Work practice changes with Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes is Monash Messaging’s new email and calendar service and aims to enhance work practices when collaborating with others while improving productivity and environmental responsibility. 

Staff who have been using Mozilla Thunderbird as an email client and Netscape Calendar as a calendar client may find the Moving to Notes online transitional program useful for learning about the initial impact that using Lotus Notes have on their day to day work practices.

Resources which document some common work practices changes are:

1. Managing email which requires follow-up (pdf, 27kb)
2. Managing your email quota (pdf, 29kb)
3. Working with other users' calendars (pdf, 27kb)
4. Managaing a colleague's mail and/or calendar account (pdf, 172kb)

Here are some of the main work practices for performing common tasks.

Email tasks using Lotus Notes

• When addressing an email, type the person’s name and press F9 to autocomplete the address against the staff directory. To look up a name from your personal contacts, click on the ‘To’ field and select your Contacts. For more information, please refer to the following learning topic:
  >> 'Addressing mail using Contact lists and the Monash Directory (MA20)' (pdf, 611kb)
  
  
• All your mail items are stored in the All Documents repository in the Mail window. Folders and views provide specified sets of items from the All Documents repository. The All Documents repository is a great place to search for items. Permanent deletion of items is only available from the All Documents repository. For more information, please refer to the following learning topic:
  >> 'Searching in Notes (GE12)' (pdf, 329kb)
  
  
• Use the Lotus Notes email archive feature to help manage your email quota.  You can choose to store your email archive on your local computer. For more information, please refer to the following learning topic:
  >> 'Archiving - Lotus Notes solution to local folders (MA26)' (pdf, 214kb)
  

Calendar tasks using Lotus Notes

• You must open and accept invitations before meetings are added to your calendar. Invitations to meetings are not automatically added to your calendar, but are received in your Inbox. You can also choose to have notes auto-process invitations for you – see File > Preferences > Calendar and To Do, Autoprocessing. For more information, please refer to the following learning topics:
  >> 'Respond to meeting invitations (CA06)' (pdf, 252kb) 
  >>'Autoprocessing of Calendar invites (CA14)' (pdf, 26kb)  
  
  
• When inviting staff to a new meeting you will only be able to see free/busy blocks of time for Monash staff using Notes. Other Notes users calendars cannot be checked for their availability unless they give you delegate access. For more information, please refer to the following learning topics:
  >> 'Schedule meetings (CA02)' (pdf, 210kb) 
  >>'Assigning delegate access (GE06)' (pdf, 116kb)
  
  
• Meetings you’ve declined or deleted do not appear in Calendar Views (ie one day, one work week).  Click on Lists > Entries and Notices to view a list of all calendar items including status (eg Accepted, Declined, Unprocessed). For more information, please refer to the following learning topic:
  >> 'Introduction to Calendar (CA01)' (pdf, 261kb)