , server , websphere
33


Congratulations to Bill Chuck, our Lotusphere speaker coach, on the publication of his new book
Fri, Mar 28th 2008 10:03a   Mary Beth Raven
Many of you who speak at Lotusphere have received speaker coaching from Bill Chuck. This past year, he really helped improve both the talks I gave-- the first with Matt Hatem about customizing the look of Notes, and the second with Carrie Tracy about design directions. He was really supportive and even came to the beginning of the talk with Carrie, because he knew she was so nervous. When he's not speaker coaching, it appears that he likes to write about baseball. His new book will be availa [read] Keywords: ibm , lotusphere , notes
61


Welcome to the world, Tyler William Raven! (And t-shirts mailed!)
Wed, Mar 26th 2008 10:17p   Mary Beth Raven
Congratulations to my brother Chris, his wife Susan, and big borther Connor, on the birth of Tyler William Raven today at 9 am! Weighing in at 9lbs 14 oz and 21 inches long he is clearly planning to make his mark on the world. No picture yet (being a public school teacher, my brother is not 100% up to date on all our electronic life-sharing stuff)... but good wishes anyway! Also, all domestic Lotusphere Staff t-shirts have been mailed, plus one to the high bidder in Canada. I have severa [read] Keywords: ibm , ilug , lotusphere
37


Thanks for your generosity, the '08 staff shirt auction is over, still have a few days for the '06 shirt
Sun, Mar 23rd 2008 8:23p   Mary Beth Raven
Lotusphere faithful, thanks for bidding on the Lotusphere '08 shirt auction for charity. The auction for those shirts is over. We still have a few more days to go on the '06 staff shirt (mine). Lotusphere '06 Denim staff shirt [read] Keywords: lotusphere
29


One more item for auction for charity: Lotusphere '06 Denim shirt
Fri, Mar 21st 2008 9:44a   Mary Beth Raven
Hey folks, Here's one more shirt that we forgot to actually list on E-bay! This denim staff shirt is a medium, but in my opinion, it was pretty big, compared to this year's medium staff shirts. Lotusphere '06 Denim staff shirt Check out the '08 shirts, too. [read] Keywords: lotusphere
40


Yes! We will ship Lotusphere staff T-Shirts outside the USA!
Thu, Mar 20th 2008 8:38p   Mary Beth Raven
The Lotusphere staff t-shirt auction on E-bay is still going on! Remember, you cannot get these collector's items in stores. And we *WILL* ship them outside the USA, so all you Asians, Aussies, Europeans, South Americans, start bidding! Here's the list of donors and their shirts that are up for auction on E-bay. Search for Lotusphere '08 on E-Bay or click the links below. Charlie Hill (newly-apppointed Lotus CTO!), 2 smalls, not worn Sheri Branco, Notes usability, 2 smalls, worn a [read] Keywords: designer , lotus , lotusphere , notes
95


Announcing the Great Lotusphere 2008 T-shirt Auction for Charity!
Sun, Mar 16th 2008 9:54p   Mary Beth Raven
I am pleased to announce the Lotupshere 2008 T-shirt auction for charity! We have 17 OFFICIAL IBM LOTUS STAFF shirts to auction, and each is listed as a separate e-bay auction item as a fund-raiser for Doctors without Borders (medecins sans frontiers). Here are links to a few, or you can search e-bay for Lotusphere '08. Notice that each listing also shows WHO donated the shirt. This is because we IBMers are having acontest to see whose shirt can raise the most money! John Lance will be [read] Keywords: designer , ibm , lotus , lotusphere , notes
144


Update on Notes 8.5 on the Mac
Sat, Mar 15th 2008 12:12p   Mary Beth Raven
A while I go I asked you how "mac-ish" you want Notes 8.5 on the Mac to be. Thanks for the responses, I read every one. I met yesterday with our Mac visual designer (Carrie) and the developer in charge of the Mac theme (Chris) and we made a few decisions. For example, we agreed to make the status bar icons monochrome, and center the status message. We also agreed that we want the selected tab to have the "upside down" look-- that is, it bleeds into the top. We want to make the toolbar sep [read] Keywords: designer , notes , mac
35


I'll be at Lotusphere Comes to You in Montreal, April 22
Wed, Mar 12th 2008 10:30p   Mary Beth Raven
Readers, I'll be giving one or more talks at Lotusphere Comes to You in Montreal on April 22. I am also available for--and interested in doing-- customer visits the day before or after. I can talk about Notes 8 or 801, what's coming in 8.5, our design process, but mostly I'd like to interview actual Notes users (do not have to be users of Notes 8), particularly if they use it in French. Je me debrouille en Francais. Mon grand-pere est ne a St. Cesaire, et j'ai encore de la famille a Quebec. [read] Keywords: ibm , lotusphere , notes , development , email
109


