Sametime enhancements

[Francois Botha]

Hi,
I'd like to suggest some Sametime enhancements.

I work in a large corporate with about 5000 employees.  We use Lotus Notes
and about 1500 of the employees have the Sametime component of Notes
connected.  The rest are in the Sametime directory, but are always offline.

With so many users, I prefer to have only my most-contacted colleagues on my
buddy list.  Adding a buddy to Sametime requires a bit more effort than for
other protocols. I have to enter the name and surname (e.g. 'Francois
Botha'), and then a dialog box titled 'Select User' pops telling me an
ambiguous user ID was entered.  Only one entry is usually in the list but
the full User Name would be 'Francois Botha/SL_IT/HK/Corporate'.

At this stage I can add the buddy and only then can I see if he's really
online or not (by looking in the buddy list itself). Else I can IM him
directly, but then there is no indication of his online status, and as I
mentioned, about 2/3rds of our staff are offline.

Can the online status be shown in the 'Select User' dialog box so that I
know whether the user is online before adding or IM'ing him?  Else, is it
possible to show the online status for a user in the conversation window
when I click IM and he is NOT in my buddy list?  That would save me a lot of
effort.

Another request:  although I keep only my most-contacted contacts in my
buddy list, it is still quite a long list and I often accidently re-add a
user which is already in my buddy list.  There is currently no indication
that I'm adding a duplicate.  I suggest adding a column (yet again to the
'Select User' dialog box) which shows whether the user is already in the
buddy list or not. I have seen this with another protocol. The alternative
is when I click Add, to prompt me that I'm adding a duplicate.

I hope someone can implement these enhancements or alternatives that would
make life a bit easier.

thanks,
Francois Botha
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