so long InfoCenters, welcome KnowledgeCenter

I was stoked 5 minutes ago when I spotted in an article that the well known IBM Infocenters will probably fade away. How come such big news for IBM techies did NOT get noticed ? Almost everyone I know in IBM's world complained about the Infocenter, not necessary it's looks, but mostly it's content (and I might add Chrome browser compatibility)

No matter what IBM's product you were faced to learn/master, you'd have to know what Infocenter means. It's almost a brand, they should keep it :)

The good news is that the new Knowledge Center seems faster: http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter

About the content quality and breadth ... we'll have to see, I maintain my confidence in the power of community contributing to DevWorks and Portal wikis

Notes 9 finally search "All Mails and Archives"

I'm stunned, I must have missed this somehow since I upgraded to Notes 9, probably because I gave up on hoping it would ever work ?

However, someone else have to be joking me, they're suggesting how to actually disable the search "All Mails and Archives", they even did a video on it !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI_u4jz0UTQ

Really, you're kidding ! Why would I want to do to that ? Recall 2009, when Radu's started to get frustrated on the exact same issue, being an early adopter and mocking upfront with this beautiful platform

http://cadariu.blogspot.ro/2009/01/notes-85-first-impressions.html

So ... no no no, I'll not disable it, on contrary, I'll use it more often now !

Process for new kids on the block, I keep seeing bad usage, here's how to correct:

1. Have your local mail replicas -- NEVER use the server one, NEVER ! -- if you don't know what a Notes local replica is .... saint Google's here to help, search for "Lotus Notes local mail replicas" :)
2. Setup your archival process. Usually nowadays one archive will be enough. I still see people making one archive per year ... neah, those days are gone now !
3. Use the menu's top right hand side "All Mails and Archives" as you see in above video, just make sure you DON'T disable it ... ha

SwiftFile Mail Assistant

I'm curious about how many Notes customers out there knew about it, installed it and used/using it on a daily basis:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21305206

Google returns 1500 results, couple of blogs and pretty much nothing else.

I can bet this is one of those things which would have been so good to have integrated in the product's default functionality, very useful but never made it the prime time ....

Lotus Notes for beginners. reloaded

Nice to see these articles on Lotus Notes for beginners. http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/xpViewCategories.xsp?lookupName=IBM%20Lotus%20Notes%20Client%20v8%20for%20Beginners People taking part in the "I hate this crap" club should take a look at the shots in these articles. If their screen does not look the same and they know they're using Lotus for applications (well, mail included), they should form the club "I hate my IT dep. for not performing the Lotus upgrade to 8.x"

Notes 8.5.3 tweaks - linux style

1. The now classic tweak for increasing the Notes underlying IBM JVM heap.

sudo vi /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/framework/rcp/deploy/jvm.properties

This is the location now.

update:
This first point needs an update. Seems that Lotus Client 8.5.3 is also incorporating eclipse helios, thus OSGI, thus new tweaking for performance (search saint google for eclipse helios performance tweaks)

Experimental, in above file I now run the following old/new stuff:

vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx1152m
vmarg.Xms=-Xms1152m
-Dosgi.bundlefile.limit=75
-XX:+UseParallelGC

Performance gain ? have no idea except that's now even snappier than before :)


2. I noticed an annoyance: when starting, client would not open my local replica mail db for about half minute, staying and doing .... something...
Turned out it was looking for the remote servers where I have the mail db replicas. Once I deleted the shortcuts from the Notes Workspace, it all regained the speed, directly opening the local replica and leave me alone to do my stuff in the mail db.

So, if you experience delays after you've entered the Notes client, you might as well remove some shortcuts from your workspace, to Domino servers not working or not available or something like this...

Notes 8.5.3 out for a week now, looking good

howdy, I'm happy to report upgrading to 8.5.3 on ubuntu 10.04 LTS went well. 8.5.3 CD5 packages needed to get uninstalled before the new one could have been applied using synaptic. Even the Notes client crashes I had when laptop switched connections in Network Manager seems to be gone now (hey, I'm on linux, using Notes, not Outlook on Windoze ! ). I actually got used to that BUG, but now it's FIXED !

So, do not fear, go for client upgrade.

I love to see this progress, since I'm now totally disconnected from the Domino/Lotus world. Well, except advices I give occasionally, and client upgrades for which I'm always looking forward :)

While I'm on this subject, one article draw my attention, in the same spirit of "not worth leaving Notes world", check this, also tweeted about it since I loved it: http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/dotdomino/entry/replacing_notes_here_s_how_it_really_goes_down4?lang=en

Domino to Exchange ? not again, this is proven. Useless way to migrate.

I think you'll find on this blog some posts already saying that Domino to Exchange/Sharepoint migration is useless from a ROI perspective. If you're running Domino, stick with it, invest in upgrade to 8.5 and skills around Domino, and better focus of delivering applications, solving your business problems and so on. Let Domino do its job because it does it better than any other MS technology.

