Indeed x 1000
I used to have to use Lotus Notes and I hated it so much. Surprised to hear that it's still alive.

I have a theory (which really isn't mine) that most software that is adopted widely throughout the corporate environment is adopted first in the home environment. Windows, Office, Netscape, etc.

Lotus Notes is clearly a counter example to this, and so it doesn't surprise me that it is seen to suck so badly. (Although I've been fortunate enough to avoid it myself) Still, the fact that it has thrived is something of a mystery.

Notes has survived because of one basic thing, the .nsf. it isn't the most scalable data store around, but it is the most flexible. add a field, subtract a field, change a field's data type, for the most part notes won't even blink. some of the other things they have built in, like the security model, just work. they haven't changed it since, i think, version 2 or maybe before that (i didn't start coding in Notes until version 4.6).

agreed that the UI sucks. it gets a little better in every version, and the one upcoming looks pretty darn promising. but the UI that comes out of the box can be changed, and in fact you can develop web applications that you would never know are coming out of Notes, if you know what you are doing.

they have some talented people working hard on the UI for version 8, i've met some of them. here's hoping that they pull off everything they are shooting for. if they do, posts like this one might finally go away (no offense intended, i totally feel your pain), assuming people get upgraded.

Don't make me sick the Notes community on you. I can have you commented back to the stone age.

Believe me, I know.

I like YOU guys -- it's the app I have problems with!

<i>How can a program be so bad, yet thrive?</i>

*cough* Crystal Reports */cough*

"Notes Sucks" and "The UI is the application" are great slogans. I disagree with the first one. In the abstract, I agree with second one, but the real world is more complicated. If both slogans are true, isn't it a paradox that 120 million people use Notes today?

BTW, Damien is just plain mean for threatening to send the Notes community here. Those guys are vicious. ;-)

I recently took a contract at a Fortune 100 company and have been forced to deal with what I consider Notes quirks. For example, if I want to 'refresh' the inbox shouldn't I press F5? Nope, that will lock the app and require your password to unlock it, (the key to refresh is: F9). (Not to mention the quirk of actually needing to refresh the inbox in the first place.)

Unfortunately things show no signs of improvement here, the corporate IT machine slogs along so slowly that we are still using version 6.5, so even if v8 is amazing we'll probably never see it.

As far as the argument that the back-end is amazing so the app is good: rubbish. That would be the equivalent of selling me a car with a steering wheel that didn't always turn the direction I expected it to while justifying it by bragging that the engine was top of the class. If I can't drive it, I don't care what is under the hood.

I appreciate you validating my assessments and the link to LNSucks.

> For example, if I want to 'refresh' the inbox shouldn't I press F5? Nope, that will lock the app and require your password to unlock it

That one bit me many times. One of Notes many "charms" is its complete disregard for standard keyboard conventions. Evidently Notes was developed in an alternate reality where no other Windows apps ever existed.

How do I send an email? CTRL+ENTER? Of course not! ALT-1, naturally..

> *cough* Crystal Reports */cough*

Agree. That's the one part of Visual Studio I *never* opt to install. And J#.

>> For example, if I want to 'refresh' the inbox shouldn't I press F5? Nope, that will lock the app and require your password to unlock it

> That one bit me many times. One of Notes many "charms" is its complete disregard for standard keyboard conventions. Evidently Notes was developed in an alternate reality where no other Windows apps ever existed.

> How do I send an email? CTRL+ENTER? Of course not! ALT-1, naturally..

At least the shortcut is consistent between versions and language versions... In Windows you use CTRL + F to search (unless the system is Danish) - then obviously enough you use CTRL + B...

And here is the big surprise... which shortcut do you use in Outlook 2003 ???? F9

Finally ALT+1 is an option, but you could use CTRL + M as well... Of course CTRL+M works everywhere in Notes, so why use that.

Forget shortcuts for a moment (and yes, I have no idea why Outlook 2003 changed from F5 to F9).

Let me ask a simple question. Why do users need a "shortcut" that locks them out of the app. What useful purpose does this serve? And why does it ned to be a hotkey? What next? A "boss key"?

In a way, the F5 functionality is perfectly emblematic of Notes. Completely user-hostile, and on top of all that, completely insane.

>> Forget shortcuts for a moment....What next? A "boss key"? Completely user-hostile, and on top of all that, completely insane.

Notes ain't that bad unless you really pledge to think otherwise. Security shortcut for locking off the app is essentially similar to "Logging Off". And I presume you understand it's importance.

The F5 key resembles the Lock-Workstation on your Windows PC...

It enables you to protect your identity in Notes when you are away from your desk... Not too important today since W2K and XP can do this, but Windows 98 and earlier couldn't.

I know I wouldn't leave my chair without locking up my system, to protect myself and the informaion I have access to.

Just forgot... you are of course allowed to your opinion :-)

Gotta love the veiled threats and straw-man arguments presented by the Notes apologists here. Oh well.

Notes, and CR, and other types of software share a common heritage: they were picked by know nothing suits, not to be used by them, but by the Great Unwashed. the suits liked the sparkle, and the fact that Lotus was desperate for cash (this was the days when 1-2-3 was in its death rattle and Lotus needed a new cash cow). then Blue bought it, and, of course, it Had To Be The Best Thing for Big Companies. Blue pushed it still more.

Proof, once again, that the Market makes the wisest decisions.

>>Notes ain't that bad unless you really pledge to think otherwise.

Touche. However, Notes ain't that good unless you vow to think it is.

I don't have a problem with the app providing a security feature to lock out unwanted folks, I just find it quirky that it chose F5 (I know, it was probably using F5 long before any other app stole it and made it mean refresh to me and every other browser user). It only caught me a few times and I can easily press F9 to achieve the result I want, which is why I only consider it a quirk.

That being said, since I am currently shackled to Notes, and I have the ear of a few Notes proponents, maybe I can glean some tips that will make my experience a little more pleasant.

For instance, when I receive a new meeting invitation, I'd like to right-click on it and see a choice for 'Accept'. Or at least a button at the top of the Inbox that lets me 'Accept' the meeting; all I see now is a 'Respond' that sends a note to the sender. Best I've found is opening the invitation, *then* I get to see a button with an 'Accept' choice. Am I missing something, seems like a lot of steps to just 'Accept' a meeting?

