Next week, my team and I will be in our labs in Littleton, Massachusetts US, working with our engineering team leadership on plans for the Lotus Notes and Domino roadmap for 2013 and beyond. The Mass Labs, as they are known, house many of the top architects, engineers, and developers who work on Notes, iNotes, Domino, and Designer, along with other IBM labs throughout the world. The whole leadership team -- many of whom you have met at Lotusphere, including VP Sandesh Bhat, Directors John Woods, Norm Lord, and Chief Architect Russ Holden -- are all at the Mass Labs, so it makes sense to bring my somewhat-more-distributed product management team together there, along with representatives from the Traveler team (labs in Austin, Raleigh, and elsewhere) and other parts of the Notes/Domino portfolio.
Our priority for the workshop is to lay out specifics of what we want to achieve in the next release of Notes and Domino after "Social Edition", likely to be called "9", and where we go after that. Many of the themes for "9 or whatever we call it" were shared at Lotusphere 2012, but this workshop will be a deeper look and plan for that release and beyond. The product managers, sales, marketing, development, and executive team will be working for two days on these plans, and of course we will also be looking at tactical ways to continue the momentum that we're seeing once again in the Notes/Domino and XPages/XWork space.
Some of the themes that I am expecting to focus on include the continued evolution towards web and mobile interfaces, integration with third party software (this one I hear over and over as a continued priority from customers), future direction for the Notes rich client and improving management and deployability, and taking further elements from the "Project Vulcan" blueprint into the product overall. On the server side, we're going to be looking at work that has been done for SmartCloud Notes and how much of it can be brought into the shipping software product, more standards work, more integration work. Of course we've used sources like IdeaJam.net as input, along with PMRs/SPRs and the usual inputs to the product management process.
We're working in parallel on a set of activities around the application developer/development roadmap, so that's not a focus for next week's workshop (and we won't have Brent Peters, Phil Riand, or others who would be needed for that). But from an infrastructure perspective....what general areas would you like my team and I to be thinking about? I'm not asking for your favorite feature request, but a higher level hot button thought of what you are looking for from us next. I won't be able to respond to your ideas, and no commitments that this ideation will lead to implemented features. Still, it has worked many times before to throw these discussions open on the blog -- so let's go for it.
Post a Comment
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Anil Ghatage | 4/25/2012 9:47:40 PM
My perspective IBM has good focus on notes client, xpage, designer but along with it more customers expects more and more email/calendering functionalities which competitors are currently providing and UI to be improved which has been started from 8.5
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Fredrik Norling http://Http://www.xpagedeveloper.com | 4/26/2012 12:36:28 AM
I would say improved stability for xpages, better
Handling of richtext this one of dominos great things.
Built in support for richtext, but the editor must improve in areas like
Pasting images, editing of attachments and saving them back like in notes.
Also improved database speed is a big issue, now when xpages is so fast the database will be the bottleneck.
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Sean Cull http://www.seancull.co.uk | 4/26/2012 1:01:37 AM
For me it would be :
Deciding if XPiNC is to be a focus and have parity with the browser - I value it but I keep running into issues which I believe are because it is not used enough within IBM e.g. Launch Attachments is not a simple click and open - you need to download and find the attachment before opening it - something that users find a real pain ( there is a workaround - { Link } ).
Making XPages / XPiNC a first class experience in terms of attachment handling ( spell check while disconnected , drag and drop, edit in place etc )
Simple integration with AD
Providing some disconnected mobile capability without having to deploy another server such as Worklight.
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Hermann | 4/26/2012 1:53:05 AM
Hello,
domino and notes is a well designed groupware but it has some older technics which should be reviewed. Today the internet speed is improved so domino/notes should be adjusted. Example: i can not find a reason for high priority in replication. Maybe it can be removed because the lines are almost fast enough. ( i do not know the whole complexity of this topic and have no overview over all functions).
In other words: cut of some old hair and adjust notes/domino to today techniks/environments. sleeker it. fasten it. ( on my macbook from 2009 it should run like mac mail)
I'm a small service provider and have i.e. a customer with 6 clients, and he has a customer/supplier address list of over 6000 addresses. He uses his own names.nsf to store it. His employees have access to the names.nsf and it works as a small customer relation management system. This is not a optimal system because the replication to the iPhone works in his account but not in all other employees accounts. (only manual copy)
in other words: integrate the names.nsf complete in the mail database as it is already done for web. Then create a type of simple customer relation management database based on a names.nsf. This should be the easy part. The integration into every employees account is the tricky part. It should be made according to the "additional calendar" system. The user can add one or more address databases into his account and sync it via traveler to his smartphone. (the domino directory should only have the employees of course) The address databases should be basically two: one personal and one crm (central customer/supplier data). The crm is managed i.e. by a secretary and/or small changes like update a number can be done by the users on their smartphones.
the crm database should be able to store incoming and outgoing mails to the person in the crm database and the persons should be grouped together to a company (with additionally company data). Today i use the "youatnotes" crm from a german company and i can't live without it. The notes basic crm should not have this complexity, but when sending a mail out of the crm the mail should be attached to the person and a possibility to make a reminder in the calendar should be possible. incoming Mails should make a popup and ask if they should be transferred in the crm (not all mails are important to store it there).
other thing: today i use sip for telephone on my macbook. So please integrate telephony functions (sip and standard) to the contact database. In case of crm in a way that the call can be done by clicking in the contacts database on the number, (with a possibility to create automatically a telephone notice in calendar and crm.) Today it can not be, that i have to read a telephone number and type it on my telephone for a call.
all these things should be only a working basic set and not the whole functions of big crm's. The big players in the crm market should remain and a win-win situation should be reached.
next idea: create a simple project management system as a database. It should make central appointments to the calendar and has a simple process list with some mile stones and maybe a timeline with horizontal bars. it can be connected to the addresses, calendars and synced to the smartphones.
long ago i sent some minor topics in a wish list, but this is not the item here.
best regards
Hermann
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Karsten Lehmann http://blog.mindoo.com | 4/26/2012 2:13:27 AM
I second @1: NSF.
Take a look what other NoSQL databases offer these days ( { Link } ) and let somebody work on NSF limitations and the indexer.
IBM dev already has designs for a lot of our requirements (field sizes, NIF outside NSF, alternative indexer like Lucene that supports powerful queries like joins and geospatial search). All they need is time to work on this stuff.
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daniele grillo http://www.dominopoint.it | 4/26/2012 2:25:23 AM
If you would mantaine the client notes the focus id theerformance speed!
Most customers here go to the concurrency because the standard client id slow.
Another good solution is stop the client notes but create html5 client web with full replica option (html5 have this possibility).
The Best is that the html5/replica Will work with mobile device.
Actually the problem point is the client notes.
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Oliver Regelmann http://n-komm.de/blog | 4/26/2012 2:29:31 AM
Improve NSF-performance, especially regarding view and full text indexes of big databases.
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ShajiT | 4/26/2012 2:57:18 AM
A more simple and light notes client for email will give a better "outlook" to lotus notes ..
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Gaby Spaszewski | 4/26/2012 3:24:23 AM
I agree with improved nsf performance for large databases. Apart from that my wish for the Domino server would be: a controlling feature that allows me to define a sequence what I would like the server to do after a crash: e.g. define tasks that I do not want to load before certain databases have been consistency checked and also a possibility to prioritize which databases should be consistency checked first. This would also come in handy during standard database maintenance: defining which databases I want to be treated in which order (e.g. by folder or by alphabetical order or by a sequence I have specified). And some status messages on the console showing the status progress of the maintenance work for jobs that work on lots of databases (something like: '7500 databases to be consistency checked - estimated time until completion: 40 minutes').
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axel | 4/26/2012 4:09:25 AM
Don't feel as a valuable input, cause I do my dirty deeds with different technology for a long time.
One topic that would worry me as a Domino Developer is framework lock-in. From the outside it kind of looking as if Domino/Notes would be based more and more on other technology stacks as eclipse-rcp or jsf.
With Eclipse 4 there are lots of enhancement in how to build gui components with Eclipse. You may assemble your gui in an html/css way, etc.
JSF 2.0 brought a lot of really usefull enhancement, that makes this little coding business so much more productive. I know better than I would like to as currently I am working in a project that for some wrong management decision 2 years ago has to use an old jsf version and - which is much worse - an even older component library.
Today organizations often build their own technology stack. The process is much harder as many of the decision takers may think, especially as you have to be well informed in the business requests of the organisation towards IT AND deep into frameworks. Often they employ some mystery coders that solve an urgent problem and its looking all kind of great. But only 2 years from then they suddenly realize, that the mystery coders trick was based on some special features of framework x and the way they implemented, it would be very expensive to switch to framework y, which would easen the dev process a lot.
Will Lotus find a way to follow the new versions developments of the members of its own tech-stack rapidly?
I would consider this a valid reason to buy into an business ready packacked tech stack of different underlying frameworks.
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Ralf M Petter http://petterralf.blogspot.com/ | 4/26/2012 6:48:48 AM
The most important feature for Notes/Domino next is product quality. The Notes client have so many little rough edges which need polish to get a better usability. And i would also remove some old technology like Java applets from the Notes client.
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Alan | 4/26/2012 7:02:27 AM
As we move increasingly towards mobile, widgets, integration with Connections/Sametime etc. please can we have an improved Eclipse Update Site process. Currently the whole way plugins and application updates are handled is massively complex (and I suspect not well-understood by the average Domino Admin). You can just about forget encouraging end-users to install their own plugins/widgets.
I've come across this recently trying to integrate Connections (F&P entitlement), Notes, and Sametime - too much local configuration required for this - changes to plugin.customization.xml and rcpinstall.properties for example.
