Ed Brill

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1. 1  Vaughan Rivett http://www.vaughanrivett.co.nz | 6/9/2010 5:21:31 PM

   Ed,

   I would really love to have an iPad if it was able to run a Lotus Notes client. I expect that this would only happen if the device was able to multitask.

   Here I am wishing for a full web based Lotus Notes client :-)

1. 2  Andreas Imnitzer  | 6/9/2010 5:33:40 PM

   Well, Ed, many of the features a Notes Calendar has, have grown over time. The same features are not really in your face, when one uses Notes/iNotes.

   We in the yellow family have grown up with philosopy around calendaring, scheduling, 1:n and m:n communication, but nevertheless, the apple interface for iCal is much easier to use. So, when I want an update on a meeting I declined, I'll write mail to the chair person. And that's easy, too.

   Apple just concentrates, like google, on the simple 80% features.

   I wish I could add another Notes Calendar, not a Google one(marketing epic fail), to my iNotes interface to compete with Apple' simple Calendar interface.

   Not to be misunderstood, I was pushing out Notes as a business partner, and still support Domino in my new job. But: hidden Actions in Action bars (which is Windows style) do not encourage people to use features. Re-thinking an In-your-face UI for i/web/pad/pod Notes is deftly needed.

1. 3  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/9/2010 6:09:51 PM

   The device manufacturers have the luxury of zero legacy install base. Even when they have a long product history, like Blackberry, people are far more accepting that whatever the new feature set is, is what it is.

   There's nothing stopping Lotus from making a version of the C&S features that's minimalist except perhaps ADA standards adherence. You've long had a practice of surfacing UI features as advertisement, just like Microsoft and Google do, because there's no competitive checkbox for "elegant."

   Don't get me wrong; since the creation of the Design Lab, Lotus has gotten WAY better about design. But there are still 8 different Reply menu variants and 3 different forward menu variants. The iPhone has 2 and 1 respectively. There are only 13 first-level context menu items on an email in Notes 8.5.1 instead of the previous 27 in Notes 7, but that's still too many by a factor of 3.

   But it's a catch-22 for you. You could remove interface vectors to simplify, but people would freak. You could offer a control switch for "minimalist" mode (like full/lite/ultralite on iNotes) but that increases the testing permutations, which slows your release cycle, and people would freak. So instead you stay the course and provide API level integration to let someone use a device UI, and people scratch their heads and wonder why they prefer the device.

   IBM would have to somehow get the corporate will to tell their customers that they'll take when you give them and like it. And unless IBM gets acquired by Apple so Steve Jobs can ram it down their throats, that just ain't gonna happen. But this is the nature of an install base. *shrug*

1. 4  Oliver Regelmann http://n-komm.de/blog | 6/9/2010 6:30:32 PM

   Based on my own daily experience with Notes users:

   "There's no delegation, no counter-proposal, no ability to even send comments with the reply. "

   Features no one ever uses.

   "On my Blackberry (and iPad), there's no "keep me informed" checkbox when declining a meeting. "

   Ok, that one's different. No one knows what this is meant for but everybody would use it if he knew.

1. 5  Peter Wilson  | 6/9/2010 6:40:20 PM

   Apple focuses all of it's efforts on engineering and an incredibly easy to use (manual free) user experience. I personally don't believe IBM understood this with Notes until version 8. I remember during R5 hoping and asking many times when would the user interface be worked on only to see a simple home page included in the final beta's - sigh.

   At least IBM seems to understand the importance of the UI in products such as Sametime, Quickr, Lotus Connections from the early begining.

