WordPress for BlackBerry

Hopefully this will allow me to update the blog more often…

http://blackberry.wordpress.org

Subcategories in Outlook?

In Lotus Notes, I was able to create subcategories in particular for my contacts.  For example, in Lotus Notes, if I entered “Personal\Family” and “Personal\Friends,” Lotus Notes organized Family and Friends as subcategories under the Personal category.  Whether it’s contacts I’ve converted or a newly created contact, Outlook doesn’t interpret the backslash character (“\”) as a separation for nested categories.  Instead  “Personal\Family” and “Personal\Friends” exist as additional categories on the same level as the “Personal” category.  If I view my contacts by category, and collapse everything, it would look like:

+Personal
+Personal\Family
+Personal\Friends

Alternatively, in Lotus Notes it would look more like:

-Personal
    +Family
    +Friends

Is there a special character in Outlook that would provide the same functionality?  Or is it just not possible to have subcategories within Outlook contacts?

It’s been too long…

It’s been too long since my last post.  My goal is to post something new each week.

Migration Tools

As we get closer to migrating from Lotus Notes/Domino to Microsoft Outlook/Exchange, I’ve started researching some migration tools.  Recently, I had the opportunity to test Quest’s Notes Migrator for Exchange.  Although I’m not happy with the time it takes to migrate the data, I do like this tool.  In Quest’s defense, I suspect the time it takes to migrate the data is more a problem with the amount of data and my current configuration.

The Quest tool is installed on my laptop and I ran a test against a 5.5GB mail file.  The first time I ran the migration, I pulled the data from the Lotus Domino server in a geographically remote location to a PST file on my local hard drive.  The remote site is connected by a point-to-point 45MB dedicated link, but the migration still took 5 hours and the resulting PST file was 7.5GB.  I later ran a similar test on the same mail file, but instead of using a local PST file for the destination, I directed the mail straight to the Exchange mailbox.  This process took 9 hours and 15 minutes.  The “size” of the mail file on the Exchange server was 6.8GB.

With over 4TB of data to migrate from Lotus Domino, I’m a little worried about the time and amount of additional drive space needed.  I have talked to Quest, and I realize we will get more data throughput by migrating multiple mail files using several threads and even additional migration workstations.

I hope to review BinaryTree’s tools soon.  In particular, we plan to test the application tool which will allow us to slowly replace our Lotus Domino applications.  More on that later.

You snooze; you lose! [Edited]

If you like to hit the snooze on calendar event reminders in Lotus Notes, clear your eyes.  Microsoft Outlook has 99% percent of the functionality, but there are some slight differences. In one case in particular, Microsoft Outlook falls short.

In Lotus Notes, you must enter the exact number of minutes you would like to snooze (Figure 1).

Figure 1

In Microsoft Outlook, you select a value from a drop-down menu (Figure 2).

Figure 2

The first difference is a manually entered integer value in Lotus Notes versus a preset list of default values in Microsoft Outlook.  [Note: When you create a new calendar entry in Microsoft Exchange, you can specify a custom value.] Unfortunately, if you enter a value less than 5 Minutes in the Microsoft Outlook reminder window, it will not work. After more testing, I’ve discovered this is wrong.  I believe I was manually modifying the “5 minutes before start” entry.  If you actually enter “3 minutes” you will get another reminder in 3 minutes.

So if you like to snooze, for 1-4 minutes, you are out of luck!

On a positive note (no pun intended), I prefer some of the values in the Microsoft Outlook drop-down list. Although I have been known to snooze for 10 minutes, then 5, then 3, then 1, I have also been know to try to calculate the number of hours in 999 minutes.

Send and File…

In Lotus Notes one could easily file a message in a specific folder by clicking the Send and File… button (Figure 1), select the folder (Figure 2), and click the OK button.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Although Microsoft Outlook doesn’t have a single click button to do this, it does offer the same functionality if you follow the steps below.

1. With the message open, click on the Options tab from the action menu (Figure 3).

Figure 3

2. Click on the Save Sent Item button and select the Other Folder… option (Figure 4).

Figure 4

3. Select the folder where you want to save the message and click the OK button (Figure 5).

Figure 5

4. Complete the message and click the Send button (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Change is inevitable!

The company I work for is migrating from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook. I’ve decided to chronicle my experiences in an effort to share information with other people in a similar situation. I hope this site will help others and in turn help me with this transition.