Authenticated Feeds
Mon, Mar 10th 2008 8:25a   Mary Beth Raven
We know that Samantha can't add and access authenticated feeds in Notes 8 or 8.01. She actually can do it, but she has to first find and understand how to set up a Notes Account with her user name and password. We don't think many Samantha's have figured this out Samantha will need to have some interaction with Notes Accounts. These can be found in Notes > Preferences > Accounts, and have been part of the Notes client for a long time. We're concerned that she might think that 'Notes [read] Keywords: designer , ibm , notes , notes client , interface , password , server
167


Announcing the Lotus Notes and Domino Wiki
Fri, Mar 7th 2008 8:58a   Mary Beth Raven
Yesterday, Chistian D'Alosio blogged that having a Notes and Domino wiki would be a good idea. We agree. Here you go: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/ It went live on February 26. Please, use it! Also, several of you have asked the Widgets and Live text team to start their own blog. For the time being, we have decided that rather than have a separate blog for Widgets and live text, if you have questions, etc., please use the Notes and Domino Wiki. Enjoy! P.S. All thanks fo [read] Keywords: domino , ldd , lotus , notes , development , widgets , wiki
84


Update on the roaming user experience
Tue, Mar 4th 2008 8:14p   Mary Beth Raven
On February 18, 2008, I posted several draft dialog boxes concerning the roaming user 'upgrade' experience, which we are trying to improve. In the comments, you asked for several things, one of which was the ability to customize the initial dialog that tells users they are being upgraded. The good news is....we actually listened! We changed our plan and at the moment, we plan to give you not one, but 2 customizable dialogs as part of that experience. We plan to let you customize the first [read] Keywords: admin , administration , ibm , lotus , notes , roaming
100


How "Mac-ish" do you want your Notes 8.5 on the Mac?
Thu, Feb 28th 2008 10:31a   Mary Beth Raven
I am working with Chris Majoros and Matt Hatem (Matt and I gave the "themes" talk at Lotusphere) and Carrie Tracy ( visual designer-- she and I gave the "Design Directions" talk together at Lotusphere) on a "Mac" visual theme for Lotus Notes 8.5 on the Mac. In addition to working on the visual part, we are toying with the idea of reducing the number of toolbar buttons in the toolbars, because, as you Mas users know, the Mac toolbars are generally pretty sparse. For example, Mac toolbars d [read] Keywords: designer , lotus , lotusphere , notes , mac
84


New preference for Large Icons in the Open List
Wed, Feb 27th 2008 9:21a   Mary Beth Raven
Hi Folks, We are adding support for large icons to Notes 8.5 (in addition to the small ones that ship with Notes 8 and 801). We plan to have a context menu item on the open list, and a preference. Figure: Use large icons in the context menu on the Open list. I'ts a "check mark" menu item, like "Dock the Open List" Here is the preference. Notice that I put it on the Windows and Themes page. I know that there used to be a preference on the Basic Notes client Configuration page. Howev [read] Keywords: expeditor , lotus , notes , notes client , symphony
86


My daughter, the "altar boy who just quit"
Tue, Feb 26th 2008 6:46p   Mary Beth Raven
This post has nothing to do with Lotus Notes. It's just a peek into the mind and motivations of Mary Beth. When I was a kid, growing up Catholic in the United States, girls could not be altar servers. I really wanted to be one-- up on the altar, helping out, *really* participating at Mass. My younger brother, Chris, however, was an altar boy. And, of course, he really was not that interested in being one. So we worked out a system, the kind that only siblings can create. When he served, I [read] Keywords: designer , lotus , notes , outlook , server
22


Meet Daisuke Okajima, a Salesperson Persona
Fri, Feb 22nd 2008 3:27p   Mary Beth Raven
Group Calendar for Daisuke Okajima Daisuke works in a sales department of JCN (Japan Communication Networks), a large IT company which provides IT solutions. He is in charge of manufacturing companies including car manufacturers. Over ten JCN System Engineers are stationed at Honma's IT Section. Daisuke and his colleague deal with the contract of these engineers, and also other business with Honma’s IT Manager on SW and HW products. He lives in Makuhari-city in Chiba with his wife ,and c [read] Keywords: forms , ibm , lotus , notes , application , archive , desktop , development , laptop , microsoft , mobile , office , security
46


introducing our Japanese user researcher and designer
Fri, Feb 22nd 2008 2:29p   Mary Beth Raven
The Lotus Notes design team is mindful of the fact that our users come from all over the world and speak many languages. To that end, we have been working intermittently with two IBM colleagues from IBM Japan to help us understand Japanese users and how Lotus Notes is used in Japan. Please allow me to introduce Ikuko Okamoto (the lady in the photo below) and Masataka Yamazaki (the gentleman in the photo below). Ikuko is a user researcher who conducted several interviews of Japanese use [read] Keywords: designer , ibm , lotus , lotusphere , notes
107


