If your organization uses Lotus Notes, you know about its e-mail capabilities. And if you're using Lotus Notes as a collaboration and workflow management platform, no doubt you have a number of applications to streamline and simplify your business processes. But do you also know that there are hundreds of free Notes plug-ins for the Notes 8 client, which can do everything from tell time, check the weather, keep you up-to-date on breaking news and perform countless other handy tasks?

7 Things IT Managers Should Know About Lotus Notes

The Notes 8 client has a feature call the Sidebar, with several miniature applications called widgets. Widgets allow you to use Notes as a "desktop" for more than just your e-mail. As it's configured when you first start up Notes, the Sidebar has widgets for RSS feeds, Activities, Sametime, and Day-At-A-Glance. Two of these are particularly useful for any Notes user. The RSS widget lets you follow RSS feeds, and the Day-At-A-Glance widget summarizes your Notes calendar. The other built-in widgets require additional software; the Sametime widget integrates Notes with the Sametime Connect client in the Sametime instant messaging software, and the Activities widget requires the Activities server.

The "free" comes into play when you activate "My Widgets" in the Sidebar. Doing so allows you to create and import useful or interesting widgets, such as Notes views, Web sites or additional content feeds. Best of all, they can also be widgets that you import from Google Gadgets. Yes, you can peruse the Google Gadgets catalog and bring them into your Notes desktop.

That certainly opens up a world of opportunities...

To get started, go into your Notes client preferences (File > Preferences) and navigate to the Widgets properties. Select the checkbox option for Show Widget Toolbar and the My Widgets Sidebar Panel. Close and restart the Notes client, and you'll have three new widget icons in your toolbar. Now you're ready to start adding your own widgets.

Lotus Notes 8 Configuring Widgets

The Getting Started With Widgets toolbar button looks like a piece from a jigsaw puzzle. When clicked, it displays a dialog box asking for the type of widget you'd like to create. Select the Google Gadgets option and click Next. The next screen allows you to browse the Google Gadgets directory on the Google website. Take some time to do this beforehand, as the choices can be overwhelming! For instance, you may want to add a currency converter widget, or perhaps a stock ticker widget to watch your investments grow (or shrink, as is more likely the case of late). IT professionals may want to consider adding a widget to use ping and traceroute commands from within the Notes client, or to use the O'Reilly Code Lookup site to find the perfect solution to your current programming challenge.