Also, improvements to the Admin client when working over slow connections to remote servers. The ability to batch database admin tasks out to remote servers from a central database would save me a huge amount of time that I currently spend trying to work interactively with server consoles and admin clients over unreliable slow links (we use sat comms for access to remote servers). Being able to work in "offline" mode with such a server would be awesome.
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Karsten Lehmann http://blog.mindoo.com | 4/26/2012 7:09:54 AM
I second @11's comment about technology lock-in, we are observing the same.
Domino Designer for example is still based on Eclipse 3.4.2, which makes it nearly impossible to install modern editors/tools, because most of them got developed for Eclipse 3.7+.
XPages is based on frameworks like JSF and Dojo. But the versions used are rather old (no vanilla JSF 2.0 or Dojo 1.7 used). Updating them as an ISV is not really possible or easy to do, because they got tweaked by IBM to better work in Domino (e.g. the IBM js files overwrite core Dojo functionality like dijit.byNode() with minified code that is impossible to debug).
That's why we picked a completely alternative web development approach for one of our customers. The Domino server simply provides REST APIs for CRUD operations on data and we are using Sencha's ExtJS for the UI and our own HTML templating engine.
Thanks to the OSGi support in Domino 8.5.2+, this is now possible.
And I'd love to see Designer to get transformed into a set of plugins that we can install in a newer Eclipse build as well.
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Mike Brown http://www.browniesblog.com | 4/26/2012 7:20:03 AM
More than 32k in a plain text field.
More than 64k in a paragraph of rich text.
More than 64k of Summary data on a document.
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Cesar | 4/26/2012 7:43:10 AM
Keep improving XPages, and from an infrastructure perspective Notes client inside browsers
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John Turnbow http://www.recondite2.com | 4/26/2012 7:46:33 AM
More Templates that are ready for business (OpenNTF is NOT!)that compete with the Google Site templates, the 47 Sharepoint templates.... Please start doing some competitive analysis guys, your lack of vision here is killing us.... Development is great, we should not have to do development for things that on the INTERNET are considered standard. So what happens, the client says Oh it's already here on the internet why are we paying a developer? These simple things must be configurable, and I don't mean reading pages and pages of documentation.
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Baiju Thomas | 4/26/2012 7:51:13 AM
NSF.. Completely agree with @1 and @6. Remove the limitations of NSF,implement the cool features from other modern NoSQL Dbs and a standard querying mechanism. Thats all we need..
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Dan Soares | 4/26/2012 8:20:05 AM
IBM authorized Redbooks.
Wikis serve their purpose but you (IBM) should not be relying on us to provide you with documentation for YOUR product.
Dan
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Danilo | 4/26/2012 8:35:13 AM
Two version pls. One for mail/calendar and another as a platform where to develop and sell applications.
Kill the client.
There must be not client at all, just web.
The web can embedd old applications? Ok. fine.
Easier administration for sysadmin, easier for users (..it works like gmail ...)
Simplify
Sometimes we need simply mail and calendar .. that's it ... no more. Give it to us pls.
If someone needs more power, he will ask for it and then, only then, we can "enable" more functions.
We have to sell the product NOT to sysadmin ... but to the user. The users doesn't care about nsf/xpages/various eclipse version
And, why don't you give away for free (a la gmail) the web client?
ok ... I go ... no no ... not the hammer no .. BONK ...
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Erich | 4/26/2012 8:38:07 AM
Client performance, more business-ready templates, improved documentation for designer (and good samples). Thanks, Ed!
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Steve Medure | 4/26/2012 9:03:07 AM
I agree, if the NSF is going to be used it does need to be overhauled. A lot of the data limits do seem to be very retro, circa 1980. I also agree that the UI does need to be polished as well. There are many small nuances that if corrected would improve the end user experience. Small example, in the client users have the ability to forward contacts as a vCard, in iNotes today that doesn't exist. It would be nice to see the same feature sets in both. Today there is a bit of a disconnect between the two when they should really be one in the same. I think iNotes has come a long way since the old days of DWA, but as with anything there is always room for improvement. I love that you are coming out with a browser plugin which is basically a mini notes client. I would say continue on that path as much as possible. If we could have our users fully functional in a web browser it would be it would be awesome.
I would like to add deployment. The next version has to be much easier to deploy to large numbers of machines. The package for installation really needs to be trimmed down too. The 8.5.3 release introduced the Smart Upgrade service so smart upgrades could work with windows 7, great! However, the installer should have been able to automatically detect the missing service and install it, instead customers are left to their own creativeness of pre-installing the service via remote command prompt, using some type of script to do it, or whatever. The point being, if a new deployment method is going to be used or introduced, it should also be complete and work 100% of the time on any of the platforms supported.
I also agree with the quality statements. Maybe the fix packs and maintenance release schedule needs to be revisited. It just seems like some of these fix packs get rushed out the door and end up having issues. I think they need more time to simmer in the pot before being put on the table.
Thanks Ed,
Steve
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Christian Tillmanns http://www.informica.ch | 4/26/2012 9:23:37 AM
Faster Client
Smaller footprint for the client.
I agree with the mail only client and a full client or bring back DAOS.
A XPages client with replication probably?
(Bring back something like NotesBuddy, that thing was cool but I never payed the 20$ they wanted for it. There wasn't a credit card slot on the download website, therefore I owe you 4 beers)
Fix the limitations or do away with nsf.
New UI.
Putting attachments in a Notes document is so 90's. Create and edit ODF directly in the Notes document would be a step forward. A huge step. Using a container to store a container that stores the information isn't how it should be today.
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Irv Schor | 4/26/2012 9:42:38 AM
I have to agree with a number of the above that offering a larger and more usable template experience, out of the box, would be a huge boon in demonstrating the capabilities. Acquire/Polish some of the openntf solutions such as FileSndr, highlight out of the box iPhone/Android ready templates (a company mobile ready directory template perhaps). Another thing that really needs a re-work is changing the way multiple languages are handled/administered in the system. There is 0 documentation on how to handle such environments, and the current method of importing multiple languages into a single mail template is not feasible when adding more than 4 or 5 languages - the mail template gets too large.
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Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 4/26/2012 9:52:17 AM
Improve the NSF files. Indexes on separate drive, faster indexing. We have several huge databases here, and view indexing is killing our servers. Searching/retrieving data must be faster, our FoxPro/SQL guys laugh when they see how long it can take to perform a simple view lookup. And they have no 32K restrictions on data they return.
Talking about that, remove the limitations to 32K/64K we still got everywhere.
Performance and memory requriement... Here at my work they will not go with Notes Standard, due to the cost of adding memory, and because the Eclipse-based client is so much slower.
Performance must be improved, out of the box. How hard can it be to have the install program tweak the properties.jvm file depending on amount of memory present?
Add better multi-threading. Lower memory requrirement. Companies will not buy new desktops for hundreds or thousands of users just for the pleasure to run the Notes client. At my work the standard computer got 512MB. Yeah, many of the computers in use are 5-6 years old. They have 2 memory slots (they are regular Dell office computers), initially they came with one 256MH stick, and then another one was added about 4 years ago when we got a new document imaging system. So there is no room for more memory, in order to put say 2GB (minimum for running Notes 8.5 with decent performance) the existing memory must be thrown away.
I think the goal should be to run Notes Standard client on 512MB with good performance, and on 1GB with great performance...
Quality must be top-notch, there can't be another Notes 8.0...
Calendar improvements, to match and surpass the competing products. I have users who asks why you can't change a meeting setup as every two weeks to be once a month... You need to delete it and recreate it and re-invite everyone. Executives does not like hearing that... Guess what product they start looking at, when they hear about 2-3 things that matters to them but is not possible in Notes?
Combine address book with mailfile. Mail must support POP3 and IMAP, and allow the user to send mail from those accounts as well, and be able to select how an outgoing mail is supposed to be sent (from what account). Like you do on your Blackberry when you have multiple mail accounts linked to it, you select "I want to send this mail as texasswede@gmail.com" or "I want to send this as karlhenry@hotmail.com"...
Like #17 (John) say: Deliver Notes with ready-for-business templates, and make them look like they are actually from 2013, not 1999 or before like the ones that comes with Notes 8.5...
Continue working on the UI, there is still plenty to do there, especially in the applications (i.e. templates).
I know that Lotusscript is dead, and probably won't be developed any further, but there are still a number of improvements I would like to see there...
I like the idea with a "mini" client, mail/calendar/todo only, and with support for XPiNC.
But performance is critical. If Eclipse is adding too much overhead, perhaps it was a bad idea to abandon the C++ client?
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David Marko http://blog.tcl-digitrade.com/ | 4/26/2012 9:54:48 AM
1. Equip DOLS with xPages support and forget XPiNC (browsers have 5 new versions per year you cant deliver on this)
2. Speed up of NSF in some massive way / why not even create product called 'IBM NoSQL/NSF Database server' as standalone database server with JAVA api access and REST access ... as opponent to MongoDB, CouchBase etc. and make it available for free for openSource products etc. You can get larger user base here and maybe a better entire product adoption in future from those who start with database server first.
3. Integrate better search engine ... what about Apache Lucene???
4. Fix many, many bugs in Domino Designer and speed it up please in some significant way please ...
5. Redesign xPages to be more flexible for larger projects ... e.g. I mean some better xpages / controls folding in folder like structure(in DDE) and making this also available via url like /database.nsf/company/create.xsp, /database.nsf/API/projects/get.xsp
Do marketing here in middle Europe please, without this, its going to be dead, unknown product that is very capable but without any audience. I know its not a technical issue but its the main pain here!!! Nobody knows IBM Domino / Notes. No advertisement, no PR articles, no reviews in on-line media etc. And its the same for IBM Connection here. How to sell something where there is almost no public marketing from IBMers. The Smarter Planet campaign has no effect for IBM Domino/Notes.
