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My Blackberry Enterprise Server Push Utility for the Lotus Notes Client, allows you to create Jobs for individual Channel, Message, and Browser Content Pushes, as well as allows you to delete Pushed Channel Icons from defined recipient devices.
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Time Tracker
The idea is simple. At the start of your day - upon completion of your first task - create an entry highlighting what you did and whether you feel it was an efficient or inefficient use of your time. Based on several requests, you can also select the priority, apply categories, or even align your time against a project.
For Lotus Notes Client v8.0 and above, you can use the Time Tracker Widget to make this process even easier!
Zephyr
My Configuration-based Rich Text Mail Merge and Emailing Utility, Zephyr allows you to create rich, data-driven emails to support automated workflow - all via Microsoft Word Mail Merge-like architecture. Dear <firstname> allows you to personalize each email message not only to the individual recipient, but also to the individual application workflow event!
xCopy
xCopy is a simple configurable xCopy client for the Lotus Notes client. By creating and defining xCopy Profiles, you can batch process your file backup or remote upload jobs. With the addition of the xCopy sidebar widget, you can easily kick-off these jobs, and modify both the xCopy Profiles and xCopy itself.
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OpenNTF.org - Open Source Community for Lotus Notes Domino
OpenNTF is devoted to enabling groups of individuals all over the world to collaborate on IBM Lotus Notes/Domino applications and release them as open source.
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Getting Lotus technologies to tomorrow's developers
05/04/2009 11:51:28 AM by Chris Toohey
The other day, I had the pleasure of proctoring a development assessment to a local vo-tech school. The assessments were designed to test the principals of project-based development rather than focusing on a particular technology, which was broken up into two sections. Section 1, the student was tasked with creating a simple payroll application that accepted specifically-formatted input and was to be designed to provide specifcally-formatted output. Section 2, the student was tasked with creating an application logic diagram or pseudocoding based on a descriptive requirements document for a given project. The good news - for both sections - the kids rocked it! They were able to understand - after my real-world explanations of why they'll actually need this in the field that they've chosen to go into - the need for creating manager/VIP-friendly overviews prior to delving into a given technology. They also quickly grasped the concepts of "sometimes it's just better to shut up and give the [manager/VIP] what they want instead of trying to tell them of a better way to do things"... especially when the manager/VIP driver - in this case - was a state assessment looking for specific output and application functionality.
The more left-brained completed the tasks first while the more right-brained were focusing on cleaning up their workflow diagrams and color-coding various items, etc.. It was an absolutely fascinating look into the young mind, and a great tool for me to gauge the mistakes that I make even to this day: either ignoring UI for speed of delivery or actually focusing on UI or refining functional processes resulting in delayed delivery.
While waiting for the students to finish, I began chatting with and answering questions of the more curious who had turned in their work. After telling them that they actually would use algebra - sometimes every day in fact - I began to talk to them about what technologies excited them.
The results? Mixture of mobile devices/software, gaming, and web. Kind of what I had expected to be honest...
What I hadn't expected was one of the students showing me their classroom textbook. It was a shock to see that their development textbook was a Microsoft .Net Student Resource Book. In chatting with the kids, I quickly realized - in absolute horror - that all assumed the need to leverage .Net to do work-related development while other development technologies were more for personal/non-professional ventures.
Before I left for the day, I spoke at length with the teacher, and expressed my surprise in their understanding of what technologies were being used in the enterprise while also offering to come in at a later time and speak with students - outlining both the various technologies and ways those technologies are used in the enterprise, while additionally showing them some pretty slick real world enterprise-level applications.
So it looks as though I'll be helping expand some minds - if not this semester - then in upcoming semesters.
So what's with the title of this post?! I hear you ask? Well, several things...
I am absolutely eager to push Lotus technologies... but that's taking a biased stand, ultimately doing the students the same disservice that educating them in .Net is doing today.
If I can focus more on globally adopted technologies, methods, etc. - such as XHTML, JavaScript, Java, et al - I can not only showcase some you can do this today work but ensure that I don't teach them today what turns into a moving/lost target tomorrow when they're in working world.
For example, if I teach the kids about Lotus Notes and focus on
@Formula, who's to say that @Formula will be around by the time they hit the enterprise? Look at the C API. Sure, still useful... as long as you're running a C-based client/server. And with XPages moving to the Lotus Notes client and a possible localized SSJS engine -@Formulabecomes more of a legacy thing than anything. YMMV here; that's just my opinion...Does IBM offer student discounts/training materials/etc.?
For that last one, I'm completely ignorant -- I don't know! Are such discounts and courseware available? Is the development environment readily available to a student?
I suspect not...
This isn't an attempt at a re-hashing of the Domino should be free! thing - don't get me wrong - but... well, two quick examples and then I'll leave it to the comments section of the post:
A few months ago I was contacted by a college student in Ireland who's professor is teaching them Lotus Notes. Awesome right? What I thought was really cool was the fact that Will - this student - came across the Lotus Online Community. Will, if you're still listening, check in and share!
One of my Notes Shop-customers decided to outsource two of their IT department groups - helpdesk and desk-side support - to a somewhat local firm. This firm does not have a competency in Lotus Notes. When I engaged the site manager, she informed me that she was unable to find anyone in the area that knows Lotus Notes.