   Pete

1. 6  Neil Wainwright http://www.nexonia.com | 6/9/2010 11:20:14 PM

   I agree with Nathan to a point. Apple too has legacy apps in iCal and even the iPhone, yet they decided to make the best possible calendar for the iPad. Steve Jobs for sure...he insists on elegance AND function AND perfection. IBM has always been about function, but like Nathan says IBM has gotten better at UI too. With guys like Ed in charge and what I see as an embrace of the Apple design sensibility at IBM, things will continue to trickle in. WWSJD...What Would Steve Jobs Do? :)

   ...Neil

1. 7  Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 6/9/2010 11:52:20 PM

   A lot of those Notes calendar/scheduling features that the iPhone/iPad don't support are the same features that either plain don't work or else are unreliable when used for collaborating with others outside a Notes domain.

   When implementing Notes/Domino for organisations that mainly work with external customers/partners/suppliers, often I wish there were a way to turn those features off - they can be more trouble than they're worth and certainly generate their share of support calls.

   As Nathan says, that's the issue that comes from the install base - I'm sure if Lotus were to start again (as in effect you are doing with LotusLive iNotes), a much smaller subset of features that are more broadly supported by Google Calendar, Apple iCal and the rest would be acceptable in 95% of cases.

1. 8  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/10/2010 12:15:50 AM
   
   

   @4

   ""There's no delegation, no counter-proposal, no ability to even send comments with the reply. "

   Features no one ever uses."

   Really? I use them all the time, and based on what I see in IBM-land, many of my colleagues do as well (and not just the technical ones). I am sure Mary Beth would have an opinion about how much usage these features get in the real world, but it's probably more than you think.

1. 9  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 6/10/2010 12:35:51 AM

   This just came up at work the other day. Someone who manages a lot of meetings finally found out why so many people were never seeing reschedule notices: they're all Blackberry users and as you pointed out, Ed, they don't get to click 'keep me informed.' And really, since the default for that is 'yes' and everyone is used to that as the 'norm' - they don't even get the default behavior and they contradict others' base expectations.

   Features are great, but when they're not supported across all platforms, they cause problems. So I have (of course and inevitably) two new feature requests that could help in this one case:

   1. When a calendar response doesn't explicitly set that 'informed' option (maybe it would have to become a Yes/No radio rather than an on/off checkbox for this to be detected), default to Yes.

   2. Show meeting managers which attendees have NOT chosen to stay informed. This request came from the user, by the way - they just want to know who they need to manually reach out to.

   By the way, @8 - I've stopped using 'respond with comments' because so few people read the calendar responses. I even caught myself missing someone's comments the other day. Does that feature really work?

   I do use delegation and counter-proposal, and definitely miss them on my mobile devices.

   /No, not seriously proposing new features via blog comments, just thinking aloud...

1. 10  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/10/2010 12:53:04 AM

   @8 You perfectly illustrated my point: features that have some value for a subset of users, but are like too many knickknacks on the shelves for other users. And so, who is the priority?

   Let's be generous and say 20% of Notes users even have the power to delegate an invite in a business scenario. And of that, let's say.... what, 30% of meetings get delegated? That makes it a feature that gets used less than 1/3 of the time by 1/5 of the user base.

   Or in other words, a feature that's just clutter in 94% of cases.

   And yet, if you took it away, that 6% would be the loudest in all of the product's history. It would take tremendous institutional fortitude to commit to the silent majority, and drop a marginal feature for the sake of simplifying for the vast majority of use cases.

   Look at what happened when you said Mac users would have to wait for half-a-major release to get full-text indexing on attachments. You'd think you guys announced the end of mouse support on Windows desktops. :-/

   So the net result is like government budgets: every menu item has its own special interest group. The costs are dispersed but the benefits are concentrated. So nobody wants their pet item removed, but the net result of all the pet items is a death-by-a-thousand-cuts.

   The only way out is a revolution. Either by getting a new dictator, a la Steve Jobs; or by writing a constitution and adhering to it religiously, like www.google.com. But the open, binary democratic process simply cannot lead to a result that is the best for the constituents.

   That's not to say it will fail. Just to say that it will constantly be found wanting when compared to experiences where the focus is on making the 80-90% be super-easy. Maybe not having the best interface is okay. *shrug*

1. 11  Notes-User  | 6/10/2010 1:14:25 AM

   Ed, do you know Lotus-Organizer?

