May 11th, 2005
Open Another Person’s Mail
In the blog entry Switch
To Mail/Calendar/To Do I introduced
the "Switcher" drop down available in your mail file, and explained
it's most basic function. Today I would like to cover one of the
more advanced functions "Open Another Person's Mail".
When you click the down arrow next to
"Mail", the following drop down menu appears. You see the
two "Switch to" options, plus the additional menu choice "Open
Another Person's Mail".
Choosing this menu option brings you
to the "Open Mail File" dialog box, where you first choose an
address book to search, and next select the name of the person who's mail
file you want to open.
Now that is handy, but what if you have
a few mail files that you need to access on a regular basis? For
example, you are an administrative assistant handling multiple executives,
or you work on a support team that monitors several shared mail files.
What if you could have them already listed for you? Lotus Notes
allows you to do this as shown below:
Populating this list is very easy.
In your mail file choose the action "Tools - Preferences"
In the Preferences dialog box switch
to "Access & Delegation" and "Shortcuts to Others' Mail",
then enter the full hierarchical name of people who's mail file you would
like to access, then press OK.
Now of course just choosing a name does
not guarantee you access to their mail! Lotus Notes security requires
that you be authorized to open the database. If you attempt to open
a mail file you do not have access to, you will receive the following error.
I'll explain how to set up access (delegation)
to your mail file in a future tip.
Note: The names you entered are also
now accessible in the "Calendar" drop down. Again, Notes
security comes in to play, meaning you have to have access to the person's
calendar to be able to open it. Lotus
Notes has a very powerful and granular security model,
allowing you to configure different levels of access to your mail and to
your calendar, and even allowing access to some calendar entries (public)
and not others (private). For example, your company's rules may
allow everyone to view people's calendars, but not each other's mail.
