IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 for Users - Lyv Connections Pte Ltd

IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 for Users

Table of Contents

Introduction to IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 ..................................................................................... 2

Logging In ...................................................................................................................... 4

Bookmarks and the Home Page ..................................................................................... 7

Accessing Preferences.................................................................................................... 9

Using the Out of Office ................................................................................................ 13

Working with Messages ............................................................................................... 15

Working with Calendar................................................................................................ 18

Working with Contacts................................................................................................. 22

Synchronizing Contacts ............................................................................................... 24

Quotas .......................................................................................................................... 30

Using Notes Offline...................................................................................................... 33

Archiving...................................................................................................................... 37

What’s new in the Lotus Notes 8.5 Client .................................................................... 40

General..................................................................................................................... 40
Streamlined context menus .................................................................................. 40
Drag and drop in Notes Documents..................................................................... 41
Compress inline images ....................................................................................... 42
Search................................................................................................................... 42

Mail .......................................................................................................................... 43
Type-ahead address options include multiple email addresses............................ 43
Folder column in mail All Documents view........................................................ 43
Roaming rich text mail signature......................................................................... 44

Calendar ................................................................................................................... 45
Adding an iCalendar feed to your Notes calendar ............................................... 45
Adding Notes TeamRoom calendar entries to your Notes calendar.................... 47
Adding a public Google calendar’s entries to your Notes calendar..................... 48
Horizontal scroll bar for calendar views .............................................................. 50

Contacts.................................................................................................................... 52
Forward contacts as a vCard ................................................................................ 52
Import and export contact files ............................................................................ 54
Lotus Sametime Contacts .................................................................................... 57
Adding international sets of alphabet tabs ........................................................... 57

Security .................................................................................................................... 59
Help if you forget your password ........................................................................ 59
Option to eliminate Notes password prompts...................................................... 60
Easier User ID management ................................................................................ 61

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 1 of 62

Introduction to IBM Lotus Notes 8.5

Lotus Notes comes in two configurations, Basic & Standard.
a) The Lotus Notes 8.5 Basic configuration includes these core applications:

The Basic configuration only runs on:
Macintosh OS 10.5.x,
Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2 or later
Windows XP for Tablet PC
Windows Vista: Enterprise, Ultimate and Business Editions
Windows Vista for Tablet PC

b) The Lotus Notes 8.5 Standard configuration includes even more features and
applications in addition to the core applications:

The Standard configuration runs on:
Linux: SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 XGL, RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.2

Desktop, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition
Macintosh OS 10.5.x
Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2 or later
Windows XP for Tablet PC
Windows Vista: Enterprise, Ultimate and Business Editions
Windows Vista for Tablet PC

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 2 of 62

** If you want to launch Notes 8.5 in the Basic Configuration rather than Standard
Configuration, create a shortcut on your Desktop to point to “nlnotes.exe” in the Notes
Program directory.

** In addition, you can create a shortcut which executes “notes.exe” within the Notes
Program directory and add one of two command line switches, “-sa” or “-basic”

For Example:

C:\Program Files\Lotus\Notes\notes.exe -sa

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 3 of 62

Logging In
1) By default, the Notes shortcut is installed on the Windows Desktop. Double
click the Lotus Notes icon:

2) As Notes starts up, you will be asked for your Notes user name and password

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 4 of 62

3) If you have not already created a custom Home Page, you will be asked to setup
how Notes appears when you start it:

Click the “Use the default” button to use the default Home Page
4) Here is the Home Page displayed in the Standard configuration:

The Home Page itself is the same as in the Basic configuration. The Standard
configuration is different because of its additional features and applications, including
the Open button, bars to open the Lotus Symphony applications, the Sidebar, and
Toolbar Search.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 5 of 62

5) To exit Notes. As with any windows application, to exit Notes you can either:
a) Choose File – Exit
b) Click the Close button in the upper right corner of the window

Don’t worry if you have any unsaved documents open, as Notes will prompt you
to save them before it closes. Notes will also prompt you to confirm that you
want to exit:

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 6 of 62

Bookmarks and the Home Page
Let’s see how to open core applications and how to restore the Home Page using
bookmarks

Basic Configuration

Along the left side of the Basic configuration is the Bookmark Bar. The first four
bookmarks from the top open the core Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and To Do
applications.

