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August 14, 2007
Why Notes sends me into orbit
Lotus Notes eh? You’ve got to love it. If you’re insane.
In my career as a journalist to date I’ve worked for four different publishing companies and every single one has expected me to do day-to-day work with Lotus bleeding Notes. That’s a decade and a half’s exposure to the program, in various states of upgrade, and I still can’t find anything. The menu structures appear to have been designed with the aid of a dartboard. Or perhaps a Ouija board.
Today’s boiling frustration is with the standard version 6.5 mail client with which I am forced to daily grapple.
This is what happens with clockwork regularity... I begin composing a new message. I get halfway through, then want to paste in some text from a similar message sent previously. What I need to do is switch from the compose pane to the inbox pane and click on “sent” - a button at the top left corner of the screen - to view my outbox. Then I need to find the older message, copy the text, and switch back to the compose view. Then I need to complete the half-finished email and send it.
That’s what I ought to do but instead my brain always short-circuits at this point. In the top left corner of the compose screen is a button marked “send”. The position and wording is sufficiently similar to the “sent” button that I find myself clicking on “send”, then realising too late and cursing very loudly. If we had a swear box in the office I would be on income support. So if you know me and often get half-baked emails, I can only apologise. It’s Notes’ fault.
Why is the blessed outbox called “sent” and not “outbox”? After all, the inbox is called inbox, not “received”. And if Notes is so wonderfully flexible, why can’t I change the name of the outbox? And why can’t I change the position of the buttons? And did anybody at IBM ever do a use-case analysis of how real human beings actually employ their infernal email system?
Aaaargh!
OK. I feel better now. Till the next time.
The reason it's not called an outbox, is that it's NOT an outbox. And outbox is a place to sit until something leaves. Once it's gone, it should no longer be IN an outbox. Inbox is named correctly as it's the place for incoming mail to arrive until you move it to a folder.
Anyway, Outlook calls it Sent Items.
Thunderbird calls it Sent
MacMail calls it Sent
GMail calls it Sent Mail
Yahoo Mail calls it Sent
I could go on... :-)
So basically you aren't REALLY bitching about Lotus Notes here. You are complaining about an accepted email standard.
Also, I need to point out that Notes 6.5 has been out forever. Heck, Notes 8 is being released this Friday! Looks like you need to get on a better version too.
And if you want to know all about use-case analysis, you might want to check out Mary Beth Raven's blog at IBM. She's the one that did it all for Notes 8.
http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/marybeth
Posted by :John Roling | August 14, 2007 5:08 PM
Sorry Lem - seems your company is a bit behind the times. Let's see - you mention R6.5. Since then (2003) there has been R6.5.1, R6.5.2 R6.5.3, R6.5.4, R6.5.5, R7.0.1, R7.0.2 with a few maint. fixes thrown in.
Be sure to check out R8 (goes public this Friday) Always best to keep current.
Cheers
Posted by :Jim | August 14, 2007 5:08 PM
Actually, his mail template in the picture looks like it is from R5, so even if he is running a "later" version of the client, he's running the 1999 version of Notes mail.
Lem, we'd love to help you get updated.
Posted by :Ed Brill | August 14, 2007 5:55 PM
Lem,
Just to clarify a few things...
"Drafts" will NOT show you were cold air is coming into your house.
Please do NOT put your banana peels in the "Trash" folder.
You will NOT learn anything about the offsides rule by clicking on the Rules folder.
And no, the Stationery is not embossed.
Posted by :John Bigenwald | August 14, 2007 7:00 PM
Ed's right. That's the R5 mail template running in the 6.x client. So step number one is to ask why Lem is running an even more out-of-date template version (R5 was 1999, wasn't it?) than his client version. The 7.x mail template is much better than the 5.x one. And 8, of course, is a whole new ballgame.
And John Roling is also right. Lem, if you want to complain about the UI in Notes (and pre-8, it's a target rich environment!), please complain about something that's actually a Notes-specific issue. In this case, you're blaming Notes for something that has nothing to do with Notes.
Posted by :Rob McDonagh | August 14, 2007 8:20 PM
You're "grappling" with creating simple emails? And then getting confused by the email standard of a "Sent" mailbox / view / call-it-what-you-will?
Crikey, your days in the office must be awful!
