Ed Brill

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1. 1  Brian Green  | 7/16/2007 2:47:13 PM

   Good summary on ODF.

   We're looking forward to more integration with the Lotus Notes client, such as live data and mail merge.

1. 2  Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog | 7/16/2007 3:07:44 PM

   It appears there is an error in the table showing different file formats. This implies that the "native" format for the productivity tools is the older .sxw, .sxc, and .sxi formats, which were the native formats for the productivity editors in Workplace, but aren't the native formats for the new version the ODF formats .odt, .ods and .odp? That is certainly the implication given by IBM when it talks about the productivity editors, although I am not sure how it matters except politically.

1. 3  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 7/16/2007 4:18:18 PM

   The "Other formats" column in the table Ben references (on page 4) doesn't list PDF even though the preceeding mentions it. Or is that table only about two-way conversions?

1. 4  Dave Harris http://www.wavysworld.com | 7/16/2007 10:24:30 PM

   I recall a demo sometime last year and the productivity editors included a project management app. When did this get dropped, and will it ever be brought back?

1. 5  Gerhard Poul http://gpoul.strain.at | 7/17/2007 4:02:26 AM

   I'll not get the new productivity tools before the IGA rollout to our TPs, but you got one feature extremely right. SmartSuite import!

   Who would've thought that this day would come :-)

1. 6  Jesper B. Kiær http://www.jezzper.com | 7/17/2007 4:50:14 AM

   @2

   Ben, IBM productivity tools is based on Openoffice 1.x, so I guess it is probably correct with the old file fileformats

1. 7  GarryL  | 7/17/2007 5:24:28 AM

   @4 There was a project management app in the workplace rich client, but unfortunately this does not seem to be in the productivity set in Notes.

   This is a real shame as there is a need for a simple application of this type without having to go to MS Project.

1. 8  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 7/17/2007 6:36:07 AM

   @6 - I use the Notes 8 productivity tools exclusively. They're all ODF-native.

1. 9  norm Van Bergen  | 7/17/2007 6:52:50 AM

   I agree with the comments on the PM app - we use MS Project a great deal, but mostly for task listings, duration, relationships, and Gantt charts - the rest of the app. is hardly used by many. Not needng MS Project would be great. Come to think of it, not needing Visio would also be handy. Are there any open-source Visio-format-compatible tools out there?

1. 10  David Russell  | 7/17/2007 8:11:03 AM

   This is a great summary, thanks for the link

1. 11  Mark Hughes  | 7/17/2007 8:20:42 AM

   Funny enough the only reason i use excel is to save as a WK4 to import into a Lotus Notes view. There are other ways to do it, but this by far seems easiest to me.

1. 12  Dave Harris http://www.wavysworld.com | 7/17/2007 9:05:19 AM

   Having spent the last couple of days at the Lotus Connections STEW* in KL, it seems that a PM productivity editor could be tied fantastically well into Activities, if it could be standardised, and not compromise the open source aspect of the editors.

   *What the heck does STEW stand for?

1. 13  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/17/2007 9:30:01 AM

   Software Technical Enablement Workshop

1. 14  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 7/17/2007 9:48:46 AM

   @3 Charles, they are talking about formats that you can open and save to. You can only export/save as to PDF. It is a one way trip. So that is not an 'editable' format for the editors

   @4 The project management tool was never part of Notes 8. You were shown the Workplace Managed Client. I know, that is a thin argument. Some pieces did not carry over. I think for the first release, it is good they are focusing on three applications and doing them well.

   The editors are great .. but we need much more integration with Notes AND a real API before anyone is really going to ditch other suites for them. I look foward to both of those things happening.

1. 15  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/17/2007 10:26:50 AM

   "need much more integration with Notes AND a real API before anyone is really going to ditch other suites for them"

   Well, I know one -very big- company that is planning to use the Notes 8 editors...IBM. From our beta participants and sales discussions, we believe there are others where at least a segment of the population will use them as they ship in Notes 8.