And, if I want to move a group of messages from my inbox to another folder, shouldn't I just click the first one, hold the shift-key, and then click the last one to select the ones I want? Best I've found is shift-clicking each one individually to get the little check mark next to them before I drag them away. Is that a little quirky, or am I just missing something?

Granted, I'm on v6.5 so some of this might be old news, unfortuneatly for me it is my present day reality.

Notes survives because once a corporation spends the insane $$ it takes to install it, and the $$ for salaries and overhead, it would cost too much to replace it with something else.

The corporate suits that make the purchasing decisions don't understand that the Lotus Notes interface sucks beyond belief. IT depts tend to purchase products that make *their* job easier, not the users. My employer's got so much security that employees have to write on paper the tens of user IDs and passwords they have.

If you were in upper management and voted for Lotus Notes, would you be willing to admit that you were wrong? You should, but that's a career killer.

Lotus Notes--what a mess.

-G

Jason -- A Notes programmer could add a button to the top of the inbox to accept the invite, but there's no support for adding to the right-click menu in current version. In the next major version, the right-click context menu will be accessible to Notes developers. The real trick will be whether they give us context-sensitive abilities, so that the "Accept" action will only be available if you're sitting on an invitation. I don't know if they've committed to that or not.

As for multi-select, IBM hasn't done the shift-click range selection, but there is a simple way. Just click over on the left margin of the inbox, and drag your mouse up or down. The selection will be made as you go along. Another way of doing this, if you're a keyboard guy, is to select a message, hold the shift key down and press the up or down arrow key. That procedure actually works for de-selecting, too. Shift-arrow is a toggle.

This method for selection is similar to F5/F9, in that it's been like this in Notes for years - almost 13 that I can attest to. Bear in mind that it was developed for OS/2 and Windows, with Mac as the third GUI platform not too long after; and for a while it was running on SCO Unix, too. Early on, someone made the choice that it was more important for some things to be consistent across all Notes client platforms rather than conforming to each platforms own GUI standards. It's hard to defend that decision in retrospect, but there was some logic to it. By the time it became obvious that it wasn't the best decision, there was a very large installed base that would have been ticked off by a change. I suppose they could have made behaviors configurable into "Notes classic", "Windows" and "Mac" modes (SCO being long gone), but for whatever reason they've never chosen to do that.

Some additional useful shortcuts: the Insert key is a toggle for marking messages "read" or "unread". F2 increases font size, and shift F2 decreases -- in both cases this is when editing only, not when reading. Esc closes the current window -- whether it's a message, a folder, or some other application. And both F4 and Tab move to the next unread message.

BTW: 6.5 is not that old news. 7.01 is the current release, but 6.0 and 6.5 are the largest portion of the installed base right now.

Jason, it looks like Richard beat me to it. He got it right. I'll just add two things.

If you don't want to open an invitation to accept it, you can experiment with autoprocessing. Just above your inbox there is a Tools button. Select Tools - Preferences - Calendar & To Do - Autoprocess. I think the dialog is self-explanatory.

Also, there are lots of other Notes tips at Alan Lepofsky web site:

<a href="https://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf">https://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf</a>;

His Archives by Category section has more tips on mail and calendar. You could also subscribe to his RSS feed to get a new tip every week or so.

There. Foobar will be proud of me. I got through that whole response without a single "veiled threat".

Gentlemen,

Thank you for your useful replies. The multi-select technique in the check-mark column is fantastic. I'm not sure if you can consider me a convert, but I am definitely a happier user.

Peace.

> Notes survives because once a corporation spends the insane $$ it takes to install it, and the $$ for salaries and overhead, it would cost too much to replace it with something else.

To be fair, this is true of a lot of software. I view progress in the software industry as REDUCING this effect (eg, semi-open Office XML file formats), not increasing it.

Jeff, today's edition of The Guardian included a follow-up piece in which you were quoted. Here's the link:

<a href="https://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1710261,00.html">https://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1710261,00.html</a>;

> ...the Insert key is a toggle for marking
> messages "read" or "unread".

Woohoo! I moved back into a Notes environment a month ago - if I'd remembered that my new employer was a Notes site I'd have asked for more money! But that one shortcut is going to make life so much more bareable.

The click-and-drag multi-select is going to be handy too.

Thanks!

Glad to help. And do check out the link Dave gave above to Alan Lepofsky's blog. There are lots of helpful tips posted there.

If you can ask this about Lotus Notes, why not ask it about pretty much any Microsoft product?

> why not ask it about pretty much any Microsoft product?

I've used a lot of software in my life. Some good, most mediocre. Being forced to use Lotus Notes was, without a doubt, one of the most painful software experiences I've ever had.

That's why it merits special mention. It's pathologically bad. But don't take my word for it. How many other software packages have a half-dozen websites dedicated to their many UI failings?

F5 Logoff - its origins:

Remember, Notes has been around since 1973 ('PLATO Notes'), so there are some quirks in there which might seem illogical until you examine its history. I first came across Notes in 1987 before it was ever released by Lotus. Back then it was known as DEC Notes and was widely (internationally) used within Digital Equipment Corporation on their VAX network, but never commercially released.

A DEC Notes user would logon to their VAX host using a 'dumb' VT terminal. To logout, a user could use a menu option or the command line, in which case their process was gracefully terminated by the host, alternatively they could hit the shortcut F5 key. On the back of your terminal was a DB25pin male RS232 port - on hitting the F5 key, the voltage on pin#20 (DTR - data terminal ready) would drop to < 3 volts. The modem (DCE) to which you were connected would respond by dropping its carrier signal which would hang up your phone line (no Hayes commands either). At the far end of the phone line, the host modem would respond to carrier loss by dropping the voltage on its pin#6 (DSR - data set ready), and the comm port on the host VAX would respond by killing the user's process. This was the standard of the time.

When Ray and the guys took their idea to Lotus, pc networking and client/server architecture was just evolving. In the absence of any standard they simply carried over the tradition of F5 logout from the DEC environment. Up till then, the nearest thing to 'groupware' was internet newsgroups or bulletin board services (typically a host/terminal topology) - at the time, F5 was a well-considered choice for a logout shortcut

Soonafter, Windows emerged and some ignoramous up in Redmond decided to assign F5 as refresh.

Read about Notes history here...
<a href="https://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-NDHistory/index.html">https://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-NDHistory/index.html</a>;

> Evidently Notes was developed in an alternate reality where no other Windows apps ever existed.