Posted by :Ben Poole | August 14, 2007 10:28 PM
I find it hard to believe that Lem's complaint is real. Journalist or not, he works for an IT publication and therefore should know a little something about software. After 15 years of using Notes I'm supposed to believe that he can't tell the difference between the Send button and the Sent view? They are not located anywhere near one another in the UI. They do not look alike. More disturbing, as a journalist he should be fully aware that he would never want to press a button labeled "Send" to view items that have been sent. Even if he doesn't have a full grasp on IT, he should at least have enough knowledge of the English language to understand the the different meaning between the two words, no matter how similar the spelling may be. No, this simply reeks of a Notes hater wanting something to complain about.
Posted by :Corey | August 14, 2007 10:45 PM
Lem, let me get this right.
You are an IT journalist.
You've had a "decade and a half’s exposure" to Lotus Notes
You make the same mistake(s) with "clockwork regularity".
And it is "Notes' fault".
You sure you dont want to look at the above statements again?
Posted by :Geoff | August 15, 2007 9:29 AM
Let me make a couple of points:
1. I have no control over the version of Notes I use - my employer decides that. I blog about what I use, not what I don't.
2. It was wrong of me to focus on the nomenclature of "send" and "sent". As John Roling wisely points out, this is effectively an industry standard.
I've gone back to my original objection and more carefully assessed why I find myself repeatedly making the same error. It's not because I can't read. It's not because of the labelling, as I originally argued. I regularly use both Google Mail and Yahoo Mail and never make the same sent/send error that I make with Notes, despite them using exactly the same labels. So my problem (which I may indeed be the only person on Earth to experience) must be caused by something else.
I think it's down to pure similarity in position and appearance of the two functional links. Plus my own stupidity, of course - thanks for pointing that out, Geoff, Ben and John.
I note that the version 8 release of Notes opens mails up in a new, floating window:
http://www.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/products/product4.nsf/wdocs/email
I'm pretty sure this would solve my problem. That just leaves about 108 other things I don't understand about Notes.
I've been talking offline to Ed Brill and will have a closer look at Notes 8 in due course. Can't promise I won't say something stupid about that...
Posted by :Lem | August 15, 2007 4:47 PM
Let's see, been working with the same software (notes) for 15 years. Still make the same mistakes? mmmm. Software is similar to others in the Universe, sounds more like a learning issue on your part, 15 years is a long time to learn. At one of my companies they have no problem with Mail or Notes Applications developed and learn both new Mail upgrades and newly developed applications quickly with little and sometimes no help at all. Sounds like the issue is with yourself.
Posted by :John Turnbow | August 15, 2007 4:52 PM
I agree with you, Lem.
Usability is not a strong point on many applications, even standard ones. One day we'll be as mature as industrial designers. Use cases won't be useful in this case.
In 26 years I've seen too many IT guys laughing and criticizing the "lack of brightness" of the IT users. They just forget that their role is to provide service and value. I've even seen colleagues that teach the CFO what reports should really look like, and next explain how to do their job!!! We're too smart!
A nice reference is "Exploring Requirements: Quality before Design", from Donald Gause and Gerald Weinberg.
One day we'll learn to listen... and the coffee-break will be used in a more constructive way
Posted by :Jose De la Cruz | August 16, 2007 7:25 AM
@Geoff
"I bave no control over the version of Notes I use - my employer decides that"
Excuse me? I thought journalists - I mean "proper" journalists - were supposed to do some kind of research before writing articles. Or can anybody write/blog about what happens to be under their nose and call themselves "a journalist" now?
I mean, I'd love to write an article about the workings of Gordon Brown's mind, but the shame of it is, he simply didn't drop by my house for a chat today.
Cheers,
- Mike
Posted by :Mike Brown | August 16, 2007 12:46 PM
Apologies. My last was supposed to be "@Lem" not "@Geoff".
Cheers
- Mike
Posted by :Mike Brown | August 16, 2007 12:54 PM
@Lem - if you really are using the R5 template, your employer - while they have control - is forcing you to use an unsupported, end of life version of your primary productivity product. And it's an IT publication. Ouch. I'd be screaming bloody murder if I were an IT journalist and not kept up to date on software. I really do think you should have realized this. You've now done the equivalent of writing a nitpick review of an 8-year-old car, complaining that the headlights just don't line up the way other new cars do. Or complaining about how Netscape 4.7 just doesn't handle CSS positioning in a way that makes your life easier.
About the comparison to Yahoo and GMail, you just can't compare (regardless of version) a stateless browser application to a rich client. There's more going on.
I think it honorable for you to (sort of) own up, but it would be moreso if you posted an update in the original article.
Posted by :Rob Novak | August 17, 2007 9:41 AM