Ed Brill

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1. 1  Jeff Anderson  | 4/24/2008 4:12:09 PM

   Has anyone ever tried to search in Outlook? In Notes, I go to All Documents, and can full-text search Mail and calendar entries, whether sent, received, or saved in draft. That is 2 clicks. I think I have been able to do the mail items in about 15 clicks in Outlook, but that still leaves Calendar entries out.

   What do you find if you Tweetscan for Outlook gripes?

1. 2  Guy Wakely http://www.notesguy.co.uk | 4/24/2008 4:18:22 PM

   { Link }

   please see my previous post, it's certainly always been an issue !

1. 3  mike  | 4/24/2008 4:51:42 PM

   I was in the barbershop two weeks ago and someone getting his haircut talks about how their "Notes server" was down all the time and all the problems. Pretty sure he worked at an SMB, but its amazing what is so reliable when done right is so problematic to so many out there. We had a development project run over a year without having to restart Domino on a p-series machine once.

1. 4  Bruce Elgort http://ideajam.net | 4/24/2008 5:15:25 PM

   @1,

   Here is a search performed in Outlook 2007:

   { Link }

1. 5  Dan King  | 4/24/2008 5:52:36 PM

   I had a shock today when one of my users, who I consider an advanced user and knows all about the search facilities and loves them for searching our corporate applications, had no idea about the All Documents view in the mailfile.

   So how intuitive is going to a link that says Views to search your mail? OpenNTF mail has a linkthat just says 'Search Mail' (or something similar). Why isn't this part of normal Notes mail?

   Maybe this is a training issue in part, but surely the ability to search a mailfile should be completely intuitive. And don't get me into the problems training people to use pre-ND8 search - as soon as you mention using AND in a search string most people look at you in disbelief.

   Ed- 'Even without a full-text index. Though obviously it would be faster with an index.' Searching without a full-text index doesn't give good results at all, not really an option.

1. 6  Peter Presnell http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/dotdomino/ | 4/24/2008 6:11:45 PM

   The two biggest causes I encounter for user complaints about Notes are the result of:-

   1) Companies not investing time to train people to use their Mail/Notes client effectively.

   2) The total project costs for migrating to a newer version of Notes (including customizing the mail template) leaves many companies running versions of Notes 5+ years old.

   IBM could probably do themselves a big favor if they developed some nice "How To" videos for general Notes usage and published them on the Internet (FREE) and then linked to them from within the Notes client so that people could train themselves.

1. 7  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 4/24/2008 7:12:00 PM

   @6 RTFM or RTFH for help comes to mind for them because if you use it, it lists it in usually simple terms although admittedly it presumes you have been using Notes for a long time.

   As far as I recall there never was a how to video althou7gh there were guided tours which were early days movies or digital screencams of various functions.

   But yes training is the key and few companies pay for it anymore for proper training.

   As to the costs, it's not more than doing any other maintenance IMHO. The problem is the existing staff(admins and develeopers) in most companies are so time restricted they do not have time to do the upgrades and thus it costs more because they hire contractors or a BP.

   But really you can do 2 servers a day or even 1 a day and be done within a month for most companies.

1. 8  Peter Wilson  | 4/24/2008 7:39:27 PM

   @6 Nice idea, but users don't have the time nor care about training themselves. All technology today pretty much as to be manual free... people just want to use it without doing all that training.

   A friend showed me the Apple email interface today and I must say Outlook and Notes have a lot of work to do, to be anywhere as easy and intuitive to use. I hope the Notes developers have used it at least.

   Pete

1. 9  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/24/2008 7:56:13 PM

   This is the fourth time that I've linked the developerworks/lotus/notes page. Has anyone actually clicked through to it? I haven't heard a single bit of feedback. In my opinion, this is our best effort to-date going back several releases.

1. 10  Bruce Elgort http://bruceelgort.com | 4/24/2008 8:18:22 PM

   @Ed,

   "Lotus Notes and Domino 8 technical content"

   This doesn't seem so welcoming to end users now does it?

1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/24/2008 8:20:55 PM

   I agree that the site location sucks, Bruce. But what about the content itself? Most of it could be downloaded and redelivered elsewhere.

1. 12  Bruce Elgort http://bruceelgort.com | 4/24/2008 8:25:22 PM

   @Ed agreed the content is very good. I have written down some notes about this and plan on adding it to the next Taking Notes podcast.

1. 13  Jeff Anderson  | 4/24/2008 8:46:40 PM

   @4 Thanks. Proves a few points. It is a training issue. Outlook isn't as intuitive as people think. Still cannot search Calendar entries though, although notifications do appear which may get you what you need.

1. 14  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 4/24/2008 8:51:34 PM

   I can speak from first hand experience, (good) user training makes a huge difference. I have personally trained over 600 people on how to use Lotus Notes (6.0) during a migration project (from Outlook 2000 / Exchange 5.5) with rave reviews for the training, but they still had many complaints / reservations about their new e-mail system.

   But one cannot blame all of the problems with Notes' reputation on training alone.