Yes!! Jeff hit the nail on the head. The reality at the time was that Windows did not exist.

To this day, there is still no one product which competes with Notes/Domino. Other companies will try to sell you a solution but what they give you is a 'suite' of products held together with spit and gum.

Notes/Domino is a single, multi-faceted, versatile and highly customizable product.

From its earliest origins in University of Illinois it has allways been about 'document sharing'. Once the Notes client has been deployed in an enterprise, new Notes apps are phenomenally easy to deploy and update. This ease of deployment (and admittedly the initial cost of ownership) has always tempted developers and IT managers to shoehorn unsuitable applications into Notes.

However the document-centric model has been greatly enhanced in R7 with the integration of DB2. This has hugely increased Notes' versatility and will mean a lot less shoehorning.

Jeff -- I did some checking on a few things here:

https://www.rhs.com/web/blog/thenewblack.nsf/d6plinks/RSCZ-6LULZA

If your assertion that the existence of some web sites about the horrors of Notes UI holds water, then what does that say about the fact that about 10% more web pages say that Outlook sucks than say that Notes sucks? That three times as many say that Word sucks? That nearly seven times as many say that Windows sucks? That nearly twentyfive times as many pages say that Microsoft sucks as say that either Lotus or IBM suck?

Anyone can create a web site that says that any product sucks, or that any UI sucks, or that anything sucks.

Hmm, that's an interesting analysis.

"Outlook sucks" - 13k
"Notes sucks" - 11k

Outlook is easy to get. It comes with many copies of Microsoft Office. I know many, many people who run Outlook on their home computers as their email client.* My wife actually installed it on her PC to manage her contacts even though I strongly recommended that she not do that.

Notes is not easy to get. It doesn't come with any office suite that I know of. I don't know anyone who runs Notes as an email client on their home computer. I don't know anyone that *wants* to use Notes, period, even if they knew how to obtain and install it. Which they don't.

Thus, I believe Outlook (like MS Word) has a much wider currency than Notes. I would expect many, *many* more complaints about Outlook because it's a far more popular and easier to obtain application. The fact that there are roughly an equal number of complaints for both doesn't exactly count in Notes' favor.

I propose a new metric for measuring suckiness. Let's measure how many people get defensive and shrill while actively going out of their way to protect a product. Bonus points if these people are developers of and/or derive income from said product.

You guys are almost as defensive as the FoxPro developers! Sheesh! ;)

* Note: I am not one of these people. If I could get away with using PINE, I would. Less is more.

Call me defensive, maybe, but I'm not the shrill one here. I'm not the one describing anything as "pathologically bad", etc.

We could argue about the meaning of the number of web sites in relation to user base sizes, degrees of user choice, marketing budget of the vendors, and phase of the moon, but it wouldn't get us anywhere. The number of "sucks" sites isn't a useful measure of anything. It's the validity of the content that matters -- and yeah... there's some valid content on some of those sites (in addition to quite a lot of very dated content). Nobody in the Notes community denies that.

I came into this thread to give some constructive information, and it seems I helped one of your readers. I never once said he -- or you -- were wrong about any of your specific criticisms. So please, by all means... keep on hating Notes and loving whatever it is that you love, but either drop your own shrill tone or get over fact that it inspires a defensive reaction from some of us.

I wouldn't say I hate Notes. I am just very, very happy that I never have to use it again.

I remember installing Notes for the first time in 1993 on a 486 with 8 megabytes of RAM-- a tremendous amount of memory at that time-- and Notes was literally the slowest Windows 3.1 application I had ever seen up to that point. And I couldn't make any sense of the interface whatsoever.

"People actually *use* this?" I said incredulously to my colleague sitting next to me, who had provided the Notes floppies.

"This consultant I know makes tons of money writing Notes software.", he replied.

"More power to him", I said, as I uninstalled Notes.

Ten years later I would have exactly the same experience. Good times.

The Notes antagonists resort to sweeping, metaphysical terms (eg. 'notes sucks', 'painful', 'pathalogically bad'), while the advocates respond with lucid explanations and counter arguments:

> I don't know anyone who runs Notes as an email client on their home computer.

Firstly, Notes/Domino is an enterprise solution. Secondly, any person or company who uses Notes solely as an email client is simply ignorant of what Notes/Domino is about. In our 'Alternative Reality', email is just one facet of document-sharing. Notes is a much bigger picture.

If you were so inclined, the Notes client can be easily configured as a POP mail client. Users can also access their mail file remotely from a web browser and it is every bit as good as Hotmail or any webmail service.

> Notes is not easy to get.

There is a misconception that Notes/Domino is only used in the corporate world, however it is in everyday use by millions of internet users without them realizing. Just search Google (advanced options) for URLs containing ".nsf".

b.t.w. the F9 key will now refresh Outlook, Excel and Word. After 15 years they're finally coming round - maybe next they'll fix it in Internet Explorer then all the other sheep can follow suit.

> Firstly, Notes/Domino is an enterprise solution

> There is a misconception that Notes/Domino is only used in the corporate world

Yes, where could we POSSIBLY be getting that terrible misconception from?

https://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000227.html

Allow me to rephrase:

> Notes/Domino is an enterprise solution

The term 'enterprise' seems to provoke a hostile response probably because it implies ERP packages like Siebel, SAP, JP Morgan etc. Notes/Domino is better described by the quaint old term 'Groupware'.

> There is a misconception that Notes/Domino is only used in the corporate world

Notes/Domino is not confined to the corporate back-office but is cross-functional and can co-exist with ERP, CRM and front of house systems. It is deployed in small, medium an large organisations in every sector. I have seen effective Notes deployments in pockets within wider organisations. The N/D brand does not aim for household recognition, yet the unsuspecting public use it every day in online ordering, information repositories, blogs and so on.

...
Notes was originally designed for a distributed topology with small servers deployed beyond the clean room to outlying offices connected by modest dialup links. Server admin, user registration ect. was often carried out by a local power user. For many years database replication was a major and unique selling point of Lotus Notes, it was key to the distributed archictecture. Even application development was very accessible, the Notes formula language oringally derived from 123 'macros'. Non-programmers could with relative ease, develop cheeky labour-saving apps under the radar of IT managers. That fragmented, almost anarchaic topology has resonances of a brief time around 1999 when I heard IBM managers try to describe their sprawled company structure in terms of business 'cells' - however the terminology was soonafter applied to terrorist organisations and was quickly erased from the business lexicon.