Lotus Notes is a technology that - today - you don't go out and actively seek to learn unless 1) you have a job requirement to do so or 2) are looking for employment in a company that uses Lotus Notes... and thus have a job requirement to do so.
Can that be changed?
Why do people want Microsoft Exchange? Simple really, Outlook is what they use at home. It's what they're familiar with. It's what they know. There's no ramp-up time needed. It's consumer-ware. Consumer-ware - incidentally - that drives technology purchases in the enterprise.
Is it better? Not as far as I'm concerned. Is it safer/more secure? Not hardly. Do people care? Not really...
It's not the featureset or the capabilities of a product that gets people to use it, it's the ease of getting it, ease of use, and not having to feel like you know how to use it in order to use it.
Ok, last point, and then I'm getting back to the project list. It's Monday after all...
Do you think people want to hear well, you're using it wrong or it's not just email, but an application platform? With responses like that, you wonder why some people in IT are thought of as egotistical prigs...
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People use Outlook at home? The thought that common users could be burdened by that instead of using something much simpler like a web-based interface makes me a sad panda.
I think people "want" Exchange because Microsoft's marketing is amazing. :P
Unfortunately, if you don't have a chance to work with Notes/Domino development on the job you are very unlikely to ever learn it. IBM sort of realizes this and thinks that the Eclipse IDE will make Domino development more mainstream. Time will tell on that one, but I don't really see the next crop of Domino developers on the horizon. There were several comments in the yellowverse after Lotusphere09 about the average age of the attendees and the absence of new faces.
Kudos to you for making the effort to expose this great product to future developers.
IBM makes Lotus Notes/Domino software available to students/faculty at no charge via the IBM Passport Advantage program. There is also an IBM program called the IBM Academic Initiative which is available to all faculty. http://tinyurl.com/bv8ft4 There was a recent announcement to all participants encouraging them to join the new myDeveloperworks site.
Domino is marketed as middleware and Notes is not marketed as a development platform. So the first problem is no one at the student level has heard of them, and Small business equates IBM with big $$$ and will always look for the cheaper solution.
I can download most of the MS server offerings as trial versions and get them operational by reading the help, msdn or an MVPs' blog.
You can't do that with Domino. Most of the documentation is dry fact, where what is needed is how to put together a working system, with best practices included (Domino Tuner is a step in the right direction).A good case in point - Apart from Rocky Olivers' blog entry, there is no good discourse on using the new thumbnail design element in Notes 8.0.
Students and Small Business do not want to call for support (when we were using MS technologies I *never* called MS tech support). We want to "stick it together" by ourselves, plus it's an extra expense.
I do agree that the education authorities need to look beyond MS tech as the teaching reference. There are plenty of open source projects that will fit the bill, but again, MS produces some very good text material which is very well written.
We can help your local shop if they want to but that's not the point.
You raised excellent points, and provided a proactive return when confronted with it.
Students and teachers can get products,, you just have to get registered and do it.
Curriculum awareness is difficult, but if we all adopt our kids schools to "help" with various IT projects, we could probably create some excellent awareness.
@ wayne, you can download almost any IBM product for eval/trial. Documentation is there, wikis are there as are various forums. Seek and ye shall find. Google does work, but so does the ibm support toolbar.
My 6 year old can install Domino. Sametime integration...not so easy....yet.
My impression is that most college students are using GMail, Yahoo, or Facebook for emails. They don't use Outlook.
What's next for the web? Probably more adoption of rich clients like Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight, and a steady decline of all other rich clients and html clients.
I've been saying for about more than 10 years that Notes needs the "Outlook Express" equivalent (or something like that.) I guess I just haven't said it loudly enough.
@Keith - I seek and I find - not a problem for me, other than the forums answers not distinguishing between client and web. But for someone who has not been the yellowverse it can be a very hit and miss affair.
The wikis and redbooks are excellent, but *how* are students and small business are going to find out about Domino and Notes.
Say "Lotus" and people think about the spreadsheet. Say "Notes" and people think email.
Small business collaborates far better than big business, they need to in order to get paid. They need a task based tool to fulfil a particular requirement - print an invoice, generate a quote etc. That is the kind of thing that will induce someone to try the software.
We are a student organisation (11 national places) and we use notes internaly: 300 ID User, alumni as webuser, notes used as webCMS, email and to organise our projects. We do avything unpaid and during our freetime.
We have two big problems with notes/domino right now: we once started with notes because we got a sponsoring from IBM. This is not anymore happening, you need to have some contacts in the right place, which we don't have anymore. This means two things: first we need to pay for updates, which is a big blow for our financial situation and second, we don't get to use new technology like sametime, conection and so on. Which basicly means that IBM misses the oppertunity to show their producs to 150 new students, which will become engineers and manager in a not so distant future.
The bigger problem is, that we don't get any students anymore, which want to play around with a notes/domino system. Most of them want to play with "cool new" MS thingies or "cool PHP" and noone wants to learn the unsexy beast, which is notes/domino. This is becoming a big problem for us, as basicly our system is going into "unsupported" mode during these days as the main persons responsible for the system finished their studies.
I think this is a problem with marketing: Notes is a software, which is "uncool" and so noone wants to have something to with it if he can't help it. Also, as it is not aimed at "normal" users, only at big companies, almost no student has heard of it or used it. And noone has thought about programming for it or played around as an admin.
The even bigger problem is, that noone sees it as a future career path. PHP, Open source, MS, that's the way to go, but N/D?