Comments on Creative code and cuisine: Outlook vs Notes

I think there is a policy to push databases to the...

2007-11-07T09:11:00.000-05:00

I think there is a policy to push databases to the workspace and you can decide whether everybody gets them or just a specific group.

Thilo, did you ever have to give 10 user groups a ...

2007-11-04T13:31:00.000-05:00

Thilo, did you ever have to give 10 user groups a list of their individual notes apps and also present a portal view to selected databases (company news, team news...). Personally I won't try to do it with the database library. I just use a extended version of Peanuts Portal and it works great for me. Unfortunately the project leader Fabian seems not to work on this project anymore, so a lot (?) of new features did not find their way to the public.

Anonymous - There are two Notes 8 clients dependin...

2007-11-02T04:42:00.000-04:00

Anonymous - There are two Notes 8 clients depending on the resources of your machine.

Peter - "Notes is really lacking a practical solution to give all users an overview of just the important applications in the company." Only few apllications are important to everybody. The database library has some capability to solve that issue.

Peter, I'm actually in the process of reworking Pe...

2007-11-01T21:39:00.000-04:00

Peter, I'm actually in the process of reworking Peanuts for a client! :-) I love that thing, it's absolutely brilliant. Now if only I could press a webify button to update my 50+ Domino apps.

Notes is really lacking a practical solution to gi...

2007-11-01T14:40:00.000-04:00

Notes is really lacking a practical solution to give all users an overview of just the important applications in the company.

With Peanuts Portal there is an elegant approach on openntf.org:

http://www.peanuts-project.net/iaxes/fabian/web/peanuts.nsf

I added some "enterprise" related features to it:

- multi-language support (you can manage as many language in one database as you like, user set their preference)
- up to three frameset tabs to present views in different apps (one or two application frames per frameset)
- access security based framesets and frames
- switching between local/server replicas and direct replica creation

If somebody wants to give it a try (open source), just drop me a line:
pmeuser@itlab.de

Peter

Chris, yeah, you're right, that is out of place. ...

2007-10-31T21:19:00.000-04:00

Chris, yeah, you're right, that is out of place. I was trying to come up with something positive to say! :-P

Tony.Bugge - You have a point but this isn't the right venue. You'd be better off mentioning it on Ed Brill's blog. I'm not in the business of selling Lotus or Microsoft software so feature shoot-outs don't interest me at all. This was from the perspective of a user, namely me.

Anonymous - "Searching for applications/databases does not work properly. I search for a database that I know exists, but no go."

You may want to ask your administrators why the databases are not in the catalog rather than blaming the product. Likewise, perhaps you should ask your support people why the records returned don't match the count shown. I'd be glad to help, but without access to your mail I can't explain the discrepancy.

I started using Notes 4,5 years ago. I've been thr...

2007-10-31T17:19:00.000-04:00

I started using Notes 4,5 years ago. I've been thru' version 5, 6, 6.5, 7.x and now version 8. I still hate Notes as much as I did 4,5 years ago when I switched job (from an Exchange based company).

Notes 8 is a huge step forward. Finally we see features that have been available since Outlook 97. However, it's way to slow and unresponsive.

Furthermore the search features does not make sense to me at all. If I search through e-mails it usually get it right the first time. When I search again, on another word, it says that 508 conversations matched. However, it shows 1411 conversations, and I have no idea where the 508 matches are.
Searching for applications/databases does not work properly. I search for a database that I know exists, but no go.

I'm only praying that the corporation that I work for will come to it's senses pretty soon, and abondon the whole Lotus sphere...

What I hear every day is that in Outlook mails are...

2007-10-31T12:57:00.000-04:00

What I hear every day is that in Outlook mails are sorted by family name.

What we need ...
.. is a new Notes V8 vs...

2007-10-31T10:48:00.000-04:00

What we need ...
.. is a new Notes V8 vs Outlook 2007 or better ND8 vs Exchange and Outlook 2007. There are too many positive comments, almost as marketing and PR remarks. What we - "the notes community" :) needs is hard facts about these two or four products, and the differences between them. As: Do both have the same type of scheduling, do both have group calendars, do both have integrated chat and awareness out of the box, do both have integrated serversync for mobile units, do both have IMAP support for their clients, do both have integrated productivity tools, do both support 4096 bit security, do both support full functionality from the internet, do both support groups and change of group members etc etc, Best regards Tony.bugge@usit.uio.no

@Alan - Thanks. I was going to point out that you ...

2007-10-31T10:08:00.000-04:00

@Alan - Thanks. I was going to point out that you can easily create mail file replicas!

@Charles - "Setting up a mailbox is just a tab on the user account while you're setting them up in Active Directory."

