Since many of us have to live with this pile of dog poo called Lotus Notes every day, I thought this thread would be good for venting, and maybe there will be some Notes experts out there to answer questions.

My recent observations/complaints:

1) Rules: The appear to be quite limited (when compared to Outlook). There's only like 5 actions you can take based on a rule. The one I'm missing the most is "Mark as Read." Anyone know a way to add this as an action?

2) Followup flags: To remove a flag, it has to open up the actual email, taking you away from the page you were just on. Also there doesn't appear to be a way to tell which email you had follow up flags on...its like the flag was never there.

3) Double clicking an attachment doesn't open it (why would i want to do that?!?!)

4) Seems pretty difficult to find the actual email address of someone sending me an email. I've even dug through the header and can't find it there. Anyone know where it is?

5) Obviously the program is stupid slow, but there isn't anything we can do about that I'm currently using version 6.5, does it get any better with 7 or 8 (in general)?

And it sounds like the IT support crew hates Notes' reliance on ID files...but thankfully I don't have to support this crap.

2/11/2008 9:48:15 AM

I've heard lots of stories about the nightmare that is Lotus Notes. We use outlook at Cisco, but I even refuse to use that. Luckily, I'm not in a position where group calendaring is necessary, or i'd have no choice.

but i'd rather use outlook than lotus notes.

[Edited on February 11, 2008 at 10:36 AM. Reason : asfd]

2/11/2008 10:35:49 AM

Quote :

"but i'd rather use outlook than lotus notes. "

amen

Quote :

"We use outlook at Cisco, but I even refuse to use that"

what do you use then?

2/11/2008 10:54:17 AM

haha, so apparently our IT can't guarantee a high enough uptime with outlook that meets my organization's requirements so we kept our old unix POP3 mail server, when the rest of the company migrated to outlook a couple of years ago.

2/11/2008 10:59:41 AM

We used Notes up until this past year.

Notes was clunky - just didn't like it - ie wasn't pretty enough for me.

Now our Outlook mail file size is limited to 500mb!
Got around that but Outlook seems to frown upon a 2gig mail file.

2/11/2008 11:32:38 AM

If you just need to select a message and mark it as read you might can hit Insert. I'm using Lotus 7.0 and Insert toggles read/unread.

Also, in the "View->Customize this View..." window I have a "Follow Up Importance" column. This shows the follow up flag and I can sort my mail by flag type.

If I open a message and hover over the sender's name it popups up the email address.

2/11/2008 11:33:58 AM

Quote :

"If you just need to select a message and mark it as read you might can hit Insert"

oh i know that, i want a rule to be able to mark a message as read...without me having to do anything.

Quote :

"If I open a message and hover over the sender's name it popups up the email address."

mine doesn't show the actual XXX@XXX.com email address...it looks more like "Bob Smith/NC/EAST/US"

2/11/2008 11:44:20 AM

For me when creating an agent using Simple actions, marking a document read is one of the options.

2/11/2008 12:04:57 PM

Quote :

"Got around that but Outlook seems to frown upon a 2gig mail file."

psst, I moved a guys the other day to his new computer that was 6gb for archive file and 3gb for the regular..

2/11/2008 12:38:07 PM

^^ yeah i have a feeling version 7.0 added that feature

2/11/2008 12:39:27 PM

Quote :

"Obviously the program is stupid slow, but there isn't anything we can do about that I'm currently using version 6.5, does it get any better with 7 or 8 (in general)?"

not really

2/11/2008 12:43:04 PM

If you think using Lotus Notes is bad, try developing with Lotus. Lotusscript is annoying.

2/11/2008 1:17:41 PM

i could only imagine... who the hell came up with that pos anyway?

2/11/2008 1:20:15 PM

Quote :

"1) Rules: The appear to be quite limited (when compared to Outlook). There's only like 5 actions you can take based on a rule. The one I'm missing the most is "Mark as Read." Anyone know a way to add this as an action? "

If you're into notes development, you can create an agent to do this pretty easily. If you aren't into notes development its easy enough to figure out, but otherwise you're sol.

Quote :

" 2) Followup flags: To remove a flag, it has to open up the actual email, taking you away from the page you were just on. Also there doesn't appear to be a way to tell which email you had follow up flags on...its like the flag was never there. "

You can remove the flag by clicking the "Follow-Up" button at the top of your mail file and going to remove flag. Remove flag is also in Actions-> Follow Up -> Remove flag. Why it doesn't show up in the context menu as well? Who knows. You could add it in there if you cared enough. I dont really use follow up flags so i dont know about the second part. After you remove flags they disapear?