Now, I'm posting this just to remind me to instruct MS enthusiasts on this subject, to Brian's post, highlighting some great points to pay attention to.

On the other hand, be aware that people counts to the project's success. No matter the technology, if not skilled, people can slam any technology against the thinnest wall, it will eventually break.

Notes 8.5 widgets catalog out in the air

Continuing my last night saga, I wanted to get back some widgets I had with some Notes 8.5 themes. Looking into the internal widget database, drag'n drop a widget, and briefly saw it's connecting to www.noteswidgets.com

I said: WOW ! They released the IBM internal widget catalog to the public !! Cool stuff. But when did I missed the announcement ? I think this should have been marketed a little bit more, because it really contains useful stuff for the Notes 8.x users / customers.

For instance: there's a CSS Inspector Tool which allows one former power Domino user like me to change the Notes 8 theme on the fly, in the Lotus 8.x Client.

I'm not much of a fan for widgets connecting from the Lotus Client to different web sites. For instance, I don't need Gmail in my Lotus Client, which is business oriented. But this CSS Inspector Tool made my life easier. Because I no longer need mocking the notes.css file, as seen in the previous post.

recover from Notes 8.5 Eclipse breakdown

Don't do what I did. If it works, don't break it. And if you happen to not read this and you broke it, then you might find this tip useful. You might have a chance by deleting / renaming the \workspace folder. When you next 'reboot' your Notes client, it just might work.

And here is my story: I was not happy with the looks of my Notes 8.5 eclipse client. Since I already new about the com.ibm.notes.branding.xxx.jar file, together with its notes.css file, I started to mock with it. Because I was bored, like I didn't had anything else better to do ... Guess what, the Notes Eclipse client didn't started they way it used to, at some point. I was presented with an almost empty window of Lotus Expeditor stuff, throwing Java exceptions.

On the other side, the Notes basic client (good old Notes C instance, always reliable) was flawlessly working.

After about two hours of wasted time trying to get the Notes Eclipse back on its feet, the answer came in the form of the comments of Matt White, at this URL. So, Matt, if you're reading this, many thanks :)

The other things I learned today (as an retired Domino developer, please excuse the old news):

- It figures. Eclipse is working with workspaces. Folders on disk where you store projects. Notes-Eclipse client cannot be without it. Its default location is \workspace. Makes sense.
- Widgets. You know, composite applications, portal, and all this Notes-Eclipse stuff. When you add / install an widget, all data will go in the same workspace location.
- Finally, I also found the easier way to mock the notes.css file. The method is based on the Java jar utility, described here. Yes, I know, any decent Java developer knows about it. But I didn't, and I am not an Java developer. And all the other Domino addicted are not necessary Java developers.

Fine. Now let's get some sleep.

Time-Tracking combination: Notes8.5 / timeEdition / Gcal

Finally, a solution for me to time track what I do, and have this information in my business Notes 8.5 calendar. It involves three pieces of software, but looks pretty nifty.

1. Notes 8.5 can display Google Calendar. If you didn't knew it, search planetlotus.com or Saint Google on how-to accomplish this.
2. I discovered a pretty nifty piece of time-tracking software, thanks to LifeHacker site. It's name: timeEdition
What this software do so great, beside recording time on events ? It will create an event in the Google Calendar.

So, here it is. timeEdition -> Google Calendar to display items I recorded -> Sync back with the Notes 8.5

It remains for me to see if I'll be able to remember to record items, when I work on them. This is a matter of discipline. However, the benefit is for me to be able to tell one what I've been doing at one particular time or day.

notes 8.5 - first impressions

You must already know by now that notes 8.5 goodies have been released.

I upgraded. Took some long time (about 20 minutes) to upgrade from 8.5 beta 2. So when you upgrade, plan some time.

I actually upgraded without any previous local data backup, no issues.
I also increased the Notes 8.5 JVM Heap, by altering:

\framework\rcp\eclipse\plugins\com.ibm.rcp.j2se.win32.x86_1.6.0.20080709-200808151631\jvm.properties

vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx1024m

Overall impressions: it's definitely worth the time to upgrade. Snappier, faster, better looking.

Old issues solved since Notes 8.5 Beta 2 (for me):
- integrated Sametime client seems faster. At least the chat windows appears faster when I open a conversation.
- appears that Notes 8.5 now shuts down cleanly (no longer do I need to kill Notes2.exe with the Sysinternals Process Explorer)
- Lotus Symphony (I think it's now 1.2) became usable as programs within the Notes client.

And a new thing I noticed: I can search IOPES from within the Notes client, which is fun. Apparently the 'Search all mail' toolbar does not search local mails together with all archives the local replica is linked to. I expected this to work, in order for me to drop IOPES. It didn't, at least I no longer need to open a separate FF window.