   There was a HUGE user interface problem. It wasn't touched to any great extent for life of R5, 6, and 7. That's a lot of years of stagnation. Like a fine wine, the frustration had plenty of time to ferment.

   @8 is partially right, software, at least ones that perform what I would characterize as "common" functions. E-Mail would fall into that category. But as we all know and evangelize to all comers, Notes is much more than e-mail client; and it's those "extra" functions that require training.

   Having said all that, Notes' biggest problem is purely perception and that's a job for a very talented marketing department. History will tell us if Lotus can pull off would could be one of the greatest perception turnarounds of all time.

1. 15  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 4/24/2008 9:12:35 PM

   @Ed, @Bruce, re: the content, I may be in a distinct minority, but I don't find a bunch of PDF files and video files to be very useful in this scenario. And the "How do I" links all require flash? Really? Yuck.

   First of all, every bit of that content should be easily located by Googling, and IBM's websites are notoriously bad with search engines. Putting the content inside of videos and flash routines isn't going to help. Try Googling "How do I search in Lotus Notes mail" and see what the first page looks like. The first page is wikipedia, and the only IBM page is for Domino support. Ironically, Microsoft's "Windows Desktop Search Add-in for Lotus Notes" is on that first page. Now try "How do I search in Microsoft Outlook mail" - the first result is MS's launch page for Outlook's search tool. Then compare the two pages, MS's and this developerWorks one. I know which one is more approachable to an end-user, it's MS's, hands down.

   The content INSIDE the PDFs and videos may be fantastic, but if I'm an end user, I want pretty pictures, and user-friendly words and layouts, and I am definitely not going to watch a video or download a file just to quickly figure something out. You know which link I clicked first on MS's page? Top Ten Reasons to Try it.

   Now, if "me the end user" had any sort of clue, I'd have looked in Notes help instead of Googling for it to begin with. But how many people treat Google as their first and last point of investigation now? I'd say it's a pretty big number.

   Anyhow, color me unimpressed with that particular page as a source of help to the average end user.

1. 16  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 4/24/2008 10:18:01 PM

   @15 - I'm 100% with you. A bunch of blue links says "cold dead fish" to me. In my experience working with a total of about 400 end users in a SMB over the course of 8 years, they don't use Notes help. The "help" menu option is a cold dead stinky fish with porcupine quills and a biohazard warning. In rare instances users do venture into Notes help they open it once, can't find what they want, and they call or e-mail me. Or, more commonly, they follow John Lance's scale of bug stupidity and eventually a mob comes after me with torches.

   The product has to be so simple to use that help, training and a manual are not necessary, at least for the PIM apps.

1. 17  Bill Geimer  | 4/24/2008 11:01:25 PM

   The last product I had that was simple to use that help, training and a manual were not necessary was Dos 3.3. That was only because I learned on DOS 2.1.

   Its amazing how well Notes 8 searches if you build an index.

   Its amazing that with Outlook 2007, you have download a search tool from Microsoft over the internet to be able to search it. But then, its amazing when you come back from vacation and read your mail, you cannot just delete it all. Somewhere between a screen full of mesasges and around 300, it stops deleting. I only had 1,400 messages and it took be about 35 screens to delete them. On Notes, it took a while, but I once deleted over 350,000 messages from a database. I only had to select them once and press delete and wait for the server to finish.

1. 18  David Bell  | 4/24/2008 11:50:43 PM

   @16 - "The product has to be so simple to use that help, training and a manual are not necessary"

   <rant>

   Why do we bother with text books in school anymore ? I mean if it's so wrong to expect people to put in any effort to learn anything, why do we bother ?

   I see standards slipping all over the world in all walks of life and activities (especially services). Mediocrity is becoming the new acceptable and there is a general downward spiral wherever you care to look. I can't for the life of me fathom why we should not expect more of people ?

   Everything cannot be intuitive. Somewhere along the line, people have to learn something to do it well. Different people will find some things more intuitive than others.

   I am degree educated and have been in technology all my life yet it took me a while to work out the circular gesture to scroll, rather than just pressing the buttons, of the oh so lauded and ultra-intuitive iPod interface.

   I dare to venture the people who complain the most are the ones least interested in helping themselves.

   </rant>

1. 19  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 4/25/2008 1:22:03 AM

   I just wish I could create folders in Lotus Notes, all these categories make no sense to me.

1. 20  Christian Saur  | 4/25/2008 2:38:01 AM

   just wish I could export data to ms-excel with notes.

   just wish I could connect data to ms-word with notes.

   just wish I could make a Calendar-Entry for 25 hours.

   just wish I could see a better groupcalendar.

   just wish .....

1. 21  Ian Scott  | 4/25/2008 3:02:48 AM

   I think implementation is a significant factor. Sometimes a non optimal implementation is due to budget contraints and sometimes it is due to ignorance.

   The rest is really to do with how practically minded people and how motivated they are - and that varies. What is intuitive to one person is not necessarily intuitive to another.

   You've got to remember that people 'blame' computers all the time. Really. Windows gets more verbal stick than anything and it is not always justified.

