Recently, I was talking to someone trying to schedule a meeting with me. She complained that “I’m (me, Ellen) in meetings all the time, I have no free time.” While that is a lovely sentiment, it’s really not completely true. Some days are meeting heavy, some are not. I wasn’t sure why she said this, so she elaborated. “I’m looking in Lotus Notes for free meeting times, and you have every day from 8-6 blocked off.”
Seriously?
I investigated further. Oh, here’s where it gets good. Seems that Lotus Notes has a setting where you can list what times you are generically “available.” My times for availability are 11:00 PM - 02:00 AM, 03:00 AM - 07:00 AM. Because, apparently, I work on Pitcairn Island and keep 9-5 kind of hours.
Since I never set that, I tried to reset it and the system would not accept any changes to the time. I am destined to head to the South Pacific, apparently. I figured it wasn’t worth torturing the rest of the company to struggle for meeting times with me in the middle of the night, so I called the help desk to fix the problem. I got an email confirmation that a support ticket was generated, and the problem was described as so:
Incident Description: Can’t change anything in Prefs. Her calendar shows her as being busy always
Sigh. The help desk understands me.
April 10, 2008 at 5:50 am
If I understand the problem correctly, you have added times that has crossed over the midnight (from one day to the next). You cannot do this. When it says Monday’s time for example, it’s only a 24 hour time frame, no crossing over to Tuesday. You will need to set up your times for example if you are working from 11:00 pm to 1:00 am, then on Monday you have 11:00 pm - 11:59 pm and on Tuesday you will have 12:00 am - 1:00 am.
In order to re-enter these times, wipe out what you have in the time fields, deselect all the days and save the preference. Then go back in and put in the correct times.
April 10, 2008 at 11:27 am
One thing that I learned from a reliable source is that you can’t see the Dr. without an appointment!
Appointments for me are best in the morning, sort of like “flights” - take-off is generally on time.
True - some people always like to give of the impression of being “booked” which is not always the case.
I am trying to find out about a system called ACT which helps businesses to be on the same page and to support follow through since I always tend to be juggling jobs.
You inspire me to look into this!
Hope you had a good, walk, run!
April 11, 2008 at 12:21 am
“I’m looking in Lotus Notes for free meeting times, and you have every day from 8-6 blocked off.”
Whoa. Thanks for the idea, Ellen. So, that’s how I get out of people trying to schedule more meetings with me.
April 11, 2008 at 7:51 am
Kevin, I’m going to try that, thanks!
Patricia - I may have been running early yesterday morning, in the fog, but you were up, dressed and pretty. I think that takes more effort!
Darci - it’s worked like a charm. I’m now questioning why I’m even thinking of fixing it!
April 11, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Hang in there - the Exchange/Outlook migration is coming soon to an office near you.
April 14, 2008 at 11:18 am
[...] take that long (ok, 3 days) for IT to get back to me and fix my Notes so that it reflects when I am actually at work. Last week, they sent up D., the IT guy to do the job. I’m sure it was under duress on [...]