This is how the search toolbar looks on my client:



The Personal Omnifind entry might have been there in the beta, I happened to noticed it today :)

IOPES - new version

Remember I wrote a post about me using IBM Omnifind Personal Email Search (IOPES) ? Well, I'm still using it. Could not find another alternative, this is good enough for me searching about 8000 (and counting) locally stored mails, in one archive and one mail replica. On Lotus 8.5 beta2.

As I am writing this post, I've just installed (not upgrading, which is a feature request) the latest version which you can get it from http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/emailsearch

For the new version I hope they managed to reduce the memory footprint, so that I would not stop the engine each time I run other memory hog programs.

There's also an IOPES Outlook version, and from my past experience Outlook is worse than Lotus when searching more than 5000 locally stored mails. At least, without IOPES and relying on Lotus Full-Text Index, I know I can find what I am looking for by performing two searches. One in local mail replica, the second in archive.

With Outlook, I remember I just waited for the search to return something. Anything. Ok, the keywords were bad, I want to stop the search. How do I stop a search in Outlook ? Have no idea, I will check the Help. But now I want to find something with my keywords, Outlook not responding. And waiting .... and waiting ... and waiting ... and Ctrl-Alt-Del, and kill the process ... and rebooting. Damn ! Next time I'm afraid to search anything in Outlook, maybe I need to reboot :)

That's why, at that time, I switched to Thunderbird. q.e.d. :)

change in reaching me

I've changed the About section of this blog, since the spammers found my gmail address and I currently have about two hundred spam messaged daily. Fortunate, gmail spam handling is pretty good so only a couple of these get by.

Related to this, guess what's in the attached picture ...



u're right, this is a Lotus widget displaying my Gmail account.
Just a good illustration of Lotus Widgets actually working, not that I'll be using it, since the Firefox plugin Better Gmail is a lot better :)

Notes Search not working as I expected

Now with the summer vacation gone, it's time to plan the winter vacation :)
But this is another story, I'd better focus on this topic's subject ....

So, I am using the 8.5_M2 version of Notes client as the business mail client. Overall it's better, however I am still frustrated. I don't get it, I expect the "Search All Mail" to perform the Full-Text search on my Local mail replica as well as in all Local mail archives.

What I do and what I see in the client:
1. I am enabling the Search Toolbar:





2. Now I see this field, with Search Scope, on my toolbar:



So, the flow I expect, which is not happening, is:
- enter the search keyword(s)
- Notes would check current Location, see that I've got a Local replica of mail.
- Go into the local mail replica and check/see that I also have one, two of more Local mail archives.
- Perform the freakin' search into all these mail dbs and return the results page in the Notes 8 style.

There maybe some programmatic limitations to this scenario, I no longer do Notes/Domino development to think if it's possible to aggregate document links into one page/folder/whatever. But I still don't get it. If it's not supposed to work as I've described above, why the Search Toolbar ? At this moment it's absolutely useless (ok so we have the google/yahoo/connections search in the embedded browser...).

But we'd better have the full mail search before other searches. Right now I am still using IOPES for full mail search (this is the Omnifind Personal Mail Search), which btw it is working in 8.5_M2 as expected. But it's adding a local web server and around 1GB RAM of processes when running. Just to perform a task which should be performed by the Notes client itself.

Does anybody know if we'll finally get to search in all mail dbs ?

Release 8.5_M1

This is the name for the Notes 8.5 beta 1 for windows, which was released .... I have no idea, does not matter.

However, since I will be gone for holidays for the next two weeks, what better way to start the vacation but to upgrade my business e-mail client to Notes 8.5 ?

So, the install was ... a little emotional, since I haven't backed up my /data folder as I usually do, and the first run didn't start the Eclipse framework at all. But the basic nlnotes.exe was starting so I relaxed and performed an uninstall, followed by an reinstall of Notes 8.5, which put things in order (if you didn't knew, since Notes 5, perhaps earlier, an uninstall of Notes did not deleted the data folder, so you're safe here).

While I don't really see a startup time improvement (actually I do think it's starting a bit slower than 8.0.1), Notes 8.5 seems to be a little responsive, it's based on Eclipse 3.4, and overall is better than the previous one.

update: well, after starting the Notes 8.5 client a few times since I wrote this, I can say it is faster than Notes 8.0.1, my previous version. As mentioned elsewhere, the starting sequence has changed, it got me while to get used to it. But it's faster, I was wrong :)

I also discovered a bug with Lotus Symphony, which I am too lazy to search where to report: if I open a new document, right-click on the tab to open it in new window, it will open a new spreadsheet instead of my document. Actually, if I save it and reopen, 'open in new window' does not work at all. Well ... its beta, you know :)

If some of you already know where to report this, please do so on my behalf, if not I will do it upon my return from vacation.