   @2 I'll check this out

   @All re project management -- as mentioned, this was never planned as part of the Notes 8 editors. I don't know the code status or whether they will be considered for a future release, but I'll funnel the interest level back.

1. 16  Steve Cogan  | 7/17/2007 10:27:32 AM

   @12 Dave, we have POTs (Proof of Technology) as well as STEWS. Someone who thought up these acronyms must have have food on their mind... ;-). I'm a great fan of stew, and the perfect vehicle for one is a pot...

1. 17  Kerr  | 7/17/2007 11:57:23 AM

   @8, How do you define what the "native" format is? My understanding is that these sorts of apps have an internal representation that may be quite different from formats they can read and write. I'd call this format when serialised the "native" format. It may or may not be the "default" format used when saving a new doc.

   So, for the Notes productivity apps, is ODF the native format or just the default? I suggest that ODF being the default is much more important than it being native.

1. 18  Sean Jennings  | 7/17/2007 12:50:58 PM

   @7 & @9 hmm interesting....

   do we need;-

   (a) a Project Management Productivity Tool....?

   (b) a composite application to do project-management?

   (c) a Notes template for project-managment?

   (d) or just follow Joel Spolsky's advice and use a spreadsheet?

   I guess;

   (a) depends if OpenOffice creates-one, presumbly future OpenOffice applications can migrated to Notes 8+ like the current three have?.....

   (b) shows the power of Notes 8, how long before an ISV does this?

   (c) I'm sure these already exist courtesy of ISVs

   (d) guess that means using the Spreadsheet productivity tool ;o)

1. 19  David Leedy  | 7/17/2007 1:51:49 PM

   I'm looking forward to playing with the productivity tools once Notes 8 goes general availability...

   However, if this book is correct, I can't help but notice and be slightly disappointed that the spreadsheet component has a limit of 32,000 rows while Excel can go to 65,000ish rows...

   Probably not the end of the world for some people but I'm at a trucking company and we can analyze a lot of data in spreadsheets and it then get's shared around...

   It's just odd to me that it supports only half the rows that excel supports...

1. 20  GarryL  | 7/17/2007 2:53:58 PM

   @18 - We really liked the simple project management tool that we saw. We consider MS Project overkill both functionality and cost-wise so generally most people then use excel to produce Gantt charts.

   Reference the OpenOffice migration this is not clear cut. The Productivity tools were forked from Openoffice around the 1.1 version timescale. They are separate products now.

   @19 - Excel 2007 supports a million rows! OpenOffice 2.3 will have the Pentaho open source reporting engine built in which is an interesting development.

1. 21  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/17/2007 10:25:11 PM

   yes, they can be restricted via policy.

1. 22  Samuel deHuszar Allen Allen  | 7/20/2007 3:39:18 PM

   So far, I've found that the Productivity Editors have a lot of problems, such as the spreadsheet forcing cell protection even when its disabled (on documents originally created in OpenOffice.org, haven't tested as a fresh doc), and they can't be run without loading the whole Notes Client which isn't entirely stable yet. I know it's a beta, but thus far it has been too painful to use and so I've continued on with OpenOffice.org.

   At this point I'm still keen to come up with a OpenOffice.org solution for Notes as the IBM Productivity Tools will not be as easy to train for in a mixed office/home environment where someone might use one app at home and one in the office. Unless the Productivity Tools can be used in isolation from Notes, and can be acquired for free, it's doesn't appear to be as compelling a solution.

   Please correct me if I'm not being accurate here, but for all it's current issues (tied to the Notes8 client, large memory footprint, buggy/beta implementation, no API, etc.) I really can't see a single thing it brings to the table that couldn't be done with OpenOffice.org, especially now that Sun's Java is open-sourced, the only real complaints about OOo have been, if not addressed, have been opened up for community fixing.

   I look forward to hearing otherwise.