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Declan Lynch http://www.qtzar.com | 4/26/2012 10:01:08 AM
From an infrastructure point of view I think that making the Domino server a provider of open standards authentication is a must.
At Lotusphere this year there was talk of how Domino will be able to consume different open standards like SAML and OAUTH etc. I do feel that many customers would be interested in having Domino as the SAML IdP or having Domino as the OAUTH Provider. The Domino infrastructure, in many organizations, is the most up to date directory of employees and it makes sense to make use this as the central hub for authentication and identity rather the AD or Tivoli IdP.
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Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 4/26/2012 10:24:37 AM
One more thing I forgot...
Improve Domino Designer. Not just stability and performance, but Xpages should be developed fully WYSIWYG, like Notes forms. One should see what the end result looks like in the editor. For the ones that want to edit the XML directly, provide that option, but in the regular edit mode, it must look like the finished application will look.
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Thomas | 4/26/2012 10:26:50 AM
For the Notes client all I can say is this.
MODERNIZE THE NOTES WORKSPACE OR GET RID OF IT !
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Thomas | 4/26/2012 10:51:40 AM
My fav top ideas from IdeaJam.net.
1. New Workspace
2. XPages - Native support for RDB access
3. Better multithreading support in the client.
4. Persistent Login for HTTP
5. Store view indexes in a separate file
6. Complete XPages Help Documentation
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John http://www.velocityintegrations.com | 4/26/2012 11:11:51 AM
As a developer of a commercial nsf based product the biggest complaints I see from my clients are in regards to performance. I cringe every time I'm on a webex with a client and we have to stare at a view updating its index.
Clients demand real time data these days (dashboards, etc...) and its very hard to do with the current nsf.
The 32K, 64K limits need to be addressed. At the very least make it work so that when code tries to write a string greater than 32K to a field it allows it to happen and just turns off the summary flag instead of nothing getting written at all.
Keep moving forward with xpages - out of box support for the open ntf extensions library would be a great addition.
Also, please continue with the support for relational/jdbc data sources in xpages which you started in 8.5.3.
For calendering I often hear a complaint that you cannot schedule a meeting that spans more than one day but you can easily do this in outlook. Things like that need to be addressed - clients perceive this as something that should be there since it is in outlook.
Cryptic error messages - I have been developing in Notes since 2001 and I still see some of the same cryptic error messages.
All in all Notes is a great product and xpages as really been a great addition. I'm looking forward to the next release!
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Jim | 4/26/2012 11:24:55 AM
Thanks for the update.
Here are a few suggestions:
1. Push more funtionality and integration into iNotes. From a support level, iNotes is so much easier to support then installing a rich client. However some improvements need to happen in iNotes, especially better/improved integration with Sametime (Audio/Video), Meetings, QuickR, Connections. If these areas improved we'd ditch the rich client in a heartbeat.
2. Try and make all Lotus products integrate better with one another. I know "other" areas such as Sametime, QuickR and Connections are not in your area, but at least maybe talk with the team leads in those areas to see if your products mesh well. So many times I've worked with support and they say "oh, that version of Sametime doesn't work with that version of Lotus Notes", or "That version of Sametime doesn't work with QuickR", so frustrating.
I guess most of my comments fall into better integration between the Lotus products. My company is trying to promote a Collaborative environment and getting our users to use, email, IM, Meetings, Document sharing, but if we are constantly running into "version issues" it has a direct impact on our users.
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Mike McP | 4/26/2012 11:43:52 AM
Not surprising there are many requests for client enhancements/fixes. I'm on board with those too, but worry your focus is elsewhere, leading to your team spread too thin. Your request for feedback gives me some hope.
Please stop calling it "Notes Social Edition". That's like marketing the Ford Fusion as Ford Fusion Highway Edition. You just build a solid tool/car, and I'll decide how I want to use it to meet my needs:)
I'd like a more seamless transition of client apps to web/xpages.
Update some of the default templates that have been floating around for ages. I really have no gripes about the workspace, other than it's ugly. Functionally, I find the tabs/tiles interface to be efficient.
I'd like a consistent SSO for client. Shared Login/Single Login both have drawbacks.
Eliminate the 64k limit for fields, as others also noted. That limitation is borderline insanity in this day and age. I enjoy the portability of a self-contained NSF, so I have no desire for you to do away with that.
Domino Designer crashes daily for me, but fixing this is a bit of a selfish desire...there's not much bang for the buck here for you or me, so I'll deal with it.
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Paul | 4/26/2012 11:51:37 AM
Active Directory integration and NTLM for webapps/xpages
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Jesper Kiaer http://nevermind.dk | 4/26/2012 12:25:19 PM
Make the NSF also be a Graph database!
This has done with excellent NOSQL database "OrientDB" ({ Link } )
It is a document database like the NSF, but it is also a Graph database and it supports SQL (subset).
Learn from it!
If IBM is into "Social" and "Connections" a Graph database is a MUST!
(The 64GB db limit should be fixed too.)
/Jesper Kiaer { Link }
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Timothy Briley | 4/26/2012 12:40:18 PM
The above is good, vital even. But throw me a bone: doc.print
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Mike McP | 4/26/2012 12:54:57 PM
@35 Ehh, I'll live. It's just funny that, of all the requests here, there's not one asking for Notes to "be more social".
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Michael Bourak | 4/26/2012 1:40:31 PM
1/ NSF on par with NoSQL databases
2/ XPages runtime following latests web standards : JSF update, websocket, Dojo etc...
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Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 4/26/2012 1:59:42 PM
Ed, thanks for asking.
Here's the three words I say to you... Simplify simplify simply.
For the first time in a decade, chuck stuff away. If there's features that don't get used, take 'em away.
If you can shave 100MB from the size of the Note memory footprint, do it. If you can reduce the number of icons in the toolbars and still have people be productive, then make it happen. Have a switch on the installer that says 'Mail, calendar and IM only' and turn off every feature in the UI that is no longer relevant to those users.
On the Domino side, do the same. NNTP really? Domino 4.x MTAs? Throw it all out. Look at the top 5 uses for a Domino server and give the installer a way to automatically configure them - e.g. the 20+ settings that need to be configured to make a robust SMTP gateway? Have a wizard that configures them. Same with an LDAP server. IMAP? You want to support IMAP? Make it work, reliably, all the time.
Domino and Notes are truly awesome products. But they've got flabby in their middle-age. You can either let them carry on getting more overweight and wrinkly, or you can take the couple of years you probably have after Social Edition to give them another 10 years of life. The way to do that is to put them on a diet and fitness regime. Do it now before it's too late. Do a Steve Jobs in 1997 and re-evaluate every single feature and function, throwing out the non-essential and streamlining the ones that make the product.
Lastly, if you're serious about being a cross-platform alternative to the MS stack and cloud-options like GMail, you've got to make the products sing and dance on the Mac and iOS/Android. 'Good enough' is no longer 'good enough'. Start developing for those platforms first, and then work out how to get the features to work on the MS stack. MS will be a bit player by the time this task is complete, so take that attitude and hasten it into being...
If IBM is truly serious about Notes/Domino having a future, this is the time to show that is the case!
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Werner Novak | 4/26/2012 2:50:37 PM
After recreating the Client (java, eclipse, and so on) in the last release, it's time to focus on the server. So combine the best of both worlds into one single product. Websphere and Domino and make the extensive and best enterprise application server the world ever seen.
- 42
Werner Novak | 4/26/2012 2:52:09 PM
But agin stay backware compatible, in all ways.
- 43
Werner Novak | 4/26/2012 3:07:21 PM
Intergrade Smartsuite as a cloud option into the server.
- 44
Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 4/26/2012 3:25:44 PM
Ed, I'd like to suggest that you add every feature from every other product on the market, and remove every single limitation to anything. But it must also be fast, small, simple, reliable and compatible with everything ever made.
Plus it should make gold-plated rocket unicorns fly out of my nether regions.
This should be easy to accomplish. All you have to do is make it free and open source.
- 45
Stuart McIntyre | 4/26/2012 3:28:14 PM
Nathan. Darn you made sense until the unicorn bit :-)
- 46
Craig Wiseman http://www.wiseman.La/cpw | 4/26/2012 4:10:03 PM
I know you'll get your ears full internally with suggestions on how to better align domino/notes with IBM's other software, but I'd suggest these:
Get a copy of Outlook 2010, Mac Mail and calendar, and Thunderbird. Go through them them comparatively. There are sooo many small features and functions that need to be added. There's NO reason that Notes/Domino can't match them while still feeding the IBM social agenda.
Oh, and doc.print("legal","landscape","Printer13")
- 47
Adam Osborne | 4/26/2012 9:34:31 PM
A quick dump of ideas:
- Make sure sales staff get rewarded for renewals.
- License the Panagenda Marvel Client and put it into the base product
- License the Genii Software Midas Rich Text toolkit and put it into the product.
- License a version of the IdeaJam and put it into the product
- Create xPages versions of anything that Sharepoint can do
- Create xPages versions of some of what Lotus Connections can do ... maybe they are lite versions, then they can crossgrade to the 'EnterpriseSphere' version
- Fully integrate with Active Directory
- Work on fit, finish and quality.
- Make the product free for companies with less than 15 users
- 49
Jaime Zapata http://VIGILUS.NET | 4/26/2012 10:36:26 PM
Hey Ed, thanks for the updates - appreciate your time in getting the word out!
Many of the suggestions are excellent.
However, ONE key thought that should control ALL our DEV efforts is MARKET SHARE - How do we retain and increase it?
