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When I was asked to wrote my article about Lotus Notes for theInfoBOOM.com (which was a great success, btw – so THANK YOU for viewing/participating in that with me!) I suggested to a few people at IBM that Ed Brill would be a great person to get to write a column as well.

As Ed pointed out in his blog, it was a bit odd that I ended up writing about Notes while he wrote about social media (those topics ended up being chosen completely independent from one another). Now that his article is posted on theInfoBOOM.com I think Ed was quite right in saying that our selection of topics gave us each a more authentic voice. If Ed would have talked about Notes, it could have been perceived as an ad. Likewise, if I would have talked about blogging/social media – it would have had far less of an impact since my posts come from the perspective of someone outside of Lotus/IBM.

Its a good article and I encourage you to go read it and post a comment.

Oh… and see you at Lotusphere! (If you’re like me, you’re frantically finishing up as many projects as possible to have a clear mind down there … and in anticipation of coming back with hundreds of new ideas!)

Tags: blogging, notes, social media

A few weeks ago, I posted an entry about a conference call of IBM customers (some Notes customers, some not) where one customer on the call said that they felt “Lotus Notes was a tarnished brand.” Many of you ran to the ‘comments’ button to leave your thoughts on that comment – thank you!

Hearing that comment couldn’t have come at a better time. I was struggling to come up with a topic for an article I was writing for theinfoboom.com and this prompted me to have a clear topic to talk about. In the required “300 words or less” I focused on some of the best real-world examples for how & why our company continues to use Lotus Notes in an attempt to help demonstrate that it is FAR from a tarnished brand; rather a thriving product!

Please take a moment to check out this article and leave a comment. In addition, I’ll be hosting a hour on-line chat session Thursday December 10th at 8am central – please join in on that as well if you can!

Your participation will not only help foster some good discussion, but also help me make a point about the power of getting these types of messages out in the IT community at large, specifically to companies who have dismissed Notes based on some very old misconceptions.

Tags: awesomeness, notes

As Ed Brill points out, today Lotus Notes turns 20! I didn’t start using Notes until it was on version 3.something but I feel like I’ve been in on the sort of “ground floor” of Notes for some time now. I’ve used it at several different companies including an IBM business partner consulting firm.

The things I’ve been able to do with Notes over the course of my professional career have been quite amazing. The best part is that MANY (read: nearly all) of the applications I personally developed (back when I wasn’t “management” and actually knew how to develop well) are still in use today. That’s impressive when you consider they were developed in 4.5, 4.6, R5, etc. and running (in most cases) under Notes 8.5.1 today!

I firmly believe that Lotus Notes has been the secret sauce to many of the successes I’ve been a part of in a wide range of IT projects. I also get just as frustrated today as I did “back in the day” when people who don’t use Notes ask if its still around.

So this week’s birthday makes an article that I wrote for theinfoBOOM.com (posting Dec. 8, 2009) perfect timing to help explain why Lotus Notes is still stronger than ever as it turns into its 20’s.

Tags: happy_birthday, notes

InvestorPlace.com has a report out about how Apple’s iPhone is closing in on RIM/BlackBerry in a number of categories. While the BlackBerry is the defacto standard for mobile business devices, there is a clear trend that even business users are moving to the iPhone.

With the release of Lotus Notes/Traveler support for the iPhone we have seen an amazing amount of interest. We have limited our deployment of iPhones to ensure we do our due diligence of testing it in our environment but continue to have daily inquiries about the status of that testing. I’ve never seen so many people interested in “beta testing” something for our group. I’ve also NEVER seen people offer to pay for the device out of their own pocket if they can simply get one with their company-issued cell phone number attached. I’ve even had a few people who have asked if they can buy the device AND pay the additional monthly service costs, if any.

Hmmm… perhaps I’m sitting on a profit center and don’t even know it?

This report suggests not only that there continues to be a strong migration to the iPhone (although, not necessarily at the expense moving away from RIM) but that the customer satisfaction for using the iPhone continues to be very strong… an item I find interesting in light of a variety of articles suggesting that as many as 30% of iPhone calls are dropped (I’ve never experienced anything anywhere near that number).

Regardless, I find it interesting that a device which has nominally changed in three generations (face it, it hasn’t changed significantly) still has so much interest that people are still wanting to migrate to it; love it when they have it; and willing to pay out of their own pocket so they can have it. Amazing!

