A few people sent me links to this during
the week.... just now got a chance to read it.
Evslin, who was the guy driving the initial development of Exchange Server
at Microsoft, says:
There were several competing efforts under way in Redmond to build the Notes-killer. One of them was mine: Microsoft Exchange Server. Exchange was behind schedule for release when I took it over and slipped even further as we tired to shoehorn in features that would one-up or at least match the information-handling capabilities of Notes. Trouble was that Exchange was also the long-overdue replacement for DOS-based Microsoft Mail. ...Interesting insight into what life was like inside the other guys' machine, even if a somewhat biased perspective on it. He uses terms (elsewhere) in the entry like "increasingly irrelevant niche" to describe the product that is still #1 in the market over his own creation, but OK.
Another effort was Cairo (a future release of NT) championed by Jim Allchin of Banyan Vines fame. Here the information was managed at the operating system level rather than in the email server. The database guys had their own effort underway. "Ren and Stimpy" was the code name for Brian MacDonald's brilliant concept in a personal information manager (PIM) which eventually became the Outlook client.
We all argued long and hard and as loudly as only Microsoft people can do about which of these was the correct solution, which should own the APIs used by Office for information management, and which ideas were brain dead. Bill kept the competition alive by not deciding between us. I think he wanted to see what emerged.
But every one of these solutions -- including the bogyman, Notes -- was hierarchical. There were folders within folders within folders. Sure, there were key word searches. And categories could be assigned. Different views could be produced. But we all assumed that most people would approach information through the categories they assigned the information to.
Let's move on to focus on what his point is -- that flat unlinked searches (such as google) are winning over hierarchies. I don't disagree -- after all, despite Evslin's characterization, one of Notes's actual strengths is its lack of required hierarchy! Notes has incorporated full-text search capabilities since early versions...long before Microsoft offered anything of the sort for their collaboration tools. And the Notes search can work across databases, too. So, I think we're actually in violent agreement on the concept, just disagreeing as to what Notes actually does and can do.
To make the point -- I am one of those people who doesn't use folders in e-mail (I know, I know). I used to in cc:Mail, but when I moved to Notes, I learned to rely on the full-text index and sortable columns. At this point, the time (even with swiftfile) I'd spend filing e-mail doesn't bring me any real value in terms of organizing my day. Now when you add the embedded thread view in Notes 7's mail, it gets really interesting -- even though that's a hierarchy, it is one that blends the best of both metaphors.
You should go read Evslin's full article, and some of the trackbacks/comments. One more time, I agree with his overall assertion about flat information retreival...just differ on some of the characterizations of products that did and do (or didn't and don't) have this capability.
Link: Tom Evslin: The flattening of almost everything #2: Information retreival >
Post a Comment
- 2
| 2/27/2005 1:21:30 PM
Outlook has a plugin that adds search on par with Notes.
- 3
Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/27/2005 1:27:20 PM
in English only, unsupported (an "MSN Sandbox" application). Great!
- 4
| 2/27/2005 1:30:49 PM
@2 - a 'plugin', not native search capability? Argh.
- 5
| 2/27/2005 1:52:54 PM
Sorry, Ed. It works for me. This does not: { Link }
- 6
Tony S Lee www.peripheral.ca | 2/27/2005 2:18:49 PM
@5 - Can you please explain what that link has to do with Outlook's lack of integrated full text search?
This is a serious question, I don't have an access code to check out the Workplace showcase.
- 7
Carl http://www.iminstant.com | 2/27/2005 2:33:23 PM
"People don■t think hierarchically ■ at least most people don■t. We think in terms of associations. Our dreams give this away as they hyperlink through experiences of the day and memories of the distant past. A conversation meanders horizontally from one topic to the next. ■That reminds me of■■ is the way we get from one place to another in our own brains. Some day we may understand this mechanically as an obvious consequence of the way neurons connect."
Boy that sounds so like Lotus Agenda...
- 8
| 2/27/2005 3:50:03 PM
Sure. The Outlook plugin is working just nicely. The supported IBM product however is not.
The access code is in the html source. Yes, would you believe that? :-)
- 9
Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/27/2005 4:00:24 PM
alright, I'm going to shut this one down if the troll continues.
- 10
Sim’ http://www.workplacechannel.com/ | 2/27/2005 4:25:56 PM
I manage my Notes mail by dividing messages into three categories.
