Eric blogged last night about his disappointment that his online emeetings provider, GoToWebinar, sends an "Add to your Outlook calendar" link in confirmation emails.
I agree, that sucks. But the question I asked Eric in comments was, have you tried the link? I bet it work with Notes, too.
Unfortunately, the Outlook calendar event link is created and included in the event confirmation automatically. We have no control over it. Still, it's a reasonable question. I'd like to see a link for Notes users or, better still, just a generic calendar event link that any calendar app can understand.
And I was right. The link is to an .ICS (iCalendar) file, and Notes 8.x supports these just fine. It works great with our partners like TripIt, and of course when cross-calendaring outside your Notes environment.
Eric quickly posted another blog entry that "It's easy to open .ICS files in Lotus Notes 8.5x". Win.
Except it isn't. Eric's chosen vendor could use some enlightenment. To carry a theme asked at and after Lotusphere of what you can do to help Notes in the market, when you encounter such links that claim to "add to Outlook", try them out with Notes -- they'll usually work. If they work, contact the vendors who are advertising Outlook links and ask them to change their wording to "add to my calendar". The reality is the iCalendar format is supported by several vendors, so while it would be great to ask for Notes by name, at least we can un-list the other guys by name. Your vendors will listen to you as paying customers more than they will listen to me as the producer of Lotus Notes. We do what we can from the IBM side, but if enough end-customers speak up, sites will change. I've seen it happen.
Link: Eric Mack: This is embarrassing: Add to your Outlook Calendar >
Link: Eric Mack: It's easy to open .ICS files in Lotus Notes 8.5x >
Post a Comment
- 2
Bill Brown | 4/1/2010 9:25:55 AM
ical/vcal has been supported since R6. { Link }
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Carl Tyler http://www.epilio.com | 4/1/2010 9:42:55 AM
@2 Not as a clickable resource from desktop, web browsers etc. The user had to choose File Import on the iCal file, so to do this in R6, the user would need to click the link with the right mouse button, save as ical then open notes, then go to calendar, then file import.
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GarryL | 4/1/2010 9:51:03 AM
I think the bigger picture is the integration from applications into Outlook. It happens with all sorts - ERP, CRM etc etc. Some of the recent ERP systems we looked at recently had integration with Outlook that we simply would not be able to use as it was 'Outlook only'. Notes was not even on the radar.
Taking a bigger picture, the cost of implementing ERP or a CRM system typically dwarfs the cost of putting Outlook in so could just get included in the overall cost if the company felt they wanted all the bells and whistles.
The clients may be at reasonable parity now, but I wonder how Notes can compete with the extensive development vendors have gone into to link with Outlook.
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tom oneil http://www.codepress.net | 4/1/2010 10:07:03 AM
Does Lotus take control of the .ics extension upon installation? I always thought I had to associate it with .ics instead of the pre-installed outlook client.
Anyway... this argument reminds me of when I tell someone to go "Topeka" (formally known as Google) something. When someone asks where to find information on the movie "Surviving Christmas," I tell them to Google it. Granted... they might go back to their desk and use Bing or Yahoo but... the user understood my statement.
If there's a link that says "Add to Outlook," a majority people understand that it means "add to my calendar." Change the title of the link to "Add to Lotus Notes" and I can guarantee there will be a lot of Topeka searches for "Lotus Notes."
If the link said "Add to calendar," there is no guarantee that it will add to the user's calendar application. Will it add to my personal google calendar? Probably not.
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Joseph Hoetzl http://www.josephhoetzl | 4/1/2010 11:28:13 AM
FWIW, taking Ed up on the idea, I checked with Webex, on the site just has "Add to Calendar", but, in the invitation emails that go out it states:
"To add this meeting to your calendar program (for example Microsoft Outlook), click this link:"
But, when I clicked on either, which does in fact open a .ics file, the Notes client comes to the foreground, but, it doesn't seem to do anything with it.
Is there a simple way to re-register Notes to handle these?
I'll write to webex and ask about getting the invitation changed...
- 8
Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 4/1/2010 1:43:45 PM
Another issue we have been having with the recent webcasts for ConsltantInYourPocket is that the GoToWebinar calendar links imported into Notes are often missing key information that is seen when importing the same into Outlook
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Rob Novak http://www.lotusrockstar.com | 4/1/2010 6:14:09 PM
Concur with Chris - I added one of these from GoToWebinar to my Notes calendar today and all the details were missing. I am checking the details on the ics file format they provide against the standard to figure out who's at fault.
- 10
Joseph Hoetzl http://www.josephhoetzl | 4/2/2010 10:02:04 AM
Just following up - received a response - they are going to let us control the email content...
"You will see an "e-mail templates" link on your site admin page. From there you will be able to edit any automated e-mails that are sent from the system."
While I agree that they are something of a competitor, and as much as I'd like it to be handled via Sametime, customers can be odd about things, and that is one of them. So many seem to not care about gotomeeting or webex, but for "self-hosted" services like Sametime would be, they don't usually go for it.
LotusLive Meetings would only cover a portion of the way we use Webex currently...
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Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 4/2/2010 11:39:14 AM
So I wonder how this works for the renamed "Outlook Express" to Windows Mail. I would imagine there's a lot more free Windows Mail/Hotmail users out there than Outlook users due to the shear # of Windows desktops.
I wonder if the various product teams within MS have similar "internal" discussions about the use of the Outlook brand to imply "Microsoft Mail".
I don't think it's a big deal. Since ics is supported in Notes 8.5.x it truly isn't a big deal. I guess if one truly wanted the text changed, they could send a link to somewhere on notes.net/ibm.com that communicates that the other 50 million Lotus Notes users would probably be more inclined to use your service if you stated it "works with" said mail client.
I can understand why some vendors are still reluctant to do this. It was only recently that Notes added support, so I can imaigne they don't like doing it as they would get support calls from people who are on pre 8.5 Notes client which didn't support it, although in reality it would be the users company that would probably get the support call. Where as Outlook has done it since at least the 2003 version.
Obviously Lotus knew how to do it, it helped design the spec for it, Lotus Organizer 98 could handle them. So really, websites should say Add to your Organizer.