   One of the best Calendar-Programs with Super UI.

   But it's dead !!!

1. 12  Volker Weber http://vowe.net/about | 6/10/2010 1:30:31 AM

   Nokia phones have way more features than Apple's. Who is winning?

   Notes has more decorations (eye candy) than iPad. But more isn't better. Msft is falling into the same trap, as this famous video shows { Link } They call it "rich".

1. 13  ed brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/10/2010 1:38:32 AM
   
   

   @11 I was the first guy to deploy Organizer 1.1 in a production group scheduling environment (at US Robotics in 1993).

   I am intrigued by how "marginal" some of these features really are. I bet the answers would be in a completely different direction from Japanese customers for example.

1. 14  Oliver Regelmann http://n-komm.de/blog | 6/10/2010 1:48:53 AM

   @8. That's why I said this is based on my own experience. YMMV.

1. 15  bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 6/10/2010 2:25:12 AM

   If only Notes had the Organiser year-at-a-glance calendar feature.. Its only been what - 16 years - since we met at Interchange (and both no doubt using cc:Mail and organiser)

   Wouldnt a notes client on the iPad rock?

   ---* Bill

1. 16  Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 6/10/2010 5:17:38 AM

   @13 Ed, obviously you get to speak to a lot of customers, so I wouldn't question your perception of how these features are used across the world.

   However, this does go back to the discussion from a year or so ago about IBM developing products based on its own use of the technology ("drinking your own champagne" etc). There is a real danger in assuming that every organisation works in a similar way to IBM whether technically or culturally - use of calendaring tools is a classic example of that.

   Looking ahead, I can see far more focus on inter-organisational scheduling via tools such as Tungle than the more traditional intra-organisational tools such as those we're discussing here.

1. 17  Joerg Rafflenbeul  | 6/10/2010 5:45:36 AM

   I'm sorry but the initial question on DNUG's closing session was not about functionality of mobile clients or a comparison between their limited calendar architecture and Notes nor about their approach on details (actually it was my question and also my hint that nobody understands the limitation by a maximum duration of 24 hours in appointments). It was about ease of use. Lotus Notes has five different types of forms plus an "Event Announcement". You cannot convert them into each other. Any "Meeting" or "Appointment" has a maximum duration of 24 hours. In any other client (iPhone, MS Outlook, BlackBerry, ...) I have not seen a so much complicated model.

   Again, like already stated on DNUG: "None of my users understand why there is a limitation of 24 hours in appointments". Also none of them (initially) understands why it needs five different forms.

   Don't get me wrong. I like Lotus Notes and its level of detail for scheduling. Most other clients have no option to enter and manipulate the time zones. But it really drives most of my users and me mad that if you invite people to a meeting that starts on 11 AM on the first day with a workshop and ends on 5 PM on the third day with a closing session (like DNUG conference ;-)) that you have to send at least three invitations (first day afternoon, second day full day, third day morning + afternoon) to allow people to enter the exact duration of this event.

   Yes there might be pros about the current approach (also DNUG conferences will give me some free time in the night between the days, and maybe not everyone can attend on the first or the last day and would like to accept only a part of the full schedule and yes it also needs to plan the travel time individual), but couldn't IBM provide one single (not five) more user friendly form for all types of entries, which allows to schedule longer than 24 hours (sorry, yes i know reoccurring works, but only with the same time frame on all days!)?!!!

   To many details this is what users need:

   - one form to create calendar entries (including invitations)

   - same level of details as option out of current set of forms

   - more than 24 hours duration for single entries

1. 18  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/10/2010 8:10:13 AM

   "I am intrigued by how "marginal" some of these features really are. I bet the answers would be in a completely different direction from Japanese customers for example."

