Tag Archives: lotus notes

Lotus Notes becomes social with Lotus Notes Social Edition

Posted on by Vaughan Rivett

That’s right, Lotus Notes has gone through a makeover and the next release will be shipping with a social media look and feel.  The software will present users with an active activity stream which will alert them to what is happening within their business.  Alerts will be feed in from other applications and also the activity of people.

Email is quickly becoming a thing of the past.  People want to get away from using email and prefer the likes of Facebook to communicate openly with friends.  IBM has taken note of these user trends and have applied it to the way we do business.

In this video, Ed Brill talks about the growth of the Lotus Notes and Domino platforms.  He also talks about new features which will be available in Lotus Notes Social Edition which should be released soon.

Click on this link to watch the video

The success of Lotus Domino/Notes 8.5.3

Posted on by Vaughan Rivett

This afternoon I  sat through a session by Ed Brill at IBM’s Lotusphere.  During this session Ed covered many of the significant achievements IBM has had with the delivery of new features and releases of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Server.

During this presentation Ed asked how many people have upgraded to the latest version of Domino server (8.5.3).  In a large room, over two thirds of the audience raised their hands.  As this was released only two months ago, Ed was blown away and rather surprised.  Just to confirm that this was the case, and that he wasn’t dreaming, he asked the same question a couple more times throughout the presentation.

This is something that is almost unheard of in the industry.  Most vendors would expect such adoption of  a new release to take up to a couple of years.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Lotus Domino Server and Lotus Notes is still RAD!

Posted on by Vaughan Rivett

Hardly a day goes past where I don’t have a conversation in which someone is comparing Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange.  The thing that I can never get over, is that the two are completely different.  Microsoft Exchange does email and does it really well.  Lotus Notes does email and again does it really well, but, Lotus Notes is also an application development platform.

So what do I mean by “RAD”?  It’s an acronym for Rapid Application Development.  Basically, what it means is, if you have a business problem which you want to address through the use of technology, you can quickly create an application and deploy it to everyone within the organisation just by sending them an email.

Take for instance, The Salvation Army in New Zealand.  When an earthquake caused significant damage and claimed many lives in Christchurch, The Salvation Army played an important role in relief work.  As a result people were being flown in from all around the country and managing who was coming and going was becoming hard to control.  Each person coming to assist needed flights and accommodation.  Overnight, an application was written to manage this process.  An application which could be used offline with synchronization to a central server.

Business changes from day to day.  It is important to be able to keep up with the demands which are driven by the market in which you operate.  To be able to use simple technology to support this, can take the headache out of having to create your business around an IT solution.  IT should not be dictating process to the businesses.  Through the use of Lotus Notes, even a novice computer operator can begin to develop databases and applications which support the requirements of the business.

My AUSLUG highlight – “Spend 60 minutes to save 60 hours”

Posted on by Vaughan Rivett

AUSLUG finished a few days ago now. While I had every intention of keeping my blog updated with some of my views on the event, life has been busy.

For me, the highlight was not about the technology or the fantastic announcements, but rather, one of the presentations which impressed me.  The presentation entitled, “Spend 60 minutes to save 60 hours”, was absolutely fantastic.  Karen Hooper from Dr. Notes went over a lot of the functionality of the Lotus Notes mail client, calendar and contacts.

I have been a Lotus Notes user and Administrator for more years than I care to remember, but somehow, Karen seemed to be able to show amazing features that I had never seen.  Some of which, she said, often surprised users who made comments about Microsoft Outlook not having those features.  The funny thing is that some of the features are in Outlook but the users are unaware.

This raised an interesting point.  There is often an argument about Lotus Notes not being as intuitive or as easy to use as Microsoft Outlook.  However, whenever I try to use Outlook, I struggle to preform the most common tasks as it is something that I am not use to using.

Occasionally, I have come across people who have made a decision to move away from Lotus Notes, for email, to Microsoft Outlook.  There’s always a list of reasons for making the move, none of which are at all compelling, certainly not for the the cost involved.  The one thing that I never hear about is user training.  Of all the reasons that people use to poorly justify a move, these could all be fixed by adequate professional training.

Karen Hooper, didn’t seem to be “ just” a trainer, but she was also very entertaining.  Well done Karen.

While Dr. Notes is an Australian company, New Zealanders are able to get local user training through ACE Training.