I have many contacts who are busy people. They don’t read email regularly and spend a lot of time on conference calls. They use Sametime, our corporate standard, for instant messaging.
 However at present, I know it is a feature in 7.5, they cannot have selective do not disturbs. Even when that functionality exists they may still set me to do not disturb…..
….yeah but I really need to tell you something….how can I?  Given that email is useless as they’ll read it tomorrow, voicemail is no good as I need to get through to them now (and they are on a conference call). Could we not have a feature in our instant message solution which allows me to be added to a list of people who wants to contact them? Perhaps it could add me to a “need to chat urgently” group in sametime or change the colour of my icon? I’d call this functionality an iNotice, potentially link it to an SMS.
So an iNotice allows some kind of alerting but no IM text. It gives the person set to do not disturb the opportunity to IM me if they wish.
Anyone else like the sound of this or not?
Stu Downes 
I was going to write a comment, but it became a post:
http://oak-grove.typepad.com/oakgrove/2006/04/inotice.html
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Graham’s blog (link) has some interesting comments and my response to his article. Steve has a very interesting approach which involves allowing the interuption but charging for interuptions.
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As a cheeky work around, what my collegues and I used to do prior to ST 7.5 when we wanted to maintain a conversation while in a meeting when we didn’t want other interuptions was to start a chat before the meeting starts and then both set ourselves “Do not disturb”. We could continue our chat but no on else could get in.
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