Template Customizatoion
Tue, Feb 19th 2008 2:33p   Mary Beth Raven
Is it painful for your organization to deploy new versions of the Lotus Notes Client, because your IT department has customized the Mail template? We want to understand what your template customizations are and the reasons behind each. For example, “Do you customize your template to show Last name, First name in the Inbox? If so, why do your users need/want this?” Roughly how many customizations do you make to your mail template?Do you make the same customizations for all your use [read] Keywords: designer , lotus , notes , notes client , template
84


Request for opinions about the "roaming user" upgrade dialogs
Mon, Feb 18th 2008 9:06a   Mary Beth Raven
As many of you know, we are improving the roaming user experience so that it's supported in the standard client. We are creating some user policies so that Fred the Domino admin can specify that Ted Amado (our roaming user) sees NO roaming user upgrade dialog boxes at all-- it just happens. Fred can also specify that Ted does see dialogs, and we want to improve on the existing dialogs. Here are some draft dialogs. I am on the fence about how much to tell Ted in these dialogs. On the one h [read] Keywords: admin , domino , ibm , lotus , notes , policies , roaming , server , workspace
52


I made it home from Laguardia
Wed, Feb 13th 2008 5:54p   Mary Beth Raven
Now that I know Jim Casale lives 15 min from Laguardia, I'll never be stuck there again, cause I can be stuck as his house for dinner I did make it home eventually. I managed to get a standby seat to Logan in Boston, and then hired a shuttle van to drive me to the Manchester, NH, airport. Once there, I scraped the snow and ice off my car and drove home by 4am. Turns out that was better than Sandesh's experience. I thought he'd made it home, but over in the other terminal, all his AA fligh [read] Keywords:
53


Questions about the Gridded Bookmarks
Wed, Feb 13th 2008 5:12p   Mary Beth Raven
I'm working with Matt Hatem and other developers on the re-designed Workspace. (Since I made that posting, clearly some things have changed, like we call the Launcher the "open list" and our plan for the "type to find" feature is that it will mimic the one you see in the Notes 8 open List) I know that in the past, IBM provided not only the Workspace, but also a "Gridded Bookmarks" feature-- at least that's what we called it internally. In Notes 7, you get to the "Gridded Bookmarks" by rig [read] Keywords: document , domino , ibm , notes , applications , database , workspace
87


Working on workspace while stuck in Laguardia
Tue, Feb 12th 2008 8:51p   Mary Beth Raven
I had a customer visit today on Madison Ave., New York City. I went with Sandesh, the deveopment director. He flew in from Boston on American. I flew in from Manchester, New Hampshire on U.S. Air. He's home now. However, due to some snow, I am now stuck at Laguardia ariport. The current prediction is that my 6 pm flight will leave at 11 pm. If if doesn't get cancelled. I know, John Lance, I should have listened to you. You told me to take the train. It's going to be a long, cold night. S [read] Keywords: workspace
69


My kids and I decorated our newly finished basement today....
Sun, Feb 10th 2008 8:22p   Mary Beth Raven
It was my 12-year-old's idea to 'splatter paint' a painting. We had a blast. I made us wear not only painting clothers, but also shower caps. At first, the girls thought it was stupid... but as we got "into" flinging paint across the room, they understood why I made us put up plastic on the ceiling...here is our masterpeice... [read] Keywords:
37


Ok, I'm only 74% addicted to blogging....not sure if that helps or hinders my performance review...
Sun, Feb 10th 2008 7:33p   Mary Beth Raven
74%How Addicted to Blogging Are You? [read] Keywords: blogging
67


Feed Reader in the Mail Navigator
Thu, Feb 7th 2008 6:26p   Mary Beth Raven
We’re looking to improve the Feed Reader in a future release of Notes. I know one of the hottest Feed Reader issues is authentication, and we’re definitely investigating that area and will be looking for input on that at another time. A design change we’re investigating is integrating the Feed Reader into the Mail navigator, so that the feeds can be viewed, previewed & managed like mail. Initially, this design poses 2 large questions: 1. How do you want to manage your feeds? Do [read] Keywords: notes
73


