Version 2.0 of the popular Emoticons for GroupWise, originally contributed by Formativ customer Ralf Faude from hr-online.de, is now available. Supporting categories and a Favorites feature, Emoticons for GroupWise has a new look and a wide range of emoticons for your GroupWise messages. You can add new emoticons and categories as desired. Some customers may wish to use Emoticons for GroupWise to add business specific emoticons, perhaps relevant to their industry or generic ones like ticks or crosses. The 'Samples' category, which ships with the solution, is shown in the screen shot below.

Emoticons are a powerful way to show how you feel when the written word is just not enough.  They enable you to add mood or context to your written communication which can be difficult to achieve or verbose using words alone. For example, have you ever written an email thinking that it cannot be misinterpreted and then, to your surprise, the recipient interprets your words in a different way? Adding the appropriate emoticon to your message may immediately convey the context of your written words and enable the recipient to comprehend your message faster and more accurately.

Of course, you could use Emoticons for GroupWise to make work more fun or convey emotion that helps establish better personal working relationships!

Download and run the solution installer (assuming Formativ Runtime is installed first) after first closing your GroupWise Windows client. You can choose to install for ALL Users or Current User. After installation, restart your GroupWise client.

Inserting an Emoticon

Compose a HTML message and press the emoticon button on the draft message view toolbar to see the Emoticons for GroupWise dialog, which offers a list categories and associated emoticons. To insert an emoticon into your draft message at the current cursor location, you can choose from the following methods:

• double-click on the desired emoticon; or
• press the Ins (Insert) key on your keyboard; or
• right mouse button click to display the context menu and choose Insert; or
• select the emoticon with a left mouse click and click the dialog's green tick button.

Adding an Emoticon to Favorites

• Select an emoticon with the left mouse button, then use the Alt+F shortcut keys, or
• click the right mouse button on an emoticon to display the context menu and select ‘Copy To Favorites’.

Deleting Emoticons

• Select an emoticon with the left mouse button, then use the Del shortcut key, or
• click the right mouse button on an emoticon to display the context menu and select ‘Delete’.
• Note: While all users can delete emoticons from their Favorites folder, for All Users installations, only users with Windows administrative rights are permitted to delete ANY emoticon.

Adding New Categories or Emoticons

Emoticons are GIF files, which can be static or animated. In addition to the sample emoticon images installed with the solution, you can add new emoticons by copying GIF image files to a category folder under the main emoticons folder. You can determine the main emoticons folder location by running the solution and clicking the Emoticon dialog's Info icon (top right).

To add a new category, simply create a new folder directly below the main emoticons folder. Category folders can only be one level deep. Once the new category folder is created, simply copy new emoticons into it.

Note: For All User installations, only users with Windows administrative rights are permitted to add new emoticons.

The Emoticons for GroupWise solution is FREE but it requires a Formativ framework product (i.e. Formativ Runtime) to power it. If you don't already have Formativ installed, please see the How to Buy page or contact your Formativ reseller or Advansys for pricing information.