EVERYTHING we all do should be focused on addressing this one factor or we will eventually have the best Analog cassette player in a digital world.
I am losing long term customers to Microsoft, SharePoint and others. It used to be once in a great, great while. Now it every quarter. I have NOT had a customer who is leaving MS for Notes in a long, long time.
I am an owner in a small Lotus Notes DEV shop with a well known Notes-based CRM. Been in the Notes biz for over 15 yrs.
Lotus Notes is the best tool/platform out there, bar none - we, in this forum, all KNOW that.
However, that message is not resonating out in the marketplace. On the contrary, it seems that Notes is something to replace.
The primary drivers for this situation appear to be (when exiting customer actually tell me):
(1) Email cost of ownership & Admin
(2) "old" interface, not hip, slow,too big
(3) Cloud computing
(4) Better marketing??
I would like to believe that what I have been seeing is just in my marketplace. But I don't.
So..... priority and resources must be poured to address those reasons for leaving the Lotus Notes/Domino family:
(1) Cost
(2) Simplify, ease of use
(3) New, flexible UI
(4) Mobile/Tablets
(5) Marketing - PR - Campaign ("Social Edition" sounds great - tell the world - now! - get those on fence to re-commit to Lotus Notes.
Sorry for the rant - I will now go back to my cave....
- 50
Jaime Zapata http://VIGILUS.NET | 4/26/2012 10:37:47 PM
oh i forgot!
Nate's suggestions rock!!
:)
- 51
Hogne B. Pettersen http://www.elfworld.org | 4/27/2012 1:40:04 AM
I'm looking forward to the next release. But I think the main thing you could improve on would have to be: Promotion of Notes/Domino. But I guess that is another department.
- 52
Giovanni | 4/27/2012 2:17:13 AM
The peoples are right:
NSF needs an update to the current NoSQL (CouchDB, MongoDB etc. ..)
The Notes client is very slow.
You can completely remake it in Eclipse or create a Web client (XPages?) that works locally but is fast
(I try that Xping is very slow in remote condition...the traffic are 10MB every GET from server)
The customer leave Notes and Domino because the frustation is Notes client not the server! (the server is very solid platform)
Take a serious marketing, invest in this, please understand that Notes and Domino are pure collaboration(now you rename it with Social :-) ) thanks to applications.
Lack of marketing, message marketing that should not be the translation of the American format, but think to local market (local slogans, messages for the local public etc..so on)
IBM must also change this if you want to succeed.
P.S. to quit IBM to sell absolutely WebShere solutions instead of Notes.
Stop the internal conflict!
I have seen cases that were the best solution are XPages but IBM press the WebSphere!
- 53
Nick Halliwell | 4/27/2012 2:34:25 AM
Ed,
I agree with a lot of what has been said above, plus, please update the personal address book UI, its terrible.
NSF, yes remove or dramatically increase limitations.
Upgrade the Workspace
Have a thin mail client
Please don't do as 1 person has said make it web only, lots of people out side of the USA dont have good internet connections.
Dramatically upgrade the Home Page, make it really flexible and make it look like something from teh 2020's not the 1990's
Included apps or Opent NTF apps, I think that you should have up to 5 small BASIC apps that show customers what can be done. They should be similar to the sort of Free apps that you get on Android, if you want more features then you have to pay for it.
I think critical for the future, extend the use of Notes on Mobile/Tablets. We need to see apps on here PDQ. Not something that has to be written from scratch but what we already use on our client.
Speed, on good HW Notes is as fast as the competition and I disagree with who ever said make the Notes client work in 512 mb, thats craze in this day and age. Its very hard to buy a machine with less than 2 Gb. But lets make sure that Notes flys on a machine with a dual core 1.8 Mhz, 2 Gb RAM, machine.
@49 makes some very good points on Marketing and market share, please take note and dont just think about the US and Western Eurpoe, those markets will show little expansion concentrate on Asia, S. America and possible Mid East & Africa.
Lets try and be the leader again especially in the Mobile market, please dont follow inoviate and be the leader. If you do that that alone can win market share. If you have user that have mobile devices and you have apps for thoses devices then users will push companies to have the product.
Finally, please, consider a Notes client for the great unwashed, it can be a mobile client, IBM can host it on a Domino Server, make it free, if you want apps then you have to buy, if you want more space then you have to buy it etc. Please Ed get with the program, corporate IT is having less influence now (especially in the small and SMB market) Lets see a Notes Mobile personal client hosted by IBM that works the same as the office client, so people can have there mail on Notes both at home and the office for business and personal mail, make getting Google mail and Yahoo and Hotmail a click of a button configuration.
- 54
Patrick Kwinten | 4/27/2012 2:55:32 AM
Hi Ed,
since templates are part of the infrastructure (some are part of the server installation) I would like to see an upgrade of some templates.
Great that we have now teamroom and discussion both on xpages and mobile but we would like to see that also for blog template.
Also the ToDo/Follow Up/Notices function may be improved so they become real 2012 productivity improvers. Add some intelligence or smart monitoring on items stored in them.
Any substantial increase of startup time of the Notes client / opening of the mail file+calendar would be great. Even with a new computer the client performance is bad promotion of the product. Expeditor still feels too heavy although it provides great opportunities
- 55
Paul Withers http://www.intec.co.uk/blog | 4/27/2012 3:51:05 AM
If the default vmarg.Xmx and setting is still 256, that definitely needs changing for Next Next because PC specs will have improved by then. I'd prefer to see the defaults set high enough to work on a PC that's one year older than the release. Let people reduce the settings if required rather than increase them if desired. Although those responding about performance here may have already changed the vmarg.Xmx and vmarg.Xms settings, I I'd like to have some money for everyone who complains about performance and hasn't changed the setting.
Field size limit increases would be great.
The Domino Administrator Client is a great part of the product. It's about time it had an Eclipse facelift as well, so it can benefit from extensibility.
XPages clustering (I don't believe that's on the 8.5.4 roadmap). I suspect there are big technical challenges here because scoped variables, managed beans etc are held in the JVM, but if anyone can find a way, I'm sure Philippe can.
I'm sure integration with Cognos and Worklight are on the roadmap already, but I'll raise that too. Cognos may require additional licensing, but it would be nice to see in the install all the moving parts to enable it from a Domino side.
Mail only version may have some mileage, but also carries significant risks. It's an easy target for Microsoft and Google comparisons, and makes those comparisons more valid. Currently comparisons of Outlook to Domino have an easy argument against - Domino is much more than just mail, so you get more for your buck. Have a mail only version and you now have an apple to compare with an apple, so Domino as a mail AND app platform will disappear from all sales and marketing documentation. Applications are the main reason companies migrate from Domino but never fully migrate OFF Domino.
- 56
Alexey Katyushyn | 4/27/2012 8:19:28 AM
Marketing, marketing, marketing. If the products are not claimed, then talk about improvements - is meaningless.
What kind of product from IBM is opposed to the Sharepoint: LND, Quickr or Connections? If the answer to this question, will be clear what to develop.
If the answer LND - that it lacks of useful templates. Make Quickr - module of LND (licensed for the extra money), and enhance marketing and rebranding.
Connections - a good product. But in the minds of CIO - Sharepoint. So again: Marketing.
Create a site { Link }
Speaking on the topic, joined many of what was said, and add:
1. Need Domino Public Key Infrastructure for xPages applications (see ideajam.net)
2. Notes browser plug-in will not support the use of email. How about application, which already use integration with user mailbox?
3. Development of a xPages applications should not be much more difficult than under the traditional Lotus Client. Need simple and useful analogues that have already happened, for example: @MailSend, notesUIWorkspace.PickListCollection, outlines, view categorization, etc.
- 57
Wayne Sobers | 4/27/2012 8:23:13 AM
Apply the "Exceptional Web Experience" to the Notes Client interface.
The UI items in the client need a face lift - especially if you are now going to run the apps in a browser.
Allow function and control key launch assignment for those clients which may not be running the mail template. I should be able to type F11 to launch my inventory app.
Make type ahead available to text fields, (source the data from a view or @dblookup), allow the use of the enter key on the numeric keypad.
Continue to improve NSF performance.
- 58
Tim Savigar | 4/27/2012 10:38:44 AM
I am expecting big things from the social addition in terms of look and feel - giving us all the templates with X-Pages designs.
I am expecting social addition to bring my facebook, linked-in, twitter and e-mail world together. My client should be able to sync all accounts and link them together (just like my HTC phone does!). I receive a phone call/e-mail from a contact and their facebook picture appears.
I am expecting the next version to be called IBM Notes 9. As the UI has been converted to X-Pages - I am expecting this to be a removal of the clunky eclipse client and more browser-like.
With the emphasis on x-pages recently - the poor client users have been forgotten - I would really like MUCH better integration with symphony....Create a spreadsheet create a new tab and get the option to look at a notes view - create a graphic using the symphony presentation tools directly in a notes e-mail - embed a syphony chart in the design of a database that changes based on the values in the database....finally reporting from Notes..Create forms in documents that take the values from a notes database (aka mail merge)...making this easy so users can do it not just developers...taking Notes back to where it came from a user friendly quick development tool.
- 59
Joe Singer http://www.vigilus.net | 4/27/2012 1:04:21 PM
Thanks Ed.
I do think notes email should be free.
Large organizations are moving off of notes in droves mostly becuase of the cost of of email. All of the other Notes applications are needless casualties of war.
Also...we need some cool marketing. I write in my blog all of the time that if Steve Jobs were alive and came out with Lotus Notes in its current state today.....the world would be saying what a genius he is and he "did it again".
There are brabd new products out there that are making people into billionaires over night and these products are nothing more then...web enabled discussion db's for goodness sake.
