Email And Calendar example essay topic

PolyCom m Vendor Analysis: Web Interface on Mac OSX Mirapoint: Mirapoint has an extremely simple design, which proved to be very easy to navigate within. The email and calendar were both very intuitive to use. Unfortunately there are some key functions that are not very easy to use, or are not available at all. The menu on the left side is very easy to use, especially with the calendar. In fact, the calendar seems to be the strength of Mirapoint's web interface. The layout is very straightforward, and the ability to easily flip from the email to the calendar was a plus.

Viewing another person's calendar can be confusing, because you can either log in and view their calendar in its entirety or you can view a snapshot of their available time versus yours. But when comparing your calendar to another person's, you cannot view their details, which makes it harder to figure out if they are truly busy. Creating a calendar entry or meeting is very easy to do, and each function is located in differently labeled sections that scroll from top to bottom. Easy to use and edit each meeting, whether repeatable or not. Another great feature is the legend of symbols on the side of the calendar screen. This makes it easier to understand the symbols that identify each meeting or calendar entry.

The email system is very simple but effective and one of the nice features was the ease of using the filtering options, which are traditionally very difficult to configure. At the same time, some key functions were missing, such as the ability to automatically spell check your emails. One of the drawbacks to this system is the directory. The directory is the same for both the email and the calendar but it is not very easy to use and it does not flow very logically. It would be nice if there was a more natural tree structure, where you could see each user within the directory and choose the one you want, as opposed to searching for one specific user through a search box. The online help for both the email and calendar were easy to use but relatively simple.

The help menu needed to be more comprehensive, especially because students will not be familiar with any calendar much less this particular web interface. Another small item that could hinder some users is the lack of advanced search options within the calendar. You cannot search under any criteria other than date and title of events. A feature that could be helpful would be the ability to color the font different colors for different priorities of meetings.

Overall, the Mirapoint web interface is easy to use, and although a bit bare bones, would be great for students to use for school and for personal use. The calendar is simple and easy enough for novice students to set up and use effectively and the email is similar to hotmail or yahoo in its functionality. Oracle: Oracle uses what they called a portal to access both the calendar and email. This portal leads to two different areas that are not very intuitive to navigate within. This seems to be the main problem with Oracle's web interface, nothing is intuitive. Unfortunately, the help menu is absolutely horrible, which means that some functionality is never found, even though it may exist within the system.

The help menu doesn't have a directory when accessed through the email. It only shows a short paragraph that is sometimes related to the page from which you access the help from. The calendar had a much improved help menu, with a directory, but no searchable index. Both help menus need to be more comprehensive.

The web interface was awkward to navigate within, especially the calendar. Certain features within the email system don't work or are difficult to figure out. This includes searching for emails and creating emails in rich text mode. First, after searching for a certain email, the inbox displays only the search results. But I could not figure out how to navigate back to the inbox before the search. The only way to cancel the search and return to the regular inbox is to log out of the portal, then log back in.

The other problem is that once rich text is selected for composing emails, not only did it not work at all, there is no way to switch back to text format. The only way to reset it was to once again log out of the portal and log back in. There was also no way to automatically spell check your message, and many features were available but not intuitive. One such feature is deletion of mail.

The only way to delete email is to move the messages to the trash folder with the move function. Designate access is either not available or too hard to figure out. I could not find out how to set up a designate account for either the email or calendar clients. The problem seems to stem from the lack of well labeled buttons and the lack of a directory of features on the left hand side like Mirapoint.

Overall, the Oracle web interface is difficult to navigate and configure, and students would probably have trouble setting up any calendar functions. Navigation can be frustrating at times, and the lack of a comprehensive help menu with a directory or index means that students may be calling in to the ITS help desk quite often within the first quarter of implementation. Oracle's Collaboration Suite was by far the worst system to work with. Lotus: Lotus has a very intuitive interface with many options available, but a difficult layout that is not very pleasing to the eye. Nevertheless, the web interface had many features that were outstanding, such as the directory among others.

The email and calendar were very easy to navigate, and certain features were very easy to use, such as automatically adding contacts to the address book by selecting the message and clicking a link within the inbox. There is also many different types of replies and forwards that can be done and each of them are easy to access. The directory is outstanding, with the ability to see each and every member within the directory, as well as the ability to clearly select which contacts to send mail to, cc, and bcc to. Very intuitive and the directory is also available to both the email and the calendar. Setting up designate access is also very easy and straightforward. This is by far the easiest to do amongst the three vendors.

Certain functionality is not easy to use. One example is editing a meeting. Once a meeting is created, there is no ability to set that meeting up as recurring meeting. Another shortfall is the address book.

Each contact doesn't have any additional fields of information, such as notes or comments. The calendar also doesn't have the ability to color coordinate the entries bases upon priority. Probably the biggest shortcoming is the lack of ability to check other calendars of multiple users within the same window. Email filtering is relatively easy to set up, but auto-reply and vacation response was non-existent. The last hindrance was the lightweight help menu. This was not very comprehensive, and did not contain any directory or searchable index, which means that students new to using the calendar may find adoption difficult.

Overall, the Lotus web interface is very simple to use the functionality that exists, but is not as complete as it should be. Creating messages, composing emails and using the directory are probably easier to use than any other vendor, but Lotus still lacks much of the functionality that Mirapoint contains. Overall: There is no vendor that clearly rises above the rest, although Oracle easily sinks to the bottom when compared to Mirapoint and Lotus. Mirapoint has the slickest looking and simplest interface, while Lotus is the easiest to use for the simplest tasks such as sending an email, creating a meeting, or searching the directory.

But Lotus has too many holes within its functionality, where Mirapoint has a more complete package. I would recommend Mirapoint's Web Interface over the other vendors if concerned purely with usability.