1. 23  Henning Heinz  | 7/21/2007 8:08:41 AM

   OpenOffice2 has a different license (from V1) that makes it harder to take but not to give. It also will probably be easier to put SmartSuite End of Life.

   Seriously the productivity tools are a Workplace invention so the code was already there in some way. Tightly integrated (which it currently is not) there are some interesting things that I could think of.

   If nothing help you can still say that there still is no official OpenOffice Mac OS-X release and IBM has committed better Mac support for 8.0.X.

1. 24  Samuel deHuszar Allen Allen  | 7/23/2007 2:27:28 PM

   Hmmm... since NeoOffice contains all the functionality of OOo 2.1, I'm not particularly sold on that. Even if it's not perfect, I fail to see how that makes it a good idea to introduce a new-ish not-perfect document editor that has compatibility issues, and adds additional training hurdles, when IBM could play nice and contribute it's tweaks to the OOo developers team.

   As stated in the NeoOffice FAQ, 99% of the NeoOffice codebase is OOo. 1% is OSX specific Java. Doesn't seem that NeoOffice had a hard time "taking." The NeoOffice people seem to be contributing their work back into OOo's upcoming OSX release too. So it seems to be more of an issue of initiative than restrictive licensing.

   I just wish IBM could focus on getting it's old problems fixed, and use freely available tools like Apache and OpenOffice in place of the IBM HTTP task and the Productivity Tools. Instead they take on these massive acquisitions which seem to complicate their portfolio which still needs more documentation, marketing clarification, and bug fixing.

   I've had 5 problems this week that merited calling Lotus Support, ALL of which stemmed from poor documentation and unaddressed bugs.

   GoogleGears and related technologies are going to undercut Lotus's small business offerings if IBM keeps making convoluted, reinventing the wheel for no reason, or not properly updating the old wheels, decisions.

   Sorry to not be glowing with positivity, it's just frustrating to see all this attention go in seemingly silly places.

1. 25  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/23/2007 3:09:13 PM

   Sam, I don't think that this was a reinventing-the-wheel effort -- and over the long-term, there will be much more integration and value. Also, the memory footprint has been substantially improved since the last public beta, and at release I believe you will be impressed.

   You raise some other points and ideas which are useful, so stay tuned on some of that...

1. 26  Mike Perrett http://www.portalpartnership.com | 7/23/2007 4:07:47 PM

   Hi, I like the concept of the productivity editors. However, are there plans to allow the tools to dave direct into Lotus Notes databases?

   Moreover, I attended a Quickr and Connections Jumpstart session last week, and was interested to note that while Quickr has connectors for Windows, Office, Sametime and Notes, no mention was made of any connector for the Notes8 productivity tools.

   Could be that as ND8 isn't gold yet the feature may be pulled, or is it that they haven't got round to writing a ND8 productivity tools connector yet?

1. 27  Samuel deHuszar Allen Allen  | 7/23/2007 5:26:21 PM

   @26 I'm really stoked to get a stable Linux release for 8.0. If you say I'll be impressed, then I'll let myself get excited.

   That said, I still don't see why IBM couldn't have just have just developed a Java library for OpenOffice's UNO infrastructure, and use the same interface and conventions that everyone else (the entire OOo userbase) gets to use. You still get integration, you still get portability and a familiar UI with predictable ODF interpretation and conversion. This all means less training, lower internal developement costs, and more flexibility for the users.

   Perhaps over the long term the PTools will be made MORE useful than they currently are, but it is still reinventing the wheel because there is an open, well documented, extensible release which COULD be integrated in the Notes Client, if IBM chose to do so.

   I know that the PTools are based off of the 1.x codebase, but if IBM was really interested in Open Standards and code, it would have submitted it's requested (or already coded) changes to the 2.x dev team instead of going it's own way with a codebase that no one else is moving forward.

   If there's some technical or strategic reason why IBM makes this decision, I think a lot of people would like to hear what it is. Otherwise it just seems like stubbornness, fair or not.

