Foreword

You are in possession of a valuable resource—Karen Hooper's IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide. Within the chapters of this book, you will find step-by-step instructions, examples, and tips on how to make the best use of your Lotus Notes 8.5 environment. New Lotus Notes users and old pros alike will find ideas and reinforcements in Karen's careful and detailed examination of Notes from the end-user perspective.

Lotus Notes 8 represents the realization of a key vision and evolution for Notes users. Several years before the current version's release, IBM recognized the need to modernize the Lotus Notes client environment. Under the codename of Hannover, IBM architects, engineers, and usability experts pursued the future vision for Lotus Notes.

The four main principles of the Notes 8 release were world-class usability, an open architecture, integration with other IBM Lotus software, and innovation. During the development phase of the Notes 8 project, IBM engineers conducted over 1000 usability test site visits, and surveyed various focus groups, learning what end users expected from the best messaging and collaboration environment in the market. They blended best-in-class features with innovative new capabilities, direct from IBM Labs. The result was the product you use, or, are considering today—a remarkable step forward for Lotus Notes.

Since the initial release of Notes 8, IBM engineers have adopted an agile development approach, adding incremental improvements to Notes in frequent releases. This book focuses on Notes 8.5, first released in 2009. While IBM continues to invent the future, notably with its new Project Vulcan vision for the next decade of Notes, you can be confident of having the best tool for corporate collaboration today.

In this book, you will find Karen's passion played out on every page. I have met Karen in person during my annual visits to Australia, and enjoyed sharing perspectives about Notes and collaboration with her for the last several years. As someone whose firm is named Dr Notes, Karen clearly has confidence in her abilities and understands the best practices with regards to the use of Lotus Notes, which you will see clearly on display in this book.

In the IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide, Karen Hooper takes you through the entire spectrum of end-user capabilities. The first chapter explains the basics, with subsequent chapters jumping right into the deeper waters to explore more powerful capabilities. I am particularly pleased with the depth of exploration of the integrated IBM Lotus Sametime capabilities; many organizations have moved far beyond "why do we need chat?" to full understanding of integrated presence, whiteboarding, and even synchronous voice services. There are full chapters dedicated to the extensibility and openness of the Notes 8.5 environment, including the RSS feeds service, and most importantly, sidebar widgets. In Chapter 6, users will find tools and tips that have often been under-utilized in typical Notes environments, but are extremely useful and powerful. Finally, users will benefit from exploring the chapter on the integrated productivity suite, IBM Lotus Symphony, as an opportunity and alternative to expensive office productivity tools.

In addition to the excellent materials in this book, I would also encourage you to check out a full range of end-user assistance tools available on IBM's website. Visit http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/notes for a wiki full of additional tutorials, examples, plugins, and more. While there, you can visit forums and community websites, and connect to Lotus Notes users and advocates around the world.

My best wishes for your continued success, and congratulations to Karen on a job well done.

—Ed Brill

Director, Lotus Notes Product Management

IBM Corporation

Chicago, USA

Twitter: <@edbrill>