Sadly, the distributed model is somewhat obsolete in today's world of always-on broadband and servers capable of 15,000 Notes sessions (Linux server) or 18,000 (iSeries). Also since R5 the increasingly-complex apps development IDE is deployed as a separate client to the annointed few. These days fascist organisations host Domino on gargantuan monoliths and impose it upon users by a central IT dictatorship. But the original architecture is still intact and organisations can still, if they wish, deploy Notes in the ad-hoc, organic manner that it was originally intended.

Every programmer knows that you can build garbage with any programming platform. Email is about 5% of the actual use of Notes.

I'll give you an example of why Notes survives. Our IT dept was asked to quote an actuarial application. It had to be easily updatable, handle a large number of mathematical equasions and work on both a client and web based environment. Both .NET and Notes were to be considered. The quotes came back. .NET took 3 people and 6 months to build at a cost of close to a half mil. Notes came back with an estimate of $60k and 1 person to build it, same delivery date.

Yes, .NET is more scalable (wasn't needed) but most companies are looking for a reliable product at a reasonable cost. The interface for an application is up to the designer and has nothing to do with the email gui. Bottom line was they got what they needed, on time and in budget and that app still runs like clock work even when they upgrade to a new version of Notes (and there is no conversion necessary).

If you want something done properly and it will run within the confines of a particular platform, give it to a capable programmer. Give up this platform specific thought process once you get past the needs of the application.

Mike

PS: Don't get me wrong, .NET and Java are great platforms but, they are 10,000 lb hammers being used for business apps. It's WAY overkill for that and wasteful. Just like using Notes for a transactional app is a bad idea. Sure, it can be done suing DB2 or Oracle as the back end using LEI but, it's probably best left to more scalable products.

Well,
As I am searching how to drag and drop and attachment from Lotus Notes into a .NET application I find this amusing thread.
I got a thank you making my day a little sunnier.

In any case my personal stand on Lotus Notes is that it is in use by IT only because hackers care less about looking for flaws in their product. So in short Notes is more secure. Before someone starts writing me back, ok it is more secure then Outlook, although with proper tools and thought Outlook has been completely robust for me at home.
In short I think Notes belongs in its own class with SAP for thinking about users last.

Hey anyone have a link for that .NET drag-drop thing ? With no extra controls from IBM please. I have the file name but can't get the file image from memory, as I can with Outlook.

> Hey anyone have a link for that .NET drag-drop thing ?

We looked at doing this a TINY bit at my previous job. It looked really difficult, so we dropped it..

Vince - I've been trying to get IBM to document their clipboard formats and expose APIs for accessing data in drag-and-drop operations for quite some time now. My focus was doclinks rather than attachments, but similar issues probably apply with the current version. They have announced an approach that will help me: they'll be putting a "notes://" URL on the clipboard during drag-drop operations. I don't know if it will help you, though, because I don't know if they have a syntax for referencing attachments.

I recently (well a year ago) switched into a notes environment for the first time since R4, and I really must say it's impressed me. Especially the server side, but even the client, I think the important part that most people don't consider is that Lotus isn't really an e-mail platform. It's an excellent application server that just happens to ship with a e-mail app. Process managment applications, things like equation based, help desk type, all run great. You can get an app web ready without any effort. Granted the e-mail interface sucks, but I've read a number of usability studies trashing Outlook's design, it's just that people are more used to it. so who knows.. personally I'm a bit of a convert, but certainly if you are only going to use the e-mail functions and nothing else, then you shouldn't use lotus. But really, what business couldn't benefit from easy apps? Expenses forms, vacation requests (at the most basic level). Notes can replace sharepoint, access, and tons of other cusomter apps.

I wouldn't say that I would quit my job because we use Lotus Notes (6.5), but it is such an impediment to my productivity I fear losing my job. Why would would someone devise an email app where organizing the messages, which takes only a few clicks and seconds of my time, be so obtuse and take a half hour with Notes? And the program itself is just plain slow. Even our own IT department hates it but we are apparently stuck with it.

I meant to say only a few seconds of my time with Outlook or Netscape.

Select one or more emails, then from your mailfile (6.5) action bar:

Folder\Move To Folder... (dialog includes options to create new folders).

Or if that's too much effort, drag and drop the selected documents to a folder.

If this takes you half an hour then yes you should fear losing your job.

Further to Owen's comments... if Notes 6.5 is truly "painfully slow", then it is your IT staff that should be in fear of losing their jobs. If the infrastructure and software are properly installed and managed, there's no reason Notes should be slower than any other program.

Ok, so why after, organizing emails messages to various folders, does Notes insist on putting them back into the orginal folder, when I refresh? Why should I have to archive just to move mail from the server to my local drive (I can drag and drop with Outlook)? Why is Notes not able to figure out which folder to put mail into when I do archive. Why does Notes make the most simple tasks so mind numbingly complicated and unreliable? I must spend a half an hour a day screaming this lame POS program.

No wait... it copied them back to the original folder. Now the emails are in both places. Even the messages I had moved 2 days ago.

<a href="https://www-12.lotus.com/ldd/doc/domino_notes/Rnext/help6_client.nsf/855dc7fcfd5fec9a85256b870069c0ab/3fb601045e9b8a7785256c1c0037d7e8">https://www-12.lotus.com/ldd/doc/domino_notes/Rnext/help6_client.nsf/855dc7fcfd5fec9a85256b870069c0ab/3fb601045e9b8a7785256c1c0037d7e8</a>;

I think a lot of you miss the point.

Lotus Notes is NOT an email appplication. Email is just one of the the things it does (albeit poorly).

It's the application development. I challenge you to find a rapid application development enviornment that allows you to create an app as quickly and easily as Lotus Notes.

Someone mentioned that I.T. buys products that make things easy for I.T.

Think about this - you have a business - it NEEDS things from I.T.

With Lotus Notes I can have one guy on staff to create every little custom app that the business needs.

In .NET, I need to double or triple the number of programmers just to get the same result.

Not to mention that everytime a .NET app comes up, the amount of verticals that need to be installed and setup is ludicrous.

