Showtime
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.
Contact Information
Blogger, podcaster, writer, and geek Chris Toohey covers topics from application development to the latest must-have-gadgets.
dominoGuru.com on Facebook
Latest Updates
Products & Applications
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.
Community & Resources
Lotus Technical Information & Education Community
The Lotus Technical Information & Education community is comprised of IBM, business partner, and customer subject matter experts who use product wikis, published articles, white papers, community blogs and the latest in social media to build and share high quality technical content.
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.
developerWorks Lotus : Wikis
Share your deployment experiences and best practices in our wikis and help IBM to create scenarios for successful deployments. Contribute to the community by collaborating on shared content and leverage the shared knowledge from that community.
Lotus Notes Domino 8 from Packt Publishing (and Giveaway!)
12/10/2009 12:43:00 AM by Chris Toohey
My first impressions of this book - which covered chapters 1 thru 3, left me with an impression that this book's target demographic was not the uber-l33t developers or the Mooney-level administrators, but rather this book seemed to be written for the everyday IT professional that uses Lotus products to address their organization's business needs.
Upon completing this book, my opinion hasn't changed...
Before I continue, let's recap Chapters 1 thru 3.
Chapter 1: A Short History of Notes and Domino
This chapter covers - you guessed it - the whole story to date. Starting with the story of three college students (Ray Ozzie, Tim Halvorsen, and Len Kawell) and briefly covering each release of Lotus Notes/Domino until present day which, at the time of the publication of this book, was Lotus Notes Domino 8.
Chapter 2: Overview of New Lotus Notes 8 Client Features
Jumping off to a great start - again for the target demographic - the book covers what eye-catching features and improved functionality an IT pro can expect to deliver to their users by upgrading to Lotus Notes 8.
Topics include the enhanced user interface of the Eclipse-based Lotus Notes Client, to the inline spellchecker, to multi-level undos, to the improvements with Calendaring and Scheduling.
Chapter 3: Lotus Notes 8 and SOA
A great chapter, discussing the push for support of reusable services and extending Lotus Notes via service-oriented architectures through open technology frameworks.
This chapter picks up the pace and really whet my appetite to deep-dive into development and application architecture...
Chapter 4: Productivity Tools
... and we leave the developer wanting and instead are given an overview of the Lotus Symphony product, it's place in the Lotus Notes Client, and how you can control and deploy these tools via Productivity Tools policy settings.
A great chapter, and something that - as a developer - I didn't know about Lotus Notes Domino 8... but I can't help but feel as though the placement of this chapter was off.
Don't get me wrong, it was a great read and I learned things about the subject technology that this book covers... but it felt a little disconnected.
Chapter 5: Lotus Domino 8 Server Features
I learned a lot in this chapter, as it's all about administration here. I read about Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM), Out of Office now running as a Domino Server Task to allow immediate responses, and even On-Disk Structure (ODS) enhancements.
Some of this stuff I knew about already, but as a non-admin I found myself wanting to learn more about the particular topic discussed... which is where I think this book served it's purpose:
I can read more about the Reverse Path Setting for Forwarded Messages after I'm done with the book. The goal of this book (this chapter in particular) is to provide enough information about the features and functionality that you understand what Lotus Notes Domino 8 is capable of, and you can thus pursue more information on those features or functionality that you think will address your company's business needs.
Y'know... if you do admin stuff.
Chapter 6: Deployment Enhancements in Notes/Domino 8
This chapter covers more admin stuff, and I again learned even more about some pretty slick features available in Lotus Notes Domino 8:
- Client provisioning
- Policy enhancements
- Database redirect
This chapter nicely leads up to...
Chapter 7: Upgrading to Notes/Domino 8
This chapter is full of awesome. Use Case Documents, Health Check punchlists, and even Special Feature Upgrade Considerations; this chapter makes this book a must-have for Notes shops that are planning an upgrade or for consultants who want a step-by-step guide on how to prep a production environment for upgrade.
Which leads us to the upgrade, and since they know that there are often situations where you can't upgrade every Domino Server or Lotus Notes Client in your organization, they've got you covered...
Chapter 8: Coexistence between Notes/Domino Releases
This chapter covers how you can run a Lotus Notes 7 Client and a Lotus Notes 8 Client on the same machine or even Domino 7 (or 6.5 or earlier) Servers and Domino 8 Servers in the same environment. It highlights the things you need to know to make a mixed environment work successfully.