   We started publishing a (simple) Notes 'Top Tip' in the fortnightly company newsletter a few months ago and it is paying dividends already. Some people say it is the only reason they read it. We are winning some hearts here.

1. 22  Dan King  | 4/25/2008 4:11:38 AM

   @18 The problem is technology and email should be there to assist users to do their work. It is not the core area of their work that brings the money in and they get paid for. If they have to learn their job, then learn the thing that should help them doing their job they're (rightly) not happy.

1. 23  Pedro Quaresma http://playroom3.wordpress.com | 4/25/2008 4:38:53 AM

   @11 I have to agree with Rob (@15) here. Yes the content may be great, but if it's hard to find and cumbersome to use, it might not be too helpful.

   Eric Burke exposes this better than me:

   { Link }

   It has been mentioned over and over, but if IBM can start finding a way of deploying a Notes (lite?) version of people's home computers, I believe it would do the job better.

1. 24  Patrick Darke http://www.ekrad.org | 4/25/2008 5:26:36 AM

   Ed, Thanks for the laugh. I get this constantly from our internal user base. However, after even 30 minutes of "personal" training, the lightbulb turns on, and amazing I have another convert. But the "please die already" comment just cracks me up. It is just like 10 years ago, and ND8 being here, death is a long way off.

1. 25  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 4/25/2008 8:06:34 AM

   @18 - When you're 8 years old everything is new so you need a lot more guidance. E-mail is ubiquitous and it shouldn't take hours of training. As Dan says, in business the tools should be transparent, not an impediment. I do think users need training for Notes applications, but they shouldn't have to be trained on how to simply send an e-mail, work with attachments, and manage their calendars. Those features should be intuitive by now.

   I still agree with Rob: I wouldn't send an end user to the dW page and expect them to get much out of it. Perhaps it's part of the dumbing down you describe, or perhaps end users have unrealistic expectations.

1. 26  Kerr  | 4/25/2008 8:23:52 AM

   @23,

   "It has been mentioned over and over, but if IBM can start finding a way of deploying a Notes (lite?) version of people's home computers, I believe it would do the job better."

   One thing I've been think of again recently is the concept of a free desktop email client form IBM. Something that was eclipse based and had pop, imap and ical support would sit very nicely with Symphony. Obviously this would not be notes, but it would put a lotus email client into consumer hands, and not suffer from the problems that plague trying to use the full Notes client in a single home user environment.

   Of course would there be any uptake? Do most home users just use gmail, yahoo, et al?

1. 27  Craig Boudreaux  | 4/25/2008 8:29:28 AM

   I did try to go to that site and I couldn't find any end user documentation (on Notes 7) before I got fed up with it. Certainly you wouldn't expect an end user to go there. Then I realized that this was 'developeroworks' so I tried to go to ibm.com directly. Guess what.... can't find anything remotely resembling 'training' there either.... There's a section for 'documentation' that looked promising but it felt like a dead end after I selected Lotus Notes and Version 7. This is certainly not how to design a site with end users in mind.

1. 28  vlad  | 4/25/2008 8:56:40 AM

   I would say that everyone is right. If you google "Lotus Notes sucks" you get 2800 results, if you google "Outlook sucks" you get 5400 results. I could be bias because am a Lotus notes guy but I am in company which is using Outlook and I am missing "All Documents" view and search from Lotus (Google desktop search is banned). The truth is at the server level and compatibility Exchange is far, far behind Lotus Notes. The Outlook client seems a little better than Outlook in my opinion and much better in others opinion. May because the Lotus Notes interface has been neglected for a such long time? The designer as well... I think we could agree that general perception is that Outlook is much better than Lotus Notes. Why? Maybe the MS marketing is better, Outlook is only an email client... but a survey and a study should be made.

   Also I do not know the Lotus Notes market share for small, medium, and large companies but my guess is that Outlook market share is (much) bigger in small and medium companies. Offering free (email) licences to small and medium companies would help Lotus Notes to penetrate to that segment where is not present and it would open the door for other products... It is just an idea.

1. 29  Brian Miller  | 4/25/2008 9:22:38 AM

   1. Why doesn't IBM own "lotusnotes.com"? That seems like a big oops. Well, at least the actual domain owners appear to be a BP...

   2. How much effort would is be to put some helpful, plainly written guides on how easy it is to avoid common pain points right on www.lotus.com? Or, maybe publicize the fast that notes.net still redirects to lotus dW? The idea here is "easy to get to".

   3. Speaking of dW, it's clearly not intended for a general audience. Too much noise, and it's even kind of hard for *me* to find things there. There needs to be a one-stop site for people to go to, that has a "headline" for every commonly mentioned annoyance (and, its well-known solution), along with a big, fat, obvious search box to go through the articles.

   I mean, seriously, has anyone tried attacking this head on? Maybe it's a good task for some marketing interns and level-1 support techs. And, perhaps, one of us to throw together the database? (I think that IBM should do it, really, but I doubt that it would really get going if we left it all up to them...) We often look at how easy it is for people to just turn the switch to solve their problem, instead of whining and going negative. But, there's nowhere for people to just go for an easy way to find what they're not seeing, even if it's not obvious to us why they don't see it.