Keep up your good work,
joe
- 60
Gwen Jenkins | 4/27/2012 4:29:06 PM
@52 -- My former boss used to complain that the IBM consultants the company hired to offer suggested workflow improvements were never interested in looking at how his department was using Notes/Domino; they just wanted to discuss other options, like Sharepoint.
- 61
Peter Meuser http://Http://www.itlab.de | 4/28/2012 1:20:49 AM
Having Nsf data replicated to mobile devices and easy accessed there out of the box would solve a lot of headache of developers who would not know the existence of Notes today. YouAtNotes's Domino-To-Go already shows how that may look like. Damien Katz leads the right development direction with CouchDB and CouchBase. "Mobile first!"
- 62
Peter Meuser http://Http://www.itlab.de | 4/28/2012 1:20:51 AM
Having Nsf data replicated to mobile devices and easy accessed there out of the box would solve a lot of headache of developers who would not know the existence of Notes today. YouAtNotes's Domino-To-Go already shows how that may look like. Damien Katz leads the right development direction with CouchDB and CouchBase. "Mobile first!"
- 63
Eric Petersen | 4/28/2012 1:54:26 AM
@47 mentioned licensing Panagenda Marvel Client. When 'tuned' correctly, even the current version of Notes can fly! Better client management / analysis will help us improve the end user experience when it isn't up to speed or correctly setup.
- 64
Carsten | 4/28/2012 6:21:44 AM
1. improve performance of the Notes client, or if the new announced 8.5.4 build-in fully functional webclient is very fast, maybe forget the Notes client all together
2. remove ALL 32K, 64K limitations ... it must be possible in 2012 to release that 32K or 64K is not enough for everyone ;-)
3. remove contacts completely from names.nsf or give the options of only have contacts in mail db, we should not have replication tasks to syncronize between the local names.nsf and mail db, and then manage contacts from mail db.
- 65
Carsten | 4/28/2012 6:41:10 AM
4. remove the 64 GB limit of databases, and include some automatic method for extending the database to multiple files when it reaches 64 GB
- 66
Pete | 4/28/2012 9:16:19 AM
Can't believe we're up to release 8.5 and we still have the old looking Workspace... enough said
If you're keeping a full Notes client, you need to bring it into the 21st century. Might have been a different story for IBM if you'd kept the cc:Mail (email only) client years ago.
Pete
- 67
Hermann | 4/29/2012 4:01:40 AM
@53
i agree and woudl add
lets see a free, platform independet Notes express client for only mail. it should have one klick setup for domino, yahoo, gmail,aol, hotmail, express, t-online ( big in germany) and others. this client should preinstalled on every new pc, and be available to mac, and linux. Every child should get experience to it.
and bring that birthday thing on contacts to an end. ( endless calendar entries from birthday to never ending future). It is a matter of trust to the competence basis of IBM.
- 68
Marco Foellmer http://ebf.de | 4/29/2012 7:28:18 AM
Please open the Traveler Activesync protocol for Windows and Mac clients to use Lotus Email and Calendar and please charge the customer like DAOS. That is IMHO the easiest answer for a Notes Light client.
cheers
- 69
Tue Skaarup http://www.e-conomic.com | 4/29/2012 8:15:00 AM
Great initiative Ed. My most important inputs:
1) The 32/64 KB limits are painfull. They cost us a lot of time and money to develop around constantly.
2) Improved URL rewriting tool, like the options in Apache mod_rewrite. The existing substitution/redirection tool leaves lots to be desired.
Tue Skaarup
e-conomic international a/s
- 70
Stephan Gilla | 4/29/2012 12:24:30 PM
Hi,
administerting a multi-domin-environment is very unsatisfying with the admin-client.
I am working in a company in the german finance-sector. Me and my coworkers are responsibe for more then fifty domino-domains of "Sparkassen" in Germany.
It would be great to have a domino-admin-client by which you can
> work on two or more servers in different domains the same time
> compare / modify the ACLs of two databases
> trigger agents without using the domino-designer
> change user.ids without closing all the opened databases
My company has already placed several enhancement requests for this features but after telefon conferences with your developers these features won't be provided in the near future. We are service provider for roundabout 200.000 (!) Domino-/Notes users.
Greetings from Germany
Stephan Gilla
- 71
Brian Green | 4/29/2012 2:22:03 PM
Continuous improvement for iOS devices, and a better Notes client for the Mac.
- 72
Fredrik Stöckel http://www.twitter.com/fstockel | 4/29/2012 5:31:38 PM
- Bump JSF version and implement support for server filters and other goodies.
- Give the NSF some love. Focus on web- and performance related stuff.
- implement backend support for html5 et al features that relies on such to function correctly (web sockets etc).
- investigste if its possible to switch http-engine To apache, lighttpd or similar so that we can benefit from the work done in those project and perhaps get a more module/plugin based and highly configurable http daemon.
- make the mail- and calendar part of the notes client look like sparrow mail for mac or even as the new android traveler app (which looks great btw). This is how modern software should look like. Dont be agerad to ditch some of the old ui-paradigms.
Minor *but* important/nice stuff:
- give the generated HTML output some extra love, investigate if it's possible to reduce all redundant inline js. Move all generated inline js-code to a dynamically created js-file (that (on the fly) applies correct last modified headers so it's cachable by the browser), include it as an external file reference last in the *body* of the page.
- switch default dojo-theme to claro. It makes all dojo digits much much nicer looking (thank you IBM for contributing that dojo theme).
- implement jquery as a secondary supported and included js framework for xpages. Right now many people seems to include both dojo and jquery in their projects which introduces (imho) unneccecery bloat and possibly coexistance issues - it also makes my ui-colleagues (and me) cry a bit as its not considered good practice.
- create a modern, clean and usefull minimalistic webstandards2 theme that just applies a generic reset, the basic font/typograpic and sizing rules, tables and input rules. This should *not* be a CSS that defines the complete structure of an application - but rather the basic stuff that the everyday web-developer can live with. Right now we have grey buttons with blue(!) text and very small input fields with weird line-height/padding as default. I guess my point is - Make it easy to implement a custom and unique application layout without first having to write a bunch of CSS rules that disables most of webstandards default stuff - Not everyone wants to use oneui. Take a look at some *popular* CSS framework for some inspiration (bootstrap by twitter or similar). Work closely with some CSS/web ninjas to make it shine.
- implement à nice multi-file upload control and throw in the possibility to edit attachments directly (via WebDAV or similar).
....my 2 cents
- 73
Paul Thomas http://www.lan2lan.com | 4/30/2012 4:18:05 AM
Clear and simple deployment of a secure and resilient Domino/Traveler environment as part of the existing licensing agreement. Effectively turnkey secure and resilient access to Web content, expanding Domino clustering and security to the web.
ie. Tick a box on a Server Document specifying 'I am a Reverse-Proxy', Tick a box for Clustering with another Reverse-Proxy, Tick a box for Load Balancing / enter a Server Group for iNotes or Traveler etc.
Nothing more - do not expect IT manager to allow Domino admins to bolt on additional technology and licensing to provide a secure and resilient feature provide by the Domino server.
Reverse-Proxy - one or more clustered in DMZ
Traveler / Mail / Apps servers - one or more on clean network.
No single point of failures, no additional licensing, no expectation for Domino admins to read all about IBM HTTP deployment, installation, upgrading and security considerations.
- 74
Alin Bria | 4/30/2012 6:44:00 AM
You mentioned taking along for your workshop representatives from Traveler team. How about Sametime and Connections?
Will IBM be able to release a Lotus Notes client that contains the latest version for the embedded Sametime? How about Connections? A single roll-out is more desirable.
- 75
Tony Holder | 4/30/2012 12:39:04 PM
An iCal server would be nice, Ed. With an iCal server built in end users can use any mail / calendar client (e.g. Mac Mail and Mac Calendar) in native mode. (A bit like Traveler). An alternative would be to expand the way that Traveler looks like an Exchange server so that third party clients (Mac, Outlook) connect using their Exchange technologies.
- 76
Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 4/30/2012 12:52:29 PM
Instead of focusing on small feature details - how about stepping back and reviewing what the product actually IS in comparison to what IBM and the community wanted it to be.
There is a massive amount of functionality (and code, and disk use, and complexity) that was put in primarily to support Workplace -- which never really went anywhere. All that stuff is still there on the disk and in the menus gumming things up. Less people use that stuff than did the DB2NSF or GARNET stuff -- both of which did get pulled (and rightly so) because it wasn't good enough.
The rough edges in the client are still a major discouragement to re-adoption, and one of the key goals of XPages (attracting new java-oriented developers) has simply not happened due to the complexity and lack of documentation in that product.
it's time to retrench. It's time to rip out things that don't work. It's time streamline and stabilize the core product.
- 77
Bob Brodsky | 4/30/2012 1:21:42 PM
Ed,
You have heard these from me before and they are still important to me:
* Import/Export .xls & .ods to/from views in client
* Export to .xls & .ods from browser
* Domino Network File Store
* SOAP 1.2, etc
Bob
- 78
Gabriella Davis http://blog.turtleweb.com | 4/30/2012 1:37:15 PM
Well I'm not a developer but my vote would be for client management. The client is badly in need of both performance improvements and client side management. We've had many discussion in the past 2 years with IBM on the use of the policies and policy management. Policies are incredibly important in Notes client environment and yet there are almost no management tools for them.
Please don't lower the priority of the Notes client management making the assumption everyone is going to be web based in the future.
- 79
Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 4/30/2012 4:48:25 PM
If you --REALLY-- want to revolutionize what the Domino server could be used for, build a JSR-170 implementation class that can ship and be used in any Java development project.