Click on the “Favorite Bookmarks” folder to see the bookmarks in that folder then click
on “Default Home Page”

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 7 of 62

Standard Configuration

Expand the Open List by click on the “Open” button. The first four bookmarks open
the core Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and To Do applications

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 8 of 62

Accessing Preferences
1) User Preferences: General Notes operating behavior is configured with User
Preferences.

Basic Configuration

Choose File – Preferences – User Preferences to open the User Preferences dialog
box.

You may have also noticed under File – Preferences the choices to set Location,
Toolbar and Status Bar preferences.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 9 of 62

Standard Configuration
Choose File – Preferences to open the User Preferences dialog box.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 10 of 62

2) Security Preferences:

Choose File – Security – User Security to control the security related preferences
of Notes

An example of a security preference is to change your Notes password

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 11 of 62

3) Mail Preferences
Each application may also have its own preferences, for example the Mail
application, which has an extensive list of preferences that can be set from the More
action button:

Choose Preferences to open Mail Preferences:

Example of a Mail Preference is to always spell check messages before sending.

Another Example of a Mail Preference you can set is to automatically add your contact
information to the bottom of every new message that you create.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 12 of 62

Using the Out of Office
1) The out-of-office notification service sends only one automated reply to each person
who sends you mail while you’re away, regardless of how many messages the person
sends you during that time.
The notification service replies to mail only during the time that you specify you’re
away
2) To enable out-of-office notification

a) If necessary, open your mail
b) Above the message list, click More Out of Office

c) Specify your leaving and returning dates

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 13 of 62

d) (Optional) Do any of the following

Task Description

Keep the time you’re away free time Clear the “I am unavailable for

schedule so that others may invite you meetings” field.

to meetings

Change the standard notification sent Do any of the following:

while you’re away • Edit the Subject field

• Clear the Append return date to
subject field

• Edit the Additional body text field

Send a different notification to certain 1. Click Alternate Notification

people or domains 2. Specify one or more people or

domains in the To field.

3. Edit the rest of the notification

Permit replies to messages sent from Click Exclusions, and then clear the “Do
Internet addresses not automatically reply to mail from
Internet addresses” field.
Cancel replies to certain people or Tip: To prevent sending replies to
people in certain group spammers, keep this field selected
Click Exclusions, then specify one or
Cancel replies to message whose subject more people or group names in the “Sent
contains certain phrases by” field.

1) Click Exclusions
2) Specify a phrase in the “A

message subject contains any of
these exact phrases” field.
3) Click “Add Phrase”
4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each
phrase to add

e) Click “Enable and Close” or, if you have already enabled out-of-office
notification but changed some out-of-office settings, click “Save and
Close”

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 14 of 62

f) To disable out-of-office notification. You may need to disable out-of-office
notifications manually after you return
1) If necessary, open your mail
2) Above the message list, click More Out of Office
3) Click “Disable and Close”

Working with Messages
1) There are several ways to create a new message

a) Click on the following button in the Mail block on the Home Page

b) Open mail application and click the following button. Message is the default
Document type

c) A new Message opens. Once you are ready to send out the message, click on
‘Send’ button.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 15 of 62

2) Type ahead addressing. As you start to type a first or last name or an email address
into an address field, you are shown a list of names to pick from.
Notes let you pick the address from the list of addresses:

These addresses come from the My Contacts and Recent Contacts views in the
Contacts application. If you haven’t used the address recently, click Search Directory
and Notes will look in the Contacts application and your company Directory for
matching names to pick from.
3) To reply an email, open the email and click on the ‘Reply’ button and select any of
the options that dropped down from the list.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 16 of 62

4) To forward an email, open the email and click on the ‘Forward’ button. Select one of
the options dropped down from the drop list.

5) To delete an email, open the email and click on the ‘Trash’ icon as shown in the
screenshot.