   Then ask them. Maybe 80% of Japanese users are managers while only 20% are workers. That would make it more commonly used. Or perhaps instead of the use case options of "attend the meeting," "send someone in your place," or "don't attend the meeting;" Japanese users only have the first two? So the last guy on the totem pole simply has no ability to decline? I guess that would bump up the frequency to at least 50%.

   On the other hand, maybe it's just that all the people who would make the decision are in management. :-)

   The sensible thing to do in my mind, would be to change the nature of Forward on an invite so that what it forwarded was itself an invite, instead of a message containing what is really a picture of the invite. Then you wouldn't need a dedicated "Delegate" action. You could just Forward to the correct person, optionally including a cc to the chairperson of the meeting. Thus providing the desired business functionality without adding another UI modality.

   Then again, what do I know? I don't have a PhD in this stuff.

1. 19  Dale Cybela  | 6/10/2010 8:43:54 AM

   @17. I fully understand the desire that comes from the concept of 1 form versus multiple forms to put something on the calendar, however, the complexity of that 1 form seems formidable. The scenarios of a multi-day meeting where the time frames of the meeting are different may in fact be the norm for your meetings, I would have to believe that in day to day business the vast majority of meetings (even reoccurring) are (or at least begin) as being the same time over the reoccurrence frequency (daily, weekly, etc.).

   It is not only the form to create the invite that gets complicated, but the acceptance gets the same complications. The user (over the course of a year meeting once a month) would have the option to accept/decline each individual meeting. The Chair now gets an acknowledgement with the same complications. I agree this is more granular and detailed and represents the actual status each individual meeting for the chair and attendees, but you have to admit this complicates the UI for everyone, when the simpler UI although not as “correct” (in detail) is simpler to understand and run.

   There is a sliding scale between granularity of feature capability and complexity of UI and configuration. Balancing this scale such that “lite” users can get in and use a tool for “lite” uses without understanding complexities that they neither comprehend nor would every use with “heavy” hitters or users with cultural/environmental uses is tough to do. Yes, I understand that the UI could “hide” the complexity until such options are picked that would then conditionally expose the higher levels of complexity, but even then, this gets complicated at both the developmental and user levels.

   If you started laying out the “single” form for all calendar uses and consider the range of users in all enterprises from the rudimentary user who does a calendar invite twice a month to the “heavy” hitter Administrative Assistants to Project Managers to (in your case) multi-day (consecutive) “conferences” with multiple varying start and end times, I believe the conditional “hide whens” and inter-related field complexity would become evident. And after that, start envisioning the downstream affects of the user acceptances and the chair’s receipts – and then take the current product’s base calendaring code and look to see how to migrate to this environment, and I believe you would see the difficulty in this task. This of course is just MHO.

   Your desires are understandable, better feature granularity, more feature capability, less forms to deal with for your enterprise needs. We all want capabilities that “our” enterprise needs, that is what our job is, to get features that help “us”. How those objectives are achieved (24+ hour calendar events, being able to schedule multi-day events with different starting times, etc.) may not necessarily dictate the tactical (1 form) implementation.

1. 20  Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 6/10/2010 9:29:36 AM

   Fascinating and thought provoking blog post and comments. Basically brought on by the release of a new piece of hardware. I love the discussion that it has created; I rarely think about the way in which Lotus Notes or mobile devices work with calendar invites as my needs are so simplistic. Apparently those to whom I send invites also have basic needs, they either accept or decline meetings. There is no delegation, "respond with comments," or counter-proposal. Based on this group, it looks like I am in the minority.

   Polling customers would seem to me to be problematic. Depending on the audience, your results will probably be skewed in one direction or another; the sample would not be representative of the whole population. So how do you get a good sample? I have no idea, but I believe that the comments here, while very enlightening, are not a good indication of the users in general.

   I find myself agreeing with Nathan, there are "too many knickknacks on the shelves." All I know is that for all of the features in Lotus Notes calendaring, I do not use but maybe 20% of them. The same can be said of my use of productivity software, too.

