Almost a year ago, I was assigned to work on Lotus Symphony.... the timing of this new assignment coincided with the preparations for Lotusphere, our annual user group and conference held in January. So, as you might imagine, between the end of the year crush of work and preparing for our biggest customer-facing event, I was building presentation after presentation.
And, suddenly, I had a new job and a new presentation tool -- Lotus Symphony. While I work in all three applications, I live in Presentations.... for customers, partners, analysts and you can sure bet... internal meetings.
I will be the first to admit: I was not the happiest of campers. Afterall, I was an old dog and these were new tricks I was trying to learn....and, honestly, in Nov/Dec of 2007, the product was not as stable as I needed it to be since I was a borderline power user.
Well, nearly a year, four releases and three million downloads later, I am pleased and proud, to work daily in Lotus Symphony. The product is now stable and so very capable for what I need to do. Each day, I learn something new the product can do and now I can also do.
So, when the team asked me to share "my story" and what I liked best about Symphony, I thought about it a while because now it's hard to choose just three......
I think the top three things I like are:
1) the contextual sidebar. I really like that many of the functions I need to do are neatly presented to me without popping up over the content I'm working on.
2) the ability to export to PDF. I use this all the time. It is simple and fast and let's me communicate with virtually anyone.
3) the MSFT Office interoperability and the Revisions feature. I work with external vendors and partners all the time. I often receive .doc files for review of creative materials. Now, I can just use Symphony to open those, insert my "revisions", save back as a .doc file, and email back to the vendor. They receive the document and can open it in Microsoft Word and see my input as "track changes". It really is seamless in our collaboration.
Enough about me -- tell us about your experience. Click the link "Tell Us Your Story" to submit what you like most about Symphony and/or how it has helped you in your home, school, organization or business. Not to worry -- if we choose to post your story, we will only use first names and job functions -- no last names, no address, no email address, etc. will be posted. We're just curious to hear from users what they're doing with Lotus Symphony and what they like best.
I look forward to reading your story....
Jeanette Barlow