User expectation issues

[Kevin M. Myer]

Hi,

I've been piloting an IMP 2.3 install with a small group of users here.
Recently I demoed the install to my department director and he proceeded
to point out a few valid issues with Turba.  Let me preface this by saying
that I know Turba is only v0.0.2 but I'd like to know if there is a plan
to solve some of these issues in the future.  Also, I am working with two
sources.  One is a global read-only LDAP directory, the other is a local
SQL database; these would be roughly akin to a global addressbook and a
local user addressbook.

1) Its very difficult to search and draft an email to more than one person
at a time.  For example, say I want to send an email to one user and CC
that email to three others.  Short of either crafting a search that either
a) returns all users or b) returns only the four users I want, this
becomes an exercise in cut and paste.  While a) is easy to do, it
certainly doesn't scale and the likelihood of b) isn't assured.
Otherwise, what I get is I search for one user and compose a message to
him.  Now, if I search for the second user and want to add him to my
already open composition, I can't.  Instead, a new composition window
opens up.  Ditto for search three and four.  What I would like to be able
to do is search for user one and create a new composition email to him.
Then, do subsequent searches which return results.  When I click on the CC
field for each user, they would be added to the already open composition
window.

2) User's local addressbook is hard to get at.  By that, I mean there's no
view that lists all the entries in a user's addresbook, _by default_.
What I would like to have is a button on the top bar that says "Local
Addresses".  When clicked, it returns all a user's local entries.  A user
should not have to understand that to return all entries in their local
addressbook, they need to do a null search against the local SQL database.
Instead, their view of a local addressbook is a visible list of all the
addresses they've entered into it.

3) Switching back to IMP isn't easy.  Using the back button often
generates Cache expired warnings which is no big deal to me but can panic
some users.  For this, I actually had a solution, instead of just griping
:)  I lifted a few lines of code from IMP and I added a registry entry in
the menu for IMP so that there's now a mail icon there.  Why this is
necessary is after you search, compose, and send a message, you're left
back at the Turba search screen.  I suppose another way to do this would
be to open Turba in another window from IMP.

These are probably too specific of problems to be dealt with for a 0.0.2
release but hopefully Turba, in later releases can address some of these.

Thanks,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin M. Myer
Systems Administrator
Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13
(717)-560-6140