Making IBM Verse Easier to get to...

One of the most frustrating things about the whole IBM Verse experience is the difficulty in getting to the application. If you go through connections, you have to go through normal mail first. This ruins the experience because it isn't “seamless” to the users.

The obvious answer is to bookmark the verse site but there's a few other things that we can do to really  smarten the experience up.

Making Verse the Default

The first thing to do is to make Verse the default mail view. To do this;

1. Go into Connections.
   
2. On the top Right, click your profile picture
   
3. In the drop down menu, choose "Mail and Calendar Settings"
   
   
   
4. On the next screen, click Mail (on the left) - Actually, it should already be selected.
   
5. Tick the box marked - [x] Make IBM Verse my default mail experience.
   
6. You should see a highlight telling you that your changes were saved. 

Setting up a Decent Shortcut/Favourite Link

So, you could of course, add a favourite to the bookmark bar or drag it out to the desktop. I tend to do that anyway with all the PCs I set up. 

I recently realised that there's a much better way to do things. 

Since Chrome is my default browser, I'll cover it there; 

In Chrome

1. Go to the IBM Verse Site
   
2. Click on the Hamburger Icon (three bars on the top right)
   
3. Click More Tools
   
4. Click Add to Desktop
   
   
   
5.  A dialog box will appear. - You Might want to change it from IBM Verse to IBM Verse Email depending upon how your users recognise verse.
   
6. Click Add.
   
   
   

That's it.  You should now see a VERSE icon on your desktop.  This is much better than a dragging a shortcut out of the taskbar because you get a proper icon.

Getting Your Desktop Icons into the Start Menu and Taskbar

So now you should have a nice little Verse icon on your desktop. 

To really improve access though, you need to get it into the start menu and onto the taskbar. 

To do this simply;

1. Right click on the desktop icon.
2. Choose Pin to taskbar
3. Right click on the desktop icon again
4. Choose Pin to Star Menu. 

Here's a shot showing Verse in both those places.

For IE Users

However dirty it makes me feel, I guess I have to at least acknowledge that some people out there are still using Internet Explorer ... so this tip is for them. 

If you want to bookmark using IE, click on the cog in the top right corner and choose Add Site to Start Menu. 

You'll be prompted with a dialog box... just click Add. 

Once you've got your icon in the start menu, you can right-click on it and choose to pin it to the taskbar. (or you could copy/paste the icon to the desktop). 

One thing that is interesting is that the Chrome Verse icon looks a whole lot better than the IE one. 

Changing the Default Email Links

In order to really sell the Verse experience, you need to make sure that when your users click email links, they open Verse, not Notes.  I've already covered this in an earlier post  (see: here).