Today I installed the eProductivity template on Raewyn’s computer to get ready for her changeover (to GTD) tomorrow.  Here’s how the installation went (includes a few pitfalls and hints).

Downloading Templates

 Photo by John Trainor

Raewyn uses IE on her PC (I use Firefox) and I immediately hit a little strife.  I went to eProductivity.com and clicked on “21-Day Free Trial” in the right hand sidebar.

This gave me a 5 step process.  Having already completed the first 4 steps I selected “5.  Try it! Use eProductivity for 21 days at no cost.”

This took me to the download page.  I filled in all the necessary boxes and clicked the “Download” button next to “eProductivity for Lotus Notes Mail:

Unfortunately, at this point Internet Explorer showed the bar across the top saying it had disallowed the download and even though I clicked it and told it to allow the download, I simply got taken back to the download form… with all the previously entered boxes now empty!

After trying this twice, I went into Tools > Internet Options > Security and changed the medium security to “Custom Level” and allowed all downloads without prompting.

Next time, the download worked like a charm and I also downloaded the “eProductivity Reference Database” (but I won’t address the reference database in these posts).

Where to save the templates

This was a little more complex…

The very complete and clear installation instruction said to save to the local Notes Data Directory (typically C:\Notes\Data or C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Data).

But our set up here as done by our IT people is different, so how did I locate the right place?

Using Lotus Notes and selecting File > Preferences > User preferences I found that the local database directory was listed as D:\Lotus Notes.  I ended up checking with IT and they suggested D:\Lotus Notes\Mail\People ??  Go figure.  I put the templates there and they work just fine.

Opening Lotus Notes

One of the first and important instructions relates to opening the Notes Workspace and closing all other tabs.  This specifically applies to the “Welcome Page” tab.

This could have been a problem as our setup is such that the welcome page opens by default and does not give an option to close!  If you have this problem you need to change your default Home Page.  Simply right click on (say) workspace in the bookmarks and choose “Set bookmark as home page”

Replace Database Design

Then it’s simply a case of replacing the database design.  Follow the instructions which are very clear and concise.

Hints

Prior to starting Raewyn out I made sure we would categorise projects and actions to make sure we used the right naming protocol from day one.  See this post for more information.

I also made sure that under eProductivity > Preferences >General > Email “Expand Right frame in In-box view” was checked.

Tomorrow – Onwards and upwards towards in-box zero and an empty brain!

Related posts:

1. Archiving email with eProductivity My Lotus Notes email database was getting a bit large. ...
2. Warning: If You Use Lotus Notes Without eProductivity You’re Working More Hours Than You Need to I hated Lotus Notes! This is the second organisation that...
3. GTD and eproductivity Opportunity This is for all those people who use Lotus Notes...
4. eProductivity Reference Tutorial Vaughan Rivett has posted a good article on how good...
5. eProductivity Journals and Knowledge Management The more I look into “Getting Things Done” (GTD), eProductivity,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.