10 Minute Guide to Lotus Notes Mail 4.5 - 17 - Using Workflow Options In this lesson, you learn about using Lotus Notes Mail to assign and follow the workflow of your projects. Lotus Notes helps you keep track of your personal To Do list, as well as record the tasks that you have assigned to others. You can check the status of the these tasks, keeping on top of any projects you manage. Assigning Tasks To keep track of all the things you have to do, you can assign tasks to yourself. For example, if you know you have a presentation to give in two weeks, you can assign a task to yourself noting all the things you must prepare for that date. 1. Open your Mail database. Choose Create, Task from the menu. The New Task form appears as shown in Figure 17.1. 2. Enter a description of the task under Task. 3. To set a priority for the task, click High, Medium, or Low (the default is None). 4. Enter a date in the Due box to set a due date for the task. 5. To establish a start date for the task, enter the date in the Start box. 6. (Optional) In Additional information, add any information you want explaining the task or how it is to be completed. Figure 17.1 The New Task form. 7. Click the Close button on the Action bar. 8. When the alert box appears asking if you want to save the document, choose Yes. 9. The task appears in the To Do view of the Mail Navigator pane (see Figure 17.2). Figure 17.2 The To Do view of the Mail database. If other people are involved in a project with you, you can also assign tasks to them. For instance, you and your staff may plan to attend your annual convention in three weeks. You want each member of the staff to know his or her areas of responsibility, such as reserving rooms and flights, packing and sending materials for the exhibit booth, arranging for rentals of audio visual equipment, or preparing presentations for seminars you are offering at the convention. You can create tasks for each member of your staff and set due dates. 1. Follow steps 1 through 5 of assigning a task to yourself. 2. Click the Assign to Others button on the Action bar. Two new fields appear on the form (see Figure 17.3). 3. In the Assign to field, enter the name of the person to whom you are assigning the task. 4. Put the names of anyone who should receive a copy of this task in the cc: field. 5. In Additional information, add any information you want explaining the task or how it is to be completed. 6. Click the Send button on the Action bar (click Close instead, if you want to save the task without sending it). Figure 17.3 A task assigned to others. Converting Mail to Tasks Quite frequently, you will receive mail messages requesting that you do something. You can convert these messages into tasks, so they will appear on your To Do list. For example, if you get a mail message from your manager asking you to prepare your depart-ment's budget for next year and have it to him by the end of the month, you can add that to the To Do view so you won't forget to work on it. 1. Select the document in the View pane or open the message. 2. Choose Actions, Convert to Task. 3. The mail message appears as a Task document, and you can make any changes or additions you want to the information provided there. 4. If you want to assign the task to yourself, click the Close button on the Action bar, or press the Esc key. To assign the task to anyone else, click the Assign to Others button on the Action bar, fill in the Assign to and cc: fields, and then click the Send button on the Action bar. Viewing Task Status To keep track of the tasks you assign to yourself, tasks others assign to you, and tasks you assign to others, open the To Do view in the Mail database. The To Do view divides the tasks into Completed, Current, Future, Overdue, and Today categories. It also displays messages that ask you to respond by a particular date. To remove a message from the To Do view, select it, and click the Remove from To Do View button on the Action bar. Although this removes the message from the To Do view, it doesn't delete it from the Mail database. Marking a Completed Task When a task is completed, you need to mark it so you know it's done. Marking it completed moves the task into the Complete category of the To Do view. If someone else assigned the task to you, that person gets a message showing that you completed the task. A copy of that message appears under the task in your To Do view. To mark a task as completed: 1. From the To Do view, select or open the task. 2. Click the Mark Completed button on the Action bar. The task moves under the Completed area in the To Do view (see Figure 17.4). Figure 17.4 A completed task. If you opened the task in order to mark it completed, you will get a prompt asking if you want to send additional comments to the person who assigned the task to you. If you select No, the task will be marked completed. If you select Yes, a mail memo will appear addressed to the person who assigned the task. Complete the mail memo and click the Send button. Updating Status Once a task is created, Notes does not read the task and check the dates constantly. In order for a task to move from the Current category to the Overdue category, you must update the status manually or automatically. The manual method: 1. Open your Mail database in the To Do view. 2. Click the Update Tasks button on the Action bar. Notes will read the dates of the tasks and recategorize them if necessary. The automatic method: 1. Open the Agents view of your Mail database. (See Figure 17.5.) Figure 17.5 The Agents view. Plain English: What's an Agent? An agent is a preset, automatic task, similar to a macro in other programs. 2. Check the box in front of Update Tasks. Panic Button: Which Server? You may be asked on which server you want the agent to run. If your mail is stored on the Notes server, choose your Mail server; you may not have access to run an agent on that server, so check with your Notes administrator before doing this. 3. Lotus Notes schedules the Update Tasks agent to run each night at 1:00 A.M., unless you change the time. In this lesson, you learned how to assign tasks to yourself and to others, how to mark the tasks completed, how to view the tasks, and how to update the task list. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to use the new Calendaring and Scheduling features of Notes.

©Copyright, Macmillan Computer Publishing. All rights reserved.