Lotus Notes Email, Calendaring and Instant Messaging

The University's centrally supported and delivered communications tools are about to change. A number of factors are driving this new approach:

• York's Information Technology strategy, a key element of which is to leverage technology to enhance the communication and collaboration capabilities of students, faculty and staff
  
• A growing demand for an integrated email and calendaring tool which also contains general "productivity" tools (such as to do lists)
• The increasing need to accommodate PDA (Palm, Blackberry, etc.) integration with email and calendaring functions
  
• The potential of instant messaging as a university-wide tool and the need to establish a standard.

Thus, in 2003 York issued an RFI to gain information on current options and emerging trends in the marketplace. Based in part on this information, but also in large part to leverage existing University investment and expertise, the decision has been made to provide central licensing and support for Lotus Notes calendaring and messaging.

Why Lotus Notes?

Lotus Notes is one of two dominant applications already in use at the University. There are several thousand existing Notes users at York (in Osgoode, Schulich, Glendon and Atkinson), and the university can leverage considerable internal technical expertise for this product. Notes offers flexible client support and good platform coverage, and the product direction aligns well with York's technology direction. Lotus Notes can deliver significantly improved functionality in calendaring and associated productivity tools, greater standardization with lower support costs and, as the project proceeds, a common base of knowledge for users.

This initiative will replace Synchronize calendaring which has been in use at York for many years. This means that faculty members who are currently using Synchronize to meet their calendaring requirements will need to transition to the Lotus Notes calendaring product as Sychronize is phased out (see implementation, below).

Supported services

Lotus Notes will become the only supported tool for calendaring, integrated email/calendaring and instant messaging for faculty and staff, and license costs for the service will be supported centrally.

Even so, while many faculty will undoubtedly choose to take advantage of the email and instant messaging capabilities which will be part of Lotus Notes, standards-based IMAP email (such as Netscape) will remain as a supported service, primarily for students but also for staff and faculty who need or wish to use only email.

Notes Implementation

Lotus Notes email, calendaring and instant messaging will be implemented in phases, with the first phase being startup and testing, planning and design, followed by implementation (this phase will include training and any necessary data conversion). The roll out of Lotus Notes will proceed in phases through 2004 and into 2005, in concert with CNS and local IT support teams.

The instant messaging capabilities of Lotus Notes will eventually be made available for all students.

A quick preview

York's Lotus Notes application has a series of pages accessible by tabs along the top of the window: a Welcome page, Inbox page, Calendar page and To Do page. The Welcome screen shows your recent messages, today's appointments and items to do.

Instant Messaging
Lotus Notes will also have an instant messaging feature which allows you to view and manage your online status (available, away, do not disturb, etc.), initiate chat sessions, and maintain an Instant Messaging Contact List.

Lotus Domino Web Access
For web based access to your email, you will be able to use Lotus Domino Web Access, which provides similar functionality as the Lotus Notes Client.

Questions?

Questions about the Lotus Notes project may be directed to notes@yorku.ca.

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