10 Minute guide to Lotus Notes Mail 4.5 - 16 - Using Mail Tools In this lesson, you learn how to create stationery, select letterhead, and activate an Out of Office Message. You also learn how to send a phone message and a serial route message. Creating Stationery You can create forms called Stationery that give you the ability to reuse the form and the recipients list on the form over and over again. This is good for weekly reports that you might create through Lotus Notes Mail. You store stationery forms that you create in your Drafts folder. When you want to reuse the stationery form, open the form from Drafts. You may have several stationery forms. Lotus Notes uses a template to build your stationery. The two default templates are: Memo, which is the Mail Message form, and Personal Stationery, which contains two more rich text fields than the Mail Memo form. One rich text field is at the very beginning of the form, before the From field, the other, at the very end of the form after the body field. Figure 16.1 shows a Personal Stationery form using these two fields to add information about the form. Since these are rich text fields, you are free to include graphics, links, attachments, and so on in these fields. Figure 16.1 The Personal Stationery template. To create stationery: 1. Open your Mail database and choose Actions, Mail Tools, Create Stationery from the menu. 2. In the Create Stationery dialog box (see Figure 16.2), select which template you want to use, the Memo or Personal Stationery template. Click OK. 3. Fill in the To: field, and any other fields and text you want to appear each time you use this form. 4. If you want this message to be delivered with options other than the defaults (maybe you want to attach a Mood Stamp, or make this a high priority delivery), click the Delivery Options button on the Action bar to set your preferences. Figure 16.2 The Create Stationery dialog box. 5. Click the Close button on the Action bar. You'll be asked if you want to save this as stationery, choose Yes. A con-firmation message as shown in Figure 16.3 will appear. Figure 16.3 The Save as Stationery confirmation dialog box. 6. Click OK to save and close the form. The body of both templates, the Memo and the Personal Stationery templates, is the same body field as the Mail Message template. This is a rich text field. Figure 16.4 shows this field used to insert a table for a weekly sales report. This example uses the Personal Stationery template with centered, bolded, and blue text in those fields, and a table in the body field for recipients to supply sales call information. With this kind of "design" leverage, you can use your stationery forms for lots of information such as weekly expense or sales reports. You can even link or embed information in the rich text fields as discussed in Lesson 15. Figure 16.4 Personal Stationery created with a table in the body field. You can delete your stationery by selecting it in your Drafts view, and pressing the Del key. Choosing Letterhead Letterhead allows you to pick a template that contains graphics and becomes your default Mail Message form. Once you pick which letterhead you want, you can change it at any time. If you select a letterhead, the letterhead is the form used when you create stationery and use the Memo template as described in the previous section. To select letterhead: 1. Open your Mail database. Choose Actions, Mail Tools, and Select Letterhead. 2. The Choose Letterhead dialog box appears as shown in Figure 16.5, scroll through the list to see which letterhead you want to use. The letterhead appears on your screen as you scroll through the list. Figure 16.5 The Choose Letterhead dialog box. 3. When you find the letterhead you like, click the Done button on the Action bar. 4. Create a new mail message to see your new letterhead in use. To change your letterhead, follow steps 1 through 4 for selecting letterhead. If you want to go back to the original Mail Message form with no letterhead, follow steps 1 through 4 and select Plain Text as the type of letterhead, the first choice on the list of available letterheads. Using the Out of Office Message The Out of Office message allows you to respond to incoming mail messages while you are away from the office. You can create a standard message that will be automatically sent as responses to incoming messages so that people know you are away. This is a good tool for times that you will be away from the office for long periods of time, such as vacations, and will not have access to your mail. You can also create a separate message for a special group of people, who may need some additional information during your absence. For example, you can send a unique message to a special committee or workgroup in which someone else will be handling your responsibilities while you're gone. You can add any special instructions or contact information into that message. To create an Out of Office message: 1. Open your Mail database. Choose Actions, Mail Tools, and Out of Office from the menu. 2. The Out of Office Profile form appears. There are four sections to this form. In the first section, add the dates for Leaving and Returning. Figure 16.6 shows those fields. Figure 16.6 Out of Office Profile form with Leaving and Returning dates. 