Contents:
Preface
Chapter 1: At the Starting Line: Know Your Sametime Client
Chapter 2: Getting Connected: Configuring and Using Sametime for Lotus Notes
Chapter 3: Getting Connected: Configuring and Using Sametime Connect
Chapter 4: Managing Your Connections: Making the Most of Your Sametime Contacts
Chapter 5: Power Chatting: Making the Most of Sametime Instant Messaging
Chapter 6: Spread the Word: Connecting to other Messaging Communities
Chapter 7: iNotes and Sametime-Chatting from the Web
Chapter 8: Going Mobile-Installing and Using the Sametime Mobile Client
Chapter 9: Meeting Basics-Using Sametime to Create Virtual Meeting Spaces
Chapter 10: Meeting Beyond the Conference Room-Using Additional Sametime Meeting Features
Chapter 11: Take Your Instant Messaging to the Next Level-Sametime Advanced
Chapter 12: Speak Up-Taking Advantage of Sametime Unified Telephony
Appendix A: Sametime 8.5 and 8.5.1 New Features
Appendix B: Using Sametime in Chat-Enabled Applications
Appendix C: Additional Sametime Resources
Index
Marie Scott and Thomas Duff begin with the basics and effectively build to the advanced features of Lotus Sametime, some of which you may not experience in your environment., By "basics," I mean that they actually explain why someone would want to use instant messaging, providing some very good use cases. Once done, they move into the two Sametime clients; the embedded client and Sametime Connect, a "free standing" instant messaging client (think AOL IM, for example). While it arrives early in the book, the most useful chapter, in my opinion, is Chapter 4: Managing Your Connections. This is the chapter that I feel most people will read and review long after the reading the remaining chapters. In this chapter, the reader will learn how to add and remove Sametime contacts, how to sort their contact lists, create and manage groups, and much more. It is basically the normal day-to-day activities that every user will experience when working with Sametime. The other chapter that will see a lot of use is Chapter 5, Power Chatting. This could be seen as a "fun" chapter, the one where you learn how to use emoticons and to create your own, making use of spell checking, and sharing portions of your screen. Once you have mastered the basics of Sametime, Chapter 5 shows you how to use many of the little known features of the software. With a solid foundation, Scott and Duff proceed to teach you more advanced features of the software. Quite a few of them are difficult concepts for most people, however the easy, conversational style of writing that Duff and Scott employ make even these chapters easily consumed. Again, it helps that they make liberal use of screen shots to allow the reader to see and understand their points.
IBM Lotus Sametime 8 Essentials: A User Guide is a book that should be on every bookshelf of the Sametime Administrator, Sametime trainer, or Sametime user. For the Administrator, it will assist when explaining usage in a manner that will help you to assist your users with many tasks. The trainer will find a wealth of information for their classes and it would make a good give-away for the exceptional students in your classes. For the user, this could be viewed as your "Using Sametime" bible. Some chapters may not be applicable, however you will receive an excellent education into the use and possibilities of Lotus Sametime. Those possibilities could be used to create thoughtful and reasoned arguments to have your organization leverage their investment in IBM Lotus Sametime to add voice, video, to Sametime, to connect Sametime to other messaging communities, and to explore unified telephony. Should your organization elect to extend Sametime, you will be viewed as a "power user" as you will be well prepared for those features.
If there are any criticisms to this book, they rest solely with IBM, not the authors. While reading this book, I was struck by the sheer number of possible preferences available to the user and Administrator. While I use Lotus Sametime, I rarely think about, or use, the preferences; IBM Lotus Sametime 8 Essentials: A User Guide examines nearly all of them, and it is quite a list. Without this book, navigating the preferences would be a daunting task for all but the most patient person. With this book, and the exceptional Index, the preferences are not quite as extreme. Multiple authors focusing on one topic in one book may suffer from different writing styles and voices. I don't know if Scott and Duff were of one mind when writing or if they have an exceptional editor, however the book appears to be have written by one person; it flows very well. If you use Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Sametime 8 Essentials: A User Guide is a worthy addition to your bookshelf.
Disclosure:
Obtained from: Amazon
Payment: Purchased
Technorati tag: book review Thomas Duff Marie Scott Lotus Sametime
Comment posted by Thomas Duff02/03/2011 09:02:35 AM
Homepage: http://www.duffbert.com
Thanks for the great review, Gregg... we appreciate it. And the book *was* in one voice... Marie wrote it! I was just the eye candy for the cover. :)
Seriously, we purposely set out to make sure we had a single voice. It helped that we were not that far apart to begin with when we determined what style we wanted to use. But each chapter went through a number of revisions before it even got sent to the publisher, and a lot of that was blending to get the same voice in each chapter, regardless of who wrote what. We're always pleased to hear when someone comments on that, because it means our effort there was on target.
Comment posted by Marie Scott02/07/2011 02:16:10 PM
Homepage: http://crashtestchix.com
Gregg - I'm finally catching up - post Lotusphere. Thanks for the great review. We worked very hard to make the tone of the book sound as if only one person had authored it. But it was by no means written by one person, and we also received feedback from many colleagues in the community during the draft process. We'll look forward to your review of the Sametime Admin book later this year!
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