LinkedIn has partnered with IBM to create a new plugin that integrates its professional social network into Lotus Notes, a popular business desktop client that includes Email, calendar, and IM functionality. The plugin is making its debut to the public at Lotusphere, with plans for its release in the first half of 2009.
For users who spend much of their day ‘living’ in their Email client, the new plugin could be a welcome addition. Its primary purpose is to display information relevant to the people in your Emails, as well as providing a handy way to browse through some of LinkedIn’s most oft-used features (like your news feed and search). However, the plugin does not yet automatically look up the contacts mentioned in your Emails – you’ll still have to click on their names or use the pre-populated search to look them up (automatic lookup is planned for a future release).
The two companies are also announcing LinkedIn integration into Lotus Connections (an internal social networking product for businesses), as well as an option to launch a Bluehouse web conference directly from someone’s LinkedIn profile. Both of these features are slated for some time in 2009, but the companies couldn’t give anything more specific.
For those of you who aren’t Lotus users, check out Xobni, which added LinkedIn support to its Outlook plugin last year. LinkedIn has also built an Outlook toolbar which you can find here.
This is a fantastic idea, save the need for maintaining contacts at all, just have a list of email addresses, and let your contacts maintain themselves.
It’d be great to see it integrated into Outlook without the need for a plugin, but I suppose that’s unlikely to happen.
@Wyatt Peak
there is a plugin for Outlook called Xobni, it also has linkedin lookups.
I know it doesn’t make any difference to the usability to need a plugin, I was actually just making the point that the standard would be adopted more quickly if it were supported natively by Outlook.
There is a wealth of information that is of use to people who have scant details of their contacts in e-mail and it isn’t hard to make the connection, like has been done here.
More interesting still will be such functionality added to CRM systems, so a customer record is only a click away from linking to LinkedIn, Facebook or WeCanDo.BIZ, where there full and correct contact details can come over to the CRM. Better still, you can pick up information of their needs and interests and adapt your relatsionhip with them accordingly.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Oh thats good now you can start using the Lotus even on our Linked In profiles.
Well Collaber, a collaboration tool with wide range of features is also coming soon on Linked In and other social networking websites.
As of this groupware is for free.
It includes more than 15 tools like task tool,polls tool,wiki,address book,applications,notepad,shared folder,file sharing,picture sharing.
It even offers dedicated collaboration servers to the organization for intranet as well as internet communication with teams where ever they are.
This is really awesome and really worth it.
The support is pretty good.
Shame they don’t try harder to make Notes user friendly – then people might care about integrating with interesting things.
When did you last have a look at Notes? Until 7.0, they kept their clunky handmade interface. Notes 8.0, however, is the first Notes version to have its user interface built on top of Eclipse RCP. It is significantly different, and more user friendly than any previous version.
Well – I am only on version 7 – so I’ll have to take your word about 8, but to be honest – they could only make it better.
Would be nice if LinkedIn would concentrate on getting their page load times to down under 5 minutes before they embarked on plugins
OMG, Lotus Notes? I thought this product joined the deadpool ages ago.
Between Google/GMail and Microsoft Exchange/Outlook, why would anyone possibly want to use Lotus Notes?
Well, I can think of a few reasons:
- because it’s one of the few secure email systems around
- because most of the services a Notes-/Domino-based infrastructure are standards compliant, not just buzzowrd compliant, which makes integration with other enterprise products/services a lot easier
- because development of new applications on top of Notes is a snap
- …
BS on how compliant Notes is. Ever see the markup language generated by Lotus apps? It’s totally incomprehensible outside of the Notes world.
I use it at work. But then again, I’m an IBMer.
@TCCritic Lotus Notes will never die if PricewaterhouseCoopers still uses it across the globe for their communications.
Secondly, is this integration with LinkedIN the social networking feature that was quoted by Lotus Notes to be becoming?
@TCCritic – OMG u have no clue about lotus notes at all, fyi email is just 28% of lotus notes functionality, 72% is a application platform dev’t for workflow, rock-solid security, RAD, web 2.0, dynamic datastore, etc..