   The reason I mention the HTTP service in all of this is because IBM seems to have historically let important parts of the Notes/Domino codebase languish when there are active projects which it could incorporate, using only the most stable snapshots available that line up with the internal development roadmap.

   I see this as a project which no one wanted to put in the dustbin after the Workplace branding was abandoned. And if history holds any lessons, after a few releases if there's no traction, or less than hoped for (or IBM decides to make a new acquisition and starts moving it's talent away from other projects to make the new toy work with the rest of the portfolio) there's a decent risk that PTools will get put on the backburner and languish with a woefully out of date feature set and unaddressed bugs.

   Again, this may not be a fair assessment, but that's how it looks from the ground level with no comment from IBM.

   Using an open-source project with it's own momentum means that IBM only has to deal with developing the components which make it work with IBM's product portfolio as opposed to the entire codebase.

   It's not as though IBM doesn't keep close contact with the Apache Foundation or Sun Microsystems on a ton of other matters. No one would be left in the dark concerning projected changes to the codebase, nor are any of these communities going to reject reasonable additions to the codebase or the addition of Notes/Domino specific modules and addons. Apache has parser modules for a whole host of different scripting engines. You think LotusScript couldn't be one of them if IBM wanted to make it happen?

   Anyway.

   @27 Ed and John Head will correct me if I'm off the rails here, but the 8.0.1 release is roadmapped to release an API which should allow us to tie the Productivity Tools to whatever Notes application you want. Whether or not IBM intends to update the Document Library or Quickr templates to take advantage of this, to my knowledge, has not been announced.

   @26 again... And on that note, I'd also like to ask you who I can talk to on the QuickPlace/Quikr team about the flagrantly misleading information about the Linux support that Quickr was supposed to ship with?

   At the "LotusSphere Comes To You" in Chicago, I was told EXPLICITLY by the speaker that while Nautilus (one of Linux's File Managers) and OpenOffice plugins would not be a development target until the next point release, Linux server support for DOMINO and the Notes Client support for Linux was expected to ship with the 8.0 release.

   I have put my money down only to find out that Linux support has now been limited to the Firefox browser, which isn't Linux support, it's support for a browser which happens to be cross-platform (a little disingenuous) and on the server-side, only WAS folks get the Quickr server for Linux. That's really uncool. I know this isn't technically your department, but I've called the QuickPlace support team trying to get an official response on when, if ever, such support would be slated for and they have not gotten back to me for over a week now.

   If you want to email me a response since it's off topic, that'd be fine, and would be MUCH appreciated.

   Again, sorry if I've got a bitter tone, it's just been a frustrating week or two on the phone with Lotus. :(

1. 28  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/23/2007 6:52:08 PM

   @28, lots there to reply to.

   First, there's significant commitment to the editors, not just as a left-over from the Workplace experiments. I promise you'll hear a lot about them going forward. The collateral materials for them are still, admittedly, ramping up, though. I think your challenges are fair questions to ask, and it behooves IBM to get answers to those in due time.

   As for Quickr, no, not my department. I'll see if I can get a redirect, but I'm not in daily contact with the Quickr org...let's see who I can raise to answer those (like I did with { Link } ).

1. 29  Samuel deHuszar Allen Allen  | 7/24/2007 1:05:52 PM

   Ed. Your commitment to the constant flow of new questions means a lot to me, and I imagine your other readers as well. Thanks for your quick responses and general vigilance.

1. 30  Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog | 7/27/2007 9:08:24 AM

   There seems to be another problem with the overview, per the comment by David Leedy above. The PDF states that the limit is 32,000 rows, but as I wrote back in March (see { Link } ), I was easily able to create a spreadsheet with 50,000+ rows. I just tested with the latest build available, to be sure this had not changed, and was able to add rows far past 32,000, although I did not attempt to determine an actual limit. So, I don't know what the limit is, but I am quite sure it is not 32,000.

1. 31  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/27/2007 9:55:04 AM

   @Ben, sorry I missed your first commment...and David's. I'm working with the document's author to get it updated.