1. 30  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 4/25/2008 9:51:22 AM

   @25 I hear what you're saying, but you're wrong :) Being intuitive is really hard, and sometimes downright impossible: iTunes is one thing, but Notes-based web content management solutions quite another!

   When I started with Notes (3.3) as an end-user, we got training in it. We also got training on Windows (3.1), how to use a mouse, and Lotus 1-2-3 and Ami Pro. This training took 2 days. We then got training in our specific in-house Notes / Smartsuite-based applications (3 days). And you know what? Those three days of chargeable time were really worth it, both to the individuals and to the firm.

   An initial investment in time and resource vis à vis training is paid back over and over when it comes to IT helpdesk calls, on the job delays and frustration (i.e. subsequent lack-of).

   Alas, this intensive starter training stopped a long time ago in that particular organisation; the powers-that-be figured that people just knew "that computer stuff" and so stopped with the hands-on training. I thought that was a real shame at the time, and my later experience as an application developer bore this thinking out: our users were really BAD at computers, even after ten years+ of the world wide web.

   I have to conclude that people DON'T know this stuff. A few clicks around a website, basic Google-ing and Outlook? Yes. Anything else with computers? No. And this isn't confined to Lotus Notes either: MS Office-based systems are like Notes apps, they're WAY more complex than Facebook, and all users benefit from some form of training.

   I've spoken with so many (intelligent) people who simply don't understand the whys and wherefores behind simple search queries in Notes, or pivot tables in Excel. The examples can go on and on... Invariably these "power tips" that we give them are a real revelation, and are something that "self-starters" like us IT types take for granted.

   So no, I'm not surprised that people don't "get" Lotus Notes -- it's too much to grasp in this world of instant gratification (and the issues aren't limited to Lotus Notes).

   We IT types forget this!

1. 31  Pete McPhedran  | 4/25/2008 9:56:58 AM

   @25,

   Hammers have been around arguably for millions of years. Let's say the current "design" hammer is only 150 years old. Very few people know how to use it well, less know how to use it correctly and a hammer is probably the simplest tool known to human kind.

   Any tool that is used in your job needs attention to it's proper and best use, including "ubiquitous" email. It doesn't matter how smart you are or what your "job" is, if you do not know how to use all of the tools at your disposal, somethings gonna give.

   I agree that MS has a jump as they gave away a moderately useful tool that a lot of people could use at home *and* in the office. I recently had a client express that she wanted the entire company to switch to Outlook because that is what she knew how to use and it is what she used at her last job.

   The problem that she and others were experiencing would not have been fixed by replacing Notes/Domino with "Outlook". Approx 15 minutes later, we trained 4 staff members on how to send and find mail and they were all ready to evangelize to the rest of the organization.

   Training, Marketing and a free, lite mail client that works with POP, IMAP and Domino and IBM can move beyond all this client war cr@p.

   --Pete

1. 32  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 4/25/2008 10:46:02 AM

   @25 please don't use iTunes and iPods as examples of easy to use! Sure anyone can get a song to play (which is good), but filtering, crating playlists, getting songs to repeat or shuffle, etc, etc, etc all need explaining, they are not intuitive. That said, their demos/tutorials/videos are awesome! { Link }

1. 33  George Paglia  | 4/25/2008 11:34:17 AM

   Ed,

   You wanted some feedback on the stuff on developers works. Ok, so good and bad news. The good news is, some of this stuff will be very usable for both my Notes 8 conversion team and my company's users. The bad news is the total lack of coordination between the different parts, and the lack of understanding of how a user interface works in courseware. As to the latter, in most cases it's either poor navigation or the navigation disappears forever as you start (Please, if I'm wrong, my apologies and would someone please point me to the pause, play, etc buttons for #3 and #4)

   1) "Using IBM Lotus Notes 8: Productivity Series" (Notes 101) wasn't bad. I like the interface, but you should be able to tell it to just play thru instead of stopping on each small section. It's very annoying.

   2) "Exploring New Features in IBM Lotus Notes 8" (Notes 102) Most valuable of all. Lots of good stuff here. Again, like Notes 101, the interface could be better

   3) "What's New in IBM Lotus Notes 8 (video)" cute, but almost useless for two reasons: 1) too much "fluff" (the guy talks too much) and 2) the only chance to do navigation is on the first screen. After that, you have to "Next" your way thru

   4) "Using IBM Lotus Notes 8 Mail, Calendar, and Contacts" Again, the navigation is on the first screen. After that, you have to "Next" your way thru

   5) "Introducting IBM Lotus Notes 8 (download)" Good content, good navigation (the only one), but it's showing the beta with links to the beta. This one should be redone.