Quote :

" 3) Double clicking an attachment doesn't open it (why would i want to do that?!?!) "

And 3 out of the 5 or so options all do the same thing. Its another stupid notes thing.

Quote :

" 4) Seems pretty difficult to find the actual email address of someone sending me an email. I've even dug through the header and can't find it there. Anyone know where it is? "

Whoever/OrgUnit/Org is the Notes email address scheme. If you're seeing that it means the email came from inside your organization or maybe from another notes server somehow. If you want to find their internet address, you can look it up in the directory.

Quote :

" 5) Obviously the program is stupid slow, but there isn't anything we can do about that I'm currently using version 6.5, does it get any better with 7 or 8 (in general)? "

Not really. 6.5 and 7.0 were both server releases. The client didn't change much. 7.0 may be a bit more stable, but the slowness you experience may not even be the client. If it crawls while opening a view or a database its most likely something on the server. Commonly used databases get cached in ram on the server, but rarely used ones arent. So if it a big DB that you dont use often it might take a while. Especially if the views haven't been updated since it was last opened. So if slowness is on opening a db, its a server thing.

Generally the client loads pretty slow at first boot, but after that its fine. One thing that can rape the client pretty good is norton or any other antivirus set to do checks on notes.

2/11/2008 1:48:44 PM

re: notes development
You can do a ton of really useful stuff with Notes Formulas which aren't hard to use at all. And if you want to get hardcore you can develop in Java. UI design in applications blows pretty hard though.

2/11/2008 1:50:50 PM

Quote :

"If you think using Lotus Notes is bad, try developing with Lotus. Lotusscript is annoying. "

Agreed

2/11/2008 1:55:09 PM

I hate Lotus Notes too.

Please include in the list of crappy IBM software: IBM DB2.

[Edited on February 11, 2008 at 3:17 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2008 3:15:23 PM

Quote :

"You can remove the flag by clicking the "Follow-Up" button at the top of your mail file and going to remove flag. Remove flag is also in Actions-> Follow Up -> Remove flag"

And either way I do it, after selecting "remove flag" the actual email opens up. i normally remove flags while in my inbox (using either method), so its kind of annoying to have my inbox replaced by the email I'm just removing a flag for.

Quote :

"I dont really use follow up flags so i dont know about the second part. After you remove flags they disapear?"

In Outlook, after removing a flag, there was still like a clear flag still there. So you could tell that you once followed up on that email. Pretty minor, but I miss it all the same.

Quote :

"If you want to find their internet address, you can look it up in the directory. "

Yeah that works for most people, but for some reason there are a number of mailboxes that don't show up in our directory.

Quote :

"If you aren't into notes development its easy enough to figure out"

Care to throw me a bone?

2/11/2008 3:22:53 PM

I use it at my new work and everyone here hates it. I have been on it a month now and I have to agree with them. It absolutely sucks... I have no idea why anyone would choose it over Outlook.

2/11/2008 3:42:12 PM

legacy

2/11/2008 3:58:13 PM

Also applications. We have a number of custom notes apps we use that fill the void where we needed something, but couldn't afford (or didn't want to spend money on) a commercial app. Like our help desk app. Also you can do some really cool shit with Notes docs that you just cant do with outlook or other mail clients. If you're using notes for just mail theres really no point. Its the applications that are the cool part.

If you want to learn more about notes development, the first step would be to get your hands on the Lotus Notes Designer client. This would probably take some haggling with your IT guys (unless you are the IT guys).

The basic idea behind the Domino Database structure is this:
You have a file. It contains X number of Documents.
Documents are generic objects that hold data. All documents contain the same basic data (a unique Document ID, security, the name of their form, etc...). Then based on the Form that is used, a document will also contain form specific data. In the case of the Memo form in your mail database you'd have fields like From, SendTo, RouteServers, etc...). If you want to see this data you can select an email in your inbox and go to file -> document properties and then select the second tab.

So now you have a database with a bunch of docs in it. From there you can create views and agents to act on that data.
Views are how to display data. They contain a selection criteria and then columns specifying what data to display. You inbox is a view.
Agents are bits of code that run on a database and do some action. Your mail rules are run by an agent. Agents can be written in simple, formula, lotusscript, javascript, or java. They let you take actions on documents either when they come in to a database, on a schedule, or manually. Like send the doc to someone, change fields, move to another database, do some external action based on document content.

Its really pretty cool. I gotta run but i'll add more to this later if you're interested.