1. 21  Mark Haller http://www.logicpsot.com | 6/10/2010 9:50:55 AM

   You know ... we've just spent 2-3 months evaluating the "best" online solution for project management / collaboration - from installed apps to cheap hosted solutions, free, and expensive.

   We settled on Basecamp. Why? Because it's elegant, beautiful, and simple. We turned down the extra 200 features in other products and placed simplicity and "Getting Things Done" above everything else.

   And you know what? We've now got about 15 clients collaborating on about 35 projects, and it's going amaaazing. Only two people have asked me "how to" do something.

   Apple iPhone and iPad ... 37 Signals (Basecamp owner) ... Google with GMail, etc ... what do they all have in common? Used by the masses and with minimal, 80% functionality interfaces.

   Oh, that and they're making money hand over fist :-)

   This is a quantum shift from the increased complexity of interfaces such as Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 over the years ... competing on feature sets ... what has happened to websites and applications - moving from complex to elegant and simple ... is the same shift with PCs - the clock speed can't get any higher, so let's make em cool, super low energy and smaller and more consumer-friendly.

   I'd love a forever FREE Lotus client, that would take on the likes of Thunderbird and others ... that allows me to deliver beautiful, rich collaborative applications and has a beautiful email/calendar/tasks/address client - that would be Lotus joining the revolution.

1. 22  Albert http://www.ibm.com | 6/10/2010 10:00:43 AM

   Ed,

   I guess sooner or later we'll be able to see some of these on youtube. Before that happens, I'd love to see some captures on how notes traveler works on IBM internal mail platform.

   Some of us would appreciate if you can spend some of your time...

   BTW, counter proposals are really important in day to day business.

   Thanks a lot for your sharing.

1. 23  Alan Hamilton http://www.sysnet.co.uk | 6/10/2010 10:04:33 AM

   I'd be happy if Domino just supported the "minimal" functionality the mail and calendar apps have on the iPad / iPhone - like being able to yes/no/maybe accept a meeting invitation or create an appointment and be able to invite people.

   Right now using Traveler to connect Domino to these devices is a fantastic step forward we're still playing second place with some functionality not available to us Domino users compared to Exchange users.

   If we're to collectively convince customers that Domino is a platform that plays nice with these great devices, we need to step right up to the mark functionality-wise when it comes to integration.

1. 24  Tom Shi  | 6/10/2010 10:33:53 AM

   Ed, To make a Lotus Notes Lite, is a dream in the community for so long time.

   IBM is just making things fat and ugly.

1. 25  Paul Robichaux http://www.robichaux.net/blog | 6/10/2010 10:52:53 AM

   I think y'all are letting Apple off the hook too easily here. (Disclaimer: I'm an iPad and iPhone user.)

   It's true that the iPad calendar app looks amazing. It's also true that it is *very* feature-poor compared to Outlook, Notes, or even Google Calendar. Apple's UX is a frustrating blend of beautiful execution of a few core features and poor, or no, execution of many other features that are important to enterprise users (and here, by "enterprise" I mean "enterprises, consultants, and all the other techies who use e-mail and calendaring heavily").

   Why can't I snooze a meeting reminder? Where's the reply-with-comments feature? No "flag for follow-up"? These are simple things, yet they're not there.

   I get the argument that not every client can support every esoteric feature shoehorned into a mature product. I also get the argument that some features are hard to do well. Anything involving meeting recurrence, for example, is very dependent on which server you're talking to, as Exchange and Domino have completely different approaches to how they handle recurrence and exceptions.

   However, if you look at the list of "real" client features that aren't in Apple's products, it's clear that they have decided to err on the side on design simplicity. There's just a whole bunch of stuff they don't even attempt to do. Wonderful... except for those of us who make heavy use of the features that aren't there.

