Experience new functions of Lotus Notes 8 beta2 (1)

Recently, IBM has provided a public beta version (Public beta2) download of the next generation of Lotus Notes. This article will introduce notes8's many improvements in ease of use from the perspective of common Notes users, and help enterprises that have deployed notes to familiarize themselves with this newly designed Lotus flagship product as soon as possible.

1. install or upgrade to the Notes 8 beta version

If you have an ibm id, you can download the Installation File of Notes 8 beta2 on this page. Supported operating systems include windows, Linux, Aix, iseries, and Sun Solaris. For normal Notes users, you only need to download the Notes 8 Client for Windows-beta 2 (623 MB ).

If this is the first time you install Lotus Notes, you can directly start the installation after the download is complete.ProgramOtherwise, we recommend that you back up important data first. The simplest method is to pack the entire notes installation directory (such as C: Program fileslotus notes) into a compressed package. You can also select several important backup files, as shown in table 1.

Table 1. Backup of Important Notes data

File description	Default location
Notes ID file	C: Program Files Lotus notesdata *. ID
Archive file	C: Program Files Lotus notesdata archive *. nsf
Notes system configuration file	C: Program Files Lotus Notes Otes. ini
Notes workbench	C: Program Files Lotus notesdatadesktop6.ndk
Notes bookmarks	C: Program Files Lotus notesdataookmark. nsf
Notes address book/contact	C: Program Files Lotus notesdata names. nsf

 

Notes 8 beta2 automatically checks the installation and configuration information of versions earlier than notes7 and completes the upgrade. If you have installed other test versions of Notes 8, uninstall the software and delete the residual files in the file system and registry.

The installation process lasts for five to ten minutes. After successful completion, the first startup of Notes 8 usually takes a little time. For upgrade and installation, you will see a familiar Password Input Interface. After logging on, a fresh welcome page is displayed in front of you, as shown in 1.

Figure 1. Notes 8 welcome page

Before getting started with the Notes 8 experience, we recommend that you make two simple configurations to fully experience the thoughtful Design of notes:

• Use the home page of the Notes 8 style.ClickHomeLabel. If you still see the homepage of the notes 7 style, clickClick here for home page optionsButton, select in current home page SelectionBasic). Result 2.

  Figure 2. Notes 8 Homepage

• Use the Notes 8 template.If you open the email tag after installation, You may be disappointed to see the same interface as notes 7. This is because your local or server database currently uses the notes 7 Template. We recommend that you use the Notes 8 template. It not only uses icons and colors that are more appropriate to the subject, but also adds some new buttons and functions. Click"Open"Click and select workbench ). Right-click your email database tag and choose"Application-> replace design ...". Select the local template mail (R8) and click the replace button.

2. Feel the great changes in Notes 8

Let's start with the most commonly used email section.

Real-time spelling check

If you often process English letters, this may be a long-awaited feature. In the new email writing window in Notes 8, spelling errors may be highlighted in red, as shown in 3.

Figure 3. Notes 8 prompts possible spelling errors

You can right-click the text to modify or add the dictionary, as shown in figure 4.

Figure 4. Right-click to correct spelling errors

Smart recipient prompt

I don't know if you have ever encountered such embarrassment. If you wanted to send a letter to someone in the company, you accidentally sent it to another person's mailbox with the same name or name as him/her. This problem was solved perfectly in Notes 8. When you enter the recipient's name in the recipient column, you do not need to press ENTER or space. Notes 8 will list the people you may contact in real time based on the previous correspondence records, 5.

Figure 5. Smart notification for recipients

As shown in the screenshot above, this will not only avoid sending emails with the same name and surname (assuming that you only have a contact with the company's three), but also greatly improve the efficiency of filling in recipients. Generally, you only need to enter a few letters in his name. If you log on to the sametime 7.5.1 that comes with Notes 8, you can also see the online status of these recipients.

Integrate sametime 7.5.1

 

In addition, you can view the sender's online status on the far left when Browsing all emails. In fact, this function was introduced from notes 7, and Sametime integration is more enriched in Notes 8. First, you can view the contact list in the newly introduced sidebar (sidebar) (see figure 6 ). Similar to Windows Vista sidebar and Google Desktop sidebar, you can drag and drop to change the size of the sidebar, click the small button on the right to hide the sidebar, or only display the sametime icon.

Figure 6. Display sametime contacts in the sidebar

The integration of notes and Sametime is also reflected in:

• In the sametime chat window, you can useTool-> send-> email, Send the chat content as an email.
• In the mail list, right-click the title of a letter to view the extended menu related to the sender. Quickly refer to previous chat records with him, Set Online reminders, and view contact information.
• On the calendar page, the online status of the meeting host is displayed.

Other sidebar applications

In addition to the sametime contact list, notes 8 also comes with two other practical small applications (see figure 7 ). The first is the daily schedule (day at-a-glance), which allows you to view the meeting schedule on the current day at any time when handling emails.

Figure 7. Calendar overview and News subscription

You can subscribe to RSS/atom on the Internet (as shown in the lower-left corner of 7) to learn about the news in the industry at the first time. If the enterprise's internal system also supports RSS/atom, you can easily learn about the latest enterprise announcements and project progress in notes.

Based on the Eclipse open platform, more and more IBM or third-party tools can be added to the sidebar in the future to further improve the efficiency of Notes users.

Document editing and portal support

As IBM's flagship product for Enterprise Collaboration and office automation, notes 8 has added powerful cross-platform document editing capabilities (see figure 8 ). Most common document formats, including Microsoft Office 2003, can be directly opened or edited in Notes 8. It can also save the document in PDF or OpenDocument format for ease of viewing in Linux.

Figure 8. Edit the Word document in Notes 8

In addition, notes 8 can connect to the IBM WebSphere Portal to view and edit portal applications. For more information, see the help documentation for notes 8.

Other improvements

Notes 8 also has many considerate designs and new features, as shown in the following table. This article will not detail them in detail.

• When viewing all emails, you can click the refresh button added in the toolbar to quickly send and receive emails.
• When you use notes 8 to open many emails, documents, or webpages, you can drag and drop tabs to change the order. You can also click the button on the right of the Open menu to display thumbnails of all TAG content. You can also quickly search by Tag name.
• Using the rightmost search box on the toolbar, you can not only search for all emails and calendars conveniently, but also use Google Desktop Search (requires additional installation) search for all local files and webpage access records in Notes 8. You can also directly submit the search to the Yahoo or Google website.
• You can open the Preview pane to view emails and schedules. If your screen resolution is relatively high, you can consider placing the preview on the right of the List to view more content.
• Press F1 at any time to open a help panel on the right to learn information related to your current operation.

I believe that you have made many improvements to notes 8. If you have concerns about its performance, you can directly run C: Program fileslotus notes lnotes.exe to start the notes in a traditional way, instead of based on the eclipse platform. It may be a good choice for customers with low system configurations. Of course, this will disable the eclipse-based functions such as sametime and document editing.

Author: Zhong qianjie is currently working in the IBM China Software Development Lab and is engaged in the development of Lotus activeinsight products based on IBM WebSphere Portal. Familiar with notes, sametime and other technologies, and have a strong interest in Java, groovy, Flash, Ajax and other technologies. He received the IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in 2005.