Summary Page
The Summary page in Polaris Mail is your launch pad for all your most important daily tasks. And that’s why it’s the first page to greet you when you log into your account.
On the summary page, you get direct access to your inbox and can start reading and answering your email right away. You can also quickly and easily view and make changes to your appointments, tasks and notes etc. through any other portlets you mount on the page. ‘Portlets’ are small moveable boxes you can place on your summary page, each of which acts as a ‘portal’ to the most frequently used utilities.
The Portlets
Using the ‘Add’ button at the top of the page, you can control which portlets you want to have displayed on your summary page. All the portlets come with an arrow button that you can use to expand or collapse them. You can also drag and drop them anywhere you want on the page. There are 6 different portlets you can choose from:
E-mail
The email portlet is displayed by default. It shows the most recent email from your inbox (and any other email folders of your choice) but you can use the navigation buttons at the bottom to access older messages. The best thing about the email portlet is that you can read and answer your email right from the summary page. Each message is displayed using its ‘subject’ and name of sender. When you double click on any one of them, the whole email opens in a dialog box. Once you are done reading, you can click on ‘Reply’, and compose and send your message straight away. You have access to all common email commands like ‘address book’, ‘attachments’ and ‘print’ from within the dialog box so you don’t have to leave the Summary page to stay on top of your email.
News
The News portlet lets you add your favorite RSS feeds to it so you can start your day by reading the latest news from your favorite channels and media sources. You can use the ‘Configure’ button at the top of the portlet to add your own RSS feeds. The labels you give to the feeds shows up as tabs in the portlet and you can use the tabs to switch between updates from all your added feeds.
Notes
The Notes portlet lets you quickly type in or copy-paste anything you need to make a note of. For instance, suppose you come across a quote somewhere on the Internet that you really like and want to save for later use. You can just copy the quote and drop into the Notes portlet where it will stay comfortably with the rest of your notes.
Appointments
The Appointments portlet shows any upcoming appointments you might have that you previously added to your calendar. This portlet is really useful because even if you don’t check the calendar page, you would still be reminded of your appointments for the day if you have the portlet mounted on your summary page.
Tasks
Like the ‘Appointments’ portlet, the ‘Tasks’ portlet shows your pending tasks that you previously added to the Tasks page. The ‘Tasks’ portlet acts like a handy little to-do list helping you stay organized and reminding you of all you need to get done- and by when. Once you complete any of the listed tasks, you can simply check mark it in the portlet and it will disappear from your tasklist.
Projects
The ‘Projects’ portlet lists the name, customer, manager, deadline, budgeted units and any other columns you choose for all your projects (which you can manage on the projects page). Using the configure button, you can choose if you want to see only ongoing projects in the portlet or complete ones as well. When you double click on any project, a dialog box pops up that lets you view its details and make any changes.
In addition to the six portlets discussed above, there’s one other kind of portlet that displays information exclusive to the Summary page. It’s the Announcements portlet and you can add it from the ‘Manage Announcements’ button at the top of the Summary page. The Announcements portlet lets you display a message of your choice on the Summary page for as long as you want. It can be used for example by Administrators to broadcast messages to all the users.