6) To add attachments to an email, click on the ‘Attachments’ button as shown below.
Then browse and select the files which you want to attach.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 17 of 62

Working with Calendar

1) There are two way to access your Calendar, click on the following button and select
“Switch to Calendar” or from the Home page as shown in the following screenshot

2) This is what a typical user’s Calendar looks like in the Standard Version

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 18 of 62

3) Click on the arrow action button to see the other types of Calendar Entries:

4) The default Calendar Entry type is created (Meeting) with today and “now” being the
default date and time. For Example:

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 19 of 62

5) You could cancel the new entry and start over, or simply change the type of a new
Calendar Entry. Click on the arrow on the first tab of the Calendar Entry window and
select a different type of event from the pull-down menu:

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 20 of 62

6) Should you decided to create a Meeting Entry, you can specified the time of the
meeting, the duration, the location, the details of the meeting and the people you wish to
invite, by entering their name in the ‘Invite’ field. Click on ‘Save & Send’ button when
you are done.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 21 of 62

Working with Contacts
1) To add a particular sender of an email to your Contact List, you can open the email,
and click on the ‘More’ button. Then select ‘Add Sender to Contacts’.

2) Enter any additional information to the fields available. And click on ‘OK’ button to
save.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 22 of 62

3) Below is the screenshot on creating new contact. Click “Save and Close” to save.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 23 of 62

Synchronizing Contacts

Your Contacts file (usually names.nsf) is stored locally on your machine. However, you
can store a copy of your Contact in your mail file. Then, to make sure that the copy
stored in your mail file remains up-to-date with the copy on your machine, you
synchronize the two files.

There are several reasons why you would want to synchronize your two Contacts lists:
a) In case your local hard drive fails, you will have a backup list of your
contacts on the server.
b) Your notes contacts will be available to you if you access your Mail using
DWA
c) You can delegate the maintenance of your Contacts to another trusted person
because they are also stored in your Mail

Follow these steps to enabling synchronization:

1) Open your Contacts Application in Lotus Notes Client

2) Click on “More” action button and choose “Preferences”

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 24 of 62

3) Select this option. Click OK to save the change.
4) Click on Open button and choose Replication:

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 25 of 62

5) The Replication page opens. Take these steps on the Replication page:

a) Check this box to enable the “Synchronize Contacts” task.
b) Click “Start Now” to manually synchronize your contacts
c) Click “Schedule” and choose “Set Replication Schedule” to define times

when you want the synchronization to occur.

d) Click the “Schedule” button again and choose “Enable Scheduled” to enable
automatic replication

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 26 of 62

6) You can now open and use your Contacts view from Notes Mail which is inside the
Mail File copy. Choose Actions Lotus iNotes Open Mail File Copy of
Contacts.

7) Delegating access to your Contacts

a) You can let other people manage your list of Contacts. To do so, a copy of your
Contacts file (usually names.nsf) is stored in your mail file on a server. Then
you set a Mail preference to allow (delegate) access to your Contacts to
specified users or groups.

b) Based on the level of access you allow, the person managing your Contacts can
add, edit, or delete contact entries for you. In addition, he or she can use your
Contacts when responding to mail for you.

c) Setting an access and delegation preference
i. Click File > Preferences.
ii. Click Mail, and then click the Access & Delegation tab.
iii. Click Add.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 27 of 62

iv. In the Add People/Groups dialog box that appears, under Person or Group
specify who the access is for:
o Everyone
o Just this person or group

v. Under Components, select one of these options, or click None to prevent a user
or group from gaining access to your Contacts. For example, you can give
access to Everyone, and then use this field to exclude people or groups.
o Mail, Calendar, To Do and Contacts
o Calendar, To Do and Contacts

vi. Under Access, specify the level of access for your Contacts. These options will
change based on your selection in the previous step.

vii. Click OK to save

7) Opening some else’s Contacts

a) You can manage another user's Contacts list, without the user having to give you full
access to his or her Contacts file. Depending on how much access you have to the
Contacts file, you can read and even edit someone else's Contact entries.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 28 of 62

b) To open someone else’s Contact

i. Open your Contacts.
ii. In the navigator pane, click the plus sign next to Other Contacts, and then click

Open Other Contacts.
iii. In the Directory field at the top of the "Open Contacts" dialog box, select a

directory that contains the name of the person whose Contacts you wish to see.
iv. In the Find names starting with field, enter the first few letters of the person's

name as it is listed in the directory.
v. Select the name from the list and then click OK

