SmartSuite 3.0: More integrated and more versatile
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): Suites are now making the biggest chunk of software sales, more than the sales of stand-alone programs. The reasons for their popularity are, of course, their price (you get more programs at a much lower cost than if you have to buy them separately) and the close integration of their components. In the future, as the Wizards, Experts and Smart Assistant get even more intelligent and can teach you how you can accomplish your task across various programs, you'll have another strong reason to buy suites.
Let's have a brief look at the latest offering from Lotus Development, SmartSuite 3.0, just to get an idea of how programs are bundled and facilities are provided to make it really easy for you to do your job using two or more of these programs.
SmartSuite 3.0, which comes in thirty diskettes and a big box, consists of five major programs. These are: Ami Pro 3.1, Free lance Graphics 2.1, 1-2-3 for Windows Release 5, Approach 3.0, and Organizer 1.1. In addition to these main programs, there are goodies such as SmartCenter, ScreenCam, Lotus Sound, and Lotus MediaManager. In a subsequent article, we'll have a look at each of these major programs more closely and evaluate them against their competitors.
SmartCenter
Just like the Office Manager of Microsoft Office 4.2, SmartSuite also has a SmartCenter that allows you to launch your application program without going back to Program Manager, or to switch from one running program to another. It's a set of icons that you can leave floating on the screen or anchor in the top right hand corner. In the illustration screen, you can see it complete with its balloon help in the bottom right corner. AS in Office Manager, you can change the size of the icons in SmartCenter to a larger one.
SmartCenter is configurable. You can add new programs to the icon palette, but unfortunately not your worksheets. Lotus should add this capability so that we can launch our application and load our file automatically from SmartCenter, as can be done with Office Manager.
If you'd like to have a guided tour of SmartSuite 3.0, all you have to do is click on the SmartAnswers menu icon in Smart Center, and click on Guided Tour . The SmartAnswers is actually a set of ordinary Help windows that provide answers to your common questions. The most interesting thing to me is actually the Movie Guide.
Movie
SmartSuite 3.0 comes with a handy utility called ScreenCam. Using this program, we can record all activities on the screen and play them back for reviews. We can even add voice annotation to this multimedia application. This is a great way of preparing your own tutorial or training materials. By playing back the sequence, people can learn how to accomplish certain tasks.
When installed, ScreenCam has three "movies" that you can choose from the Movie Guide. One of them teaches you how to copy a 1-2-3 range to Ami Pro, another leads you through the process of copying an Organizer address to Ami Pro, and the last one shows you how to create Approach mail labels in 1-2-3.
You can see ScreenCam at work in the accompanying illustra tion. It's on the top left corner of the screen. Unfortunately, these three movies are all that's available. Here's another item on my wish list: More movies for the ScreenCam.
SmartMasters
I still think that Lotus Ami Pro is a legend. It was the first in a lot of areas, including providing templates for your new documents. Today, almost all application programs come with pre- built templates.
Ami Pro still has its rich collection of templates that it calls Style Sheets. 1-2-3, Approach and Freelance Graphics all come with pre-designed templates called SmartMasters. These templates streamline preparation of budgets, tracking expenses, customer lists, forms, reports, presentations, and many other specific tasks. For instance, if you'd like the idea of organiz ing your financial matters with the help of your PC, you can create a worksheet in 1-2-3 using the SmartMasters called "Create your personal budget". I really like this particular template.
As you would expect, the tool icons called SmartIcons are very similar from one application to another. Lotus Organizer was one of the first programs that had the description bubble for each of its icon, and now all applications in SmartSuite have it. So now you don't get lost anymore as to what a tool does; all you have to do is move your cursor across an icon and the bubble will come up before you.
Applications
A Suite is not a suite if you cannot share data between applications. In SmartSuite 3.0, for instance, you can create an outline for your presentation in Ami Pro and move it into Freelance Graphics, link your chart to a Freelance Graphics presentation, create a dynamic crosstab of your 1-2-3 data with the help of Approach, create mailing labels from your 1-2-3 data also with the help of Approach, and create forms for data entry in Approach. In fact, 1-2-3 and Approach represent a true integration of programs; you can hardly notice when you're working in one program or the other. Hopefully Lotus expands this kind of integration further to include other programs as well in the next version of SmartSuite.
Workgroup
SmartSuite 3.0's strengths lie in its emphasis on facilitating group works and inter-application integration. All the programs in this version are already optimized for Lotus Notes, which is currently Lotus' brainchild for network applications development. So, the choice is clear: If you intend to develop an enterprise- wide network and to allow people to work together across a wide area, SmartSuite is for you as Notes is currently the most popu lar way of doing it.
Using Notes/FX, for instance, you can combine the power of a Notes database with a 1-2-3 template. You can create applications that use a 1-2-3 worksheet as a template and store spreadsheet data in a Notes database, which can be shared across the network. SmartSuite has also been mail-enabled. It now provides access to Lotus cc:Mail and other VIM or MAPI-compliant electronic mail system. So, for instance, you can create a memo in Ami Pro and send it to one or more cc:Mail or Notes users, or users of any other VIM or MAPI-compliant systems, simply by clicking on the File, Send Mail menu item.
However, if you're a lone user in your SOHO (Small Office Home Office), SmartSuite is still a very good choice. It comes with tools that you will need to organize your life, such as the Organizer personal information management and the mailing label tool in Approach. The programs are easy to learn and fairly consistent. And, as reported by Windows Magazine, my favorite Ami Pro is still the fastest full-featured Windows word processor available today. Finally, if hardware limitation is your problem, SmartSuite is the least resource-demanding of all suite products out there.