   6) Reveiwers Guide is pretty good, in fact you should just expand on the user chapter and make it into training materials

   7) "Menu mappings: Where to find Lotus Notes 6/7 menus that have changed in Lotus Notes 8" was realtively useful, but not very portable

   8) There are 2 PDF "cheat sheets" ("Using IBM Lotus NOtes 8" and "Using Activities in IBM Lotus Notes 8" which are pretty good. I'm going to use these

1. 34  Michael Mannske http://www.fndbook.com | 4/25/2008 12:16:50 PM

   @26, you make a good point. I keep going back to Thunderbird as an example with its plethora of add-ons, multiple accounts, local folders, spam filter, calendar, todos, contacts, intuitive ui and nightly builds. I live in TB and actually give it exclusive use of one of my monitors because it provides multiple email identities for my multiple companies (w/o multiple logins). And as of this week, I can drag my emails to the calendar and todo panes without needing an Activities server (and before you say "yeah, but," Ed, think about this: TB is free).

   Notes used to be my killer app so what's happened in these few short years? If you read this thread, the problem isn't so much technology as it is frustration with IBM marketers, the same ones that can look at the Web 0.0 dW page and say "what's not to love?" The same ones who think just because we suddenly have a few quarters of growth all our problems are gone.

   My hope for the future rests not with Notes 8 but with the marketing saavy of Bob Picciano. Hopefully he'll be the change agent we've been looking for and clean house so our users will start being validated and stop being disregarded every time they have an issue (@9).

1. 35  Richard Moy http://www.taishanworks.com | 4/25/2008 12:36:52 PM

   There has been a lots of discussion about training here and how important it is to the success of a migration. Our company ReCor has been creating the best Notes training solutions since Notes 3 and we are beginning to sell quite of bit of our LearningDocs for Lotus Notes 8 training recently. The cost per user is extremely low compare to the cost of per user for a migration. However, management usually do not apprepricate the importance of training and its impact on the productivity of users and the cost of help desk support. Training is usually the first thing on the chopping block if the migration is over budget. However, the impact is great. Unlike Outlook which is just a mail and calendaring program, Notes is much more than that. It is a full application platform and environment. Since you can do so much with Notes, without proper training whether it is a product like ours or ILT users will get frustrated and will complain that Notes is horrible.

1. 36  David Bell  | 4/25/2008 12:52:01 PM

   @22 - so next time you take your car for an emissions test, you'll not care if the guy doing the job knows how to use the testing tool ? And if your car fails, that's not his fault because he should not be expected to have to learn how to use it properly. Got it.

   It's exactly this kind of low expectation that I am complaining about.

1. 37  Jeff Picco  | 4/25/2008 6:40:47 PM

   Ed,

   I was shown the education web site you linked today. I think that is a great start. But, I believe that email and calendaring is expected to be so easy that a manual or training class is not needed. On occasion, a simple search of a help file might be needed, but on rare occasion.

   My only complaint about the education web site is that it's Notes 8 Standard centric. Due to the issue with Notes Roaming and it's limited support until 8.5, we are stuck with Notes 8 Basic. Finding material for that is not easy.

   At the bottom of that page, there are "How Do I" videos. That is what I'm going to do for my end users. Very simple and short videos of the items we find get a response of "I didn't know Notes could do that".

1. 38  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 4/25/2008 9:07:49 PM

   Everyone should see the videos Vaughan Rivett made: { Link }

1. 39  Peter Wilson  | 4/26/2008 12:47:01 AM

   @36 Yeah, agreed. I guess for tools such as email and searching the web, companies no longer want to train users in them. They just expect staff have these skills nowadays.

   Almost all of what executives and general users will use on a day to day basis in Notes is email and calendar and scheduling. And during the Notes 4, 5, 6 and 7 days I don't believe it was as intuitive to use as other clients. For example, even in Notes 8, you can't easily create a calendar entry like you can in Outlook and Apple's email client. ie. selecting a bunch of time and then start immediately editing that entry. If you try to select some time and then start typing in something for that entry, a window opens up with "Starts with...". Users go WTF??!!! I want my Outlook! Sigh. Notes is still playing catchup in this basic funtionality IMHO.

   Pete

1. 40  Axel  | 4/28/2008 4:58:20 AM

   I somehow have developed a homegrown antroposophical theory about Notes User-user interface design and people. Whats often forgotten is, that people are different.

   For example my sister uses Lotus Notes in her job and she really have learnt quite naturally to use it in an effective way without asking me, except for very, very, very special things.

   On the other hand I have a cousin who asked me much more and he still sucks as a notes user.

   Why? My little sister, Starting with learning to walk, allways have learnt things in a very strategical and systematic way. Kind of very "german". Learning is learning and fooling around is fooling around. My cousin allways have had a more playfull / kick and rush style of aquiring new competences.

   I think that Lotus Notes has a certain tradition that favours the strategic learner versus the fooling around learner.

   One little example: Not knowing, why would you search for "out of office"-agent in actions/tools/Out of Office?

   I think Lotus Notes 8 tips the balance a bit in the direction towards the fooling around learner, but more could be done.

1. 41  Jeff Picco  | 4/28/2008 11:40:36 AM

   @40 - You bring up some good points. IMO Notes was targeted at the highly technical engineering types and not the person that only uses a computer because their manager tells them to.