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 29 of 62

Quotas
Most organizations have set a quota as to how large your Mail can grow in size. When
your file grows past this point, you will be warned to make room for new documents.
Remember that in addition to message, your mail also includes Calendar Entries and
Contacts all having the ability to attach potential large and numerous files. So it is easy
to surpass your quota.
1) If you have quota set on the size of your Mail, you will see the Usage Indicator and
when you move your mouse over the indicator, you will see more information:

2) There are several ways to see that you are about to or have exceeded your quota:
a) Then you click on the bar and the details about how much space you have
used and how much you have left will show

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 30 of 62

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 31 of 62

b) When you attempt to send and save a message that would result in exceeding
your quota, the “send” operation is cancelled and you are warned with this
message:

Click OK to return to the underlying message to reduce its size, of if it really
needs to be sent and saved, leave the window open until you delete or
archive other messages or Notebook Pages to make room.

c) If you have attached files that will exceed your quota, you will receive this
messages:

d) Depending on how the Domino Server is configured, you may also receive
warning emails from the Domino Server telling you to reduce the size of
your Mail:

e) People who send you messages may also receive a delivery failure indicating
that your disk quota has been exceeded and to try sending the message later

Note: Your administrator determines what happens to your incoming
messages when you reach your quota. Message may be delivered anyway,
may be denied (the sender will received an error message and be told to
resend the message the message), or may be delivered only after you make
room in your Mail file

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 32 of 62

Using Notes Offline

You can create an offline (local) copy of any IBM® Lotus® Notes® application you use.
Such a copy -- or replica -- is a duplicate of the application. Through replication, Lotus
Notes® can keep a local replica identical with the application on the server, so you make
changes once, but they appear in both places. Replication is a great tool to have when
working with large documents or applications, since a local replica can open documents
and views much faster than a server application can over a network.

1) Step to Creating an Offline Copy

Make the current IBM® Lotus® Notes® application available offline by creating a
replica on your computer. After you create a replica, an entry for the replica appears on
the Replication tab.

a. From an open application, click File > Make Available Offline.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 33 of 62

b. If you don't want to create the replica immediately, select "At the next scheduled
replication."

c. If you don't want the replica to have a high-priority schedule, click the down-
arrow and click Normal-priority.

d. To change the default replication intervals for High- or Normal-priority
schedules, click Set or Change Schedules.

e. (Optional) To customize the replica, click Options for this Application.
f. (Optional) To set replication preferences, click Defaults for All Local Replicas.
g. Click OK.

Replication started

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 34 of 62

2) Switch Location profile to “Offline”

3) The first time you switch to any location other than Online, Notes automatically
creates an outgoing mailbox file for that location (MAIL.BOX for Notes mail). The
mailbox file is created in your local data directory and is called Outgoing Mail. It has
both a bookmark and an entry ("Send outgoing mail") on the Replication page.

4) You can start to compose email in the offline mode. The emails you sent out will
temporary store at Outgoing Mail File.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 35 of 62

5) Then, assuming you have a connection to a server, the following dialog box will
prompt asking that “You have outgoing mail pending. Do you want to transfer it now?”
Click Yes

6) Pending emails sent and MAIL.BOX empties.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 36 of 62

Archiving

Rather than simple deleting documents you may want to keep copies for future
reference. You can do this using archiving.
Follow these steps to configure and use Local archiving:

1) To enable a set of archive criteria

Make sure the archive criteria sets you want to use are enabled. If no set is enabled and
you ask for an application to be archived, nothing is archived.

a) Open an application to archive (for example, your mail).
b) Click Actions > Archive > Settings > Criteria.
c) Select a set of criteria in the list.
d) Click Enable, and then click OK.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 37 of 62

2) Then you start to archive your email
3) From the status bar, you will notice that the following
4) The physically file of the local archive will be located at the following directory

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 38 of 62

5) To access your archive emails, click on the following button as shown below

6) Your Archive database generally looks like your Mail, with the following
exceptions:

a) The title under the tabs says (Archive)

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 39 of 62

What’s new in the Lotus Notes 8.5 Client

General
Some of the new general client features including the following:

