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March 03, 2006
Working with All Day Events in Lotus Notes
One of the most powerful uses of the calendar is to remind me of actions that have to be done today, but can be done anytime today. These are not the kind of things I want to assign to a particular time because they really don't have one. They just need to be done sometime today when I can fit it in. Most calendar programs have some type of "All Day Event" entry for this purpose.
One of the things you may have learned if you are using the Lotus Notes calendar, is that "All Day Events" will mark your day as Busy. This means if you are sharing calendars and have created an All Day Event, such as "Remember to call Bill sometime today", then your entire day appears to be Busy when others view your calendar. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the Busy or Free time. You would instead need to enter the item as a different type of entry on your calendar.
Here is what Lotus Notes does with Free and Busy time with each particular type of entry:
Appointments - Busy, and you need to assign a start and end time
Anniversary - Free, and no time is assigned
Reminder - Free, and you need to assign a start time
All Day Event - Busy, and no time is assigned
A workaround I've been suggesting to our clients on Notes who share calendars is to use the "Anniversary" entry for All Day Events. If it's just a one-day event, then uncheck the "Repeats" box. If it does repeat over more than one day, then click on the Repeats box and change the recurrence to Daily. Anniversaries will not block your day as Busy, so those entries will still appear at the top of your your calendar but not affect your group scheduling availability.
If you are on Notes but don't share calendars with others on your team, then in the words of Gilda Radner, "Nevermind."
By the way, another handy Notes shortcut is Ctrl+M for creating a new e-mail message from anywhere in Notes.
Posted by Kelly at March 3, 2006 09:31 AM
Comments
Thanks for this tip. I am recent convert to Lotus Notes (ver 6.5), who has actually had to use the "Pencil In" feature for even an Anniversary entry to not block out my whole day.
Please keep these posts coming.
Posted by: Arnold at March 3, 2006 04:06 PM