Chapter 9: What's New in Notes/Domino 8 Development
You fellow-developers out there still reading? Well, if you are, you're in luck - our time/chapter has finally come.
This chapter covers Composite Application Wires, the Property Broker Editor, Web Services Consumer (you'll note that in my first impressions review I discussed the lack of a deep-dive into Web Services... I should have kept reading!), Design Element enhancements, Formula and LotusScript enhancements, the Lotus Component Designer, Lotus Expeditor, and even throws in the RSS Feed and IBM Blog templates for good measure.
It's all in one chapter, so don't expect deep-dives, but rather several-paragraph introductions and overviews of each topic. Just like with the admin-centric chapters, you're given enough information to know you want to learn more (or run away screaming - either way).
Chapter 10: Integration with Other Lotus/IBM Products
If you're a Notes shop, and you've heard about Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime, or Lotus Connections - read this chapter.
It's a solid yet simple overview of each product and how they can connect/integrate with your Lotus Notes/Domino environment.
Appendix: Third-Party Products
In this appendix, we look at several vendor offerings that could extend your Lotus Notes/Domino 8 environment. The information contained in this chapter is provided by the vendors themselves. For more information, consult the respective vendor's website.
PistolStar, IntelliPRINT, IONET, and CMT Inspector get some page-time in this chapter. To be honest, I didn't read the multi-page overviews of the vendor products.
To be fair, an overview of vendor/3rd-party solutions that address functionality gap in Lotus Notes/Domino could be useful to the target demographic for this book... but it didn't do it for me!
Conclusion
I've mentioned target demographic multiple times, as I think you need to understand who this book was written for and judge/review it based on that.
On the back cover of this book, we find the Who this book is written for:
Lotus Notes power users, administrators, and developers working with any version of Lotus Notes/Domino, who want to upgrade to Lotus Notes/Domino 8.
I would recommend this book to the following people:
- Developers that often create applications in Lotus Notes/Domino, and need to understand what's new in the next/current release.
- Systems Administrators then often work with or maintain Lotus Notes/Domino environments, and need to understand what's new in the next/current release.
- Developers who want to understand Administration.
- Administrators who want to understand Development.
- Technical Managers of Developers or Administrators in Notes shops.
I would not recommend this book to the following people:
- If you're speaking at Lotusphere...
- Developers who hate Administration/Administrators.
- Administrators who hate Development/Developers.
- Helpdesk Analysts looking to understand more about Lotus Notes/Domino.
- Lotus Notes Power Users - this is not a user guide...
If you fall into that first category and not into the second, you can purchase Lotus Notes Domino 8: Upgrader's Guide directly from Packt Publishing in Adobe PDF eBook, standard Book, or both formats.
And -- as mentioned -- I am holding a contest where you can win my review copy of Lotus Notes Domino 8: Upgrader's Guide.
To enter, simply leave a comment on this post. with your name, email address (not published, but I'll need to contact you if you win...), and your thoughts on this review.
I will pick a winning comment at random by Friday, December 12th 11th, 2009 9:00PM EST.
From there, I'll contact you for your mailing address and ship the book ASAP!
Good luck!
Disclosure
Obtained From: Publisher
Payment: Free
|
Unless otherwise stated, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. |
Good review. Sounds like a very useful book. Especially for somone like myself, an experienced developer and frustrated partial domino admin. I know Domino can do so much more - the people I work with disagree. I'd love to show them! This book would help :)
Interesting review. Now that I read it I decided that I don't want this book (but it probably wasn't written for me anyway). Books about Notes and Domino are sparse so every title is welcome. If you want to get more free books you should probably not write a conclusion who should not buy them ;-)
Interesting review.
Time to read a good book written on real paper: sick to read info only on pc or worse on iPhone ;-)
I miss a good book on 8.5.1 programming too. do you want to write one for us, Chris? ;-)
A great review. It sounds like this would be a useful book for anyone needing to pit together a case to management for why the company should upgrade sooner rather than later, and to make an initial estimate of what work they need to do to achieve that goal.
Sounds like it would be a great addition to my reference shelf... After reading it of course...
Nice review, especially like the portion about who you recommend this to. I'm sure my boss would love to know more about the out of office piece, that is a nightmare for us.
Chris, I have a review copy of the book to (and have read it but never got to the point of actually writing a review). I would like to throw my copy of the book into your giveaway. What do you say? Then two lucky readers of your blog can receive a copy.
BTW: when is Friday December 12? In my part of the world, today is Friday December 11 ;-)