Streamlined context menus
Context menus have been streamlined for mail, contacts and To Do views. When you
right click documents in any of these views, you will see a more concise menu with
options relevant to the context as shown below

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 40 of 62

Drag and drop in Notes Documents
You can now drag and drop text, rich text and names as outlined in table below

You can Drag And Drop it into
Notes rich text from a rich text field in a
Notes document Another area within the same rich text
field, a different rich text field in the same
A name from an external application Notes document, or another document (
Rich text selection ( as plain text or rich currently supported on Microsoft
text ) Windows only )
A name from embedded Lotus Sametime
A Notes names field A names field in a Notes document
A Notes names field
A Notes text field External applications, Symphony editor
An attachment
A names field

Another names field

A rich text field, or external application

A Notes text field

Another place in the same document (
previously you could only drag to another
document )

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 41 of 62

Compress inline images
You can now set a Basic Notes Client Configuration preference to automatically
compress bitmap (.bmp) images that are pasted into documents.

File > Preferences, Basic Notes Client Configuration. Then click on the appropriate
setting under Additional Options for “Compress images pasted into documents”. (This
setting is selected by default)

When you set this preference, bitmap images pasted into a Notes document are
compressed and converted to a .gif or .jpg format, reducing the space needed to store
them.

Search
Search has an enhanced look in the toolbar

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 42 of 62

Mail
The new features in mail are described below
Type-ahead address options include multiple email addresses

• Lotus Notes uses type-ahead to complete the names you type, displaying one or
more names as soon as you type enough letters for a match.

• If you have included multiple email address in a person’s contact entry, all the
optional addresses display in a submenu in the type-ahead list as well.

• This allows you to send the email to your friend at their work or home email
address, which is most appropriate.

Folder column in mail All Documents view
A new Folder column in the mail “All Documents” view display any mail folders in
which a document resides.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 43 of 62

Roaming rich text mail signature

If you specify a mail signature in your mail preferences, it is stored in your mail file so
that it is available on any computer where you use Notes

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 44 of 62

Calendar
Now you can add activities, private or public Google calendar, an iCalendar feed,
another Notes user’s calendar, or a Notes application’s calendar (such as a Notes
TeamRoom’s calendar)

Adding an iCalendar feed to your Notes calendar
iCalendar (iCal) is an Internet standard that allows calendars created in different
calendar products to be imported into, and then viewed and managed in, other calendar
products that use the iCal standard. The iCal standard also allows for sending and
receiving meeting request and other tasks via email.

You can import an iCal calendar in Notes 8.5 by using the following format:
File > Import or by dragging and dropping a URL or files into your Notes Inbox or
calendar.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 45 of 62

This can also be done through the Add Calendar option in the navigator; in the Show
Calendars view, click Add a Calendar > iCalendar feed.

Selecting the option “View this calendar when offline or on a mobile device” adds
the meetings from the iCal calendar to your Notes calendar (instead of overlaying
them), so the calendar can be synchronized with mobile devices or used offline.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 46 of 62

Adding Notes TeamRoom calendar entries to your Notes calendar

To add Notes TeamRoom calendar entries to your Notes Calendar, first make sure you
are using the Mail85 template. Then, in the Views panel of the calendar navigator, click
My Calendars, click Add a Calendar, and select Notes TeamRoom Calendar.

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 47 of 62

Adding a public Google calendar’s entries to your Notes calendar
Now you can add both public and private Google calendars to your Notes calendar,
which helps you track all the demands on your time in one place and better manage
your schedule.

Below is some of the screenshot on how to extract the Google Public Calendar URL
before you can configure it at Lotus Notes

Copied out the above highlighted link Page 48 of 62

Connecting People with Technology......

Then, in the Views panel of the calendar navigator, click My Calendars, click Add a
Calendar, and select “Google Calendar ( TM )” and paste the URL which mentioned
above.

If there are many Google calendar entries, it may take a little longer for your Notes
calendar to display them. You can toggle the display of the Google calendar entries by
selecting or deselecting the calendar’s check box

In this same way, you can also add another Notes user’s calendar or an Activity to your
Notes calendar

Connecting People with Technology...... Page 49 of 62