   Notes 8 is a step in the right direction, but you can still see the evil engineer peaking out on occasion. For me, I love it, but I'm a geek :-)

   With the major research going on in companies like IBM, Google , MS and a host of others including the University space on 'human interfaces', not to mention the new networking technologies being developed, I'm hopeful that the UI will become very intuitive and light where multi-million dollar upgrade projects that take years to complete will be a thing of the past we reminisce about over a pint.

   My two children (14 and 9) scour the Internet daily and bring me new games and other interactive web sites. What seems to get the most traction with them and their peers (and on occasion myself) are the sites where the application starts out easy enough where either no, or very limited, instructions are given and then as you delve deeper in to the game / app the complexity rises, but again, limited formal training is needed. I think UI designers for business apps can learn a lot from that space. Second life is not popular among that age group so far. The older teen... yes, but for a few of the wrong reasons.

   So, I digress, but I do think you make some good points about who can easily embrace the UI of Notes.

1. 42  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 4/29/2008 7:48:18 AM

   Manual trackback

   { Link }

1. 43  NeilT  | 4/29/2008 8:27:26 AM

   @1

   Across all versions of Outlook that I know of since 97,

   Ctrl-Shift-F

   Click on Browse

   Select the mailbox and check the Search subfolders checkbox

   type in the text

   Change it from description to description to both description and body text.

   In Outlook 2007 type Ctrl-Alt-A and type the query in.

   Notes users don't know how to use Outlook and Outlook users don't know how to use Notes. Creating pain. However Outlook is/was more point click and click happy than Notes with the ability to discover simple stuff more easily.

   Using Outlook as a business tool, some things really annoy the hell out of me. Using it as a personal tool it's fine. However the irritants are less than many people see with Notes.

   What it comes down to is many people don't like change.

   As to the training issue? If I were a CIO or CEO and balancing the two issues and someone told me "but you haven't trained your users, no wonder". I woulds say "OK, if you pay my training bill I'll keep your product".

   That is the way it is today. We have to learn to accept it and work around it.

1. 44  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 4/30/2008 6:41:37 AM

   Ctrl-Shift-F, Ctrl-Alt-A

   How obvious and intuitive...why didn't I guess that?

1. 45  Greg D  | 4/30/2008 8:20:07 AM

   Any user interface that requires training for a task as widely known and understood as sending an email is, by definition, a broken user interface. The problem isn't a lack of training or lazy users, the problem is the software.

   @44, look @4. Then tell me what's intuitive about having to go to a different screen and click "Start replication" to send and receive email. Then having to separately click "Refresh" to actually display any of the now-received email. I've had to use Notes 3, 5, and 7 in various positions at various companies. Never once was it as intuitive or easy to use as its contemporary version Pine, Eudora, or Outlook.

1. 46  David Bell  | 4/30/2008 8:48:34 AM

   @45 - "Then tell me what's intuitive about having to go to a different screen and click "Start replication" to send and receive email. Then having to separately click "Refresh" to actually display any of the now-received email."

   Neither of these are true statements.

   You don't have to start replication manually at all, and you certainly don't need to have mail waiting on replication to be sent.

   Auto-refresh Inbox has been around nearly 5 years now.

1. 47  Greg D  | 4/30/2008 9:13:29 AM

   @46

   Yet, in spite of what you say, I've had to do exactly that for the last 3 years in Notes 5. If I don't, email doesn't show up. Auto refresh doesn't work, or if it does the delay between receiving the mail via replication and having it refresh back in the inbox in unacceptably long.

   I suppose one might say that I've set notes up wrong, or that I'm using it wrong. Why is it even _possible_ to do these things wrong, though? I promise I didn't go mucking about in the various preferences. (Are there 4 or 5 different options and preferences screens, now? I've lost count, and I'm terrified of touching them. Sametime taught me that modifying preferences in IBM software results in corrupted data and crashing programs.)

   Basic, core UI design principles are violated again and again and again in Notes. I don't understand how anyone can call themselves an IT professional and still endorse such a universally despised, horrible, and expensive product.

1. 48  David Bell  | 4/30/2008 4:18:57 PM

   @47 - your prior post did not explicitly say you are currently using Notes R5. Auto-refresh came along in 6.5 (nearly five years ago - Sept 2003).

   If you used R7, which you claim, you should have experienced this behavior along with the client triggering a mail replication cycle to download mail when a new mail notification is received from the server. That feature was introduced in 6.0 which came out in Oct 2002. You don't have to wait on the scheduled replication for send or receive.

   Complaining today about a version of the product that is 5-6 years old is disingenuous at best.

   "I don't understand how anyone can call themselves an IT professional and still endorse such a universally despised, horrible, and expensive product"

   Way to win friends and influence people.

   Because we, the terrible unwashed IT professionals who do endorse it, are not dazzled by skin-deep glamor; we are not that shallow. We recognize the unique value it brings to the majority of Fortune 1000 companies and 50% of the messaging/collaborative marketplace, contrary to the numbers our friends in Redmond like to espouse.

1. 49  Tony Frazier  | 4/30/2008 4:37:50 PM

   @47 "...I've had to do exactly that for the last 3 years in Notes 5."