I've got one app that runs on Lotus Notes that to convert it to .NET I need to install the following:

1. SQL Server
2. IIS Server (THE most insecure webserver ever made...)
3. BizTalk
4. Exchange Server
5. Share Point Server

So here's the conversation with the CFO:

"I can give you this app with the existing infrastructure using the current staff on Lotus Notes. Or I can build it in .NET, hire a couple of new programmers, hire a new server admin to handle the 5 new boxes, buy a new rack to put them in, but 5 new servers, pay Microsoft licensing fees for all 5 of those servers, etc..."

There's more to this than the e-mail UI....

Like it or not, Microsoft has created a de facto interface design standard. It's not a matter of "Lotus Notes had it first". If you want end-users to be happy with their applications and have less training time to learn their applications, then give them applications that have the look and feel that "they" are used to, not what "you" are used to, or what "came first".

I really don't like Exchange/Outlook, I absolutely HATE Lotus Notes interface, which ruins the rest of the product for me, I'm just pissed that there's not a 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. choice that allows Notes data to be migrated into it. I took over the IT department at my company recently, and if it wasn't for the years of databases STUCK in Notes, we'd have migrated the day I got here.

Notes is like the bad decision that no one wants to admit to, so it just keeps going and going and going and .... gunshot... (maybe someday)

I have to say that this is certainly an interesting thread.

I ended up here because I was on a search for keyboard shortcuts to use with Lotus Notes 6.5.5 on my Macintosh. Needless to say, i *did* find two shortcuts here, but alas they are targetted towards Windows installations of Notes.

I don't know about any other facet of Notes besides its email facade . . . or perhaps veneer would be a better descriptor. I have to agree with virtually every comment here about Notes as an email GUI . . . they all pretty much equal the same thing . . . painful.

On the interesting topic of keyboard shortcuts, I found the bit of Notes history interesting and certainly it seems to be grounded in a reasonable precedent. However, the balance of the keyboard shortcuts range the gamut from "That makes sense" (CMD - B for BOLD; CMD - I for Italic) all the way to "Who thought that made sense?" (ESC to close a message window paired with Shift - ESC to Send a message). How are closing a window and sending a message related, aside from the fact that the New Memo window disappears when you send the message?

Notably missing from the shortcut list are such staples in other email GUIs (Eudora for example) that make life really much easier. I'll just list those that ought to have a shortcut but don't that am aware of: Reply; Reply - All; Forward; Forward - All, but I am certain there are others.

As for observations about the speed of the program, 6.5.5 on the Macintosh is painful in that area as well. It is completely executed in Java, but almost as an after-thought of some type. When I come in in the morning, I start up Notes and then go get a cup of tea. When I come back some five or 10 minutes later, Notes is still engaged in some internal struggle to decide which part of the program is going to win the battle to control the interface for the next few hours. This is always marked by it taking 20 to 25 seconds for it to respond to any input . . . and before anyone advises a beefier machine with more RAM, I am running a G4 667 with 1GB of RAM and 100 GB HD that is less than half-full.

Oh, and a warning for those of you who may be deploying an SSL VPN gateway of some type in your environment, there is one HUGE gotcha that resulted from a code change made between 6.5.3 and 6.5.4 that results in a pop-up dialog asking the end user to install some nebulously referenced "Internet Certificate." Contrary to the hard to find article on the IBM website, the situation occurs when a Notes email message has been replied to with history at least twice, with at least one of those replies occuring through the SSL gateway, and then a Notes full-client (6.5.4 or higher) user attempts to open the message . . . voil? . . . odd dialog box to confuse the end-user.

For those Windows users out there, a single click on the Cancel button will dismiss this dialog and the observant user will discover that the *only* item missing from the display is the little piece of paper icon that indicates that the message several tiers deep in the thread is a document within a Notes store.

For the Macintosh users out there, it is a slightly different state of affairs. One will be required to click Cancel 55 times for EACH item that makes a reference to the SSL gateway (i.e., a message that has been replied to in the manner describe above three times will require 110 clicks on Cancel, four times - 165 clicks, etc.). One of our Notes developers opened a technical case with Lotus. There response was "Oh. Sorry about that." with NO indication of a fix date . . . or even the intention to fix.

Sorry if I've gone on. Notes frustrates me terribly because even if it's only the mail UI that is bad about the entire application . . . it IS the only part I get to see.

Came across an interesting quote from Jack Ozzie (Ray's brother), c.1997:

"...we've always had a great relationship with Microsoft. We worked with Windows 1.0 and found a lot of bugs for them, and they changed a lot of things in Windows for Notes, because our server really pushed Windows."

Read the full interview here
https://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-Jack_Ozzie/index.html

Even more interesting is (Lotus Notes progenitor) Ray Ozzie's recent meteoric rise to power in Microsoft. He's now to replace Bill Gates as Chief Software Architect.

Also remember that David Cutler is still active in Microsoft. Cutler who was the progenitor of Windows NT (now xp), oringally came from Digital Equipment Corpoaration (DEC), where he was the lead developer of their RSX and VMS operating systems. Many articles have been written about the VMS legacy within WinNT, and then there's the urban myth of "WNT=VMS++" (increment each letter), which would follow the convention of "B, C, C++".

Before Lotus/Iris, Ozzie came from Data General (an offshoot of DEC). I've always been aware of some trace elements of VMS within Lotus Notes eg. the F5 logout, "Access Control Lists", "Privileges" (now referred to as 'Roles').

What we have here is the alignment of an axis of evil ;-) It's like a secret society and F5 is the secret handshake. Soon the whole world will use F5 logout & F9 refresh. Be very afraid.

I don't get it.....I use Notes at work and Outlook at home. I am certified in Exchange Server, and have taken Notes Admin and Development courses (V4) but who cares? I don't find either interface better than the other.....just different. Perhaps I have just been using Notes too long. But when an enterprise email system manages to keep up with l-users that insist on keeping 5GB mailfiles on the servers, with little to no degradation in performance, I sit up and take notice. The Notes/Domino architecture has been fantastice for me and my organization.

I was asked to do a little notes project by my boss. I thought nice another little tool in my resume box. That was the last positive thought I had about this product! In 20 years of IT there is only one product I've found to be worse! I've gone to 4 different bookstore chains looking for Notes books...guess what...none to be found. Although there are rows upon rows of Java, php, and .NET books... hmmm.

