This review originally appeared on May 21, 1995 by Chip Cox. It's funny to look at how the personal information market (PIM) shook out through the 1990s. At this point most people use Outlook. 

Organizer 2 is a computerized scheduling system.  It incorporates multiple calendars, project schedules, an address book, anniversary schedule, call history section , notepad and a to-do list into a easy to manage system.  Since I started working with Organizer I have become increasingly dependent on it for organizing my week.  Schedules can be viewed in a variety of formats.  These include different levels of detail depending on the time span displayed on a page.  The to-do list is the section I use most.

Activities are separated by due date (Future, Current, Overdue, and Completed).  Within each category they are sorted by date and priority. The Notepad section provides a categorized set of notepad pages to write down quick notes and updates on projects or any other task.  I keep notes concerning development projects I am working on in my notepad. This allows me to review the status on each project without having to place large amounts of text in my to-do list.  The planner section displays either a quart quarterly or yearly calendar with up to 4 projects tracked on each day.  Mine shows days I will be in training and days I will be on vacation.  Meetings scheduled in my calendar also are displayed on the project plan.  The Address section provides a phone and address list for both business and home contacts.  The anniversary section is one of the default calendars. Other calendars can be created and loaded. A Holiday calendar is shipped with Organizer.  Organizer 2 has a very nice section for tracking calls.  Th is section includes the name of the person called.  The time of the call.  The duration of the call is tracked as well as the result of the call (busy, completed). All of these features work together to help busy executives plan their schedules.

Some of the features of organizer mentioned above deserve to be covered in greater detail.  The calendar functions allow scheduled events to be repeated.  Organizer provides a wide range of choices to describe when an event should be repeated.  These choices range from daily to every tenth year unless it is on a weekend and then it should be moved to the nearest week day.  Organizer also will find time in your schedule for a meeting and warn you if a scheduled time conflicts with another commitment.  The all section includes an auto dialer if you have a modem attached to your system.  This is one of those tools I never had much use for but I can see where it would be very useful to a sales person or a telemarketing representative who spends their day on the phone.

A couple of nice features I was not able to test out on my configuration at my home but that we use with Organizer at work, are the calendar sharing and appointment scheduling features.  When installed on a LAN Organizer will allow users on the same fileserver to view each others calendars and actually schedule meetings for each other.  The recipient of the meeting has the right to decline to attend and reschedule the meeting.  At work, my coworkers and I use this feature primarily to keep up with what h other will be doing during the day.  I can see their calendars reflected on my calendar.  Users who are not on the same fileserver are not out of luck.  Lotus uses several popular e-Mail programs to exchange appointment requests between users on different file servers.  My experience has been with cc:Mail and after a slightly tedious setup procedure in cc:Mail for the users, the process works wonderfully from organizer.

Organizer also supports printing schedules in a variety of formats. Many of these formats conform to popular daily scheduling books.  Since organizer runs in Microsoft Windows no special setup is needed to work with most printers.

In conclusion, Organizer 2 is a giant step forward for Lotus organizer. As with any product it takes a little time to get used to but is well worth the effort.  If you are upgrading from a previous version of Organizer, you will find Organizer 2 faster and easier to use with many more options than previous versions.  If you are new to Organizer you will be happy with the options offered and the flexibility of the product.  One final note, There is one downside to using organizer at home.  My wife has d discovered Organizer. My to do list now shows that I have to cut the grass, finish building the patio, and wash the car this weekend.

Lotus Corporation 55 Cambridge Pky Cambridge, MA 02142 (800) TRADE-UP CompuServe: GO LOTUS WWW: http://www.lotus.com

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