How to do "Twitter" in Notes
Mathew Newman February 2 2010 11:56:54
One of the things that attendees at my session @ Lotusphere (BP306 - How to sell Notes to your users) were really interest in was the "Welcome Page" demo that included a "Notes Status Update" feature - similar in functionality to "Twitter".As I mentioned during my session, creating a corporate welcome screen is one of the tools you can use to SELL Notes. There are a number of benefits to implementing a custom welcome screen, such as:
- Once implemented it is easily managed
- It personalises Lotus Notes
- It can reflect who you are, your values and attitudes
- It provides users with central access to corporate data, and
- It doesn't HAVE to be complex
Importantly, it should include links to MORE than just email, another tip for selling Notes to your users and breaking the perception that Notes is just another email application.
The status update feature is a REALLY simple tool that you can implement within your own custom welcome screen to provide an internal equivalent of the public Twitter service.
I have implemented this within a Notes database using a couple of views, a couple of forms, and a frame-set to tie it all together. The relevant parts included within my demo database are really just two forms, and a view:
The rest of the Frame-set is there to show you how easy it is to implement your own welcome screen that includes standard personal links (Mail-Calendar-To Do-Contacts-Journal), standard corporate links, and the "What am I doing" feed.
One of the benefits of implementing this type of feature within your own custom welcome screen is that it can reduce a lot of Inbox "noise", by reducing those email messages that people send around just to let you know what's going on ... "I'm out of the office for the rest of the day" ... "Joel is off sick today" ... etc. You get the picture.
The welcome screen I used belonged to a customer, so I couldn't provide that here, but I have spent a few minutes to customise a demo version for you to use:
Download the Notes welcome screen demo, including status updates
Standard caveats, caveat emptor, no warranty, no liability, use at your own discretion, I will not be responsible for any data loss or otherwise..., etc...
The default ACL is "Manager", make sure you add yourself and your server before replicating it to a test server, and then change the "Default" access back to "Author", removing the "Delete" role. You might also want to sign the database with a trusted ID so your users don't have to trust "Mathew Newman/isw" every time they do something.
Feel free to customise and redistribute, it's a tool that I'm sure you will find useful in your own Notes environment. Enjoy.
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