Link to the "Customizing Notes with .CSS" Lotusphere talk
Sat, Feb 2nd 2008 1:27p   Mary Beth Raven
Hi folks, You can get to the final version of the Lotusphere 2008 talk that I did with Matt Hatem AD 204 "Customizing Notes with CSS" by going here and looking for the file name AD204_Final http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/attach/Home We're still working on getting your the Css inspector plug-in that he demoed. [read] Keywords: ibm , lotusphere , notes , css
41


Link to my "Design Directions" talk from Lotusphere
Sat, Feb 2nd 2008 1:04p   Mary Beth Raven
Hi folks, You can get to the final version of the Lotusphere 2008 talk that I did with Carrie Tracy on "Design Directions for Notes and Sametime" at the following link. Please note that I had to divide it into 3 parts... so look for all 3. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/attach/Home [read] Keywords: ibm , lotusphere , notes , sametime
52


Please give us your constructive criticism on the UX Lab at Lotusphere 2008
Thu, Jan 31st 2008 4:53p   Mary Beth Raven
Lotusphere 2008 attendees: Please help us improve our User Experience lab for next year's Lotusphere. This year, the User Experience (UX) lab (most folks call it "the usability lab") was in Asia 4 -- the biggest and best location we've ever had. We were running usability tests of most of our products- Notes, Connections, Quickr, App dev tools, and we even had an "explore the landscape" area where you could use Outlook and Notes side by side and tell us what you thought. If you visited [read] Keywords: connections , lotusphere , notes , quickr , outlook
117


Here's how to get the documentation for the "My Widgets" feature in the 8.0.1 beta
Thu, Jan 31st 2008 10:44a   Mary Beth Raven
I know that some o fyou have been playing with the "My Widgets" and Live Text in the recent Notes 8.0.1 beta. We have now posted the documentation. You can obtain the beta version My Widgets documentation as below: 1. Go to http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/index.jsp. 2. Open the "Domino 8.0.1 Administrator Beta Help" link in the navigator panel. 3. Open the "Configuring and using My Widgets" section of the table of contents -- My Widgets documentation (overview and [read] Keywords: admin , domino , ibm , notes , widgets
79


We will be uploading Lotusphere presentations and the CSS inspector plug-in in the next few days....
Tue, Jan 29th 2008 2:49p   Mary Beth Raven
Hi folks, The Lotushere talks files are too big to post on this blog so I can't post them. But I'm working on a solution. Matt is working to get his CSS Inspector plugin posted on developerWorks-- but he's been out sick the past 2 days (all that talking must have tired him out.... But we'll get it all to you soon, I hope! Also, stay tuned for the great "Lotusphere staff t-shirt auction" on ebay. Members of the design team are donating their Lotusphere staff t-shirts (some worn, some not, some [read] Keywords: lotusphere , css
120


You have all been too kind...
Fri, Jan 25th 2008 1:51p   Mary Beth Raven
Customers, business partners, and other IBMers, This was a great Lotusphere. You have all been very nice and kind to the design team. I was a little concerned that lots of people would come to the lab all irate, with LONG lists of thngs that they don't like about Notes 8 (I KNOW you have them). Yes, you came to the lab with your lists, but overall, you were patient, kind, and understanding as we discussed the lists. Also, thanks for all the thanks. It was great for us to hear you tell us to ke [read] Keywords: lotusphere , notes
58


Introducing our newest persona: Michaela Zelber, Web developer
Tue, Jan 22nd 2008 12:01p   Mary Beth Raven
This is a DRAFT persona. If you are a web developer (or can get one to read this) please feel free to post comments on whether this persona is accurate. Or come to the UX lab in Asia 4 at Lotusphere and talk to us about her. Michaela is a Web Developer for Renovations. She actually has 2 jobs - during the day, it's her responsibility to put content on the company's internet and intranet sites, and make it look elegant and professional. And on the weekends, she free-lances in website development [read] Keywords: connect , domino , javascript , lotusphere , ajax , css , database , development , dhtml , eclipse , email , enterprise , facebook , firefox , myspace , mysql , network , networking , oracle , php , xml
151


FINALLY! My first-ever actual conference t-shirt made for a woman!
Tue, Jan 22nd 2008 10:40a   Mary Beth Raven
Congratulations to Lotus+911 for giving me my first-ever actual LADIES conference shirt. I had to bleed yellow to get it, but it was worth it [read] Keywords: lotus
29