Go read the spec: JSR-170 { Link }
It's not long. It maps PERFECTLY to a Domino database and would make the Domino server INSTANTLY the single best storage location for documents within the Java world.
I'm tempted to write it myself.
- 80
Mat Newman http://www.matnewman.com | 5/1/2012 1:32:38 AM
What I wouldn't give for an invite to THAT workshop!
No Unicorns, just the following:
1. No 32/64k limits
2. View Indexes removed from the .nsf's (and as with full-text, relocatable)
3. Enable an option for Local Delivery of Mail for any cluster Mate
4. Free access to IBM SmartCloud Notes/iNotes for individuals
5. IBM SmartCloud to include Domino Blog, Wiki, Discussion and EProductivity hosting (again free for individuals)
6. Gant Chart/Timeline view for Notes + equivalent XPages control (for EVERY notes database where the record has a StartDateTime/EndDateTime)
7. Import/Export .ods from a view in an .nsf
8. Redesign (I DO *NOT* mean Dumbify, ie: remove features!) The Mail/Calendar/To-Do/Contacts/Notebook with a one-ui theme
9. Move Actions like 'Copy-Into', 'Create Rule' and 'Out-Of-Office' onto the Mail Action Bar
10. Allow users to retrospectively run rules in their Mail Database
11. Allow users to set their OWN preference for the "Reply/Reply All" buttons. I use 'Reply WITHOUT History' by default and would like it to be the one-click option.
12. Borrow the Android Traveler Design Team and make a "Notes Light" Mail Template that looks the same
13. Either integrate birthdays/anniversaries from the Contacts into the calendar, or move contact records from names.nsf into the Mail database so they can show up with a simple view selection change.
14. Include a 'Hide Initially' option for columns in a view, so that designers can add columns and users can include/enable them using 'View->Customise this view' (You may not want to see the names of the CC recipients in your inbox, but many users do!)
15. Enable 'Group By' (AKA Categorize) as a view column option (right-click the column heading and choose SORT or GROUP)
16. Update the Phone Message form and make it work on mobile
17. Make Activities/To-Do's from Connections automatically synch with your own To-Do list
18. Enable direct-entry in the calendar (as is still available with Ctrl-Alt open & in the Basic client)
19. Make the calendar more flexible in it's display options (c/f Other Products, drag 3 days/Weeks in the picker to show those in the calendar)
20. Buy Panagenda/Marvel, and include a new "Client Management" tab in Domino Administrator.
21. Bring back Categorization for Mail
22. Include the ability for users to colour code their own calendar entries by category
23. Include default Live-Text recognizers for email addresses that create a Memo, Invite to Meeting, or Assign a To-Do in the current users Mail Database.
24. Ctrl+Tab switches between Tabs. Period.
25. At one point it was possible to dig into the eclipse preferences and re-map short-cuts, PLEASE bring that back
26. The web isn't available on many of the worlds airlines, nor lightning fast in many countries around the world. Replication Rocks, and SO does the Rich Client!
I'm sure there are more, but that's a start ... :-)
- 81
Srihari Pullati | 5/1/2012 3:11:19 AM
1. have only an ibm email client
2. kill notes client totally
3. domino works only for web apps.. with nsf
4. build more basic collaboration features
i think ibm should not try to do what is already there in other products.. if I want to do java then i will use web sphere, tom cat..if i want rapid apps with relation technology then i will use groovy n grails..or i will use no sql when i need.
i also have cloud platforms for paas etc..
basically ibm shud bring true and uniqe innovation here... dont copy ideas from other products.. and dont compete with other ibm products like websphere, websphere portal etc
- 82
Srihari Pullati | 5/1/2012 3:15:16 AM
on the limitations people are asking here to remove. i think it is ok.. we are building lotus apps for so many years with those things .. so no problem
also if you dont want those limitations then use other products
lotus notes is for simple people who do simple departmental application.. no body does enterprise application with notes
- 83
Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/1/2012 7:00:58 AM
Srihari Pullati - are you sure you don't work for IBM? If not, you should definitely send a Resume to Steve Mills. You'll fit right in.
- 84
Kevin Mort | 5/1/2012 7:13:37 AM
What I'd say is pretty much covered here and probably elsewhere. So I'll say this instead:
Make a concerted effort to take all the suggestions here seriously, no matter how much you want to say "oh is THAT ALL?"
Sure it's a lot, and that's want to be your first reaction as it would be for everyone. But if you're asking for ideas this is what you get...don't allow yourself to blow off any of them.
After all, why would anyone in the community ask for anything less than what they think is the perfect solution?
: )
- 85
Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 5/1/2012 8:10:33 AM
#55 (Paul Withers): Or why not have the installer just read the amount of memory present and adapt vmarg.Xmx depending on that?
If memory<1GB Then
vmarg.Xmx = 256
ElseIf memory<2GB Then
vmarg.Xmx = 768
Else
vmarg.Xmx = 1024
End If
See, was it that hard? :-)
I also agree with the suggestions about rewriting/improving the workspace (just clean it up and make it look modern, don't change the functionality too much) and adding a print command in the backend classes, i.e. doc.Print(printername,orientation).
All templates that comes in the box should be modernized. But remember, there are many customers not using Xpages, or even using the Basic client. So there should be both classic and Xpages versions of the templates. With all the developers IBM have in India, should it not be easy to get that done quickly?
And if IBM is pushing Xpages so hard, why not eat your own dog food and rewrite all the templates using Xpages?
I have also (like several above) for al ong time been suggesting a free email-only client (with full support for multiple accounts, including Gmail, Yahoo and other webmail, as well as POP3/IMAP.
Yeah, and marketing. I still hear "Notes? People still use that?" when I tell people what I do. There is a saying: "Out of sight, out of mind." If a CEO/CIO never hear the name Notes (in a positive way, as in IBM is promoting it), they will never consider it.
Ed, do this experiment. Ask a dozen ten or eleven year old boys what sports car they would like if they could pick any.
How many do yo think would pick Mustang, Camaro or Corvette? I.e. brands they see on TV in commercials.
And how many do you think would answer Ferrari, Lamborghini or Bugatti? Perhaps the few that watch Top Gear. But not a majority.
As I said earlier in this comment thread, Xpages development much be easier. True WYSIWYG in the editor, but also complete and correct documentation. Much more documentation. And simplify things.
I agree with #76 (Andrew), rip out all the old legacy stuff left over from Workplace... Make Notes lean again.
And I agree with every single item Mat Newman lists...
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Paul Hudson | 5/1/2012 10:56:46 AM
Order of preference:
1. 64-bit Solaris - ok it was worth another try.
(or find a way to have the XPage run-time sit in it's own 32bit space).
2. Significantly better HTTP performance.
3. Remove 32kb and 64kb limitations
- 88
Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 5/1/2012 12:08:36 PM
Hum. Well it's all said above isn't it? But from an infrastructure perspective then I'd have to add three things:
1) Get rid of the insane 32KB and 64KB limits that exist everywhere. This make the product an absolute joke when talking about development. Would you use a 32KB USB drive? No, I didn't think so. Too small isn't it?
2) Free us from the arcane world of the Notes ID file. 1990 called and want it back. And make roaming work right, no password needed. Ever. Basically link the Notes user to the AD profile and roam the stuff right on to the PC. You'll also need some way to find the home server automatically but you have smart people who can figure that out (ahem, AD is extensible).
3) Make the Notes client as installed usable. For heavens sake, no alarms for calendar entries by default? Yes there are policies, but really, I should not need to set a policy just to remind you of a meeting. While where here why not give the first time user an optional wizard to enter a signature, pick the mail pop out/up/slide style, alarm durations, and other useful stuff they would never find on their own.
3.5) SSL performance. Or front it with another HTTPS server.
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Mat Newman http://www.matnewman.com | 5/1/2012 3:59:14 PM
@88 - Darren pointed out the obvious one I missed:
It's time to review ALL of the DEFAULT options in the Lotus Notes client. Don't Set Alarms by default? Don't retain View Column Sorting? Send Plain-Text format Email to the internet?
Thank heaven Policies do handle most of this, but during the Migration we kicked off a couple of weeks ago ...
Remember that these are NEW Admins with NO previous exposure to Notes!
... I had to create the Desktop/Mail/etc policies that turn ALL the stuff on that makes Lotus Notes really functional for the user - *especially* since they are migrating from Outlook!
Happy to assist with that process.
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Alex | 5/1/2012 4:07:04 PM
Hi Ed,
last but not least we need Foundations with 8.5.4 too :-) The Best Development Entvirorment Today
- 91
John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 5/1/2012 4:40:37 PM
This is a great list of what existing customers want. That count (by company or user) has decreased over the past couple of years. We can all argue why or fret over if that was what should have happened, but it's reality.
Making these changes won't get you new clients. They will also not keep existing clients that are facing the sea change of user dissent and executive decision making on the platform. We need a massive shift. And adding social, either deep level or bolt on, wont solve this.
There needs to be real change in the architecture, direction, and strategy for the product line to emerge as a leader again. Do drastic decisions. Make the implementation of those decisions rock solid. And in the end, decide if you want to be a messaging product or a development platform. They have different requirements and goals. They don't mesh well, never have. If you want to keep both, put a stake in the ground and fork into two products.
I hope you go into these meetings with the thought process of a blank sheet of paper. We don not need Notes 9 with a few new mail features. We don't need a campfire, we need a forest fire.
- 92
Erik Brooks | 5/1/2012 10:32:50 PM
So my quick count shows 22 people mentioning NSF improvements directly, with another 4 mentioning 16/32/64K limits without directly mentioning NSF.
So remove some duplicate posters, jokes, and Ed's responses and we're at 26 of ~80-ish? Is that enough weight?
