Jan Schulz

How do I do that? There seems to be no language chooser in the preference/profile and since the update to 2.5 I get a German interface on bleedyellow (with all content in English) :-(

Language of blog content = language of userinterface

I've set my browser to German as a first language, so that get search results from my country and don't disturb any browser switch. But changing the language of the template of an blog, which is in one language, so that the menu and other stuff is in a different language is just annoying...

Any Idea how to get it back to English?

In German, "Jan" (spoken: like "j" from "yes" and "an" from Ian, only one short syllable) is a male given name.
It seems that in the US, Jan can also be a female given name.

Now I know why I'm sometimes named "she" - and why I always thought about Jan from the Notes beta program as a male person :-)

Ah, and it can even get better.

Since a few days, I get my private mails delivered into my Notes mailbox, so that I can process my private mails as well as my normal "company" mails with eProductivity. But most of this article is not specific to eProductivity, you can do this with the normal mailfile as well.

There are great instructions how to setup notes to get the mails from a POP3 server on the "Lotus Notes 8.x Tips" blog. If you get mails from both a domino server and a POP3 server, I recommend to first create a new location and switch to it and then run the described wizard... I had to recreate my normal (-> mail goes out via Domino Server) online setup afterwards.

Anyway: this works really well apart from one point: up to now I read mail my private mail in Thunderbird and used ThunderBayes to filter out spam. Notes, unfortunately does not have a spam filter, but this is how you can work around this limitation. Another limitation is, that notes does not process mailrules for POP3 mails, but there is an OpenNTF project for that. So here is the setup to fight spam in POP3 mails delivered to the Notes client:

1. Setup SpamBayes
2. Configure Notes to use SpamBayes
3. Setup POP3 mailrules
4. Configure a Mailrules to filter Spam
(5. Train the filter)

Setup Spambayes
I use SpamBayes, which is a baysian/learning spam filter which acts as a proxy beween the POP3 server and your mailclient and classifies the mail as ham (=good), unsure or spam (=bad :-) in some custom mail-header.  Just download the windows version and install (make sure it is started automatically as a service!). Do a restart of windows, to make sure you have the service running... Afterwards point you webbrowser to http://localhost:8880/config and configure SpamBayes to connect to your current POP3 server and a local port number (the rest of the options are ok for now :-). You don't need to input your username/password into SpamBayes.



Configure Notes to use SpamBayes
Now configure your Notes POP3 mailsetup as you would before, just with "localhost" and the local port number and Notes would get the mail through SpamBayes. If you have already configured it: the config is in the personal adressbook under "Advanced -> Accounts". My final setup looks like this:


Now you should already get mails delivered into your mailaccount which have the new mailheader: Open a new mail, goto "View -> Show -> Page Source" and you find something like this:

Setup POP3 mailrules
No we need something to filter on this. Go to the POP Mail Rules OpenNTF project and get the latest release. It has a nice Install instruction, but for the impatient: copy the rules.dll next to your notes.ini file and add a "EXTMGR_ADDINS=rules.dll" line to your notes.ini (if there is already one, read te instructions...). Restart Notes and your POP3 delivered Mails will be filtered by your mailrules.

Configure a mailrule to filter Spam
Now we have only one problem: how to get a Mailrule to filter on the "X-Spambayes-Classification:" Header? This is also done by a trick: the new extention has some extra capabilities, which can be accessed when you build a rule based on the BCC field: instead of you adding the string you would filter, you add "header:string" and the rule engine will base the filter on that header instead of the BCC field or better that field in the final mail document in your mailfile. There is unortunately a difference beween header names and fields: notes converts '-' in headernames into '_' in fieldnames. So if we want to filter by Mail with "X-Spambayes-Classification: spam", we need to add a BCC rule with a "contains"-String of "X_Spambayes_Classification:spam" (and move that mail into the junk folder (in eProductivity, Mailrules are under E-Mail -> Tools -> Rules):

And that was it: from now on, every classified spam mail should be filtered into the Junk folder.

Train the filter
On problem remains: how to train the filter. This is best done via the webinterface at http://localhost:8880/review: just classify the daily mails there and train the filter with that data. After a few days, it should get better and better until you get less and less false classified mails. For this to work, you need to cache messages in SpamBayes (see SpamBayes webinterface -> Configuration -> Storage options). The other option, to send messages to "spam@localhost" or "ham@localhost" does not work, as Notes does not send every old mailheader. Also, we haven't configured notes to send maisl through spambayes.

Happy emailing!

Opening weblinks in notes does not work, if you have opera set as your default browser. This is unfortunately still so in the 8.5.1 beta client.

Today I found the solution after looking at the registry values when firefox is the default browser: notes seems to miss a '%1' string in the returned registry value. Adding that to the registry lets Notes open URLs in my preferred browser.

before:
C:\Programme\Opera>reg query HKCR\https\shell\open\command
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\command   <NO NAME>   REG_SZ  "C:\Programme\Opera\opera.exe"

After:
C:\Programme\Opera>reg query HKCR\https\shell\open\command
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\command     <NO NAME>   REG_SZ  "C:\Programme\Opera\opera.exe"  "%1"

So, just edit that registry key and add the "%1" (with quotation marks around both strings!) and you are done...