Tags: blackberry, iphone, marketing, mobile, notes, traveler

Last week I was told that I was one of the most outspoken critics about Lotus’ lack of support for the iPhone. While I agree that I complained quite a bit, I was surprised to hear that the number of complaints I lodged reached anyone’s radar screen. With that in mind, I feel compelled to comment on the latest update to Lotus Traveler which now supports the iPhone.

In a word: Nailed-it!

From my perspective, I’ve been waiting for Notes connectivity since the day iPhone apps were first launched – which is a long time to wait for something (email, contacts, calendar sync with Notes) I could easily have by moving to a WinMobile or BlackBerry device. There is also a relationship between the amount of time I have to wait for something and the continuous raising of my expectations of the product once its released… which is to say: I’ve had some HIGH expectations for this product.

And Lotus totally pulled it off. Install is easy & painless. Setup is so easy its almost non-existent (which is GREAT). Usability and integration with the iPhone is awesome. What’s more, Lotus also threw in a free surprise in the form of global address book look-ups which is a HUGE deal for us since we leverage directory assistance to integrate not only address book information but supplier, vendor and customer information — all of which are now easily at my fingertips and work GREAT!

Nice job, Lotus! You guys NAILED IT!

Tags: iphone, nailed it, notes, traveler

I posted something about having problems with Quickr Personal Places not showing up after the 8.2 upgrade. The team at my office was able to dig up a fix, which I’ve left as a comment on the original post.

Tags: lotus, notes, quickr

I’ve been unusually quiet around here lately. Its not for a lack of things to discuss; rather its because I wasn’t sure how to even go about explaining them with any value. Then I realized this is a blog – valuable comments are purely optional on blogs.

First off, we’ve begun the formal launch of Lotus Notes 8.5 in the organization. Its going quite well. We’re using the automatic upgrade, some policies and a home-grown training course (which I’ll post once we’re done with it) in mandatory sessions that last about an hour and a half. User response has been positive. Favorite features include the ability to show other calendars ontop of your own (yet no one is using it with calendars other than internal users) and Sametime IM. I think the later is more of a result of bringing it to the front sidebar than anything else. However, the “preview” of some of the planned Cisco-Sametime integration helped too… people really seem to be excited about that.

Next, Quickr. We came “this close” (put your finger and thumb together spaced about 1cm apart) to jumping ship to SharePoint based largely on user interface. That’s a huge factor. For whatever reason, SharePoint seems instantly more intuitive to our users than Quickr does, despite the fact that we use so little Microsoft-anything its almost unbelievable.

I think some key users toughed it out long enough to make it seem (at the moment) like Quickr will stick around. However it made me seriously think about developing (and then selling, or at least posting for download) a Quickr template that looks like a mirror image of SharePoint. (hint hint – to any enterprising Quickr fan out there looking to make a buck on the side)

Lastly, Sametime. This one is still a product that is suddenly on the fence for us. Don’t get me wrong, its a great tool, looks fantastic and is easy to use. However it has two big “flaws.” It requires some Java stuff to download before the first use (which I’m told changes in 8.5) which is hit-or-miss with how well it works (or how likely the end user is to screw it up by not waiting or paying attention to warning messages).

The second big flaw is in how it renders the screen. Its essentially square blocks which get refreshed based on changes. We see more and more lag with this as we have Sametime meetings around 3D CAD designs, engineering simulations or even screens that require some modest “scrolling” during the meeting. Sametime has a tough time keeping up despite some big internet connections between all parties involved and a dedicated server that’s plenty big.

We’ve looked into Fuze as of late which is a promising tool (and has an iPhone app – bonus!). There is a fair amount of pressure to make a change in our committment to Sametime based largely on these performance issues – however I’m keeping the faith and waiting out the storm for some first hand experience with the 8.5 release. Hopefully that’ll just fix all of my problems.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the iPhone stuff. Still waiting. Patiently. Its coming – I know. And when it does, I anticipate some floodgates opening in the form of people wanting it and then wanting our applications to work closely with it.

Tags: iphone, notes, quickr, sametime, sharepoint

When I heard about this at Lotusphere I instantly got excited. For a good rundown of what this is, read this guy’s blog entry (why retype something someone else did brilliantly, right?).