2/11/2008 5:14:40 PM

Thanks for the info...but it sounds like short of developing my own agent, theres no way I can make my rules mark emails as read

2/14/2008 9:54:42 AM

oh god, not lotus notes. At work, our IT guy two years ago was trying to help sales and marketing to develop a database system using lotus notes. Spent $20,000 trying to develop it for lead generation with customer tracking, but after 6 months we scrapped the project.

2/14/2008 3:49:41 PM

when spend so much $ developing something like that from scratch when there are superior off the shelf products available?

2/20/2008 9:19:11 AM

because if you know what you're doing you can develop custom notes applications for less than off the shelf products.

2/20/2008 9:40:53 AM

sametime servers offline

(someone f'd up, big time)

2/20/2008 9:56:05 AM

Lotus Notes and Adobe Framemaker are the bane of my existence. I have to work with one or both of them daily at work. Fortunately, we only use Notes for a couple databases, and not for email (like I used at last job.....)

one of the main problems I have with Notes and Framemaker (especially Framemaker) is that the interfaces are just so bad and out of date. Honestly, it feels like the Framemaker interface hasn't been updated since Windows 3.1. The windows and controls are just horribly out of date and no up to current standards, and they have some truly bizzare UI controls that I've never seen in any other program.

And Notes is almost as bad. We use Lotus Notes 5, released in 2001..... It's like the designers just wanted to create all new paradigms for how interfaces were supposed to act. The damned "Workspace" with the strange tabs and the big buttons that kind of act like buttons but kind of act like checkboxes. And WTF is up with the damned password prompt? jesus - i've heard all the explanations for it before about how it is to prevent people from looking over your shoulder and stealing your password or something, but it's just fucking retarded. Cycling random Egyptian hieroglyphics and a random number of "X"s every time you press a key? Really? Has this technique ever prevented someone from stealing a password?

2/20/2008 10:07:59 AM

My complaints of the day:

1) I can't sort my inbox by subject line???? Really??

2) F5 logs me out of Lotus Notes. That makes perfect sense. I'm guessing that that functionality was around before windows and its F5-refresh, BUT STILL.

2/28/2008 11:50:46 AM

yea the f5 lock is annoying as fuck. f9 will refresh your inbox or any other view you're in.

As for the subject sort, I think that was a dumb limitation in earlier versions of the mail template. You can either see if you can upgrade to a newer template (7 would work) or if you have access to designer (or an admin with designer) it can be changed to allow sort in about 60 seconds.

2/28/2008 12:52:33 PM

would be cool if it auto checked for spelling mistakes as you were composing messages(since i can't spell worth shit)

but i assume that another in the never-ending pile of features they've added since my crappy 6.5 version was released

3/6/2008 4:38:33 PM

notes 8 does it :-P. Notes 8 also has a ton more bugs.

3/6/2008 4:52:55 PM

CHECK OUT MY FANCY STATIONARY

3/7/2008 3:58:34 PM

3/7/2008 4:11:42 PM

^ when did you start using notes again?

3/7/2008 4:17:27 PM

^^ sweet i just changed to that one

oh and how buggy is notes 7.1? I'm about to change over to that one....but pretty much all 2000-3000 other users in my organization use 6.5. That won't be a problem will it? Will it be a problem if the server or whatever is older than the client? I will mention I don't do any database stuff (outside of email, calendar, address book).

3/7/2008 4:45:27 PM

^^ upgrade to 7 broke my outlook domino connector stuff

3/7/2008 4:46:36 PM

Domino 7.0.2 + hotfixes is the most stable version of domino I've ever used. I had one of my servers up for 160 days before I had to restart it because of an IP change. (the underlying windows system wasn't shut down and has been up for 430+ days).

As far as clients go, Notes 6.5 -> Notes 7.0.2 contains a few client fixes here and there. Nothing major. You probably wont notice that anything has changed. R7 was really a server release.

R8 is a client release. Notes 8 is based on eclipse so the UI in some places is much improved. But it also suffers from new bugs. Domino 8 is pretty much 7.0.2+ hotfixes. I dont have any in production because it doesn't offer much in the way of new features and 7.0.2 has been doing so well for me.

As for different client versions on different servers, any client 6 or newer is pretty much the same. It wont cause any problems with the server. Running the notes 7 or 8 client with a notes 6 or 6.5 server isn't a problem either. If theres one thing notes does really well its backwards compatability. The only thing you'll want to do if you move to a new client is update your mail template. Its not going to cause problems if you use the old one, but the new one may have new features that works with the new client. Also, if you use webmail DWA7 owns iNotes 6 so fucking hard in both UI and server performance.

