Advanced Features - Integrated Group Calendaring & Scheduling
Domino and Notes calendaring and scheduling features provide group scheduling, time management and task management, with a user interface modeled on the award-winning Organizer interface that millions of customers are using today.
The Domino and Notes calendaring and scheduling solution also supports development of organizational calendaring applications, such as workforce time management, that utilize the rich Domino and Notes application development environment. Customers and Lotus Business Partners can utilize Domino and Organizer APIs, Visual Basic, LotusScript, ODBC, OLE 2.0 and a variety of other methods to access data and automate processes within the Domino and Notes calendaring and scheduling environment.
The Domino data store holds both mail and calendar information. Notes users benefit from real-time access to busy time information. And the reliable Domino and Notes architecture serves as the delivery vehicle for meeting notices and replies, while Domino replication ensures a robust, scalable solution for the mobile or occasionally connected user as well.
Interoperability between Notes- and cc:Mail-based calendaring and scheduling users is delivered via the Domino cc:Mail MTA, which provides full, bi-directional fidelity for all forms of communication between Domino and Notes and cc:Mail.
As with all Lotus Messaging products, the customer controls the pace of transition to a new calendaring and scheduling environment. To ensure that IBM host-based users can participate in group scheduling along with Notes and/or cc:Mail users, Lotus provides the Lotus Calendar Connector for OfficeVision (LCCOV). This high-fidelity connector provides bi-directional querying of busy times held within Domino/Notes, IBM Time and Place (TaP) and OfficeVision calendars via e-mail. It also enables exchange of meeting notices among Notes, OV and TaP users.
Notes C&S users can view the busy time of Organizer 2.x group scheduling users via the Domino Server, in combination with the Notes C&S user interface. Organizer users cannot see the free and busy times of Notes users; however, tools enable customers to convert Organizer data (.OR2 or .OR3 formats) to the Notes and/or Organizer 97 GS (.NSF) format.
The Notes Inbox serves as the repository for meeting invitations, delegations, proposed reschedules, and accept/decline notices, featuring "Calendar" and "Meetings' views. The Calendar view displays calendar information by two-days, week, two weeks and by month, as Organizer does today. Users get the drag-and-drop functionality they expect, plus integration with their desktop applications. All it takes to include a meeting agenda created in Microsoft Word, for example, is a click of a button. The Meetings view displays all meeting information managed in a linear fashion, so that users can see all appointments easily for an extended period of time. Users can schedule appointments, events that span several days, or anniversaries.
Other key features include:
- Point-and-click appointment creation using built-in controls; drag-and-drop moving of appointments
- Free-time search, which provides the user with a graphical representation of attendees' availability and automatically suggests a new time slot
- Meeting notification; each attendee is notified with date, time and place information. The attendee can accept, delegate or decline the appointment
- Configurable rules for repeating appointments
- Room reservations right on the appointment form
- Personal alarms for meeting reminders
- Automatic notification of conflicting appointments, if desired
- Calendar profiles, which let users customize information like the start of the work week, free times, default meeting duration and autoprocessing options
- Fully functional support for mobile users, via Domino replication
The "To Do" folder available in their personal mail database lets Notes users manage tasks assigned to themselves, or assign tasks to other users and track them. This feature illustrates the true benefit of a native Domino and Notes C&S solution -- the extensive integration of calendaring and scheduling features with mail features. Without this level of integration, users might need to use their inbox as a task list or meetings folder; whereas Notes already offers features such as Convert to Task, which automatically converts a mail message to a task that users can assign to themselves or others, and then track to completion.
Because Domino and Notes C&S functionality is a completely open architecture, developers and designers can create applications to manipulate busy times, schedule appointments, change meeting particulars or change any other function associated with calendaring and scheduling. Another benefit of calendaring and messaging integration and Domino and Notes programmability is that the Notes calendar view with its familiar Organizer interface can be used not only in the user's mail file, but in custom applications -- making the whole business information infrastructure more consistent and easier to use.
Kolaco, Inc.
6 Hampton Road
Mendham, NJ 07945
P 973.543.2888
F 943.543.5339
sales@kolaco.com |
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