To provide a bit more detail, Ed, as Karsten said @6 there has already been a ton of discussion with IBM Dev about the needs and approaches that could be taken here. They just need the OK from management to do it.
- 93
Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 5/2/2012 12:11:14 AM
@91 Hear hear. Perfectly stated.
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David Hablewitz http://thenotesguyinseattle.com | 5/2/2012 1:57:10 AM
I'm late to the party. But Ed, you already have many of my ideas from ideajam. I could point out a few more minor feature enhancements, but the reality is that, after using MS products now for 1 full year in the environment that should be more adept at using their tools than anyone else in the world, I can now speak with authority that Notes/Domino is already light-years ahead of the competition without changing a thing.
If I were to make one enhancement, it would be to improve the world's understanding and appreciation of your products' superiority.
- 96
John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 5/2/2012 7:29:18 AM
"Everyone at IBM would."
I disagree. If you restate "Everyone who works on Notes/Domino at IBM would." then I would agree.
How many companies have multiple versions of DB2 and WAS installed to support Portal, Connections, and other applications they are using. My customers, using IBM or MS or Open Source server stacks, are used to having multiple versions of a product in-house based on application need. And other teams in IBM Software have no problem putting a fork in the ground around what will work and what needs to be rebuilt on an upgrade. Yes, simplification is a big deal. This is a major reason the cloud platform and app model is taking off is to reduce the need to manage all the back end stuff.
First, if you break email and apps into two servers, you reduce the backwards compatibility issues into smaller chunks. Second, on the app side, having limits that allow me to have a vastly improved XPages experience will get my vote.
I realize not everyone will agree. And what I am suggesting would increase some of the burden on the V side of SMB. But while IBM touts backwards compatibility, I see a massive move from Notes to other platforms. All those apps that were written in Notes 4.x are either sunset or pumped and dumped into another platform. I bet if you went back and asked your medium and large customers if they cared about backwards compatibility - the answer would be different than it was 2 years ago.
- 97
Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/2/2012 7:31:01 AM
Ed, your question @95 is a good one. Personally, I think server side backward compatibility is paramount -- but also that server side isn't where your problems are. The server is damn awesome and keeps getting better. The exception to this is configuration management. The Domino Directory along with the myriad other configuration database is is a nightmare for any new and many experienced admins. I'd support a server side Directory change that pulled all configuration into a new "Configuration Directory" that was reorganized and worked on version "9" and above. You'd maintain compatibility with previous versions by syncing some settings with the current directory into read-only documents that remained for a version or two, meanwhile more and more settings from other places (not the directory) would be added to the new configuration directory until at some point you could phase out the functionality in the old directory as previous server versions fell out of support.
The client side is another matter. There are two conflicting drivers here. If you make migration difficult for your big clients, it just won't happen. The product just doesn't have the support for that. On the other hand, there is market space for something new. Anything less than that is just a delaying action. John Head hit this on the head.
What I would propose is minimal changes to the existing client, primarily focused on performance and stability, along with the introduction of an entirely new client alternative -- new in branding, and new in compatibility history. I would build it to feel LIGHTWEIGHT and fast, and have the new UI functionality.
This will surprise you, but I'd even suggest it be an "Xpages" based client --- BUT ONLY if you can strip out that functionality and wrap it in NOTHING but a very lightweight and smooth wrapper. Apps written for it would appear to be "standalone" once you'd installed the "domino framework" on the machine. Each app could have it's own desktop ICON and run on its own. No overarching desktop would be necessary. This would be very similar to what the .NET CLR does, or the Adobe AIR based apps do and so on. To make that work, you'll also need to FIX the Xpages designer into it's own standalone tool that is smooth, stable, and documented.
IF you could actually get the big funding to do this, and IF you could actually get it built right and not have it be the powerful yet clunky and painful model that xpages is now -- you'd have a NEW entry into the market for another generation of applications.
IMCO, anything else you do is nothing but a delaying action during an inevitable long retreat into obscurity.
- 98
Roberto Boccadoro | 5/2/2012 9:56:38 AM
@97 - I am surprised by your statement "anything else you do is nothing but a delaying action during an inevitable long retreat into obscurity." If I didn't know you I would have asked you how much do you know Notes and Domino. Have you seen the proposed enhancements in 8.5.4 SE ? Does OpenSocial ring any bells ? DOTS anyone ? IMHO the future of Notes/Domino looks good, assuming one understands all the exceptional possibilities that it offers.
- 99
Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 5/2/2012 11:33:58 AM
@98 That's the view inside the fences (or the bubble depending on how you want to phrase it). The stuff in 8.5.4 is cool and well thought out. Few here are criticising that.
The issue is that when you look (or even live) outside the fences, life ain't so rosy. We can debate how good or bad it is, but either way, to make the future of Domino/Notes significantly different 2-3 years out, something significantly different needs to be done.
I've been impressed by the tone of the commenters (and Ed) above. This is a positive conversation about the products we care about.
What the theme seems to be is that we realise there are sizeable challenges ahead, and we want IBM to 'be bold' in how it approaches them. We don't just want IBM to be bold with Connections and WebSphere, we want it to be bold with Domino and Notes. IMHO that means revolution, not evolution.
- 100
Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/2/2012 1:57:32 PM
@98 Robert - look at the numbers. New adoption of Domino at sites is not completely gone, but is so low as to being aberrational when it does happen. Existing license renewals continue to drop. Total user base continues to drop. Clients claiming to be migrating away from the product continue to grow.
All this despite MAJOR new advantages in TCO from DAOS, in manageability and support through IDVAULT, and programmatic functionality from XPages.
What you can learn from this is that simply making improvements that are incremental (even if they're fairly large) in a product that the bulk of the marketplace has already decided is past its sell-by date will not get you anywhere. If you don't agree, watch Blackberry. They have a VERY similar problem.
Time for a NEW client side framework with new branding and fresh history that really can take full advantage of the power of that server.
- 102
Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/2/2012 3:31:02 PM
@Ed - my numbers are anecdotal - and I won't pretend otherwise. They are based on a fairly wide contact range with other partners around the world. They're not as good as IBM's numbers would be, but IBM's numbers are never given out in a year to year consistent matter that makes a true comparison possible.
Ed, I would LOVE to be wrong here. Truly and deeply love to be wrong. We both know that the Notes client user base is NOT growing and hasn't been in a long time.
- 103
Steve Mullen | 5/2/2012 3:33:06 PM
I don't have much to add that hasn't already been covered. I would argue with @5 about replication. We support numerous projects in developing countries where network bandwidth is extremely poor. Notes/Domino replication and its ability to work in bandwidth challenged environments is critical to us and is the reason we went with Notes/Domino many years ago.
- 104
Fred | 5/2/2012 3:42:28 PM
Lots of good input, but agree with the last comments. Think new on client and give an option without backwards compatibility.
Server is very good, but important to get rid of 32/64kb limits.
Make good, modern looking and functional templates in xPages for mail and calendar.
What about making a local server that handles the best of Notes/Domino (replication and security), and let users access mail and other databases locally via xPages in standard browser.
- 105
Mike Perrett http://www.chooseportal.com | 5/3/2012 6:03:54 AM
Deployment Control
I carried out a deployment for Hosted Notes and also the Hybrid Smart cloud model the other day. There are faults in those products that need addressing, but the interesting feature is that a user could log on to a web page and effectively download a config database that will configure the client.
So if an enterprise delivers the Notes client to a PC in a vanilla fashion, when the user clicks to launch:
1. Have the client connect to a load balanced domino server, via http if necessary.
2. Prompt the user for credentials, or take SSO if using SPNEGO or get OAUTH working
3. Give the user one ui button, link, hotspot anything to simply configure the client
4. If the client screws up in future allow the process to be repeated
We have Domino Configuration Tuner - so lets have NCT Notes Configuration Tuner - Runs once a week at startup. Compares current configuration against (a) best practice and (b) Organisational/dynamic/explicit policies.
Report to central mail in database with views that say for example 80% of users have turned on Automatic spell checking - allows admins to tailor policies in accordance with users behaviour.
- allows admins to spot problems where for example debug parameters have been left in Client NOTES.INI
-Use this information to allow users to easily migrate from old PC to new PC.
Also Put ST Proxy into Notes Sidebar saving 100Mb+ of footprint
Above all else carry on innovating
- 106
Henning Heinz | 5/3/2012 5:13:26 PM
There already had been some radical changes. Some of them did not happen in Domino but Connections and Sametime. There are even free entitlements for profiles and files so that Domino customers can benefit from them.
And to be honest the new Connections Windows Explorer integration seems to become what DNFS never was.
Another one has been incorporating XPages into Domino. Complete new development model. Even the move to Eclipse could have been a bold move but IBM stopped at a certain point. I don't mean this in a negative way but just to clarify that there already had been some big changes in this product (some say most of them were only half-baked).
From an infrastructure perspective I would like to see IBM replacing or adding as much open source components as possible but this does not mean I want Notes and Domino to be open sourced. I see so many defects nowadays from missing product quality to documentation that I am very hesitant to ask for something new. It seems the resources just aren't there.
- 107
Brendan Long | 5/3/2012 9:29:02 PM
Not much left to be said here that hasn't been said. On the client side I'm just happy if it is fast(er) and reliable. The feature set is good and I have high hopes that Social Edition will change some user perceptions and help to arrest any slide away from notes in the installed client base. I don't think it is all doom and gloom.
I'd like to see iNotes done in XPages, if that's possible. Even if this means making the interface a bit simpler and removing a few of the more obscure features. I'm committing my immediate future as a developer to XPages, and I'd like to see IBM do the same. If XPages isn't a good enough platform for a mail/calendar implementation, it needs improvement as a platform - and these improvements could then be used by the rest of the community.