3. The second section provides a place for you to type your Out of Office message that will be delivered to "most" people. This will actually be delivered to all people, unless you indicate otherwise in sections 3 and 4. Type your message in this section. Figure 16.7 Shows this section. Figure 16.7 The Out of Office message for most people. This is your default message. 4. (Optional) Section 3 enables you to provide a message for a special person or a group of people. To select people for this group, press the down arrow key. When the dialog box appears, select people from your address book. Figure 16.8 shows people selected for this group. 5. Type your special message in the My Out of The Office message for special people/groups section as shown in Figure 16.8. Figure 16.8 People selected for a special message. 6. The fourth section allows you to list people who should not receive any notification at all. Click the drop-down arrow key and select people or groups for this field, or you can leave it blank. 7. Click the Enable Out of Office Agent button on the Action bar. A dialog box confirms that the agent is enabled. Click the OK button. When you return to the office, you need to disable the Out of Office Message. If you return on the date that you indicated in the Out of Office Profile form, you need to do nothing. If you return early, you need to disable the Out of Office message: 1. Open your Mail database. Choose Actions, Mail Tools, and Out of Office from the menu. 2. When the Out of Office Profile form appears, click the I have returned to the office button located on the Action bar. Timesaver Tip: Don't Forget to Replicate! If you are a remote user and you have created an Out Of Office message from your remote PC, be certain to replicate your Mail database before leaving for your trip. Otherwise, the server will not be notified that this agent needs to run. Refer to Lessons 23 through 26 for remote user information. Creating Phone Messages In addition to creating tasks for yourself and others, Lotus Notes gives you a tool for creating telephone message information and mailing that message to others who are using Lotus Notes Mail. Phone messages are straightforward. When you create a phone message, you are filling in a Notes form, in this case, the Phone Message form. It works in the same way that you fill out a mail message since the Phone Message forms are mail enabled. This means that when you complete the form, you click the Send button on the Action bar and the message will be mailed to the person or persons in the To:, cc:, and bcc: fields. To create a phone message: 1. Open your Mail database, or click the Mail database icon once to select it. 2. Choose Create, Special, and Phone Message from the menu. 3. The Phone Message form appears as shown in Figure 16.9. Fill in the To: field and any other information you want to supply with this message. Figure 16.9 The Phone Message form completed and ready to send. 4. Use the rich text field, Message to type any additional information that the caller supplied with his message. 5. Click the Send button on the Action bar to send the message. Creating Serial Route Messages Within Mail, you also have the ability to route messages. Different than a distribution list, or a list of names in the To:, cc:, and bcc: fields, routing a message means that it will go to people in the order that you list them. For example, if you are mailing expense reports through Lotus Notes Mail, either by attaching, copying and pasting, or embedding them, serial routing gives you the ability to submit the report first to your manager, then to their manager, and then to the accounting department. However, you don't have to be using expense reports to appreciate serial routing. You might have a mail memo that you want delivered to people in a certain order. For these purposes, serial mail routing is the way to go. A Serial Route message will be routed to each person listed in the Route to: field of the memo in the order in which you place people's names. You can address this memo to a list of individuals only; you can't use groups that you created in your address book. To create a Serial Route message: 1. Open your Mail database, or select it in your workspace by clicking the Mail database icon. 2. Choose Create, Special, and Serial Route Memo from the menu. 3. The Serial Route Memo does not have a cc: or bcc: field. Fill in the Route To field with the names of those you want to route. Put them in the order that you want to route them. 4. If you want to be notified of the delivery of this message to each recipient as they receive it, click the Notify Sender at Each Stop box. 5. Click the Send button in the Action bar to send this message. In this lesson, you learned how to create and customize stationery and select letterhead. You also learned how to create, enable, and disable an Out of Office message. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to use Lotus Notes workflow options.

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