IBM Lotus Connections on the BlackBerry
Blackberry, Connections    Posted by Darren 2 comments »
I’ll be the first to admit I’m a terrible mobile phone user. I have hardly any numbers at all stored in my address book and therefore always struggle to ring my colleagues if I’m out and about. So, even before I’ve really tried out any of the other aspects of IBM Lotus Connections on the BlackBerry, the Profiles feature is an absolute revelation. All I have to do is go to the Profiles search page, type in the name, search, and then I can call their number or e-mail that person directly from the results.
This being Connections you can also look up a person’s about-me information and background. And as well as looking them up purely by name you can also perform a search on their information and tags.
Dogear (not pictured here) is also worth a mention - you can search for bookmarks, add new bookmarks, view the most popular, view your own, and view the bookmarks of your watchlist (those people you think are interesting).
I have to confess I don’t when this is scheduled to ship, but you can get some more info at the BlackBerry web site. By the way, the features of future products may be subject to change, etc etc.
BlackBerry screenshots made possible by the Rove Mobile Viewer for BlackBerry.
Last year, Lizzie from RIM sneered at the mobile phone I had at the time. Perhaps “sneered” is too harsh a word as she meant no malice, but we recognised the fact that there were better devices available. Now I appreciate that. Better looking, better screen, better battery life… but more importantly, access to e-mail, calendar and Sametime. Despite this being one of the busiest times of my working life, I’ve managed to maintain my no-scroll-bar inbox. Precious minutes in taxis, the bus to the airport terminal, standing in customers’ receptions are opportunities to deal with e-mail. So when I finally get to sit down and do some work, the e-mail workload is diminished.
Having been a Palm user for a number of years (and briefly, I’m sorry to say, a Pocket PC user), I had an expectation that getting the Blackberry to receive e-mail and connect to Sametime was going to take a few configuration steps. How wrong I was… it couldn’t have been easier. I clicked on the enterprise activation icon, I entered my e-mail address and the supplied password, I selected ‘Activate’ from the menu… and that was it. The Blackberry told me it was going through the necessary steps, and when it reached 100% there was my e-mail (identical to what I could see sitting in my Notes 8 inbox) and there was my fully up-to-date calendar. It was too easy - having a technical background I could almost say I’d rather go through some pain to set things up because that’s how you learn how things work. But imagine supplying Blackberries to hundreds of users and it being that simple (because it has to be).
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