"Atlantic" is in the UX Lab at Lotusphere!
Mon, Jan 21st 2008 2:00p   Mary Beth Raven
"Atlantic" is in the UX Lab at Lotusphere! As announced in the OGS, "Atlantic" is a future software product that is being jointly developed by IBM and SAP. If the idea of this joint effort excites you, please come to the UX Lab to tell us why. With your help, we can design this future product to be as usable and useful as possible. Thanks, [read] Keywords: atlantic , ibm , lotusphere , sap
38


The Notes text editor is alive with Live Text!
Sun, Jan 20th 2008 10:34a   Mary Beth Raven
Now that (the first of two) opening general sessions are over, I can tell you more about the Live Text feature that I've been working on for Notes 8.0.1. Notes 8.0.1 will ship with several types of text that are "recognized", such as an email address or postal address. These recognized terms or phrases get a special underline, and you can (left) click on the underline to get a dialog of options, as shown in the picture below. If there is only one action to take, then clicking simply perform [read] Keywords: domino , notes , policies , application , database , desktop , email , widget , widgets
30


You might want to change your Lotusphere schedule to attend "Notes Widgets and Live Text"
Sun, Jan 20th 2008 10:32a   Mary Beth Raven
Lotuspherians, We have a great new session on Wednesday morning-- AD111: Notes Widget s and Live Text: Linking Your Data to the World 8:30am - 9:30am, SW 5-6 It was not in the program (thus, it's not in your Blackberry version either!)because we did not want to "give away" some of the impact of the Opening general session. If you cannot make that session, you can come and usability test both Live Text and Widgets in the User experience lab-- Asia 4. Ask for me (Mary beth "Widget woman" [read] Keywords: lotusphere , notes , blackberry , linking , widget , widgets
44


User experience deisgn guidelines for Notes are now available!
Fri, Jan 18th 2008 9:04p   Mary Beth Raven
Friends, roaming users, countrymen, lend me your ears! Here are the Louts Notes 8, Sametime, Symphony and Expeditor design guidelines, freshly posted to developerWorks! If you are a template developer who uses Domino Designer or a java programmer who writes plugins and features, these guidelines are for you! Also, let me know-- would they be more useful on the developerworks site as a discussion topic so that you can post questions abotu certain parts? as a wiki, or ?? These guidelines will ev [read] Keywords: designer , domino , expeditor , notes , roaming , sametime , symphony , template , java , wiki
55


Jamfest at Lotusphere2008: Let's collaborate!
Thu, Jan 17th 2008 12:48p   Mary Beth Raven
The Jamfest is an evening get-together at Lotusphere when folks show up and play songs. In the past, the design team has participated by singing "The Sametime Song" and "Livin' la Vida Lotus." This year, we're taking a folk-song approach and rather than just singing it, ourselves, we're inviting you to collaborate on it with us. This year we're doing "This Notes is Your Notes" (to the tune of "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie) For sheet music, you can go to: http://www.sheetmusicdirect. [read] Keywords: lotus , lotusphere , lotusphere2008 , notes , sametime , applications , office , outlook
45


Final roster of who is racing with the Design team in the Swan boat races
Wed, Jan 16th 2008 11:12a   Mary Beth Raven
Here's the final roster for who is racing with the Design team in the Swan boat races at lunch time during Lotusphere MONDAY at 13:05 Jodi Rexford, -> Randy NelsonJohn Lance -> "Curious" Mitch Cohen Kristina McBlain -> Kevin Pettit TUESDAY at 13:05 Margo Ezekiel -> Mat Newman Sheri Branco -> Nathan Freeman Deb Maurer -> Jim Casale Mary Beth Raven -> Paul Hobson Note that Jodi's partner (Randy), Margo's partner (Mat), andSheri's partner (Nathan) names do not show up on the [read] Keywords: lotusphere
18


Samantha, Ted and Betty are NOT going to Lotusphere... but...
Tue, Jan 15th 2008 11:00p   Mary Beth Raven
As business end users, our design personas of Samantha, Ted, and Betty, are not the kind of people who attend Lotusphere. However, as it happens, all three are attending a retail conference at the Caribe Royale, right near Disney property. It is entirely possible that you might see them at Downtown Disney or on the Boardwalk. If you do, stop and say hello. They just might have a little gift for Lotusphere conference goers. [read] Keywords: lotusphere
38


Find some time to test products in the User Epxerience Lab at Lotusphere!
Mon, Jan 14th 2008 11:00p   Mary Beth Raven
This year, the User Experience (UX) lab at Lotusphere is in a bigger and more prominent room -- Asia 4, not far from the escalator to the showcase floor and next to the Innovations Lab. The UX lab will have a "road map" theme this year, so in addition to giving us valuable feedback, we hope you have fun: "Exploring the landscape" of our products "Doing Test Drives" of current or soon-to-be released versions of Notes 8.0.1. Quickr, Connections, Domino Designer, and more. Visiting the "Constr [read] Keywords: connections , designer , domino , lotusphere , notes , quickr , application
57