   Notes 5?! As a long time Notes/Domino user and consultant, I remember the lack of an auto-refresh on the inbox as a major pain for myself and customers. But then we upgraded! I think version 6.5, maybe 6, introduced this. As @46 states, almost 5 years ago. I understand that you may not be able to upgrade due to your IT organization's policies or resources, but take it from these folks here, what you are experiencing can be changed.

   @47 "I suppose one might say that I've set notes up wrong, or that I'm using it wrong. Why is it even _possible_ to do these things wrong, though?"

   It is possible due to the flexibility of the Notes/Domino software to be configured for an organization's unique computing environment, network topology, business process requirements, etc. Any software, across the spectrum, that has configuration options can be mis-configured.

   @47 "I don't understand how anyone can call themselves an IT professional and still endorse such a universally despised, horrible, and expensive product."

   Which universe? There are folks, many here, that do not despise Notes/Domino. Your other points can be explained and mitigated by configuration changes and by using a version that is not 10 years old. I would be glad, seriously, to help you with this; I am sure many others here would help as well. But this comment I take personal offense to. On the one hand, I do not want to respond to the comment (my usual tact), because I think it will be a lost effort. But, on the other hand, I am having a difficult time letting it go. Maybe just a bad day for me. I have been an IT professional for 25 years and endorse Notes/Domino on its merits and capabilities that I have examined, judged, and balanced against competing products. Is it perfect: no way! Is it horrible: no way! Can it be better: yes! Making such blanket statements is not going to facilitate you getting relief from your problems and will just alienate the very people best able to help you. But, maybe you do not want any help, just looking to change for change's sake.

   But, again, if you or your organization want to improve your Notes/Domino environment, myself and many other readers of this blog are available to assist.

   @Ed, others: I have been a long, long time lurker on this blog and many others. Not sure I want this entry to be my introduction; it was written hastily and probably with a clouded mind. But it is what it is.

   --Tony

1. 50  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/30/2008 8:30:23 PM

   @Tony, it's OK, all comments are welcome, anytime.

1. 51  Pedro Quaresma http://playroom3.wordpress.com | 5/1/2008 6:39:54 AM

   Sliiiiightly OT, Joel Spolsky has an interesting article on his blog today on Lotus Notes, Ray Ozzie, Groove and Microsoft and the new Live Mesh product

   { Link }

1. 52  Greg D  | 5/1/2008 9:29:39 AM

   @48

   I used R5 for the last 3 years. Earlier this year we finally moved to R7. R7 was an improvement over R5, which was itself an improvement over R3 (which was totally unusable. I just refused to use R3. I was interning at the time, so it didn't matter much). When it works, anyhow. Right now the problem with R7 is that it fails to properly place my "memos" in my inbox. The only way for me to look at new emails is to browse through the cluttered All Documents view. Local replica, server, doesn't matter. My inbox just decided to kill itself one morning. The inbox will pull in memos one time if I create a new local replica, but the new replica will never work again after that. The most recent item in my inbox is from April 7.

   You're right, I did speak a bit hastily when I said that I didn't understand how an IT professional could endorse Notes. A quick search through the web reveals that, apparently, the only people who do endorse Notes are IT professionals. I don't think it's a coincidence that they all seem to be Notes devs or Notes contractors, though. I've talked with literally hundreds of people who try to _use_ Notes on a daily basis to facilitate their _real_ jobs in various industrial and office environments (FirstEnergy, e.g.). The most resoundingly positive compliment I've run across is something along the lines of, "it usually works." (That wasn't a common thread, I'm afraid.)

   I'm not espousing skin deep glamour. I'm espousing core, user-centric fundamentals. In fact, I might argue that the shallow position is the one that places technical ease for the few over ease-of-use and net productivity for the many. I'm no Redmond fanboy, _every_ other mail client I've _ever_ used did email better than Notes. Pine, Eudora, Outlook, Juno, hotmail, gmail, everything. I'm shocked that Notes didn't have the ability to "auto-refresh" its mail view until 2003! That's ridiculous! Even Outlook 97 (which I did _not_ like due to the lack of a preview pane) did that. On average, I'd say I end up charging about 1.5 hours per week to "Office computer maintenance" just as a result of waiting for Notes' UI thread to stop hanging on an email with an attachment over the course of the week.

   Notes' UI doesn't target the end user. That's the core UI flaw, and until the responsible organization is willing to eliminate nonsensical cruft (like an "edit" mode for received emails that is accessed by an accidental double click and prevents the use of usual commands like "Reply" on "Forward"), it isn't going to get better. There is absolutely no good justification for using words like "replicate" or "views" in an email client, and the menu structure is senselessly complex. It took me 5 minutes just to figure out how to attach a file the first time:

   "Hmmm, I need to add an attachment. Right click where I want to add it and... insert table, but no attachment. Crummy context menu, ok. How about the message menus? tools->add attachment? No. Send a file... , oh, crap, read that wrong, send _and_ file. Are attachments a Delivery Option? That'd be silly. Not in basic... not in advanced. Well, adding an attachment is an Action, so Action...No add, no archive, lots of synchronize. What's that mean? Whatever. Maybe I need to Create an attachment. Create Memo, I think I'm in the right place, but I want to create something in a Memo. Create... Other...? What's this? Why is this a separate dialog instead of a submenu? No, no, ok, no attachment here. Cancel. edit maybe? No. File... attach! Ah-ha! What a stupid place for it."

