Jan Schulz

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!

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 :-)

Another post about my road to productivity heaven with eProductivity. This time how I plan my next day.

When I've lots of things to do, I like to plan my next day on the evening before that day. For this, eProductivty gives me the possibility to flag action to be done today. The are then visible in the today view (my default on opening the mailfile), which lists all calendar items for today, the due actions for today and everything I've taged as "do it today".

Usually I go through different views to look out for the tasks I want to do on the next day. This involves looking at my current projects ("projects and actions" view) amd the contexts I will "visit" that day. (I would also like to look at my high priority actions, my urgent ones and the actions for the various people I meet, but there are currently no views for that or the view is not compatible to my setup.)  To mark an action for "today", just click the small green flag and it will get flagged:



After that some short quiet time remember everything I might have missed yet and I'm ready to go to bed :-)

The next day I'm greeted by a nice view with all the planned actions on it:



What I'm still missing is a possibility to put this actions into an order or assign them timeslots. No idea if that's actually possible with notes. This would be great to have to implement in full the other time management techniques I learned (privatization with the eisenhower method, doing the time allocating for actions the day before, adding buffers)
.
Somehow this soundes like small weekly review, but just that I do that daily and not that extensive. As far as read the GTD book yet, there were no recommendations or actually tips on how to plan the day, so it seems that I either missed that part (or didn't understand it) or that GTD is missing this :-)

I like ctrl+m: a new mail memo with one key presskeypress even in totally different DBs. Never suspected that I can have Actions (and I suspect Todos in normal Mailfiles, just a different key), too.
This menu is available from everywhere in Notes, so just press alt, c,m,a (one after another) and you have a new action. Great!

Ok, its not Thursdays, but at least "show & tell". :-) Happy weekend!

This is another blogpost about my experience with eProductivity, this time about working with my lists of ToDos.

Your ToDos (or actions in eProductivity speak) can become quite a lot. To get an overview of this pile, there are different ways to divide them or better "look at" them: by context and by projects.

Context is one of the key concepts of GTD: sort your actions by context so every time you have a telephone nearby or a computer or are @Work or @Home, you know where to look for work and it lets you keep an overview over your todos. eProductivity implements that by some categories and views (default and user specified!) , where you can sort in your actions and view them:


Unfortunately I have some problems with that as I am/was a student: my room is my workplace, together with telephone, laptop and online connection. So basically everything is @Home. And most of the rest isn't getting filled up and I felt like I overlook some actions in all my @Home ones. And that was exactly the feeling I wanted to leave behind with my "old style" todo handling. So something needed to be done. First try was sorting "leisure" items into a different box, which helped a lot. Anyway, I still think I have to split up the rest, but currently I've no idea how: there isn't really a hard border between the rest, where I can divide them up. Any Ideas?

Another way to sort your actions is by linking them to a project. A project is defined as something, which takes several actions to get done. This divides most of my actions quite cleanly and is currently my default way to get a grip on the "important" actions. There is also a view "projects and actions", which sorts all actions by projects and so is almost as informative as the context views and I can even drop stray actions into projects. Using the projects itself is also possible (all actions are shown there too), but most of my projects start out with a brainstorming session and a lot of small actions and so the small embedded view does not give the same overview as the view. It's even possile to sort the action, but only in the embedded view of the project, not the view (feature request sent :-) )

[there is another way to look at your actions: usually you fill in the action as "Category - Action title", where category is usually a person you need to contact. If you use advanced settings and subcategories, there is a view, which shows all actions by this categories ("Actions by entity", burried a bit in the preferences in "Navigation -> advanced"). As I only use categories, not subcategories, it only shows "uncategorized entities" and is so unuseable for me :-/ Lets see if the next version makes this view available for category only users :-) ]

What I miss
I use eProductivity as a dumping ground of all my actions (as a "trusted system" and to get them out if my mind) and then sort through them to get to the ones I need/want to do and plan the next day. There is still some lingering feeling, that there is some urgent or important action burried in my pile and I would overlook that. Actions which are due today show up in the today view (if set to advanced and I got a reply to my bugreport, that there will be some more improvements in the next version) and you can sort most views by due date, so that helps already (here is an ideajam for a specific view). Also you can assign priorities to actions, but I haven't found a way to look at them in that way, sorted by priority.