Who wants to team up with the Notes desginers to do the Swan boat races at Lotusphere?
Sun, Jan 13th 2008 3:12p   Mary Beth Raven
Hey customers and business partners, As many of you know, Warren and Kitty Elsmore are organizing Swan boat races at lunch time during Lotusphere. There are 2 people to a boat. So, in an effort to 'team' with you-- our customers-- better, the Design team is looking for people to race with us. Below are the names and roles of the Design team members who are participating. This is your chance for "quality" one-one-one time. Think about it, perhaps it's an opportunity for things like this: you sa [read] Keywords: composite , designer , domino , dwa , inotes , lotusphere , notes , applications
16


Who gets to demo what... and I am ADDICTED to PlanetLotus!
Thu, Jan 10th 2008 9:25p   Mary Beth Raven
Not surprisingly, I am spending most of my time preparing for Lotusphere this week. Jeff Eisen and I spent a while this afternoon "horse trading" demo ideas. He's doing a "What's new in the Notes Client" session and I'm doing a "Design Directions for Notes and Sametime" session and we wanted to make sure we did not repeat the same demos. We both have some cool things to show you. I "won" demos that have to do with gas prices and world clocks. And, I must admit, much to the annoyance of my fami [read] Keywords: lotusphere , notes , notes client , sametime , planetlotus
11


Now that the New Hampshire Primary is over, I can concentrate on important things like Lotusphere :)
Wed, Jan 9th 2008 5:17p   Mary Beth Raven
I know that in the past few months I have not posted that many design questions for Notes 8.0.1 for several reasons. First, of course, since it's a point release, we didn't do that much new design work. Second, I've been working with development on a feature that I needed to keep confidential. The good news is that I only have to wait a few more days before I can tell you about it, and even usability test it in the UX lab in Asia 4! [read] Keywords: lotusphere , notes , development
12


We're turning the tables in the Lotusphere usability lab this year-- bring in YOUR app and we'll evaluate it!
Wed, Jan 9th 2008 10:48a   Mary Beth Raven
The Lotus user experience (UX ) Lab is going to offer a one-time opportunity for our customers at Lotusphere 2008 - "The 15-minute Usability and Design Evaluation" - in the User Experience Lab, Rm. Asia 4. We'll only be doing this from 1-5 pm on Monday afternoon. Here's the deal: you can bring in one application, working, and with data ideally, (Notes, Web, Sametime, Portal, Quickr, Connections, Expeditor, any Lotus product) and we'll have someone look at it and make suggestions for 15 minutes. [read] Keywords: connections , expeditor , lotus , lotusphere , notes , quickr , sametime , application , network
17


Calling on DWA-only users...for a new persona
Tue, Jan 8th 2008 9:25p   Mary Beth Raven
We here in the design team have decided that it's time for a new persona -- someone who uses ONLY DWA and not the Notes Client. (For example, I know that the University of Cardiff has some users, but I lost your contact info-- are you out there?? Can you connect us to some Users??) Specifically, if you have people in your organization who use ONLY Domino Web Access (DWA), and not the Notes client, we'd like to interview them individually for about an hour-- most likely by phone (unless they li [read] Keywords: connect , designer , domino , dwa , ibm , notes , notes client , email
21


Mapping Imported Contacts
Mon, Jan 7th 2008 10:00a   Mary Beth Raven
Hi all, John Lance here. You may remember me from such past blog postings as "Exporting Contacts" and "Lance 4 U.S. Prez" (remember, I have not been endorsed by any political party, Hollywood folks, or anyone in the media. And if that doesn't make me appealing, I don't know what will. - Our slogan: "John Lance: Willing to say he believes in what you believe in to get your vote.") Moving right along... Along with the exporting of contacts we are examining the importing of contacts, specifically [read] Keywords: outlook
23


Update on making the Sidebar thin... or closed or open....
Mon, Jan 7th 2008 7:30a   Mary Beth Raven
A few days ago, Alan Lepofsky told you how Lotus made it easy for you to get thin in 2008. It was a post about how we added shortcut keys of CTRL+2, to close the sidebar, CTRL+3 to make it thin and CTRL+4 to open it. I did indeed pay attention to your reponses there. First of all, yes, we are almost out of shortcut combos that can apply across the entire platform. That is one of the challenges of being the "mother of all integration clients." (I am referring to the client itself, not me, althou [read] Keywords: lotus , symphony , bug , integration
13


