Lotus Workplace Primer, and How Hiway Federal Credit Union uses Lotus Domino.

Tuesday, January 10^th, 2006 - 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM
Location: Hiway Federal Credit Union (see bottom of this page for map & directions)

At our last meeting we had talked about what we wanted to see in our future meetings. The most popular idea was simply finding out how other companies in our area are using Notes. Hiway Federal Credit Union has not only graciously offered their facilities for our meeting, but Dave Boden, VP of Technology, will give us an overview of how Lotus technology is used at Hiway Federal Credit Union! Hiway is a mid-sized company that has a significant number of Notes applications, so we'll all likely get a few ideas to bring back to our own organizations.

Jeff Anderson of Comtech Group will be speaking about Lotus Workplace, starting with a general primer, then he'll explain how two companies are using it. Jeff is a former Lotus Notes consultant/developer who joined Comtech as their IBM Software Product Manager, so he's able to speak from a viewpoint of how it contrasts with Lotus Notes and other products we're familiar with.

Agenda:

45 minutes: Lotus Workplace
15 minutes: Break & Breakout for informal discussions
45 minutes: Hiway Federal Credit Union
15 minutes: Group business - next meetings, ideas, etc

Meeting Notes

David Boden, VP or Technology at Hiway Federal Credit Union in St. Paul began the meeting (he invited anyone that lives in St. Paul to become of member of the Hiway Federal Credit Union).

David described how his company was able to develop a highly functional intranet from the ground-up based on Lotus Notes. Nearly everything that an employee needs is at their fingertips when they login to their Notes client each day. David and his team of two developers focused on consistency throughout all application in order to flatten the user learning curve. Their work has brought great success.

They have also developed a 'Project' application similar to the Teamroom template that Lotus provides. It is very efficient and easy for them to create a new 'Project' for any organization in the company that needs it. They also developed a way to bring all tasks, ToDo's and Meeting notices into one place for each person to see what they need to do and when. You may contact David Boden for more information about his approach to leveraging Lotus Notes at Hiway Federal.

Thank you Hiway Federal for an excellent presentation and for the accomodations and wonderful food.

Jeff Anderson presented a primer about the Lotus Workplace offerings. He really shed light on the subject for many of us. He explained Workplace Collaboration Services and Websphere portal and how they relate to each other. He also reiterated IBM's resolve to continue evolving and innovating the Notes/Domino software for the foreseeable future.