As a few of you may be aware, a couple of weeks ago I entered into an exchange with Andy Pattinson (Twitter - @APACloud) regarding Gmail, it's ease of use, etc, etc...
In addition, I recently reached out to John C Welch (Twitter - @bynkii) who announced he was about to trial Lotus Notes again. You may remember his post from a couple of years ago when he last reviewed Lotus Notes which caused quite a stir. While the language he used in his follow up left something to be desired, he raised some valid points regarding his interaction with the product. The reason I reached out to John was because his last review was based entirely on his experience with Lotus Notes using the IMAP template (which hasn't been updated for a loooong time) connecting to IMAP and SMTP services, rather than a Lotus Domino Server.
Many who commented on John's previous review pointed out that his experience would not really show-case Lotus Notes and it's capabilities since he wasn't utilising the typical Lotus Notes user experience while interacting in a Lotus Notes environment.
With this in mind, I tweeted John and offered to create a Lotus Notes account for him so he could experience the software in it's purest form. It would appear that he intends to use IMAP regardless of this offer, as his reply was:
bynkii @matnewman why is it MY fault for setting up Notes in a way the setup wizard allows me to? Why not bag on IBM for 14 year old templates? May 2, 2012 8:08:44 AM from Twitter - Twitterrific for Mac
Fair call.
So this one's for you John, an updated IMAP template I knocked up today in a couple of hours, and for you Andy, I've made it look a little 'familiar' to again showcase that Lotus Notes can do anything:
The Lotus Notes IMAP template for R8 with a (hopefully) intuitive and familiar interface:
All you have to do John, is download the following file to your /Lotus/Notes/Data directory, open the IMAP database with the old design and choose "File -> Application -> Replace Design" Choose the Template with the title: "v8 Mail (IMAP)". If this option is not available, you may have to choose "View -> Advanced Menu's" and try again. Because Lotus Notes is a secure system, you will have to click "Start Trusting Mathew Newman/isw" a couple of times so that the code I've re-written will work, but at the end I trust you will have a much more pleasant experience utilising Lotus Notes against an IMAP server:
Getting Started with IBM Notes 9 - Part 6: Bookmarks
Wed, Jun 19th 2013 12:50a Mat Newman As with IBM Lotus Notes 8, the Bookmark bar in IBM Notes 9 is 'hidden' by default, with the functionality available as the 'Open List' from the OPEN button on the new Notes 9 Masthead. Figure 1: The OPEN button on the Masthead Clicking the OPEN button will reveal the short-cuts available from the 'Open List'. Figure 2: The Open List revealed A quick reminder what 'Bookmarks' can do for the user in IBM Notes: Access anything easily Launch Tabs automatically on sta [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
applications
Getting Started with IBM Notes 9 - Part 5: What happened to my Toolbars
Wed, May 29th 2013 1:15a Mat Newman One of the design goals for IBM Notes 9 was to simplify the user experience and streamline the user interface. Yep, time to fire up the DeLorean and switch on the time-circuits folks, we're heading back to March 1999! Ahhh ... 1999. The world was in the grip of the Millennium Bug frenzy, Bill was in the White House, John was in the Lodge, Cher was 'Top of the Pops' and we waited in anticipation for the first of George Lucas' Star Wars prequel's to hit the cinemas. And Lotus came out [read] Keywords: ibm
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eclipse
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How to insert your mail signature in a Lotus Notes meeting invitation
Tue, May 28th 2013 12:05a Mat Newman A couple of weeks ago Russ Maher flicked me a question via twitter whether it was possible to include a Lotus Notes mail signature in a Meeting Invitation. Well, of course it is! It's Notes, and Notes can do anything! :-) Initially I thought this was going to require a major hack of the mail file. However, further investigation revealed an agent in the mail database design that I hadn't really noticed before; it's called - interestingly enough - "(InsertSignature)". Guess what it do [read] Keywords: acl
admin
agent
domino
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234
Using IBM Notes data as a source for Google Maps API
Wed, May 22nd 2013 10:20p Mat Newman During the past couple of weeks I've been consulting for a customer who required some heavy integration between IBM Notes data and Google Maps. That project is in it's final stages and is close to coming online. What that experience has shown me is how (relatively) simple it is to take source data from a Notes application and present that information using the Google Maps API on the web for public consumption. To begin with, the complete Google Maps API (v3) is available here for your re [read] Keywords: ibm
notes
R6
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consulting
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Getting stated with IBM Notes 9 on Ubuntu 12.10 or 13.04 x64
Sun, May 12th 2013 9:13a Mat Newman IBM Notes 9 installs without any problems on both 12.10 and 13.04 x32 flavour. However, the x64 version has a few tricks that you need to repair before you can run the installation files. Over on Usablesoftware's blog there's a nice reference to the steps required to get IBM Notes 9 installed. With the fantastic assistance of Jason Hatch from IBM, I learned that the only thing required to get Notes 9 running on x64 was to remove some dependancies from the control file in the IBM supplied [read] Keywords: ibm
inotes
notes
sametime
application
email
properties
widgets
ubuntu
Getting Started with IBM Notes 9 - Part 3: The Search Box
Wed, Apr 10th 2013 1:13a Mat Newman In Part 2: Introducing the Masthead, we discussed the new Masthead feature in IBM Notes 9, and briefly touched on the Search box, which has now been moved - with the IBM Social them applied - from the Toolbar to the Masthead. The Search box itself has a fantastic new feature which deserves it's own post, which is: IBM Notes 9 can now simultaneously search all Mail, Including the current Users Mail database and all archives configured for that user! YAY! The option needs to be se [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
notes client
application
applications
archive
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