This blog temporarily pre-empted by... politics...
Sat, Jan 5th 2008 7:02p   Mary Beth Raven
Update on Sunday, January 6: For those of you in the USA who have ever heard of or watch "the Simpsons" the episode that is on right now is a pardoy of the New Hampshire primary. It is hilarious because... it is so close to the truth! P.S. And yes, Hillary, Ron, John, Mitt, Rudy, and Fred all called again today (well, their recorded voices did.) and Barack sent another set of convassers to the house. And then there are the SURVEYS! The Republican survey, the Democratic survey, the "incredibly [read] Keywords: lotus , notes
25


Domain Search--Is anybody out there?
Thu, Jan 3rd 2008 2:13p   Mary Beth Raven
The Information Development team is looking to streamline the end-user Help system for the next major release of Notes. In the area of Search, we are wondering if customers have implemented the Domain Search feature in their companies, and, if you have, what kind of help your end users need to successfully search for documents and applications across their Notes domains. Thanks for any assistance you can provide, Gayle Thiel Notes Information Developer [read] Keywords: notes , applications , development
14


Here's a .pdf of the developerWorks "How to set up Notes 8" article
Wed, Jan 2nd 2008 9:21a   Mary Beth Raven
Here is a link to a .pdf version of the developerWorks article on "How to Set up Notes for Outlook Users" that was published on December 19. : link [read] Keywords: notes , outlook
23


What the personas are doing for the holidays
Thu, Dec 20th 2007 6:31p   Mary Beth Raven
I thought you might be interested in what our design personas are doing for the holidays, since last year I told you what Samantha, Ted and Betty were doing. Our new personas-- for Domino Administration and Domino designer-- have personal lives, too. Fred the Domino administrator is skiing at Whistler with is wife. Originally, he wanted to upgrade the entire company to Notes 8 on Christmas day (it's really quiet that day), but his wife and his staffers who really enjoy celebrating Christma [read] Keywords: administration , designer , domino , id vault , notes , application , blackberry , database , laptop , outlook
14


A toolbar button for CTRL+Break
Wed, Dec 19th 2007 8:19p   Mary Beth Raven
Update:Well, it appears I did not read Nathan's request closely enough, because, unfortunately, you can't click the darn button when the client is busy. So it's just a little teaser button And this is one of the things that we'll copy from the Idea Jam into our Usability scorecard. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Over on the IdeaJam, Nathan Freeman requested a toolbar button for CTRL+Break. And guess what? [read] Keywords: R5 , idea jam , ideajam
16


How to set up Notes 8 so that Outlook users have an easy transition
Wed, Dec 19th 2007 1:34p   Mary Beth Raven
Greetings loyal customers, Check out my article on developerWorks. It has some tips for setting up Notes 8 so that Outlook users feel right at home and can make an easy transition. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus [read] Keywords: ibm , lotus , notes , outlook
15


How are you saving your chat histories in Notes?
Thu, Dec 13th 2007 1:19p   Mary Beth Raven
Hello, Notes Users. I have a few questions for those of you saving Sametime chat histories in Notes 8. Notes 8 allows you to automatically save Sametime chat histories to either your mail file or locally. Where are you storing you chat histories using Sametime - locally on your computer, or in the Notes Mail file? Why this choice? Do you switch this preference back and forth between locally vs. mail file for any reason? Do you see any reason to sync the chat history content between your locall [read] Keywords: notes , sametime
13


Looking for some "Larrys" to interview at Lotusphere or on the phone
Wed, Dec 12th 2007 8:15a   Mary Beth Raven
Do you have a Larry in your organization? Are you Larry? Larry is our persona for a lab manager. He is the person who never sleeps and seems to always be in the server room or machine lab making sure everything is still running, upgrading hardware, updating software, and managing who owns each of the machines. He may be the person you email at 10 pm when you need a specific machine immediately for testing. Perhaps he then puts your name on a post-it, sticks it on a machine and then respo [read] Keywords: ibm , lotusphere , notes , database , email , server
14


Meet Raj, Notes Application Developer
Fri, Dec 7th 2007 11:14a   Mary Beth Raven
Hi folks. Before getting down to business, I should introduce the members of the Domino Designer User Experience Team. My name is Kathy Howard and I've been at Lotus/IBM for almost 20 years. I've worked on the user experience of various products over the years, including 1-2-3, K-station, and Notes Access for SAP Solutions, and now I'm the lead designer for the upcoming release of Domino Designer. I've been doing basic Notes application development since "the beginning" so it's exciting to be wo [read] Keywords: composite , designer , domino , forms , ibm , javascript , lotus , lotusscript , mashups , notes , ntf , script library , template , ajax , application , applications , community , consulting , database , development , interface , java , profile , sap , web 2.0
19