I have been using Notes for 15 years; I am the administrator. And yes, I use it at home as well as work; why should I have two different email clients? I do not have any complaints about Notes other than sometimes support is a little slow in responding to issues and questions. My system starts-up quickly, there are no delays in processing and the system is rock-solid. Thank you.
PS: MS sucks.

wow ! wonderful thread ! had to start using Lotus notes , dint like it that much , esply because of shortcut keys, and google isnt of much help.

is any of you guys here aware of a shortcut for "reply with history" ? i tried googling , but in vain.

Thanks in advance.

Arvind - the answer to your question of short-cut keys for reply with history is to highlight or open the mail then hit Alt-2-e. (hit the Alt key to see the shortcut #s for the menus buttons, then use the underlined letter for the menu item you want).

I have another shortcut key question that I'm hoping someone will have the answer for since I don't like switching back and forth from keyboard to mouse. I want to be able to create an email, appointment, or to-do item without having to "open" the corresponding application. So while reading email, I want to be able to create a calendar entry or a to-do entry (or vise versa) using keystrokes. I know you can do this using MS Outlook and i found it really handy cause I could add stuff as I thought of them while reading mail without any mouse involvement. I've since changed jobs, and now I have to use Notes and I can't find anything on this shortcut - UGH!

This is a funny thread. I happened across it trying to find a way to convert NDL's to Notes URL's and I have to put in my 2 cents...

I have been on both sides of the Notes sucks battle.

I was subjected to Notes in 1997 and used it (and administered it) until mid 2005 when I got to experience Exchange/Outlook/SharePoint.

Happily, that phase of my life is over and I am back to a world with powerful replication, easy database access, wonderful archiving, easy customization, actual security, and best of all, as someone else pointed out, no spit and gum holding it all together!

Great to see that so many people know so little about a product, maybe that is also why IBM paid so much for the code for replication and the compound document (true one) that still micro$ has not copied despite having access to the replication code.

It does not take a brain cell to work out that you do not been to use notes for email derrrrr...

Look at the posting and then try on a domino server

load imap
load pop3
load smtp

RTFM guy's

;-)

I've been waiting for 45 minutes for notes to remove a calendar entry. That sucks no matter what manual you read.

I just stumbled across this thread after typing "Lotus Notes 6.5 suck" into Google. :) I'm glad I did as I've learned a couple of useful tips that have been bothering me since I had to move from Outlook to Notes. So, in that spirit, I'm hoping you Notes experts can help me overcome these annoyances:

1. Why is there no 'notes' feature in Notes? I really miss that feature of Outlook.

2. When a colleague sends me a contact from his Address book, how do I accept it into mine? So far, I have needed to create a new contact and copy-and-paste the fields one at a time.

3. I received a meeting update today, but I can't deal with it because Notes says, "You cannot process this notice because this meeting is not in your mailfile or has not been accepted." It *was* in my calendar but now it's not. I did not remove it. It was originally a single meeting event that became a recurring meeting. When I got the update to make it recurring, I got the same message. Since then, every update I get about this stupid meeting gives me the same message.

4. Yes, the F5/F9 foo drives me nuts. Also, Control-N/Control-M still catches me when I want to create a new 'memo' (Hello, Lotus...The rest of the world calls these "email messages," not "memos").

5. I created a rule to forward emails from a specific sender to another email address. It never worked. I found out that IT had disabled rules due to security concerns and because "Out of Office" auto-replies were bouncing around in a feedback loop (Notes still has that problem?!). So, I deleted all my rules. Now, every email I get from that sender is automatically dumped into one of my folders and I cannot figure out how to make it stop doing that.

6. Thank you for that click-drag to select tip! It was driving me crazy to do the hold-the-shift-key-while-hitting-the-arrow-keys trick. I just wish now that the selection would stick after an action, such as hitting Insert to mark the selection as read. Frequently, I want to select multiple messages, mark them as read, and then move them into a folder. As it stands, it seems I need to select the messages, mark them read, reselect them again, and then drag them to the folder.

That's all I have time to type right now. Thanks for your interest.

here is a list of some mail shortcuts that were distributed to users at my company:

Open mail window: Alt+B+1
Move to next unread document: F4 or Tab
Move to previous unread document: Shift+F4 or Shift+Tab
Delete selected items permanently: Shift+Delete
Select or deselect item: Spacebar
Mark as read/unread: Insert
Send and close: Shift+Esc
Reply: Alt+2
Reply to all: Alt+3
Forward: Alt+4

these aren't uber powerful shortcuts, but hopefully some people find them useful.

I'm amazed that (what I assume to be) I.T. professionals griping about Lotus Notes because they don't like the keyboard shortcuts!?!?

Let's all pause for a moment and calculate the ROI or TCO of 'F5 vs. F9' .... then let's get on to the real issues.

M. Donohue (April 6, 2006) hit the nail on the head when he listed the FIVE MS servers he would need to reproduce a simple Lotus Domino/Notes application. There is no question that Lotus offers the better value when it comes to custom enterprise apps.

Likewise, Berto (July 27, 2006) made the point that there really isn't THAT much difference between the client experience (see also: Hotmail vs. Yahoo mail, etc.).

I've trained hundreds of novice PC users on Lotus Notes over the last 12 years and it is the easiest app to teach. The best part is that once they know the E-mail, learning any other custom Notes app is a cinch.

I realize these things can be driven by highly relative matters of taste and preference, but c'mon people. Domino & Notes are not even the same KIND of software as Exchange & Outlook.

Each have their place, but the choice should be driven by business requirements and not arbitrary grouchiness about keyboard shortcuts and minute features.

Duh.

While I appreciate all the comments in support of Notes, it pales in comparison to a tool such as MS Outlook. The only reason my company continues to use it is because we are signed into such a stranglehold contract with IBM and have spent mucho dineros on Domino servers.

It is shocking that people still consider building apps in Lotus a plus. While easy enough to do, try getting data out or integrating with the rest of the non-Lotus world. I should not need to run out and get a third party API for everything I want to do.

Someone back in 2006 mentioned ROI and I totally agree. The biggest challenge is calculating enough of an ROI from a migration to the Exchange platform that would justify the expense of all the Domino hardware.

Lotus is slow, not friendly, and fat.

The beauty of Notes is in its flexibility and the Domino server. Also being IBM, they will support a product to the end of the earth. Except for version 8, all code base is a direct descendent of the last version. So, a version 1 database (application) can run on a Domino 7 server and vice versa.