The first is info from mailing lists (including notes from management !) - these messages get auto-moved into folders by rules - and I'll generally go through them once or twice a week. The assumption is that they are informational only and I'll get to them when I get to them.
The second category is for notes relating to a customer (business partner) or project I'm currently working on. I maintain a set of folders relating to current projects so that I have everything relating to that project in one location for ease of reference. Messages are manually filed into these folders.
The third category is "everything else". I maintain a giant "filing folder" (giant as in the number of messages in it), which everything else that doesn't fit into the first two categories gets moved to. The goal is to keep the inbox down to less than a page, as I like to use this as a "to do" list. I flag highly important messages with a followup flag so I don't forget which stuff needs to be actioned first.
The third category was a revelation (and revolution !) for me, I used to maintain a large hierarchy of folders and try to file everything, but even with swiftfile I found I just couldn't keep up.
Realising that 80-90% of the email I wanted to keep just couldn't be easily categorised - and most were unrelated to the important things I worked on - by simply moving them to this filing folder, I can then use full text search and column sorting to find the information later if I need to refer to it, while also maintaining a fairly clean inbox.
I also empty my entire mail file about once every two or three months too - my preference is to create a "new copy" of the .nsf file and then delete the messages from my actual mail file. This way I have a new (not replica) independent file that I can search in for older messages, and keep my current mail file down to a managable number of documents. My argument is that 99% of the information in my mailfile I need to reference is less than 30 days old - everything else is only there "just in case", so I don't want all that old mail contaminating my searches for current information.
I choose the "new copy" method rather than the built in archiving mechanism since I want discrete databases that contain mail from a period of time, which can then be archived (zipped and burned to DVD) when they get too old. I guess there are a number of ways to do it, but this is how I've been doing archiving since v4.0, so I just stick with what I'm comfortable with.
- 11
tonyo | 2/27/2005 9:28:52 PM
Search folders within Outlook 2003 operate a lot like how you would expect. people don't have to organize like obsessive compulsive accountants anymore.. they can rely on search folder ( a mechanism to have "stored" searched available instead of having sort things )
So.. I can have search rules or mail from specific people or subjects and the like. Not bad - even if it's not Notes.
- 12
David Richardson | 2/27/2005 9:34:10 PM
What caught my attention in Tom's post was the reactive nature of Microsoft's approach. Microsoft (and, presumably, Bill Gates) have an apparently pathological need to be recognized for technical innovation, and yet this article is more proof for me that they are technical followers, and not the place to look for any real advances.
In fact, Bill Gates and Microsoft were supreme innovators, but as marketers (nothing wrong with that)! Recognizing that something as ephemeral as software could be shrink-wrapped on a colossal scale was an insight of genius. Technically though, they are doomed by their corporate genes to follow others. You can't be great at everything. No matter how many brilliant people Microsoft hires, I expect their business model to be more like Proctor and Gamble's than <a href="{ Link } target="_blank">this group of men</a>.
<em>"And they copied and copied and copied. But they couldn■t copy my mind. So I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.■
-Rudyard Kipling</em>
- 13
Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 2/28/2005 2:37:57 AM
I've been writing a long piece about my perfect mail client recently, which is relevant to this. It article (the first for my blog, which already has many overly-long entries) was on my mid-priority list of things, and I will now bump it up to high priority instead. That means it may be done inside the week...
Suffice it to say that I don't think heirarchical folders are dead - they're just not used properly. By both people AND the software itself. And at the same time, I don't think that labels or search is a panacea - it's often a pain in the posterior.
The answer? Provide all three. Labels, folders and search.
Notes does two of them. Almost three, actually. But it's still not my perfect mail client.
(Which, if you're wondering, doesn't exist yet. I hope to be throwing down the gauntlet with a pretty comprehensive list of requirements, though.)
- 14
Geoff woollahra.nsw.gvo.au | 2/28/2005 2:51:02 AM
The conversation above is a very single user centric view of the world. Our organisation(local goverment)just about runs on email communication with our customers. The key issue for us is that email is a corproate resource and not a thing for the individual. We need corporate filing and searching rules to meet statutory and customer obligations. With a 25% turnover of staff its is a coporate imperative to file and find in a structured way...
- 15
Nathan T. Freeman | 2/28/2005 3:06:04 AM
"The answer? Provide all three. Labels, folders and search.
Notes does two of them."