   This is exacerbated by the fact that they'd never approve an iPad/iPhone version of Outlook Mobile, or allow IBM to ship a mobile Notes client through the App Store. It's further worsened by the fact that we're only now (in iOS 4) getting APIs to allow third-party apps to work with the calendar.

1. 26  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/10/2010 11:20:09 AM

   "techies who use e-mail and calendaring heavily"

   Real techies use IM and eschew meetings. ;-)

1. 27  Mark Haller http://www.logicspot.com | 6/10/2010 11:26:54 AM

   @Paul - imagine if we were at the stage with the Notes client and its minimal simplicity where it could be installed easily onto an iPad? And it loaded super fast without being bloated ... and half the buttons were gone! ;-)

   A different way of looking at the same discussion - perhaps that's where we could be heading?

   Or perhaps we now have the need for different clients on different platforms and the "one design fits all platforms" has had its day?

   I mean ... an OS where people holler and woop woop because they've introduced copy and paste? Maaan, that's a real different genre to what IBM know.

   I'm not saying I want to get rid of ANY functionality for myself - I'm a Domino developer - and have been since version 2 ... what I'm saying is I want Lotus Notes to be "wanted" by the masses and to be loved once more - so what has to happen.

   One way to do it is to stop defending it and saying it's pressing all the right buttons .. if you'll excuse the cloaked pun! (not you Paul, I mean in general)

1. 28  Peter Wilson  | 6/10/2010 6:45:05 PM

   @27 In my view, with hindsight IBM/Lotus would have kept the cc:Mail client and made it compatible to access email with a Domino back end. The light email client would have allowed organisations that didn't want all the groupware 'stuff' to have a simple email client..water under the bridge.

   I don't see IBM bringing out a light Notes client. It's probably best if IBM now focuses on iNotes and Lotus Live.

   Pete

1. 29  Mat Newman http://www.matnewman.com | 6/10/2010 7:03:08 PM

   @12, Volker, agreed - although I will take my more functional N97 over my wife's iPhone for mail and calendaring any day, despite it's decidedly inferior touch experience (c/f iThing). I am obviously in the minority of people who want something that works, rather than looks good.

   @13, Ed you KNOW how great a user experience Organizer was, I have a client who's been on Notes for 15 years who sill complains that it (the calendar) is not as good as Organizer's.

   As for the Eye-Candy that is iPad's calendar, after reading your comments yesterday I played with Adam's for a few minutes.

   Great looking, but sadly lacking in functionality, and some weird behaviour.

   Switch to today. Display as day. Touch Add, Touch cancel. Which day are you on now?

   Switch back to today (grin) touch a time-slot, touch add, What - no recognition of where you just touched as the time required for your entry?

   These types of quirks on the iPlatform drive me nuts. Great looking, sorely lacking in functionality.

   Similarly, the great looking calendar in Notes 8 Standard has proven unworkable for me. I reverted back to a Notes 7 mail template after about 5 minutes since calendar functionality is important to me, and a no-scrolling, no quick entry + wasted navigation pane (Standard vs Basic calendar interface) was a deal-breaker for me personally.

1. 30  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/10/2010 8:53:34 PM

   @29 - *chuckle* Maybe you just need to go to a training class? ;-)

1. 31  Mat Newman http://www.matnewman.com | 6/12/2010 2:27:40 AM

   @30 ROFL Nathan.

   Would that class be called: "ND8-0000 Features missing in Notes 8 Standard"?

   Do you think it covers Ctrl+Tab, Lock (and Hide), using the wheel-mouse to navigate your calendar, in-view calendar editing, Ctrl+M from any screen to create a memo, right-double-click anywhere to close the current window, using the history buttons on the navigation tool-bar, etc, etc...?

   Do you know where I could attend that class?

   :-)

1. 32  Randall Shimizu  | 6/14/2010 11:15:01 PM

   Ed:

   Do you find that the IPad is a sufficient substitute for a laptop while traveling...? I would think it 's good for email and creating document's. But not suitable for creating presentations etc...

   Randy