Chris Doig's Blog

Is that old magic coming back?

After several moribund years, are user groups returning to life? Is that old magic coming back? This evening I attended the Las Vegas Lotus User Group meeting at the Las Vegas Hilton. David Stephens from IBM gave an interesting look at Workplace Services Express. But the real star of the show was Lance Spellman of Workflow Studios. (Sorry David, but you didn't stand a chance next to Lance and his support team).

In true Vegas style Lance dressed up as a "green man" (a play on the Blue Man currently showing in Vegas). Not only is Lance a capable performer, but he did an excellent presentation on using Ajax with Notes views, based on work done by Bob Obringer. After the meeting we stopped in at Quarks Bar and Restaurant. Needless to say Lance fitted right in with the Star Trek theme! Many thanks to Brian Benz for organizing such an excellent user group meeting. My only regret is leaving my camera in the hotel room, otherwise there would be some pictures posted here.

A new way of driving application development

It hit me right between the eyes - one of those "Duh!" moments. So obvious when you read it, but it took such inspiration to write in the first place.

I am referring to the blog entry "Listening to users considered harmful?" In this article Kathy Sierra makes the point that while users can drive incremental changes to a software application, they are not capable of driving breakthrough improvements. This is because they have no way of asking for something they have never conceived of. To quote Kathy: "This is about giving them what they really DO want... but simply don't realize it because they had no way to imagine it." Go and read the article. If you are in software development this will open your eyes...

Using categories to tame your in-box.

Most of us get way too much email. If you are in habit of emptying you mailbox, there is a small design change you can use to help manage this email overload. Based on how email is addressed, you can categorize your in-box to focus your attention on email that matters. There are five ways to categorize incoming email:

Email addressed to you alone. Usually this is of the most interest to you.

Email addressed to you and others.

Email where you are cc'ed. Usually not that important, most often for information only. Usually this is the largest category of emails.

Email where you are bcc'ed. Usually small, but can be important. Especially if you are a manager.

Email from the internet. Often the least important email in a corporate setting.

Of course you can combine this with the R6 email color preferences - e.g. mail email from you boss can have a red background. Usually that mail is the most important! You can add a counter on the left of each category, which is vital when you collapse them. Finally, the new R6.5 "View Show Unread" is also very useful. Turn it on, and the collapsed (or expanded) categories show only the totals of unread email.

Note that this categorizing technique works best in a corporate setting where most of your email is from inside the company. If most of your email is from the internet it won't really buy you anything (because everything ends up in one category). Below is an example from my in-box:



The code behind this is quite simple. In the R6 mail file, the in-box column 1 is hidden and used to calculate the color of rows. Insert new columns in positions 2 to 4:

Add Column 2: The "Counter" Column

Create a "counter" for column 2 in the in-box. Make the formula for the view 1 (i.e. the integer 1). Total the column and hide the detail rows.

Add Column 3: Hidden Column to Sort In-box Categories

Modify this column to change the category order. And of course, remember to hide it.

temp := @LowerCase ( @DbTitle );
@If (        
!@IsUnavailable(ApptUNID ); 1 ;
SMTPOriginator != "" ; 6;
@Contains ( @LowerCase (SendTo); temp) & @Elements ( SendTo ) = 1; 2;
@Contains ( @LowerCase (CopyTo ); temp); 4;
@Contains ( @LowerCase (BlindCopyTo); temp); 5;
3
)

Add Column 4: The In-box Categories

Create a categorized column for column 4 in the in-box. Unfortunately there is no way to pass @username as a parameter into a view. The trick here is that the database title MUST be the user's short name (or you hard code the common name; only feasible for testing the idea). Although @username appears to work in the view, it fails if an other user, e.g.an admin assistant, views the mail file.

temp := @LowerCase ( @DbTitle );
@If (        
     !@IsUnavailable(ApptUNID ); "Calendar" ;
     SMTPOriginator != "" ; "Internet email";
     @Contains ( @LowerCase (SendTo); temp) & @Elements ( SendTo ) = 1; "To " + @DbTitle + " only";
     @Contains ( @LowerCase (CopyTo); temp); "cc";
     @Contains ( @LowerCase (BlindCopyTo); temp); "bcc";
     "To " + @DbTitle + " and others"
)

That's about it. Personally I like this approach very much, and have found it very useful. But I am wary of releasing it to large number of users because I like to minimize the number of changes made to the mail file. However, I would be very interested to hear comments from you folks out there, and possibly suggestions of further extensions.

Project Management Unknowns

I really liked this quote, form  Donald Rumsfeld at a NATO briefing on June 06, 2002:

"There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. . ... It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter."

It's always the unknown unknowns that kill a project. You don't know what you don't know, and the only way to find out what you don't know is to do the project. The next time you do a similar project, there are fewer unknown unknowns, and you are better at estimating it. Some people are "luckier" than others at avoiding problems, but as the champion golfer Gary Player once said "The more I practice, the luckier I get."