Using Bleedyellow.com Connections Activities

05/08/2008 09:15 PM by Chris Toohey

As I'm working on a community project (more on that once we get past the initial stages and flesh out some more details, etc.) with an individual that is outside of my organization, I needed a simple solution that would allow me to create and maintain a Project/Task/Sub-Task to do list that we could both work from. Enter bleedyellow.com's Connections Activities.

Now, if I'm any indication of Joe Notes-Guy, I hear of all of these amazing capabilities that are becoming available to use "Notes shops"... but I don't get the chance to really flesh them out. This is one of the reasons that I both jump at chances where I can utilize these new solutions or functionality within established solutions, and why I try to share them with those of you that find yourself in this same situation: life interrupts technology playtime.

It's with that in mind that I bring up Activities, which is absolutely cool. With my 8.0.1 Lotus Notes client, I can turn on the Sidebar Activities application and it's really an afterthought of functionality - it's right there. Makes you wonder if the integrated To Do List would get used today if it was always-on at the UI layer, huh?!

As you can see with these screen caps, I've got the projects and their tasks at my fingertips. With them right there, I can imagine that collaboration with project teams that reside outside of the physical location (or, for this community project, both outside of the location and into a global community!) is going to be MUCH easier - kinda like Tweeting is MUCH easier with the Lotus Notes client Sidebar application TwitNotes.

As for this project that I'm hinting to... unlike Zephyr and Yellowcake (which I'm positioning as low cost community solutions), the goal of this project is to provide not only 2 open source community-accessible solutions, but also do it utilizing ancillary technologies or spanking-new capabilities within Lotus technologies that us Joe Notes-Guys and Gals just don't get that much of a chance to play with - and via a medium which will lend to hectic schedules.