New Features in Lotus Notes 8.0.2
The release of Lotus Notes 8.0.2 has been met with considerable interest from our Aussie customer base. In the past couple of months, we’ve been working with a number of organisations to upgrade their Lotus platform to version 8. We’re also excited about providing Lotus consulting for a major Australian university who are currently going down the Notes 8, Quickr and Sametime path (12,000+ users!).
In recent Lotus news, we’ve begun a major migration project for a large international development business. This project will move them away from Microsoft Exchange and onto an IBM collaboration platform using Notes 8, Quickr and Sametime. Stay tuned as we’ll be providing some detailed case studies in coming months!
The article below takes a quick look at the new features in 8.0.2, Notes composite applications and some helpful information on Domino 8.
New Features of Lotus Notes 8.0.2
Lotus Notes 8.0.2 comes brimming with the following new features:
- Performance Improvements
There has been a significant performance increase in 8.0.2. The Notes client loads up twice as fast as the previous version, due to a modified start-up sequence, loading the inbox first and other components loading either in the background, or when they are accessed for the first time. The amount of memory used has been cut by around 20% and does make a noticeable difference to performance. However, there is still some room to move here and we’d like to see this load up faster. - Office 2007 Viewers
Microsoft’s perplexing decision to create a new “.x” version of files created using Office 2007 has caught a number of users unaware. Thankfully, IBM has included a set of viewers for the Lotus Symphony suite (packaged with Notes 8 for free), which allows you to view documents, spreadsheets and presentation files created in Office 2007. - iPhone Ultralite Access
Not that we needed any more reasons to buy an iPhone! Now you can access your email, calendar and contacts through iNotes using the Apple iPhone. Check out the screenshots at the IBM website. - Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook (DAMO)
DAMO has been available for a couple of years now, but now comes as an out of the box feature for 8.0.2 that allows Microsoft Outlook clients to connect to a Domino server. A handy feature for running multiple email environments.
Lotus Notes 8.0.2 Composite Applications
We have been busy working on our own “Embrace Portal” composite application, to extend the functionality of our Embrace suite of Notes applications. Simple changes such as tabbed views (see below) make a real difference in improving the interface:
Also, giving users the option to customise their screen into a “My Portal” view (see below) has made a big difference to how we use our Embrace applications.
Our next newsletter will detail this process with some great tips for your own developments.
In the meantime, if you want more information on composite applications, visit the IBM Wiki which is growing by the day with helpful content. Alternately, send your questions to our Lotus team who are always happy to help.
The Server Side - Domino 8
Our Site Services team have provided a quick list of some of their favourite features in Domino 8.0.2:
- Out of Office
This is what any Domino Administrator who has had the pleasure of trying to debug the Out of Office Agent has been wanting for a long time. The service works really well and is instantaneous. Essentially, the router now takes care of the response, instead of the agent manager. One enhancement here that our team would like to see is the ability in a Calendar invite to be able to specify that the service should be enabled for this meeting. This currently isn't an option.
- “Time too far in the future”
"Error: Time too far in the future:names.nsf:" It's the stuff of nightmares. Considering the only known resolution to this is to manually create new replicas of the databases affected, the introduction of a way to prevent your Domino server from time creep is a big step in the right direction. While the way that the server shuts down isn't exactly elegant (it panics), this is a very beneficial inclusion. - Compact Design notes
This feature saves up to 16MB per mail file. While this doesn't sound like much, it certainly is a space saving for organisations with thousands of users. This is a default option on the release 8 mail template, but relies on the On Disk Structure being ODS48.
- Mail template
The new Domino Web Access is brilliant, especially the Lite version. The ability to make this the default UI for Domino Web Access, combined with the updated DWA Redirect database so users can choose what version it loads, is definitely worth the upgrade. The lite interface is slick and very fast (view a screenshot), compared to the traditional DWA. It gives you access to email and contacts, with access to the calendar through a collapsible sidebar. - Automatic report closing in DDM
This one cleans up the Domino Domain Monitoring database, making it easier to identify critical issues without having to trudge through masses of less critical errors.
Domino 8 Upgrade Weirdness
Our team have encountered a couple of interesting scenarios when upgrading Domino servers to version 8.
- For some reason, when upgrading Domino from 6.5.x to 8.0.1 on Windows 2003, the Lotus Domino Service is not installed. While this is no major problem as you can manually register the service, it’s a little disturbing when you finish your installation and go to set the service back to Auto - and it’s disappeared. This is related to the MMC services window being open at the time of installation.
- While completing testing on a Notes 8 upgrade, we discovered users that were running an iNotes 6 template had problems viewing their mail in the iNotes interface. It turned out that the upgrade had removed all databases from the inotes directory and left only the new version 8 database. So when the template was trying to access the iNotes interface, it couldn't access it and resorted to the Webmail view. To resolve this issue, copy the forms6.nsf database from an R6 server to your Domino 8 server. Make sure you include this and the help database in any pre-upgrade backups.
Test your Lotus Notes knowledge!
While not specifically part of the Lotus Notes 8.0.2 release, we did find this Lotus Notes crossword rather amusing. Have a crack at the TechWords Interactive IBM Lotus Notes Crossword. There are a few questions in the crossword that will definitely test your Lotus knowledge.
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