Anyway: even if there is still some of this "do I overlook something important" feeling, it isn't as high as with any other system I've used so far. In this regard, in times of stress, eProductivity really took a lot of anxiety out of my life. :-)

So, my first days and weeks with eProductivity are gone and here are some impressions:

The Installation gave some hickups because of some errors while replacing the design, but replacing the design on the server (convert -u ) fixed that in the end. Could be related to my frequent changes (ONTF ME releases, Mail8, etc) of the template and having editor access normaly. But this let my discover some really great thing: the support done by the eProductivity Team. The response times to my installation problems were hours and I don't even pay for the license! Thanks to Ian Armstrong and Eric Mack for this great service!


The menu entry "Send Feedback" (opens a dialog, which asks some basic questions -> bug, feature requests, general feedback) is a great idea for such a product! (They might have some different thoughts after my frequent uses of them, though :-) ) Finally some easy way to get in contact with the developers. At least with me it encouraged me to send small things, which I noticed and wouldn't normally bother about, back to the developers. There is also the eProductivty ideajam which I discovered after some nagging from Eric Mack.

Learning my way around the application was easy after the "tutorial" but costumizing to to my needs was an interesting experience: most of my Todos are "@Computer" and after adding my first todos I only added to that context. I finaly settled on several "roles", which I have, when using the computer (as student, as member of my student organisation, as notes programmer), which at least spread that out a bit and made my todos more organiced, at least to me.

I also started using it as a project management tool for my small projects (so no time plans, only splitting it up into projects). This feels great because finally I've found some way to bring my planing together with my computer and in a way, which does feel natural and not "getting in the way". Before that was either some paper based planning or email/notepad/mindmanger based docs, which got old after the initial planing. If I only had this when I started my diploma thesis... :-)

I also got to inbox zero for the first time in years (although there were never more than two pages full of mails). Yay!

I'm still not sure if I use eProductivity how it was thought to be: using GTD methodology (I started reading some ressource about it). But the greatest thing which eProductivity did for me after only a week was giving me a feeling, that I'm in control of my tasks and that I have one system, where everything comes together. And in the end it is about "getting things done" and that's what this feels like!  :-)

Nice: Eric Mack gave me the opportunity to evaluate the eProductivity mailtemplate and blog about the experience and get a free license if I like it in the end. Thanks for that Eric! :-) So this is kind of an introductory posting and then over the next weeks I will share how my little experiment with eProductivity proceeds.

I think my experience will be unique as I've just finished with my diploma thesis and I'm currently looking for my first job. So basically I've not a lot "professional" life to organize right now but just my private one and my point of view will (hopefully) be a little different than all the other guys who gave eProductitivity a try :-).

Up to now I used all kinds of tools to organize my life. My experiences vary from calendars written on paper by hand, a single email in my notes mailfile (which contained all my todos organized by priorities and estimated time), simple inbox unread marks up to several different calendar tools (including KOrganizer and Notes).  Usually the problem was, that the tool got in the way and it was much more overhead to organize or get a big picture view than to not use the tools. But in times of stress or more complicated things (even a student has that sometimes :-) I usually got back to to one or the other: mostly paper and color coding...

I also must say that I don't have any experience in "Getting things done": my only experience with time and self management is the book "slow down speed up" by Lothar J. Seiwert (highly recomended!) and several ways, which do not work in one way or the other :-).

So what I'm basically looking for is an app, which

• collects and keeps track of all the little things I have in my mind
• lets me organize my actions/tasks and present it to me in organized forms
• lets me quickly prioritize my tasks
• lets me plan my next day

And most of all: does this without getting in my way.

So after ready all the nice reviews of eProductivity I got curious and had a look at the video postet and the evaluation database. What got me hooked was the ease with what you could add new tasks and keep them organized: just drag and drop an email and you have a new task ready and have it (almost) automaticaly asigned to a context or a project

So after doing the nice tutorial in the evaluation database, I send in feedback and got this chance.