Help shape the future of the IBM technical information wikis
Tue, Dec 4th 2007 8:07a   Mary Beth Raven
The IBM Information Development folks are working on making technical information more useful and easier to find. I work closely with the folks in the Notes/Domino team, but this posting is not only for Notes/Domino technical information. We are looking to work with customers LIKE YOU on a regular basis to learn more about how you use (um, OR NOT...) our technical information (product help, information centers, training materials, release notes, and so on), and how we can improve what we deliv [read] Keywords: connections , designer , domino , expeditor , forms , ibm , lotus , notes , quickr , development , email , portlet , websphere , websphere portal , wiki
8


Contratulations to Paul Mooney and Warren Elsmore on their new business relationship!
Mon, Dec 3rd 2007 6:39a   Mary Beth Raven
Two business parterns are joining forces to provide better service to the UK and Europe. Specifically, BE Systems (Warren's company - http://www.besystems.eu) has been acquired by Blue Wave Technology (http://www.bluewave.ie) (Paul's company) as of today! Blue Wave Technology now has approx 40 staff, delivering Lotus Domino, Websphere, SQL etc solutions to a market place that is now covering Europe. Many of you know these guys already -- They (with the help of friends and colleagues [read] Keywords: domino , lotus , sql , websphere
23


User Stories for Personal Journal
Thu, Nov 29th 2007 4:16a   Mary Beth Raven
With the release of the Notes 8.5, the Notes Development Team has switched to an 'Agile' Development environment. In contrast to a traditional waterfall process, we are now focused on doing short, complete iterations, involving cross-functional teams. It's very exciting for us, particularly as designers, because it means we will have daily access to the actual working code, and thus better able to iterate designs as we go along. One of the very first phases of the Agile process, involves writ [read] Keywords: designer , dwa , forms , notes , notes client , application , development
15


You know your family is into Geocaching when....
Tue, Nov 27th 2007 6:58p   Mary Beth Raven
As you know, my husband is a real geocaching fanatic. I discovered just how much had rubbed off on one of my daughers when she showed me the letter she'd written to Santa, addressed: Santa Claus 89* 26' 34" N 30* 54" 26.44" E When I pointed out that the NORTH POLE is at 90* she explained "But Mom, there's a research station at 90* so that can't be Santa Claus's actual location." Kids say the darndest things... Regarding Lotus Notes business--- I'm busy finishing up some feature [read] Keywords: lotus , notes , outlook
8


If you are going to Lotusphere, don't forget to "vote"
Tue, Nov 20th 2007 2:00a   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: lotusphere
11


What do you want/need for "Embedded Support"?
Sun, Nov 18th 2007 10:08a   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords:
17


Be Free, Work Smart, Point others to this Video on Youtube...
Mon, Nov 12th 2007 12:46p   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords:
13


How do you use Help in Domino Designer?
Mon, Nov 12th 2007 9:05a   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: designer , domino
11


Hynek, are you still having problems with the Lock Notes ID feature?
Mon, Nov 12th 2007 8:04a   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: notes
12


Exporting Contacts
Mon, Nov 5th 2007 2:44p   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords:
15


For Halloween, we're giving you a "drag and drop ghost"!
Wed, Oct 31st 2007 2:20p   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords:
7


Mira! Mira!
Wed, Oct 24th 2007 6:52p   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords:
37


Revised Login dialog
Wed, Oct 24th 2007 10:00a   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords:
8


Your direct channel to the design and usability team
Tue, Oct 23rd 2007 10:14a   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords:
7


Revised and official Ida Engel "Domino second line support" persona for use in *.next
Mon, Oct 22nd 2007 10:05a   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: domino
13


Revised and official Fred persona that we're using for Domino administration in *.next
Fri, Oct 19th 2007 7:10p   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: administration , domino
16


In Memoriam: Scott Davidson, user experience designer for Lotus and Rational
Thu, Oct 18th 2007 7:23p   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords: designer , lotus
17


The results of "making the sidebar snap control more findable"
Thu, Oct 18th 2007 12:16p   Mary Beth Raven
[read] Keywords:




Created and Maintained by Yancy Lent - About - Blog Submission - Suggestions - Change Log - Blog Widget - Advertising - FAQ - Mobile Edition