Inside eProductivity Blog Home Page

Learn how to customize your eProductivity Navigator by adding predefined and custom contexts.

eProductivity is highly customizable, and it can be setup for the way you work best. Stay tuned, more videos that teach you how to do this are on the way.

An eProductivity customer asked:

I am being upgraded by my company from Notes version 7 to Notes version 8.5. How will this affect my eProductivity software?

The main thing you need to know is that eProductivity is not likely not to work immediately following the upgrade. To restore it to working order, you'll need to re-apply the eProductivity template, which is thankfully a fast and painless process.

When your Notes administrators upgrades you to Notes 8.5, they will usually do two things:

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

This second step will break the functionality of eProductivity. Your eProductivity navigator and contexts will not appear after the upgrade and the action buttons in your folders may not work.

The good news is that you won't lose your projects or actions or linking. You just won't see them until you re-apply the eProductivity template to your mail file. The re-application process is quick and easy - it's the same process you went through when you installed eProductivity for the first time.

So, following the upgrade to Notes 8.5, you'll likely need to follow these steps to get back your eProductivity functionality.

Bruce Lill is a Lotus Design Partner and now recently, an eProductivity user. Bruce blogs at www.brucelill.com. He has given us permission to repost some of his thoughts on eProductivity that were initially posted on his blog. Enjoy!

(Remember to click the small images to get a larger view)

eProductivity in Use - my setup:

The mail opens to the Today view shown below. The navigation lets you view all your projects, action, list and reference databases from one place. You can now really live in your mail file. The folders are from the choices you make on the eProductivity preferences. For me the projects are for internal use, clients or Lotus ( the redbook, etc). I spend most time with this navigator open as I can do almost all functionality. I use IBM's Swift file so I can put emails into folders easily. The only thing I miss is to have the "replicate now" button on the navigator. I added it to my old mail template and will probably add it here also. It is on the action bar but you have to scroll to get to it. As I work local all the time, I tend to like to refresh my mail.

My mail file's navigation after installing eProductivity.

Here is the Today view with my actions and any meetings listed. Luckily today there aren't any meetings today, so I'm doing this blog entry.

Here is what a project looks like. This one is important, it's to become more productive!

I have only 3 - project types. Projects is for internal work such as this blog, Projects - Clients is for billable projects and Projects - Lotus is for projects that I do with Lotus such as the Domino R8.5 Deployment wiki.  I'll end up with more projects types as I get a better feel for how to manage my tasks. You can take emails and link, embed into tasks & projects or move then to the reference database.

I've always used database to store information, I have a customer, development, administration, and office dbs. I use the customer db to track projects, proposals, general  information and correspondence. I've added code to my mail template to let me drag selected mails to a modified document library and all the email information would be stored there. This let me centralize the information and when working with others, share it.

Now it's gong to be trying to use the eProductivity Reference database instead of mine. I have moved all the emails with license and registration numbers to the reference database.

I do wish the Action list in the project form could be longer, as you can see from the image of the form, only 3-4 items are visible. you can scroll or go to a view to see more. I'm now adding a action to my project to build a list of "Nice to have" features that I will post here.

One caveat I found was creating an Action and forgetting to link it to a project. When you change folders or open your mail you will be prompted to make it a project. I hit yes and ended up with the task as a project, not what I wanted. You can't demote it, only delete it and re-do it.  I'll know next time. I do wish it let me have a choice to make it a project of link it to a project.

I have found this error was do to having a context call "S/M - Projects", it seems that the Projects in the name was the cause of the problem, Easy fix. The title or subject of the Projects and actions can be formatted to appear categorized in views. I just figured this out this morning as I was updating my projects. You can group projects together  by first selecting the format in your preference then for the Project title do "category - project name".  In the view the project will be group by the category. here is my Lotus Projects (Project - Lotus is a project type):

Do plan for time to setup, get use to it and to adjust it to fit. You can easily change your preferences such as add project type and the left side navigation will be updated with your new choices. Really nice job.

Next post will be on using it for the deployment redbook. Go and give eProductivity a chance to change how you approach your mail.

 

During last week's eProductivity Basics webinar, a common question was, "Can you create more videos/guides for setting up and using eProductivity?"

While we do have a number of resources available, creating more is a big priority for us, and we're working on it. In the meantime, we have some unofficial resources to draw your attention to.

Recently, Paul Gardner showed how he setup the eProductivity sidebar widgets in Notes 8. And today, Eric Mack shares another setup tip with you.

Eric demonstrates how he sets up the link between his eProductivity Reference Database and his eProductivity Mail. When the link is setup, you can do neat things like drag-and-drop reference items from your email directly into the Reference Database for organized storage. Very handy.

Launch Video

(Tip: watch the video in full-screen mode for the best viewing experience...)

Learn more about setting up eProductivity sidebar widgets by viewing Paul Gardner's excellent tutorial video above. Paul is an eProductivity customer and a prolific blogger. This video shows how Paul setup the widgets for himself. Remember that these widgets require Lotus Notes 8 to run.

And, if you want to know more about pastors and ministry workers using GTD, Paul writes a great blog on that subject.

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.