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If you are passionate about a software product, and that product can make people's lives easier, you should be an advocate. You should shout praises from the rooftops, and show people the advantages of using that product as much as possible.

Over the last three and a half years, that's what I've attempted to do here. But with you, I have a captive audience, one that is coming here specifically to learn all about Lotus Notes and what it can do for you in your business. What if you're responsible for Lotus Notes in your enterprise? How do you go about advocating to people when at best they may not care, and at worst your users are hostile?

That's what I hope to share with you today, I want to give you some tips and guidelines to grow support for Lotus inside your organization.

It Starts With End Users

End users are generally the hardest people to get on board as advocates for your product, but once they've seen the light, they can become some of the fiercest supporters of what you are trying to do. So in my experience, you really need to start with them. There are tons of ways to get your end users engaged.

My first thought is always training. Make SURE your users are well trained in how to use the product. In my experience, most of time when a user dislikes Notes, it's because they haven't figured out how to make it do what they want. If you can help them in that regard, everything else falls into place much easier.

Now if you cannot afford to do proper training, create a space on your intranet with simple instructions to do all of the basics. This could be a webpage or wiki or even a file repository of PDF's, but give them a completely accessible place to find simple information. You would be surprised at how simple things like attaching documents, creating tables, creating bullet points or even filing emails into folders are things that a lot of your users may not know how to do. Giving them a way to find that info on their own without having to feel dumb for asking goes a long way.

In the same vein, send out weekly or monthly tips to your userbase via email. Show users more advanced things like adding words to their spellcheck dictionary, how to share their calendars, setting up their signature, how to enable delivery options. Every time I've done this, no matter where I've worked, or what job I'm in, I've gotten "Thank You" emails in response.

Grow Virally

Another thing you absolutely need to do is determine who the "cool kids" are in your organization. What I mean by that, is find out who the trend setters are, the people that are considered the ones on the forefront of technology. You want to engage these people, and put them to work for you.

What I mean by that is simple. If you get these folks on board with features in Lotus, they will tell others, and now those people will want the same features. There are several low or no-cost things you can put in place that tend to grow virally this way. One is Sametime instant messaging. If you haven't implemented it, you should. IM comes free with your Domino licensing, and getting it in the hands of people that communicate by phone all the time is a no brainer. With Notes 8.X you have a full featured client built into Notes. Get people's pictures in there, allow them to send files, show them how to trade screenshots.

In several instances of putting in Sametime, I saw it grow exponentially in adoption as soon as I added user's pictures. Then all of a sudden everyone wanted to use it. It's simple things like that that can drive adoption.

Another good one is Symphony. Symphony is Lotus' free office suite, but a great way to position it is as a way to read the new Microsoft Office formats. For example, if your organization never upgraded to Office 2007, they still may receive documents in the DOCX format or other proprietary formats for Excel or PowerPoint. Well, you can install Symphony as a way to read those files and convert them for the user. You can also casually inform users that it's a free productivity suite that they can also use at home. This can drive internal adoption, and get it into the user population without forcing people to switch.

Serve your tools from the Domino platform

The next thing you should do is serve up as much of your intranet as you can from Lotus Domino servers. Even if your intranet website is HTML only, Domino is a perfectly capable web server. Once you do, you can start adding in functionality that ties to back-end Domino pieces.

With minimal effort you can add things like bulletin boards, wikis, file storage and more. If you've read my articles over the years, you can find tons of great additions to your intranet functionality.

In my current job, our intranet is completely run via Domino. We use the open-source Blogsphere template as the basis, and have customized it to include document libraries, a company-wide suggestion box, an employee recognition form, links to our company-wide directory, photo albums and more.

Domino developers now have the tools to make really good looking web applications that look nothing like the clunky web apps of old. If you build it well, no one even would recognize your intranet as being on Domino. And that is when you want to remind them.

When people comment on good things about your intranet, make sure to let them know that it runs on Domino. The more they hear Lotus and Domino equated with things they like, the more they may actually like Lotus themselves.

Domino cannot fix every problem

Now even though you want to tout Domino as a great solution in your environment, you have to be careful that you don't try to use it to accomplish everything. Certain things are better served with other solutions, you have to know when and where to use Domino to it's strengths. If you try to fit too complex a problem into the Domino programming model, you will fail.

Pick and choose your battles wisely, and put in Domino development when it makes sense, and hits the platform's sweet spots. That way you are always touting the benefits without having to explain why it may do certain things poorly.

Upgrade Upgrade Upgrade

This one is paramount. Get to 8.5.1 as soon as you possibly can. In fact, always try to keep up with upgrades when you can. Test them fully and make sure they will work in your environment but don't get so far behind.

Many times when I meet up with people who say they hate Lotus Notes, it's because they are still on 6.5 or 7 (or older if you can believe it.) Those older releases were good for their day, but email and internet software has come so far so fast, that if you don't upgrade, users will be left without features they take for granted in other software.

Go Forth and Conquer

Hopefully these tips that I've given you, along with all of the articles I've put out there over the years, can help you get the most out of your Lotus investment. It truly is a remarkable piece of software. It's time to make sure everyone knows it.

About this Series

This series of articles on intranet solutions with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and its companion products is intended to help readers understand the fundamental methodology and capabilities of the product and how to utilize it to deliver a feature-rich, secure, and functional corporate intranet solution. It will include implementation strategies, case studies, industry-tested tips and tricks, and, with your input, true value to the administrator or developer who wants to utilize IBM Lotus technologies to deliver winning intranet solutions.

About the Author

John Roling is the Manager of Information Technology for a North American trade-show exhibit company and a certified Lotus Notes Administrator, Developer and all-around geek. You can keep up with him at his blog (www.greyhawk68.com) or drop him an e-mail at jroling@gmail.com.

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