Folders and searching it obviously does, but that would suggest that you think Notes does *not* do labels? To that I would say: @Command([ToolsCategorize])
- 16
Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 2/28/2005 3:09:29 AM
Reading Tom Evslin's article gave me the impression that he was thinking "this is my opinion and the way I work, therefore it applies to everyone". Not so Tom.
The great thing about Notes is that it allows you to work in which ever way you like. Personally I do make use of nested folders - it works for me but may not work for others. That's fine. Quite often I do go into All Docs and do a search or sort by date / size / sender. So I get the best of both worlds. Essentially you can do that in Outlook too (although the searching cabability is less powerful). So what is Tom's point? I'm not sure he has one.
And finally, the anonymous troll. If you believed in what you posted, surely you'd stand up and be counted by at least adding your name. As it stands you have no credibility, particularly when you go off at a tangent... were we talking about Workplace?
- 17
Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 2/28/2005 7:01:30 AM
Geoff [14]> Well said.
Funnily enough, one thing that's come out of my "deep thinking" about mail is that I can't live without some kind of folder/labelling system. I become less productive without it, and I find that search just Isn't Enough.
At some point, some structure must be imposed on the data so that it makes sense to everyone, not just one person. And even for one person, structured data can be easier to maintain than unstructured data, because it makes selection much easier, and it asks you to think about how you organise your data rather than just hoping that you can build an appropriate search term...
Nathan [15]>
Yes, that's a way to label mail.
However, the issue (for me) is that it's not part of the standard mail template. Categorising mail was effectively dropped in R4 when folders were introduced.
You can, of course, modify the standard mail template to include categorisation. Throw in the field into views and folder designs, add an action button or two, and so forth. But it's certainly no longer a part of the default design, and would require some work to become so in my opinion.
But the fact that it's not in there as standard means I'm not counting it as a Notes mail feature.
(Insert standard gloating about how we could easily make it a standard feature in our respective environments here. *grins*)
- 18
Maria Helm | 2/28/2005 11:46:04 AM
Ok, I'm a lurker, but I'm going to comment now, because this is an issue I find extremely relevant to some situations at our company.
Philip @17 says: At some point, some structure must be imposed on the data so that it makes sense to everyone, not just one person.
This is where I believe the search structure alone is deficient.
Take, for example, the person who takes over job functions from a previous employee. Let's say the new employee has been given this documentation, and access to the terminated employees mailfile (in countries where this is legal, it can be very useful). Hopefully, that previous employee did a good job of documenting in some obvious way their job functions and projects/issues in which they are involved. By searching the mailfile, you may find messages relating to the obvious search terms. But, you aren't likely to find references to something they left out of their documentation. With a clear folder structure, you would be more likely to find that type of data. Even if only the major projects are in named folders, and everything else is simply in a folder named "other".
Bottom line, using search alone, you aren't as likely to find out what you don't know to look for.
That said, I teach users search and sort before I teach them folders, because otherwise they create folders for people's names, and put every message from that person in them and think they are being organized.
- 19
Geoff woollahra.nsw.gov.au | 2/28/2005 4:51:08 PM
@18 As a well known member of the us goverment recently said. There are known knowns, known unknowns ...... This whole debate needs a twist and view from another direction. Mail is perceived and developed from the single users perspective. It needs a corporate perspective. I certainly dont have the answers but instead of being a single users with only your view of the email world should you not be a "member" of a corporate email system or space. When you become a member you work with a set of corporate rules. The use of corproate folders etc in our organisation is a nonsense as we have 25,000 properties,5000 new applications per year and a customer base of 50,000 residents of which 50% a new every 5 years. This volume needs structure and discipline else we get our tails kicked if we cant track respond and find it.
- 20
David Bell | 3/1/2005 12:02:55 AM
@14, @18
Reminds me a little of Discovery Server in that it tried to impose more structure with a corporate taxonomy of data.
But it didn't flourish, email (though owned by the organiztion) is still viewed as a very very personal application / information set.
my notesmailfile used to have one folder which is called oldmail. Thats where i move messages from my inbox to, to keep the inbox itself manageble. since the implementation of rules combined with the unread count on folders i've got a couple of folders which i use to move incoming system related or status messages to.
all you need to find mails is a working fulltext search and sortable columns. i had to use outlook for 2 years, the gui is ok but the lack of search functionality sucked...