Friday 6 February, 2009

Searching Lotus Notes email

At work, I use Lotus Notes email client and found its search reasonably good. But what irritates me the most is searching through archives. Since I am supposed to copy the archive database on CDs, I have created many archive files for different time periods. That has now required me to open each archive and search through it for anything I need. That made me search a tool that can provide an unified search interface for searching through all archive files.

Finally, my search ended with IBM OmniFind Personal Email Search tool. This is an outcome of IBM Alphaworks and one can download the tool from its site. I started using this tool since last Friday and have found it extremely useful.

While installing the tool, it asked for all archive files and local folder for indexing the documents. The tool provides a locally hosted web site for searching through all this data. It's not only keyword search. One can search for telephone numbers, email addresses etc. Actually the tool recognizes the concepts such as email address, telephone number, directions, schedule, call, person etc and hence one can search for them. The sample queries could be something like, "from chetan", "chetan phone", "url icws".

This tool has really enhanced my effectiveness at workplace. I would recommend it to you for enhancing your effectiveness at workplace!!