InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

We believe SmartCenter 2.0, the release of which is undetermined, is a strong tool that will help increase the productivity of that one-third of your users, and it may be highly useful in special situations beyond those objectors. The product serves as an organizer for your personal information manager (PIM) data, Web links, and document folders.

Although the deceptively simple tool has been available as a part of Lotus Development Corp.'s SmartSuite, this version is a standalone product you can use with Microsoft Office or WordPerfect Office. The idea behind SmartCenter is a stripped-down access and filing system for the most important files that users can navigate with a minimum of effort.

SmartCenter is a sensible interface for a computer desktop because it uses a cognitive map understandable to anyone who does office work: drawers, containing folders, containing items. A thin ribbon stays on top of your screen, and it doesn't bother users with the physical organization of storage devices. You can shape the set of drawers and folders to fit the work patterns of each user. The product comes with default drawers, three of which are key PIM functions: tasks, calendar, and contacts. Another drawer is Internet, a set of bookmarks that gives you dynamic access to a Web page when you open its folder.

Many of the problems for objectors disappear when they add personalized drawers and folders. Users can drag and drop files to or from the drawers' folders. This is valuable, since most users want a minimum of disk navigation, and this keeps those most-used folders accessible.

We set up a drawer with folders for each of our three main projects, a process that took less than three minutes. It won't be obvious to inexperienced users how to do this as an initial setup process, but it's easy to do for new projects--and once taught, users who know Windows Explorer can set up legacy projects in a few minutes.

If there were awards for user-interface design, the people who crafted SmartCenter would win easily, because the product is not only easy to learn, but a lot of its functions remain under the surface, out of the way.

Even better, SmartCenter has great "discovery," the ability to discover additional features as a low-effort byproduct of using the features you already know. For example, when you bring the cursor over the edges of a calendar day's date, the cursor changes to an arrow; click, and you move a day. Bring the cursor over the vertical edge of a folder drawer, and the cursor becomes a resizing control, just as it would with any window. The controls are original and comprehensible at the same time--no mean feat.

The only documentation available for this product is online. The build we tested had some gaps, making that great discovery even more important. But intermediate users will plumb almost all the functions of this product sooner or later, even without crackerjack documentation.

The product offers integration with Lotus Notes and Organizer. Your contact, calendar, and tasks lists can connect to either application, and you can add shortcuts to your Notes databases in any of the document folders. Even though those products have had interface improvements during the last year, the SmartCenter interface is so much better for all but the most advanced power users, most will access their Notes PIM functions from here because it's easier to drag and release a new appointment or single-click a contact to trigger an E-mail message or fax. The most noteworthy limitation here is that it misses the Outlook feature of filing contacts by their nicknames or first names; it glues you to the stodgy last-name filing method.

We hope that future versions improve Microsoft Office integration.

For Office users, the product will trigger Word and a letter template when you press a contact's letter button. We would like to see the PIM integration with Notes and Organizer extended to Outlook or Exchange users, although Office shops that use Notes for E-mail are probably the most common business combination.

Getting a productivity boost from that one-third of your least-effective users has a remarkable effect on total cost of ownership. While most shops don't have the knowledge or clout to make the moves that have the most positive effects on ownership costs, if yours does, look closely at SmartCenter.