Also, if you use Sametime the Sametime 8.0 client has massive improvements over 7.5 and 7.5.1


[Edited on March 7, 2008 at 5:16 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2008 5:09:55 PM

Something about building a "one tool that fits all OSs" does work. I have to use notes at work and am running Notes8 in Ubuntu 7.10 on a t42 thinkpad. Granted 8 vs 7 is a huge improvement, I still hate a handful of things about it.

Mainly, the moving of files between folders takes a ridiculous amount of time.

I understand the need to automatically mark things as 'read', i just put anything like that to a separate folder and then just mark the folder 'read' from time to time. This only works if its technically junk that does not need to be sorted.

If you have a meeting notice which you click the 'add to calendar' button, this should close the damn notice. The same with a meeting update or and note that you click 'accept' on.

Im not sure if this is a linux issue or not, but notes has trouble searching the local network for servers and applications. i.e., if im looking for an app on server Dfoo/foo/MYCOMPANY, i have to type in the actually server's ip address, instead of the notes name. This forces me to add databases and apps manually, which was not the case with notes7

+
The searching mechanism actually works in notes8

3/7/2008 9:55:19 PM

switch to gmail corporate.

3/7/2008 11:24:39 PM

i had to switch back to Outlook at work, after years of only using Thunderbird. No choice, I have to use the group calandar/appointment stuff.

but im surprised to say, Outlook is pretty good now. theyve really improved their rules filtering.

thanks god i never had to use Notes.

3/8/2008 12:04:57 AM

yo Shaggy

if you plug notes in the "Official Complain About Lotus Notes Thread" one more time, I will punch you in the teeth

Lotus Notes sucks, my opinion of you as an IT professional has been summarily executed, and nobody that matters cares about Notes so just stop kthx

3/8/2008 8:03:43 AM

youre an idiot

plenty of companies still use Notes, if only because their crusty old doddering executives refuse to let it go. The sysadmins have to work with what they have.

now shut the fuck up.

3/9/2008 2:08:20 AM

Quote :

"Mainly, the moving of files between folders takes a ridiculous amount of time. "

Thats either a linux thing or a network thing. Moving a document from one folder to another is just moving what views it shows up in and should be pretty much instant

Quote :

" I understand the need to automatically mark things as 'read', i just put anything like that to a separate folder and then just mark the folder 'read' from time to time. This only works if its technically junk that does not need to be sorted. "

I'm not sure what you mean here, but if you want to do something to mail as it comes in, you can write a rule for it.

Quote :

" If you have a meeting notice which you click the 'add to calendar' button, this should close the damn notice. The same with a meeting update or and note that you click 'accept' on. "

Thats how it works in 7. I dont know why it would have changed in 8. Probably a bug.

Quote :

" Im not sure if this is a linux issue or not, but notes has trouble searching the local network for servers and applications. i.e., if im looking for an app on server Dfoo/foo/MYCOMPANY, i have to type in the actually server's ip address, instead of the notes name. This forces me to add databases and apps manually, which was not the case with notes7 "

One thing to check would be to go into user prefs and then ports. Make sure the only active port you have is TCP/IP and then use the trace tool to figure out how its trying to find the server. If the server is ServerA/ORG, IIRC the first thing notes tries to do is resolve ServerA by DNS. If it cant do that it looks in your local connection doc to find an address. If it can do it there it tries to connect to your mail server to ask it for an address. The trace tool should tell you where its failing and then you can fix it from there.

3/9/2008 9:57:10 AM

yo JoeSchmoe

if you plug notes in the "Official Complain About Lotus Notes Thread" one more time, I will punch you in the teeth

Lotus Notes sucks, my opinion of you as an IT professional has been summarily executed, and nobody that matters cares about Notes so just stop kthx

3/9/2008 9:57:39 AM

Quote :

"I'm not sure what you mean here, but if you want to do something to mail as it comes in, you can write a rule for it. "

I think the problem is that rules can't mark mail read.

3/9/2008 9:59:14 AM

ah you are right. I thought that you could. Unread marks are a pain in the ass.

3/9/2008 10:02:44 AM

How did I miss this gem? On the plus side my notes 8 is crashing far less than 7 did.

3/10/2008 9:08:25 AM

we still use 6.5.5 at work

3/10/2008 9:42:39 AM

if I were still at IBM I'd fill this thread up!

3/10/2008 10:00:06 AM

god, I hate it now

but it was terrible at IBM where we actually used almost everything it does

set em up

3/10/2008 10:31:41 PM