My Start with Lotus Notes

I was 23 the first time I heard the words Lotus Notes. I was just out of college working for MCI Worldcomm. My job was brutally boring. Employees would fax in their request for training and I would renter the information on a computer to produce class lists for the instructors. My boss was a great guy that told me whenever I had extra time to go to any class I wanted.

I took everything from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, all the Microsoft office courses, Business Analyst courses and Lotus Notes.

Lotus Notes Was Easy To Learn

I’d never taken a programming class in my life and if you’d told me I’d grow up to be in the IT works I would have laughed at you. But there I was and it made sense. It was so easy to create forms and views to report the data on. I was able to pretty quickly create an application where people could sign themselves up for class essentially putting myself out of a job but I’ve never been one to create unnecessary work.

The Lotus Notes Solution…

• A form that had course information. Course category, course title, date, times, description, location and instructor.
• Views that displayed the courses by date, title, location etc.
• Prospective students could look over the offerings and with the click of an action button bring up a form to register.
• They’d provide their name, department, supervisor and contact details.
• Once registered the capacity of the class would reduce by one and confirmation emails were sent to the employee and their supervisor.
• Each day the instructor would get an email showing everyone that signed up for their course.
• I even incorporated certificates of completion.

After effectively eliminating my position in the technical training department I was transferred to HR to work on automating benefits sign up, exit interviews and many more applications. In fact, I have never come across a business need that required a software solution I have not been able to solve using Lotus Notes.

Domino, XPages and Bootstrap

Being able to take Lotus Notes to the web has made programming apps even easier. I will cover more of the solutions in future blogs. If you need help with any Lotus Notes (now HCL Domino) don’t hesitate to contact us here at BeWib.