Oliver Marks: Time and Identity Management
January 21 2010
I was going to write a whole blog entry about our exciting Notes partnership with Tungle, and its implications now and into the future of IBM Project Vulcan, but ZDNet's Oliver Marks did it for me:
The challenge of adopting multitudes of innovative 2.0 and mobile applications is that they may make you more efficient as an individual but scaling use to multiple people can be very challenging.The "glacial speed point" is about the upgrade rate of some organizations that remain on back-level Notes versions, not the product itself. At any rate, I met with Tungle yesterday (you'll soon be able to tungle.me/edbrill) and am excited about their calendar integration into Notes 8. It solves a lot of problems for me, and that personal productivity boost is a real leap forward. Encourage you all to check it out.
An example might be Tungle, the slick lightweight scheduling software that works across browser and iphone. Like many 2.0 offerings, for scheduling small groups Tungle is a wonderous thing. you can daisy chain Tungle so it speaks to your Microsoft Outlook, Google calendar, Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, Ning, Twitter, iphone & ical, and now as a beta with the venerable Lotus Notes. ...
Tungle's Notes integration beta aims to lighten the glacial speed issues of some Notes installs while adding flexibility by speeding meeting scheduling. The bigger question is whether integrations such as this will ultimately make sense in the overall time-is-money equation.
I would say that a mandate to improve business with good organization, Tetrising newer applications into the jigsaw so they work well with legacy infrastructure, will almost always yield results. It’s sometimes surprising how limited that mandate can be due to turf wars, the other time efficiency killer for technology scaling solutions of all shapes and sizes.
Link: Oliver Marks: Time and Identity Management >
Link: Tungle Blog: Tungle.me for Lotus Notes -- Beta connector now available >
Post a Comment
- 2
Anthony Holmes http://www.workingcollaboration.com | 1/21/2010 11:02:00 PM
@1 Peter:
"why doesn't Lotus try and improve Exchange/Notes calendar integration"?
Ummm… because there's been a lot of work done in this area, and no doubt it's continuing. Lotus knows that interoperability is important, which is why using the iCal standard is becoming very important to scheduling.
Are you aware of (and are you using) compatibility mode, which was introduced in Notes 8.5 to improve compatibility of scheduling with other email systems (especially Exchange)?
The biggest issue between the two systems is that Exchange is less flexible in the way it handles repeating meetings. Notes needs to be err… (I'll be polite...)"simplified" to let Exchange/Outlook cope.
To use compatibility mode, it's just a matter of checking the following option when you create a calendar entry: "Some invitees use other mail programs".
{ Link }
And see this article that outlines many of the ways in which Lotus has worked to ensure that interoperability has improved:
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(You'll see that it's not a one way street: there's a reference to the importance of Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 and also an issue that will be addressed "in next Outlook Service Pack". IBM and Microsoft are BOTH working on this.)
As for your specific issue: an invitation that didn't appear… I've not encountered that as a "compatibility issue", (but you know exactly what you did, so you may be able to see your scenario in the Domino Wiki article).
A non-appearing invitation sounds a bit more like an infrastructure/routing problem.
- 3
Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 1/22/2010 7:55:14 AM
@2 - Anthony - Thanks a LOT for this follow up! I had not heard about this new feature and apparently missed it in the release notes. I'll be trying it out soon to see if it can resolve some of my compatibility issues.
At first I thought... umm, why doesn't Lotus try and improve Exchange/Notes calendar integration (ie. I booked a mtg today, then added a customer and they never received it....who knows what happens) but the video on tungle.me showed the freetime feature which would be very nice b/w customers.
Pete
Oh, I'd still like Lotus to try and work with Microsoft to ensure Calendar invites b/w Notes / Exchange can work as seamless as possible.