If they weren’t already stuck with a huge install base, no one in their right mind would select Notes as a platform for doing workflow or database apps.
And even this amazing new UI redesign, it still doesn’t look like a normal Windows app.
I’ve talked with a number of IBM employees and even they hate Notes.
I want an email client that’s 100% focused on email and great usability. Notes fails on both fronts.
No seriously. People still use Lotus Notes?
“No seriously. People still use Lotus Notes?”
Yes. 100 million+ users globally
More exact figures:
- 46 000 companies use Lotus Notes
- 140 million licenses
I’m just a user principally for client work, but without the significant, institutional client base of old industry – financial services, etc… – Notes would have justifiably joined the deadpool long ago. But the IBMers can continue to comment here instead of actually making that product relevant.
My company used lotus notes, but we’re making plans to switch to google docs. Ho hum.
Dan
UTon Inc
http://mitraicion.blogspot.com
Great features and great ideas all. But I can’t help thinking that it’s, uhm, too serious? Kind of too “adult”? From working with gen-yers and gen-zers, this is too corporate and will likely be replaced by another external platform. It would be interesting to see this made into something that incorporates more fun into it.
Yet another recent improvement to email. Email is due for a renaissance and it is slowly happening. Nice job.
Dave
CMO
http://www.wrapmail.com
I’m with TCCritic and Tyler: why would anyone still use Notes with all the free or cheap alternatives out there. My guess is that Notes user base is primarily composed of:
- IBM Employees (a large enough number alone to insure some user base)
- Legacy users who have tons of messaging data locked up in their Notes databases.
Before anyone responds with some customer list of F500 companies or numbers on Notes adoption rates and year-over-year growth, let me add that no one cares.
Notes 8 is a much better user interface than 7. The problem is that there’s still not a lot of intuitiveness in where they put their menu options. I still can’t select text in an email, right click on it and choose “add link”. I have to go to some menu option at the top of the app, then choose something like “Create” then choose something called “link hotspot” then type in the address in a tiny little window. That’s not user-friendly at all. Shouldn’t take me 4 steps to do something that should only take one. Also things like automatically making a link in my email if I type a URL should be common sense…still doesn’t happen in Lotus Notes 8.
There’s also a lot of options in Lotus Notes that most normal users would never touch…and all the commonly used items are buried within the “techy” options. I’m a techy myself and it’s horrible.
That being said, there’s also a lot of government agencies that still use Lotus Notes. They have a much larger client base then you think. But if they could clean up some of the confusion in their interface and add some needed tweaks to things like their RSS reader it would be a much better application.
http://www.tech...-more-linkedin/
Lotus Notes Soon To Become Even More LinkedIn
@Scott – I created the above link (through my notes browser) by dragging the tab into this comment box – don’t know how hard that is!!!
@Microface – Free and Cheap – yep, that’s what your grandma uses to distribute (read:email, also referred to as outlook) photo’s of her grand-kids, rather than “Sharing” or “Collaborating” which is what businesses want to do with information.
@CBASS – Yep, that’s why all the cross patform applications “work like a standard windwows app” – Not!
@Nick – Ever used ENTER, BACKSPACE, TAB, INSERT, CTRL+M or ESCAPE, they really are better short cuts than CTRL+>, CTRL+<, (no equivaent), (no equivalent), CTRL+SHIFT+M, Escape used in Outlook, nice to see MS adopting Escape in Outlook 2003 to close a window…
@CBASS & @Nick, who said MS got the GUI right – maybe you just fallen into the trap of becoming familiar with MS designed software, please don’t tell anyone at Apple or Adobe that their interfaces are “Bad”, or anyone who uses Word that you go to the “Insert” menu to insert something – unless it’s a table, you go to the “Table” menu to choose “Insert Table”. Grin!
Or how about F9 in Word refreshes fields, F9 in Excel refreshes formulas, F9 in Outlook receives email (refreshes the inbox) but F5 is used in Explorer to Refresh the screen!
C’Mon guys if you want to get into Notes bashing, at least come up with something more original than “it looks bad” – so does a Combine Harvester, but it does a better job than a Ferrari towing a reaper (which still looks kinda silly).