In short, ID vault synchronizes IDs and ensures that users who have multiple ID files out in the wild have the information (certificates, passwords, etc.) in the ID file synchronized. It also includes a number of tools that are designed to provide better administration of ID related activities (password resets and such).

For some reason, in my excitement I *thought* that it would also solve a problem we have where people use PCs in conference rooms and don’t have access to their ID. Sure, we’ve provided instructions about how to move it to a network share, but not everyone “gets” that. We could also store the ID on the network, but that doesn’t fix the issue for laptop users. I *thought* ID vault had something available that would help address that but apparently not.

If anyone knows of a clever way around that problem, I’d love to hear about it.

Tags: domino, id, notes

For YEARS I’ve wanted something that allows me to see my work calendar, my home calendar, my wife’s calendar, my kid’s calendar and … well… the schedule of the Denver Broncos, on one screen. With the combination of Notes 8.5 and Apple’s Me.com (formerly MobileMe) service, I can.

First, open Apple’s iCal application and right-click on the calendar(s) you want to subscribe to. Select “Publish” and make note (either copy/paste or use the “email” option) of the locations of your published calendar.

When the calendar is published, you’ll se a “broadcast” icon appear letting you know its available. In the “Publish…” dialog box, you may also want to select some of the options available. For example, I leave the defaults and select “Publish changes automatically” and “Publish To Do items” but do not “Publish alarms” (I don’t need to be alerted to when their appointments will occur, I just need to see them on the schedule).

Back in Lotus Notes, open your calendar and select “Show Calendars” from the navigation on the left. Use the “Add a Calendar…” feature to enter the location of your .ics feed. Give the calendar a name (can’t use hyphens for some reason) and select any custom icons or colors to make it stand out. I use the same color scheme as I’ve got set up in Apple’s iCal to keep the instant corellation of “who’s calendar is what color” straight in my head.

The new calendar will appear automatically on your Lotus Notes calendar. To toggle on/off, just use the appropriate check mark.

Pretty easy stuff and extremely handy!

Tags: Apple / Mac, broncos, calendars, ical, mac, me.com, mobileme, notes

Finally!

As recent as last night, I found myself talking with a group of people from Lotusphere about when true iPhone support would come for Notes/Domino users. It is safe to say that by Tuesday, most everyone interested in the topic had heard Ed Brill say something about future support for ActiveSync (and my favorite quote from him was something like ‘… we said we’d support ActiveSync in a future Traveler release… I guess you could use that to connect an iPhone’).

I’m thrilled about this news – even if there is no ETA. Now, I’ve been… eh… let’s say “challenged” … by people at IBM in the past about my strong stance on the need for iPhone support beyond uber-lite. Various persons from IBM that I’ve talked to have often reminded me about the dominance of BlackBerry in the enterprise and the long list of other perfectly good (notice I didn’t say “great”) mobile phones. Those are good points. However, Lotus is doing something incredibly smart with this announcement… something I didn’t expect, think of, or request… they’re adding ActiveSync support to Travler.

My organization uses GOOD for mobile PIM connectivity. We’ve tried lots of other solutions and that’s the one that fit the best. We also have an interest in Traveler, but, while its a very strong product, we stay committed to GOOD because we can’t justify the transition on any feature improvements (infact, we’re still trying to figure out the final answer on wether or not Traveler supports global address books). But this announcement changes that perspective completely.

Beyond the sheer power the iPhone offers through its ease of use and outstanding applications, its use of a full featured (sans flash) web browser means that I can get to nearly any website I need. Including web-faced Domino apps, Quickr, etc. Sure, some optimization would be nice — but doing that development work for ONE platform (iPhone) is much easier. And doing it with a head start (the rendering ability of a full Safari web browser) means it doesn’t take the entire IT staff to deliver mobile applications.

Couple this huge benefit of using the iPhone vs. other devices with the now upcoming Notes support – and the value proposition of using Traveler vs. anything else suddenly is a no-brainer. AND I can transition existing users/devices to Traveler first if needed, then to an iPhone (to help manage cash flow for buying new devices).

Score one for Lotus! This is an exciting announcement and a brilliant plan. Well done!

Tags: domino, iphone, lotus, notes, qucikr, safari