I told you so ....

I sometimes have moments of intuition which have never (or rarely) proven wrong. One of these moments was the one when I anticipated that Notes 8 will be a kick-a** application. Is has, it is and it will be. Despite the fact that I also have some criticism to address (its performance), it turned out the IBM's strategy was right.

I am also linking to the article demonstrating Lotus's momentum

Not that I am now employed at IBM, but I can trust those examples and figures. Because I have seen IBM's business controls in action. You cannot lie within the company and you cannot report figures that aren't true. It's an internal system of ensuring business is accurate. It's part of IBM's image. It's not marketing. It's the truth around the subject: Notes 8 is better than any other previous Notes x.x and is also better than any other so called competitors.

I am saying 'so called' because I haven's seen ONE product (client/server) to achieve the Notes/Domino capabilities.

for notes and outlook searches - IOPES

not sure how to start a recommendation for Outlook users .... oh yeah, switch to Notes :)

joking aside, I can highly recommend you try a program for searching all your mails. If you use and receive a lots of mails, I know your frustration when searching for something in old mails. Neither Outlook or Notes handle this job properly. Been there, done that. For some time I used to try Google Desktop Search which did a good job not only finding mails (it has a Notes plugin), except it took a whole lot of memory to do run. Since I am a rather organized person, I usually have no problem finding a file. But I need to find emails, since I also run at least one archive.

Since Notes 8 cannot search in archives (as I clarified this in another post), I needed a program to search only mails. Cannot say for Outlook since when I did used it I had another free indexer which was brilliant, called Lookout

IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search does this job and so far I have no complains. Well, the version I have uses a lot of memory too, but as I write this I am downloading the new version, I'll see if it handles memory better. Since I need from time to time to search for mails, I have no other choice. Do I ?

my top reason to upgrade to Notes 8 ...

So far, at least. Here's what I just discovered, might be old news already, but I thought I should mention it here, anyways ...

First of all, I'll tell you the reason I have NOT already discovered this :) it's because past year I have become a rather Domino ignorant, due to my job responsability of architecting solutions. And I mean it, it just so happens I realized how much I need to learn in areas like WAS, Portal, RUP, UMF, Rational (ClearCase, ClearQuest, Method Composer) and I could continue... So, Domino is no longer my focus but I am a devoted Domino blog reader and early adopter Domino "new stuff" within IBM.

Back to my just discovered top reason for adopting Notes 8. Or Domino 8.0.1, or, Domino 8.x

The keywords are "unified search". This is enabled in Notes 8 client, as in View\Toolbar\Search. And magically you'll be presented on the right hand with a search field which will search in all of your mail, INCLUDING any archives you have linked from within your current mail database.

How cool is that ?! you can actually now search within ALL your mail, not having to go through each archive at a time using the beautiful Full Index of Notes, however limited on a database only, or calling for help from Google Desktop Search with the Lotus Plugin.

update: seems this is not accurate, afterall. At least on my business computer this does not work anymore. If anyone has more details about this, please let me know. I'm sure though this used to work as I described, however it appears it does no longer work on my Notes 8.0.1 install.

more exchange "fun"

This post shoots two rabbits:
1. Story about how Exchange looses mails, on Rocky's blog
2. Story on the new (old) backwards compatibility issue for the new Exchange server (2008 or somethin'), on Ed's blog

some of those reading my blog might know that I've started into the Exchange 5.x business, before my definitive conversion to IBM, more specifically Domino (well back joining IBM as employee).

Add these two stories to my personal hearing of stories of lost emails to Romanian Exchange shops, backup/restore Exchange failures, plus change all your hardware to get the new version, and you've got yourself a pretty good nightmare and a pretty bad ROI.

So, who wants that ? :)

You're still saying Lotus interface sucks ? Get up to date information and do yourself a favor by searching for the Lotus 8.0.1 interface, then say more.
We, the Domino fellows, are waiting for more pro-Exchange arguments in this context. Good luck :)

running on Notes 8.0.1

yep...I've waited for this. And a funny thing happened. I downloaded from the IBM's catalog the part numbers:

C19U0EN, which is said to be Lotus Designer, and
C19U1EN, which is said to be Lotus Client.

First I thought: why do they say only "Lotus Designer" ? Is it something already changed, do we have the new Designer ? ... hmmmm

So, to cut the story, on my machine, I was running 8.0 All Clients (plus Designer, plus Admin). I wanted to upgrade this installation with C19U1EN. No Luck ! An error saying upgrade was not possible. Cool :)

Last evening, it occured to me: what is listed as "Lotus Designer" client is actually the full fledge of Lotus Client. So, I managed to finally upgrade to 8.0.1 using the part number C19U0EN.

Now, the first impression: client performance improvement of about 10% (not more, unfortunatelly). As for the rest, did not had the time to play with. Not just yet.