More out of the box bling for XPages is always a good thing. Keep improving the ExtLib so that the quick and dirty base level XPages application as developed by an inexperienced developer is still something that impresses people. I like Mat Newman's Gantt Chart/Timeline idea, and I'd love to have a really slick set of calendar views.
- 108
Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/4/2012 5:59:13 AM
Clear trends in this thread.
Quality and Documentation for existing features -- particularly in XPages -- is the most pervasive point being made. Virtually nobody is stepping up to argue that the quality or documentation are at an acceptable level.
Quality overall is clearly a major concern on the client side for everyone. Again, I don't see anyone stepping out to refute this.
Phrases like "half baked" are thrown around easily and accepted by a community who is tired of dealing with it. This is from your fan base. What is said among the end users is far stronger and more toxic.
Whatever you do, quit doing it badly.
- 109
Gustavo F Frizzera | 5/4/2012 10:02:47 AM
In my opinion: Lotus Notes Client Mobility needs to better
Actually users have to be "IT gurus" to use roaming user feature and understand passwords windows that comes when they have to "use mobility".
Many clients in the "lotus world" still use Lotus Notes on Windows or Novell "home folder" to have mobility. This is a fact and not a supported configuration that causes other big problems.
Maybe the solution to this problem is a "radical change". It would be much pretension to say about radical change but IBM could learn about mobility with other competitor collaboration solutions.
- 110
Gustavo F Frizzera | 5/4/2012 10:05:47 AM
Improve Domino Cluster and ICM!
- 111
Mikkel Flindt Heisterberg | 5/4/2012 1:06:45 PM
Have to second Declan on making Domino an open authentication provider for openid and oauth.
Also simplify the client by making non-applicable actions hidden instead of being inactive. That would greatly simplify Sametime and context menus.
- 112
Mikkel Flindt Heisterberg http://lekkimworld.com | 5/4/2012 1:16:27 PM
Ooops. A bit too quick on the submit there... :)
Have to second Declan on making Domino an open authentication provider for openid and oauth. Authentication is key and making Domino the center and even center in a public environment would be a great addition. Would also be great for the open social additions.
Secondly - simplify the rich client by making non-applicable actions hidden instead of being inactive. There is so much functionality there and hardly any use it all - hiding functionality that doesn't apply would make it simpler to look at. Consider Sametime - if you only have Entry entitlement most of the actions in the context menu is grated out but still makes the context menu complex. From an extensibility perspective it also makes it harder to add custom actions as they drown in the other functionality plus similarly names functionality (eg "Call" using custom action and not Sametime) appear to be a duplicate and hence an error.
Thanks.
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Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/4/2012 1:47:52 PM
@111 -- I'm on a project to implement SAML 2.0 on Domino in the next few weeks. Once that's done, I'm seriously thinking of doing oAUTH as a product as well -- both to supported by NCT SSO.
I realize IBM has said SAML will be in 8.5.4, but there are a lot of people that won't be running that any time soon -- and so far we have no idea what the "saml" ibm is planning will actually look like or require.
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Michiel Hamberg http://www.michielhamberg.com | 5/5/2012 2:27:07 AM
Hi Ed,
Eventhough this input comes late I hope it is still of value to you.
Key message: Increase analytics capabilities on platform level. Move from server based metrics to more platform level metrics & abilty to extract service KPIs. When are we going to see Xpages for infrastructure DBs ?
Background:
The last 4 years I have been working with the IT Operations department of a larger special chemistry company in Switzerland managing the messaging and collaboration services globally. We have worked towards more usercentric end-to-end services and pro-active management of our infrastructure. Having looked more detailed at the multi domain domino platform infrastructure related databases and setup I learned what is possible and where there are limitations. I would like to share some of this experience because I think it could help to develop the analytical capabilities of the Domno product further. During the last years interesting work was done in the monitoring area with DDM. For the reporting and analytics area I see room for improvement which can result in lower TCO & less caretaking efforts.
For pro-active management of your infrastructure I want to be looking at some key metrics and how they change over time.
statrep.nsf provides interesting counters, eg number & size of transported emails. Interestingly counters get reset on reboot and volume counters are reported to the number bytes precise. So where are you after a monthly maintenance window or unplanned reboot of the machine ? Back to manual extraction in to spreadsheet and counting there to get complete numbers for a month in useful quantities (eg GB/Millions). What about last month? Well depending on your settings that data was purged already. Reports.nsf provides some relieve with a monthly table for some key figures. But having it in a richtext field basically brings back to spreadsheet processing.
And the statrep.nsf or reports.nsf is single server. so if you need to count for clusters etc, it is spreadsheet time again. It seems to me a smaller step to come to a next level where Out-of-the-box those monthly numbers are extracted and tracked so that trend analysis can be performed. And why not add an Xpage for it ?
userlicense.nsf: A useful application that analyses the number of actual users,how the use the product and when the last used it. Very useful. However information is limited to single domain. IBM's enterprise license model is independent on number of domains.
So if you have a multi-domain setup you find yourself doing manual calculations with a spreadsheet to get out the a number that is useful.
Would it not be a small step to aggregate across all domains, and add an xpage to the app that provides a graphical representation over the trend & forecast ?
Assett tracking: I generate monthly high level reports to get an "helicopter overview" over the landscape and its development. How many servers in total & per domain/Geography, How many databases & their size, how many new, how many deleted (unique replicas & total DBs), number registered users (new/delete/total). Why do I need to do this all using spreadsheets? should be pretty straightforward to have all this info collected platform wide automatically & presented to me in an attractive assett cockpit/dashboard overview ?
Managing Notes application hosting services I am interested in knowing how much of what I host where & what is used, or better what is not used.
Activity.nsf provides you useful information at detailed level of what the individual users do on your system. As usual it is per-server view.
I would like to know 2 key metrics for application hosting: How many users use Notes databases, and how many unique databases (ie ReplicaIDs) are used.
(A second level of interest would be data like: what are the top25 DBs based on usage worldwide, and how many databases do users use)
To get this information out we created a custom app that does the number crunching on the basis of the activity.nsf data. Would it not be great to have such data available in a platform dashboard with developments per month?
Logical next step are automated features for non-used databases. We all need to optimise the TCO of the platform. Currently there is still to much manual work related to these activities.
Running clustered Domino mail servers works fine. It is easy to provide a high-available service to Notes clients. High-available webmail with automatic switchover to the available server in the cluster is not provided by the out-of-the-box version of redirect.nsf. Why? I found out it was easy to fix by modifying the app. I would like to know how many webmail users are active on your system... you need to submit a console command and capture the output, no tracking of such metrics anywhere. Same for reporting. I would like to have a report how many users used the webmail service during a month and when my peak hours for the service are. We needed to create a custom app to extract his info. Would it not be great if this info comes out of the box ?
For Mail services a typical end-user centric service KPI is "Percentage of internal emails that is delivered within x minutes during last month". That all servers are up and running and show green on the monitoring dashboard does not help the user if his email got stuck in a queue somewhere for too long. It is the end-to-end service that the user cares about.
It is amazingly challenging to get this service level KPI out. Can you differentiate between internal & external emails? Not really. Probes will alert you when emails do not arrive in time, but miss the percentage counting and reporting capability. A solution approach that comes closest is using a synthetic user approach with 3rd party tools like GSX. Would it not make sense to extend the capabilities of Domino so these kind of KPIs get in reach ?
In conclusion: I see multiple opportunities for the Domino product to make infrastructure and service management easier & better. There is a good server level basis. If basis could be leveraged to the platform level it would be a great improvement!
- 115
Phil Salm | 5/7/2012 10:04:14 AM
Late to the party, but I'll throw these out there in any case.
1) Free migration tool from Outlook & Gmail. You need to be serious about being competitive, and push mail migrations to Notes as not only a reasonable move, but a forward-thinking move.
2) Domino as Voicemail server. I can tell you with certainty that customers don't accept that "no one uses voicemail anymore" and that companies are making decisions to migrate based on unified messaging options either natively present in Exchange or available from leading telephony providers only on Exchange and not Domino. Microsoft beat you to the punch on this. You've done it to them with numerous features in the past, and they had no problem subsequently copying you and adding it to their product.
3) If a selling point for Domino is that it is both apps and mail, then REAL business apps need to be included that are top-notch, usable out of the box. Link to OpenNTF.org is not sufficient. Otherwise, take seriously John's suggestion to separate the apps/mail functionality.
4) Agree with suggestions to simplify from Stuart & Andrew. This can positively impact requests for addressing performance and stability.
5) Agree with suggestions from Matt & others on need for free consumer version of Notes. If IBM marketing won't take on the fight for you, you need another way to drive consumer awareness and demand for the product. Yes, I too regularly hear the proclamation from potential customers, "Notes still exists?" My suggestion in the past was to stick it in Symphony, which I guess now would satisfy the call others have made to open source the client.
- 116
John Vaughan | 5/21/2012 2:22:51 PM
The main problem that you guys need to solve is, how do you restructure the Notes business and products so that sales has more to sell. Relevancy can only be reattained when IBM starts selling it again. Only sales can start John's forest fire, only sales can produce magical unicorns. Make IBM care.
- 117
Jenny | 9/18/2012 12:24:55 AM
Make Notes look/feel/work like Gmail rather than something from the 90s.
- 118
Brian Labelle | 12/28/2012 9:23:28 PM
Late to the game, but I'd love to see improvements / ease of use in the composite application space.
Are any of you doing composite application development ?
I'm using the HOD container ( for iSeries connectivity ) & Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets). I saw that container going away in Notes 9....
NSF.