Wednesday 18 March 2015

Your help needed: Jump-start guide to IBM Notes for Outlook users

At my workplace we are about to start with migrating a decent amount of users from Exchange/Outlook to Notes 9. Yes, this still happens and I am quite excited about that ;-)

After a user has been migrated we want to provide access to useful information. What we already have is explaining general things like FAQs about using Mail and Calendar, enable Out of Office, Signature etc...

On top of that, I thought it would be helpful if we provided a jump-start guide explaining a few key differences between Notes and Outlook.  I have to admit that in the 18 years of my Notes & Domino carreer I haven't really touched Outlook - neither at work not for personal reasons... In other words: I have no experience with Outlook and therefore I cannot be very helpful in depicting differencs between both systems.

So I would like to ask you to share your experience in what Outlook users struggle most with when switching over to Notes & Domino.
How do users work with Outlook and what adjustment problems do they have when using Notes?
What is missing in Notes and what can we offer as a substitute (public folders...)?


Looking forward to your feedback :-)

11 comments:

  1. Ask IBM for the Lotus Notes Multimedia Library ....
    http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/services/mml.html
    You can install this as a Widget. Very helpful for the users.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for this hint. I will look into this.

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  2. try this http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/31082009171715WEBSYC.htm

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  3. We have a Notes based user training course
    http://www.tlcc.com/notes9usercourses

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  4. How to set up IBM Lotus Notes V8 for Microsoft Outlook users
    http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/notes8-outlook/

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  5. and these too...

    http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/Tips_for_moving_from_Microsoft_Outlook_to_IBM_Lotus_Notes_8.5.2

    http://www.eview.com/eview/volr6.nsf/articleURL/2011-02-7-ways-to-ease-users-transition-from-ms-outlook-to-lotus-notes

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  6. Thanks Steve and Howard. Will check these offerings and posts too.

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  7. If they need a fantastic easy to use / inexpensive CRM that integrates Nativiely with Notes email and calendar....check out VMobile. They can learn more on Vigilus.net

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  8. Your Notes users will be pleasantly surprised by some of the features of Notes. I have been working on mail migrations from Lotus Notes to Microsoft for quite a while and I always chafe when I have to use an Outlook client.

    When I send an email, 95% of the time, I know which folder that I want it placed. So I use the "Send and File" button. So now I can locate the mail message in the folder AND in the Sent View. With Outlook I have to go to the Sent Folder and move it to the appropriate Folder. However, with Outlook I can have the message in the Sent Folder OR the project folder. Of course, I can copy it in the Sent Folder and paste a copy into another folder.

    I had a devil of a time finding emails. When we migrate to Exchange/O365 the first mail message gets placed in a folder and the other folders that contained the message are left empty.

    Working with Microsoft Partner's I wondered "Why do Outlook Users cc:/bcc: themselves?" So I wrote a post to explain why.
    http://www.v-and-m.com/vmhomepage.nsf/Content/OutlookView+?OpenDocument

    With Outlook when I want to address an email, I have to lookup using the receipient's last name. With Notes, I just start typing their first name OR their last name.

    Just a couple of ideas off the top of my head.

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    1. John, many thanks for your valuable feedback - and the link to your post. I fully agree with you, there are a lot of great features in Notes. There will be users who prefer the one or the other client. And I want to make sure that the necessary trainings and information are provided.

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  9. Michael, Paul Withers created excellent Cheat Sheets which I was happy to translate/adapt into German. See: http://www.intec.co.uk/ibm-lotus-notes-cheat-sheets/
    It's not "from Outlook to Notes", but a handy version of tricks in Notes.

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