Mat-
Keep telling yourself that businesses need BloatWare like Notes to “share information”. For large Notes shops, I’m sure the cost of switching is still prohibitive but getting lower every day. For anyone considering a new sharing/collaboration tool needed to run their enterprise, no one is going to consider Notes. This is the Obama generation of users…not the Carter administration.
Glad to see that some are still making a living off trying to install/configure/justify Notes to large corporations. Good luck with that – maybe CA will come along and buy out Notes from IBM and keep them alive for another 20 years.
@Microface,
You are so missing the value proposition that Notes provides. Last year I was involved with a number of Exchange -> Domino migrations, 5 of those were companies with less than 100 employees (I’m sure you would concur that 100 employees is not a large corporation).
One of those companies was looking at purchasing licensing for it’s financial application so all employees could SEE sales and order history for their customers – licensing cost $50,000.
Lotus Notes licensing $10,000. Financial package licensing for the 4 Finance/Admin users + 1 for Domino access $4,500. 4 hours development to create a Notes Application that talked to the finance package to get the required information AND link it to the CRM system for LIVE data review of customers (now THAT’S Rapid Application Development!) $1,000.
6 Hours to migrate from Exchange to Domino (Including ALL Email/Calendar and Contact Data) AND migrate existing web-site to a Domino Application – $1500.
Total cost $17,000. Saving for this project $34,000.
Now consider that this project was costed purely from the perspective of access to the financial application, you’ve saved your company $34,000 (not an insignificant amount for a small business) and in the process, you’ve also gained an email client, CRM system and a web maintenance tool, getting rid of the licensing for Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL and Dynamics (MORE Savings) in the process. You OWN all of the data, none of it is sitting in the “cloud” on other peoples infrastructure, so you’re not reliant on either an Internet connection or someone else maintaining their systems so that you can access YOUR information.
BTW, “Bloatware” – Lotus Notes install in each users PC is 625mb, the “Financial Client” by itself is 480mb. So for an Extra 145mb you get Email, Calendar, Tasks, CRM, Web Browser, Instant Messaging, VOIP and Online Meetings, and a myriad of plug-ins to review practically any other data you require instant access to.
That’s such a SIMPLE business scenario with REAL cost savings for a small business. Surely you would have to agree that purely from a cost/benefit analysis this SMALL company made the right decision moving to Notes.
RE: still doesn’t look like a normal Windows app.
Maybe because it also runs on MacOS and Ubuntu?
Notes UI is not worse that Gmail’s?
Why does a Gmail reply start with the thread and not with the content?
Why is there an Archive button, but a Compose Message LINK, hidden away in the left margin (Seriously, couldn’t find it the first time).
Why is that reply field so small?
Why do they continue to call it BETA.
What is Bin?
Why is my mail so unsecured if somebody else uses my laptop?
We have also integrated HyperOffice Publisher, a component of our HyperOffice Collaboration Suite, with LotusLive. It was recently previewed at LotusSphere. It is a tool for non experts to easily create intranet and extranet workspaces.
Check it out!
Lets face it… Lotus notes is dead and buried.
Xobni isn’t a bad plugin. But as far as Outlook, if you download Outlook Track-It (download from their site) you have better organization of your emails. it’s a toolbar where you can flag emails to remind you to followup. Recipient can also be reminded.
LinkedIn has to me been an incredible tool in corporate and business-networking, and this new partnership is pretty damn exciting.
If anyone is as interested as me in LinkeIn for business, the networking expert Jan Vermeiren has written a new book called ‘How to REALLY use LinkedIn, and there is a free light version at [how-to-really-use-linkedin.com]
I use Notes as I work for a government agency that uses Notes. I have to say that everyone I have spoken with hates Notes. I’m sure it’s a wonderful tool for application development and data access, as long as everyone who needs to run the application or access the data is also using Notes, which they probably aren’t.
In my opinion, the reason our agency continue to run Notes is that in the short term it costs less to keep upgrading and stick with it than it would to switch over, as long as you don’t consider the time wasted because pretty much no that we work with outside of our agency uses Notes.
If ability and power were more important than ease of use then we would all be working on on Linux boxes.