Umm, this has nothing to do with Outlook. Your focus in the article was solely regarding the UI and then there's this random snippet about how an admin adds a new account... Is this Notes vs. Exchange again?? :)

I've administered Exchange 2000/Outlook 2000 befor...

2007-10-31T09:09:00.000-04:00

I've administered Exchange 2000/Outlook 2000 before. At that point, configuring a client for offline use required more than just the checkbox. There was a great deal to be done if uses wanted their folders offline to synch as well, and forget about it if the user's mail file exceeded 250MB. We have folks with 4 Gig mail files on laptops replicating. While it doesn't say much for a strict policy, it speaks bounds about the flexibility in working offline with Notes. Now, how about synching those Outlook Applications to work 'offline'.

BTW, the setting for creating a local mail replica...

2007-10-31T00:27:00.000-04:00

BTW, the setting for creating a local mail replica is in the Desktop Policy document, not the Registration Policy document. So once the user is set up, and the Notes client connects, the settings in the Desktop Policy will be applied. Here is a good article on it:
Understanding and implementing local mail replicas for IBM Lotus Notes

Charles, your new company sounds like they are in ...

2007-10-31T00:16:00.000-04:00

Charles, your new company sounds like they are in desperate need of Notes :-)

@Thomas - I use polices to create local replicas o...

2007-10-30T23:55:00.000-04:00

@Thomas - I use polices to create local replicas of everything I can, but I haven't found a way to tell Notes to create a replica of the current user's mail during setup. If you know how to do that I would love to learn. :-)

What I don't like about ID files is I can't reset a user's password administratively. If they call in and tell me they forgot their password it's a rather tedious process to extract the recovery password and get them to enter it.. and hope they typed all 16 characters correctly! Yes, I know that can be changed, and I've done that, but still... the ID files don't help me that much.

@dholzric - I don't administer Exchange, so I have no idea what kind of monitoring is possible.

@Alan - We actually don't use the calendar. They don't schedule any resources, they put Post-It notes on the doors of the conference rooms! From the little I have played with the calendar, it is anemic compared to Notes.

Applications is a HUGE problem we have. Right now they have a monolithic Access app that runs the entire business, from order entry to purchasing to a full accounting system. Adding anything just bloats it even more, so my job (eventually) is to split it up into multiple applications. Many business functions are done in Excel spreadsheets because of the tremendous effort required to put i into the ERP system. I suggested we use Sharepoint and was told the previous CIO decided installed it, demoed it to upper management, and decided it was too complicated and expensive.

The long-term goal is to recreate the home grown ERP system as an ASP.Net intranet application. That's probably going to take 18 - 24 months.

Charles, thank you for the great write up. This ...

2007-10-30T21:08:00.000-04:00

Charles, thank you for the great write up. This is refreshing compared to the ridiculously vague "Notes sucks" posts.

I have two questions for you.
1.) What about Calendar and Scheduling? How do they compare in not just you putting personal events on your calendar, but the full workflow of enterprise grade meeting invitations, reschedules, delegation, responding with comments, counter proposing times, etc.

2.) What about all the applications? When I look at my desktop, I have dozens of things I do in Notes. What do you use instead? And tied into that, how do you access/group/organize the alternatives? My feeling is that it is a combo of .Net apps, Access DBs, web sites, SharePoint sites, etc. I love my Notes workspace, almost all of applications I use are there.

I feel your pain :)

I'm working on a migrat...

2007-10-30T18:07:00.000-04:00

I feel your pain :)

I'm working on a migration to Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2003. There are some good features like account creation/reset, but you are right about it being limited. The thing I miss the most is the server monitoring. Anyone have an idea how you are supposed to do this? (I guess they expect you to buy MOM)

Hi Charles,

but you can administratively co...

2007-10-30T16:35:00.000-04:00

Hi Charles,

but you can administratively control the creation of replicas!

In the Registration and Desktop Settings there is a tab Databases. The first field is "Create As new replicas on user's machine". It's a rich-text field. You can paste database links into that field. If you apply this setting (through a policy) to a user, his Notes client will care about the creation of a local replica.

To create a local replica manually, you now have Application - Make Available Offline..., which simplifies the process of creating a local replica for normal users.

IMHO the ID files are a great security plus! The two-factor authorization Notes uses (ID file + password) is a lot more secure than the one-factor authorization of Web and other applications. Normally, the user name is public, thus you only need to "get" the password e.g. by social engineering. In Notes you would have to get the ID file, too. This mean, you must have access to the local computer (or administrative access to the file share most administrators use as backup).

Ciao
Thomas
http://www.assono.de/blog/