The Domino server is so power packed and extensible. Anybody can develop new server task and addins if they know C/CPP or Java.

The other reason is can you can create apps in the same database (nsf file) that can be simultaneously viewed through a web browser and a Notes client.

Notes/Domino supports LotusScript, Visual Basic/Basic/VBScript (with some exceptions), C/CPP, Java/J2EE, JavaScript, HTML, XML. With some configuration, you can use Perl, PHP, Python, Rexx, ORexx, etc.

The same apps and software can run all major plateforms natively

Just some food for thought

A nsf file is a blank canvas....it is up to the talent of the person writing the code... As they say...it's not what you got that's important but how you use it.

How about the fact that Notes will not take a virus and send it to your first 100 contacts in your address book? Some Companies might like that feature. Spamming your customers, a great feature of Exchange/Outlook. Love that one.

"Lotus Notes, one of software's biggest triumphs" - Fortune Magazine.

Fortune magazine published this glowing article about Microsoft with interview quotes from Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie. It's so heavily-biased that it should have carried the term "Advertisement Feature" at the top of the page. Yet despite themselves they included this nugget: "Ozzie - a renowned programmer who had created Lotus Notes, one of software's biggest triumphs".

Read the full article below, if you don't mind wading through a mound of propaganda. Groove barely gets a mention. The final quote from Ozzie is very interesting and suggests to me that he still has a place in his heart for Notes.

https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/05/01/8375454/index.htm

the stupidest moves are in the top of the box office.

care to elaborate?

Now that my company has moved from Outlook to Notes 6.5 am having trouble to do the most basic thing as cut-and-paste into Notes say something off a website. Anyway to over come this?? Had tried pasting it to Ms Word and then to Notes and it works but is there a more direct method?!

I've been using Lotus at work since 3 years now. And following is why I think it is better than Outlook.

1. It does more than just email.
2. It is more secure.
3. It has something as good as Domino webmail access which enables mail access on any other computer, which does not have Lotus installed.
4. I can lock display by pressing F5 when I need to run for a meeting. Any messages I am editing, creating at that time will remain that way once I unlock.
5. I like the organisation structure that is built in. That ways you get to know who is in IT and who is in Operations and stuff..
6. Sametime IM is integrated since long in Lotus. IM is something Outlook/ Windows mail is coming to now.
7. Webmail works on a Firefox browser.
8. It does more than just email. ;)

For those who say its slow, I would say I find outlook slower since it is always downloading mail messages, and clogs network traffic, even when I might be working on excel application. But with notes I can choose to download those mails at my convenience. And none of us uses systems with 8MB RAM anymore.

but it's just so damn sloooooooow........ they shouln't have done it in java.

@ AG

Why I absolutely disagree with any of your statements:
1. It actually does more than just email, though why do more than just emailing when you don't even get the full emailing functionality right??
2. It most likely is more secure because you simply cannot access anything without the app crashing or finding the right function for that matter
3. You can only access LN from the only client you are using. Any other computer besides your own is uncapable to show your emails except for the webmail functionality: it's just plain stupid! Besides, Outlook webmail is exactly the same, only MS did it right...
4. Ehh, Windows key + L? Ever noticed?
5. Maybe you should take a look at Active Directory or NDS (Novell)... When you can read that (which Outlook can), you have that same thing, but not stored in several places --> better and easier maintenance
6. Sametime: yes i have to agree that Sametime 7.5 really works for me. The only good thing about IBM Software.
7. Not every webpage is Firefox compatible. Besides, I absolutely dislike the functionality to have LN open every single thing for you WITHIN LN. The LN tabs are so unclear, it's annoying to read every single tab over and over again.
8. See first point. ;)

About the slow thing: even with just a 400MB mailfile at startup, I could get coffee, drink it if it's not too hot, make another cup, go back to my spot, wait some more and put in my password.
(@chila: I agree... Novell Netware did the same thing. Big mistake)

On top of all this: have you ever heard of the apps "killnotes.exe" and "notesreloaded.exe"? I install it on every PC I deliver to my users just because the app crashes SO often (No, it's not me, it's the app, trust me). And the best thing is: without such a program you can't simply restart Notes, you have to perform a full reboot! Isn't it a shame that actual users have to write their own program to shut down LN properly? I mean... It doesn't work right, but what kind of program did you write when it can't even CRASH right?! Ain't that just a little sad?

@ chila and diceman: they didn't do it in Notes. Notes 8.x uses (optionally) the Eclipse framework for its UI. The core Notes code is not Java.

While Notes does have its foibles, don't underestimate the business importance of replication. I work in a consulting firm with 100s of users. We work on client sites, often w/o access to the internet, and mobile broadband is useless outside of major cities. Yet with Lotus Notes we can access all our corporate apps - T&E, CRM, Knowledge Management, etc. - all without an internet connection. Try doing that with another product! Until internet access is EVERYWHERE, plenty of professional services firms with similar issues (McKinsey anyone?) will continue to use Lotus Notes.

Everyone!
In Notes there's only ONE keyboard shortcut you need - <F1>
This brings up (context sensitive) help. Here you'll find answers to all your queries

Everyone

There is only 1 ketboard shortcut yuo need - <F1>.

This brings up (context-sensitive) help and one of the best help systems around. From here you have all the answers to useabillity questions.

F1. The one next to the ESC key

There are three things I definitely hate:

1-Mary-Kate
2-Lotus Notes
3-Ashley Olsen

If you give support to ppl who is trying to the things by their own, Lotus Notes is not the best thing...I mean you can self-repair other software but for Lotus Notes u will need to check a lot of crap, delete, move, edit, "Error encountered while openeing a Window", Too many Local Replicas, Nsfs Currupted, "Ohh I deleted my Mailfile and the notes.ini", etc,etc. Everyone should go gmail...hehehe.

Opps I think it was: Mary and Kate Ashley. I do not feel stupid for getting her names messed up though...lol

What is the matter with you people. Is this some form of late twentieth century social psychosis? Grow up and get a life will ya!
Notes is just a mail box program with some added and useful functionality. Listen carefully...It was and is not a Data Storage technology...The way you all sit around here and bitch about this makes one wonder...Quit a job over it? You really need to stop all this prattle....

I use notes8 daily on my Linux workstation. Something I couldn't do with outlook. My browser uses ctrl+r to refresh, so why should notes use f5? Thats different to what I'm used to.
Im not saying notes is the best app in the world, or even in its domain, but just because its different to outlook doesn't make it bad.