Why Notes can't handle default browser which do not register themselves in that way, when every other programm can.... I've filed bugs both with opera and IBM (in the beta forum)...

And just to be on the secure side:
Disclaimer: IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1 is prerelease code and there are no guarantees from IBM that the functionality presented or discussed will be in the final shipping product.

Andre Guirard released some of his little treasures on OpenNTF: several lotusscript libraries. I especially like one if them: StringDiff.

This diff util was part of the replication conflict tool he posted some years ago. I used it to generate field diffs for a field level history:



Then I had to refactor it to get text output instead of html, now I only need to write a "TextDiffWriter" implementation (there is already a RichText and a HTML one), which should be about 20 lines of code, most of it function definitions and so on. Nice!

Thanks Andre!

Since a few days I get the "valid usage period expired" message when trying to add new actions to my action lists. Seems that it is time for a resume of my time with eProductivity (and to some degree with GTD).

To start with: eProductivity changed my way of time- and email-management and for a lot better! One of the objectives of my evaluation period was if it reduces the constant nagging feeling of "did I miss something" and I can say that it does! A lot!

eProductivity is up to now my most productive way to organize myself: it makes it really easy to us it, especially the integration with email. The "today" view is up to now the fastest way to get an idea what needs to be done today. Having three different ways to look at your actions (by context, entities or projects) gives you a lot more overview than what I previously had.

(Not) Getting in my way
Eric Mack argued in a "taking notes podcast", that one of the key features of a time management system is the ability to not get in the way: even one click to many is unconsciously preventing your adaption of such a system. eProductivity does that most of the time and especially more often than my other tools I used before. Draging an email to a context makes it an action. Different ways to look at your actions (not doable at all on paper). Linking information to actions and the info is one click away.

But sometimes it does force me to do this "on click to many". The most important one is the "drag email to context" (or "copy email into"): afterwards it asks me to what I want to do with the original email and my answer is in 99%: put it into folder "done". To do this it is click on 'put into folder' -> wait a few seconds to get the picklist up -> choose the folder -> ok. This was my number one resistance to using eProductivity and putting every email into an action. Hopefully there will be a way to do away with that in future versions (feature request filed :-) )

Another one is the dialog which comes after "mark complete" of an action in a project: usually I have my actions sorted (possible in the projects) or multiple action in my todo, so just pick the next or one of the "today"-marked and don't bother me...

Linking information to reminders
Also great is the ability to link emails, actions, calendar items and projects. It's such a timesaver to have the ability to have all the information linked into a action or callendar item (at least if the information is/was contained in an email) or actions linked together into projects. I just wish if there was an toolbar button to link arbitrary notes documents (or even things outside of notes).

Working on your action lists: Stream vs. structure
I'm a very structured person: I need it and I feel uncomfortable without structure. In a lot of ways, eProductivity and GTD helps me with that by giving me structure in my todos/actions, at least on the filling level. On the other hand, on the last step when working on my action lists, it misses structure: the context lists are not ordered at all, you always have to pick one action after completing the last one. At least you have different ways to look at your actions (context, by relevant persons, by projects), but urgency and priority are missing.

Other time management techniques argue for planning the day in advanced (-> the evening before, adding puffers and including timeslots for "unplanned events") and ordering your actions by priority/urgency (Eisenhower method). The only way to emulate this is by using the today flag, but that way I can only chose the items, not the time when I want to do them. This "problem" seems to be build in, at least I found that the GTD book also argued for this kind of "stream" time management without predefined order or priorities.

What I also miss is some kind of "daily review coach", which lets me pick actions for the next day, review my callendar and fit them in and then present me a schedule for my next day.

GTD - the book
I didn't know GTD when I started using eProductivity and read the book during the last weeks. The biggest "aha" moments came in the last three chapters when it came to the "big picture" view ("The Power of the key principles" -> seems that David Allen really likes bottom up :-)) and I think I will re-read the book with that knowledge.

Some of the ideas in the book are really great (I reordered my paper stuff into folders.... What a great feeling afterwards! That alone was worth the book!). Most of the action stuff was intuitive with eProductivity (at least I did them that way when using eProductivity without reading the book :-) ) What I didn't like was the "stream vs structure" view of GTD (see above). Anyway: I'm looking forward to what the re-read will bring!

So, to sum it up:
+ Up to now the easiest way to organize my time
+ Really intuitive way to work with your emails and getting on top of them ("inbox zero")
+ Linking information is a great time saver (and could be used much more) .
+ Different ways to look at my action lists make me much more comfortable not to miss something
+ Today view gives me a easy way to know what needs doing today
- "Dragging emails to actions" and "mark complete" have too many clicks
- Stream (vs structured) based action picking doesn't fit my personal working style
- I miss a daily review coach

But even with last negative points: eProductivity wins hands down against all my other tried time and task management tools! And not to forget: the support team is great! :-)

Thanks to Eric Mack and his team for this opportunity! So lets hope they will let me go on with eProductivity :-)