   When years of use are filled with small exercises of frustration like this, is it really surprising that notes is so reviled by its users? We don't care about Notes' replication, we don't care about Notes' "fortune 1000 value", we don't care about Notes' market share because if we had a say, it wouldn't have that market share. We care about using it transparently to get our work done, and the frustration we're forced to eat on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis tells us that it's a bad, bad value.

   I'm not attacking or disrespecting you or anyone else in particular on this blog. I'm disrespecting Notes because Notes, and by proxy the organization responsible for Notes, disrespects me.

1. 53  David Bell  | 5/1/2008 3:20:31 PM

   @52

   "On average, I'd say I end up charging about 1.5 hours per week to "Office computer maintenance" just as a result of waiting for Notes' UI thread to stop hanging on an email with an attachment over the course of the week."

   Outlook suffers the same problem when not using a local message cache. Now if you work in a local replica, as you seem to indicate, this is not an issue.

   "There is absolutely no good justification for using words like "replicate" or "views" in an email client"

   Since there was no precedent or common name for this when replication technology was introduced by Notes, what else would you have called it ?

   "File... attach! Ah-ha! What a stupid place for it."

   File | Attach is the wrong place for it ? Isn't that exactly where it is on all other clients ? It certainly is in Thunberbird. And no other client has a paper clip toolbar button ?

   "We care about using it transparently to get our work done, and the frustration we're forced to eat on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis tells us that it's a bad, bad value."

   I would say that because standards are not uniformly implemented in IT, that no software is completely transparent to the user or will completely adhere to them. When you talk about "Basic, core UI design principles are violated again and again and again in Notes" to whose principles / standards are you referring ?

1. 54  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 5/1/2008 8:08:15 PM

   My inbox just decided to kill itself one morning.

   Now that's just argumentative. We all know your inbox was never alive, nor did it *decide* to do anything.

   The inbox will pull in memos one time if I create a new local replica, but the new replica will never work again after that. The most recent item in my inbox is from April 7.

   Wait, are you saying that if you make a new replica (presumably on your local machine) it adds messages to your Inbox? To call that non-standard behavior would be an understatement.

   I'm curious about your environment. You imply that you've used Notes since R3, which is going all the way back to 1993. Then you say you used R5 up until this year, when you upgraded to Notes 7. Why would you go to Notes 7 in 2008? Notes 8 had already been shipping for 6 months by then. The first maintenance release was right on the cusp of being delivered.

   I have to say, I suspect some very strange choices on the part of your IT department if you've just moved from R5 to R7 in 2008. And strange choices would explain things like emails showing up in your Inbox when you make a new replica, but not when you receive new messages.

   All software can suffer from bad implementation. Your inbox situation sounds like a bug -- one that would normally be addressed by a Domino administrator. Have you notified your administrator? Has he or she done anything about it?

   Feel free to have him or her call me at 770 517 0092. I'm sure we can diagnose and fix your Inbox problem in no time.

1. 55  SS  | 5/13/2008 7:09:36 PM

   Hi guys. Interesting comments. Unfortunately, I have to agree with the Lotus Notes haters. I have been migrating to the Lotus Notes UI (from Thunderbird) for the last three years. I am currently running Lotus Notes 6.5.4 on Winblows XP and Lotus Notes 8 (beta) on Linux. Also, I am an end user, not a developer or an administrator.

   This email UI migration has been way more difficult (and frustrating!!!) than any of my past migrations.

   This is a list of the email systems I have used in the past.

   ? (IBM Mainframe)

   ? (Prime mini-computer)

   DEC EMOS (all-in-one)

   ? (early 3Com email on PC-DOS)

   Elm (FreeBSD)

   Pine (UNIX)

   Eudora (Winblows)

   Outlook (Winblows)

   Sylpheed (Linux)

   Thunderbird (Linux)

   (And let me say upfront that I HATE Microsoft! I hate their user interfaces. Bill and Steve should be in federal prison for life. I fully applaud the EU's fines. And I hope to live to see the day that Microsoft trades on the pink sheets.)

   I have many issues with the Lotus Notes email UI. However, the biggest issue I have is that my IT department has the power to prevent me from being productive. And Lotus Notes gives them that power. For email!?!?!?!

   Why would anyone intentionally disable IMAP/POP/Webmail and local replication?

   My remote VPN connection to Corporate runs extremely well for everything except Lotus Notes (it crawls). Is it the Domino server? Nobody knows. Lots of finger pointing.

   In my job I don't need a powerful collaboration system. I need email. With a UI that is similar to the other 10 email clients that I have used. That uses the same terminology that all of the other email clients use.

   I have spent months trying to figure out how to forward my email to a familiar email client. However, I have been blocked time and time again by my evil IT Lotus Notes Domino server administrators.

   I hate you Lotus Notes!