Most of my really, really long calls involve calendaring. For whatever reason, people think the Notes calendar should do everything their secretary can, with the possible exception of making coffee. I can only wonder what they expect of other software.

Some of my favorite abuses include...

Eddie scheduled a meeting with 20 or more attendees. As Eddie received their responses, he deleted them. A few days before the meeting Eddie wanted to know who would be attending. When the client couldn't show him what he wanted, he had his secretary ask me to resend the responses.

I told her, even if she bribed me with another box of chocolate, I couldn't do it. Eddie's request was like asking the Post Office to resend the check he'd burned. What she told Eddie I'm not sure, but I think he's still deleting responses.

On the other hand, Albert kept all the responses for his meeting. When he checked to see who was attending, Albert realized he didn't have a response from Marianne. Marianne had accidently deleted the invitation instead of declining the meeting.

Now Albert wanted to send her a second notice, without including the rest of the invitees, so she could properly decline the meeting and Albert could give his boss a printout of the responses. He got quite upset when I told him it couldn't be done under our version of Notes. And when I suggested such an option might be in a future release, his response wasn't polite.

Then there's the "virus" going across site. I've heard from at least a dozen people, some more than once -- where they change their minds about attending a repeating meeting.

Let's say, in January, Karl declines all 52 ocurrances of a weekly meeting and deletes the invitation. Then in August he decides he can make the 4 meetings in September and 3 in November. Since Karl can't "un-decline" the meeting he deleted months ago, the chair, in this case Sally, sends out a second invitation to all the invitees. Karl accepts the meeting he previously declined and it goes onto his calendar.

The next day Karl checks his schedule and notices the meeting has vanished. Sally sends him -- and the other 30 invitees -- yet another invitation, which Karl accepts. But the meeting won't show up on his calendar after he accepts it for the second time, so he creates a repeating appointment for the time slot.

The next day that's disappeared too. If I get called early in this process -- while the original invitation can be recovered -- it can take several hours to clear up the mess. But if the user doesn't call until months after deleting the invitation, there's nothing I can do.

On the other hand, maybe it's easier to be the administrator. I don't have to try and imagine how users think the software should work, I just need to help them out of the hole they've dug. And when they ask why the program doesn't do something I can tell them, "the programmer didn't think of it".

DominoPower Contributing Editor Nancy Hand is primary Notes admin at a remote site for a large corporation. She earned both Novell and Microsoft certifications in network engineering before being introduced to Lotus Notes. The 3,000 users she supports constantly challenge Nancy to keep up with their creative missteps. With a background in art, she brings a different perspective to working with computers and their users. In the past, Nancy has worked in the fields of accounting, criminal justice, and museum display. To balance the challenges of the job, she continues to draw and sculpt between stabs at writing novels and designing knitware.