Lotus Organizer planner views in Notes - OF COURSE you can do that ... it’s Notes!
Mat Newman April 20 2011 23:38:54
A pet project of mine over the last few years has been to replicate the 'Planner' view from Lotus Organizer inside Lotus Notes. Combined with this is an organisational system that I use to keep track of everything I'm involved in.
The Concepts
As a huge fan of David Allen and his 'getting things done' methodology, I have been working within an organisational system that enables the classification and execution of the 'things' you do. Every day you spend time doing 'things'. You may do a number of different 'things' on the same day - or different days - that can be grouped together that need to be executed before a deadline, and those deadlines may also grouped together since they are somehow related.
Thus, the system I work within uses 'Projects' to identify the different types of work I am undertaking at any one time. Within a Project I may need to execute certain things within a deadline, which identifies a Task. A Task may need an Action, or a number of Actions to be completed before the task deadline is reached.
Within this framework, Actions are the items appearing on my calendar at a particular time that require a dedicated period of time to complete. For example: today I needed to create some VM's for a class. That action was scheduled on my calendar. The Action to create the VM's was part of the 'Class Preparation' Task. Other items on this Task include room set-up, confirming participants and ordering courseware. Each separate Task may need multiple Actions to complete that task.
The 'Class Preparation' Task was one of many items that have deadlines for me to deliver training for a customer. Other tasks included 'Planning', 'Delivery' and 'Follow Up'. Each of these Tasks are grouped together under the "Lotus Admin Training for Customer X" Project.
I keep track of the project time line to identify what 'Projects' I am involved with at any one time using my Lotus Notes/Organizer planner view. It's the 'Projects' that I show in my Planner, since the type of work I am undertaking will determine whether I can get involved in another project at the same time. I use the Projects view on the Planner to identify that if I am attending a conference, it will be highly unlikely that I will be able to undertake education, development or consulting work at the same time.
The Database
So that's what you see in the Notes Database I have attached below. The 'Planner' view shows Projects. The Calendar\Today view shows Tasks/Actions coming up today, in addition to all the Tasks assigned to the current user. The Calendar\Calendar view only shows the Tasks/Actions in a calendar display. The 'Tasks By' view's are self-explanatory.
Note, the 'Calendar', 'Planner' and 'Tasks by' headings don't have Twisties to expand/collapse the section headings, click at the start of those entries to see the details below.
Development
This application is designed entirely utilising 'Notes Classic' methods. There is NOT an XPage or Wisdl or composite anywhere in sight! That's not to say that this sample could not be completed using those technologies, but quite simply I am a Linux user (Ubuntu x32 and x64 10.10 on two Thinkpads) and I have Notes 7 Designer stable and 100% available to me under Wine, while DDE 8.5.* under Wine is less than perfect. I have gotten it running, but hey - Notes 7 Designer works ALL the time under Wine!
The concepts and layouts all originated in Lotus Organizer. The latest interface was a goal I wanted to achieve after playing with Adam Brown's iPad and setting myself the task of trying to make a 'classic' Notes interface as visually appealing.
The formulas to calculate the start dates for each of the months in the Planner view were originally written in formula language after concepts I adapted using "Zeller's congruence" and then translated into Lotusscript.
This Database can be utilised however you wish. Note, it's not perfect. It's NOT what I would publish as a Project on OpenNTF because it's always been a 'work in progress' and I'm not entirely happy with it's production readiness. There are quite a few tweaks that I would like to make - like the colour selection for the projects form, and the colour profile document for the planner view - before I even thought of publishing it on OpenNTF.
Anyway, it's one of my 'of Course Notes can do that' databases, and a post on Twitter earlier this morning prompted me to share, so here you are, Lotus Organizer planner view inside Lotus Notes.
Enjoy :-)
MatProjects.nsf
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