Karen from Dr Notes is giving a talk the return on investment from working effectively. She is talking about how to save hours by investing minutes in learning some of the features and capabilities of the Lotus Notes client – and how to use them effectively:

1. Karen is finding that training people for 1.5 to 2 hours is about right.

2. Make sure you switch from using the icon list to using the Open button.

3. If you are working with lots of windows from a given application, you can group these into the same tab. It’s not for everyone, but good for people opening a lot of different documents and views.

4. The search bar is extensible. If you want to include specific applications in the search list, you can add them into the Search list.

5. Learn some of the most common keyboard shortcuts – Ctrl-M creates a new mail from anywhere in Notes, Esc closes the current window, and more.

6. Put the preview on the right-hand side of the screen, rather than at the bottom.

7. View your messages in Conversations. Brings together emails from wherever you have filed them across folders in Notes. If you sort messages into Conversational view, you can file all related messages out of your inbox into a folder.

8. You can find available meeting times directly from an email message.

9. Use the Copy into New – Message, Calendar Entry, or To Do.

10. Flagging of messages are great, because you can set a follow-up action directly in the email. It’s not just a colored flag. The follow-up action is shown in the Follow Up view, in a column.

11. When getting a delivery failure notice, you can resend a message directly from within the notice. You can correct the error on the address line, if needed. You don’t have to try and recreate the message.

12. When replying to an email with attachment, create the reply and then click to open the attachment. Click the edit button. When you save it, it will save back to the reply message. Don’t have to drag-out, update, and then drag back in.