Over on the Notes on eProductivity blog, Eric Mack riffs on some of the fundamental problems with Lotus Notes archiving options. Basically, between the (poor) options that Notes gives for archiving and the typical way that system admins configure those archiving options, the chances of users getting burned by unfortunate archiving practices are very high. In other words, archiving may cause them to lose their data and hate Notes for forever. It's pretty hard to trust a system that steals your data when you're not looking.

You can read more at the Notes on Productivity blog post.

As a sidenote, we're working hard to give our eProductivity users an archiving method that they can trust and just simply works. Here's a screenshot of the eProductivity archive view:    



(click for larger image) The latest version of eProductivity (1.81) contains many new features. Among them are two experimental views that you can use to create sidebar widgets or floating windows based on the popular eProductivity 'Today' and 'All by context' views.

Here's a preview of just two of several new Sidebar widgets for eProductivity that you will soon be able to use: the Today view and the All by Context views.



These widgets are now available in eProductivity 1.81. These sidebar views are persistent - it does not matter what Notes application you have open - you can always review your Today list and your actions by contexts.

If you would like to try this on your own system, here are the steps I am currently using to accomplish this in Notes 8.5.1

Continue Reading: "How to enable the 'Today' and 'All By Context' views as sidebar widgets in Lotus Notes 8.x" » A customer asked:

My company is switching over our Notes version from 6.5 to 8.5. Should I do anything special with my current eProductivity install to help prevent any problems with the switch?

eProductivity works great with Notes 6.x, 7.x and 8.x. With Notes 8.x or higher, you'll be able to take advantage of the new sidebar widgets that are coming soon to eProductivity. This will keep your Today view or Actions by Contact view on the side of your screen - even when eProductivity is closed.

You do need to know one thing about the the upgrade to Notes 8x.

When your Notes administrators upgrade you to Notes 8.5x, they will (likely) do two things:

1. Upgrade your Lotus Notes software
2. Replace your mail template design with the new Notes 8.5x template.

When step #2 occurs, your eProductivity software will immediately break. While your data will be completely intact, all eProductivity functionality will be missing until you reapply the eProductivity template to your mail file. When you reapply, all of your projects/actions/linking/etc will show up again.

The good news is that the process to reapply eProductivity is quick and painless. Just follow this simple set of instructions. If you're using Notes 8.x or 8.5x, you can use Sidebars to display information from a Notes application (e.g. eProductivity) even when that application is not open.

Here's a preview of just two of several new Sidebar widgets for eProductivity that you will soon be able to use: the Today view and the All by Context views.



These widgets are being made to our Notes 8 Design Partners and will soon appear in the next release of eProductivity. These sidebar views are persistent - it does not matter what Notes application you have open - you can always review your Today list and your actions by contexts.

As part of our unified task management strategy, we are working on ways to allow you to drag and drop anything onto a context and manage it in Notes, GTD-Style, with eProductivity. (This includes web and mobile resources as well - a true unified view.)

Stay tuned, more to come!

• 
• 
• 
•