I Love Notes..... bring back os/2

I love Notes 8 a LOT!

Well, face it...all fans of Notes are yelling that email is only 5% of Notes and you should know the rest to appreciate it....but in most companies, Notes is forced onto the users as email client and not as multi application envinronment anyway.
And as a user I don't care about beautiful tools and applications and secure servers and what else: I use it for email and calendaring everyday....I have used Pegasus, Eudora, Outlook and Thunderbird and they are ALL better email clients than Notes.

Why does Notes archive my entire folder structure if I explicitly told it to archive one folder only? Why can't I drag and drop folders to an archive. Why doesn't Notes show more than 1 archive file??

It is the CLIENT that is used most in companies; only a few people manage the server. So if the client UI is bad and not intuitive, a company looses more money on that side than employing extra people on the server side. IT must also think very carefully about making the user's life easier, because I don't know about your company...but here IT is not making the profit... so if 99% of the users tell you that the email client stinks, they are right and it's time to change.

Simon Templar, unlike you, those of us with real marketable skills can do just that -- quit a job just because they use a shitty email program. Life is too short to work for a company where they're too cheap and/or stupid to deploy a real email application. It is the 21st century, you know, and calling Lotus Notes a dinosaur is insulting to those great extinct beasts of the past! Seriously, do you really want to work for people whose IT dept is that retarded??

Funny how all defense arguments for LN are simply wiped off this forum, if any. Most of the people actually liking LN only can say "I love Notes" and "you should find out all there is before judging" because there is really nothing to say about ANYthing Lotus Notes has to offer. Clientside as well as serverside (or Domino for that matter). My users here are all complaining about LN how annoying it is and that there is really no logic in it. Except for 1 person. She actually "likes" LN because she doesn't know anything different than LN and Hotmail. She's cool so I'm having a problem calling her ignorant, but if she only knew...
I can't stop... Just one more example which occurred recently: signatures; looks professional, handy when you want people to be able to click on a picture, whatever. In Outlook you have this easy box where you can tune up your signature to whatever your heart desires. In LN? No, they think that's no challenge for the users. They NEED an HTML file if you want to be able to put a linked picture in. So in other words: you have to be a damn coder yourself just to be able to use a linked pic in your signature? Like... EXCUSE ME GENTLEMEN... Some users aren't exactly geniusses over here. I have found some stinking way to do it with a free (thank god for that) tool. Asks you a couple of questions before it actually sends the email, but only when you want it to. IBM definitely has its own definition of userfriendly. One that the rest of the world doesn't share, that's for sure!
I fully agree with *Original Name*'s statements. A better word instead of dinosaur would probably something like "fly"... Makes you wanna kill every now and then.

-cheers-

LN SUCKS! LN SUCKS!

I found this site by accident while - of course - Googling how to do something ridiculously simple that LN makes complicated (moving mail out of my Sent folder).

I'm sure I'm stating the obvious, but IMHO the only reason LN still exists is inertia and money. I'm using LN at my new job, the first time ever in my life. I work for a large medical device manufacturer, and everyone hates LN and wishes we used Outlook. The only (chuckle) reason we don't is justifying to management and IT why we should spend X gazillion $$ to convert the entire company over when "nothing's broken". They missed the opportunity when there were only ~100 (or even 1000) employees, and now it's an insurmountable task.

Long live the cockroach.

oh and eh... @FuzzyJJ

It's really nice to have more applications within LN. That sounds real redundant. Hell, let's just crash the whole company we support! Maybe afterwards we can setup Exchange and Outlook after all. NotesHater, this sounds like a perfectly good solution for all your LN your problems hahaha!

My company recently converted from Outlook to Lotus Notes 7.0.2. Our only experience is with the email interface, and the interface is not good. It is unattractive and in some cases cumbersome (I won't repeat previous usability complaints). This is a poison pill for users of LN, and it creates irrational dislike toward the product. The application itself seems to run plenty fast.

I agree with the comments about LN as an application platform - .NET and related technologies are a big hammer for a little nail in most cases. I would rather see our smaller corporate apps written in LN than MS Access.

My only hope is that IBM will hire Apple to redesign the web interface, then everyone can be happy.

With the flexibility in Notes for coding web interfaces and UI, it would stand to reason that if the interface is not well received then it would be the developer that is writing the interface and not the platform itself. I have been writing in Notes for about 10 years now and I love it and so do most at my company, yet everything still is Notes fault, if the network hiccups and they can't reach their mail file I get "why isn't Notes working". Don't get me wrong we still have some devout Microsoft pushers that would like to see it gone, but Lotus Notes has it's place for quick, flexible and secure applications.

The Lotus Defenders STILL DON'T GET IT!

How many times does one have to say that the end user experience (ie the UI) is pretty atrocious? Really, when I interface with the email-like view of the database, I expect certain things to exist. Searching in Notes is not nearly as simple as it should be (take recent versions of Thunderbird for a clue as to what is "easy"). Though, I admit that it's easier in 7.x than it was in 6.x.

Sorting by an arbitrary column, in either ascending or descending order is impossible, UNLESS someone at your company has provided the template to be able to do that. I still chuckle at the day my (very large) company pushed out the new feature of Notes 6.5 to let me sort email like documents according to subject.

I hear that a threaded view is available in 8.x. That sounds good, but other clients have been doing that since the late 90s/early 00s.

By the way, the highlighting of messages by holding shift and dragging is ... TERRIBLE. Imagine, if you will, a server spews out thousands of emails to you (in error) due to some other misconfiguration issue. You have 12000 of these emails, and few of them seem to have any reliable way of distinguishing them based on a searching criteria. Click and drag through 12000 of those emails, and tell me that's better or as good as selecting the first one, scrolling down to the last one in the list, hitting shift-click to select all the ones in between. Why does (nearly) every other application (not simply email, mind you!) implement the UI standards of CTRL-click to select one, Shift-click to select a range, but Notes does not? This is NOT a Microsoft thing, BTW.

Right-click context sensitive help would be really nice (I dont' want to see "Document Properties" when I right click on a Memo Message - it doesn't seem appropriate to me).

I started out using a nice X-term based environment (*nix), and grew to really like the "focus follows mouse" behavior. I've found mini-apps to mimic that behavior (TweakUI, etc) in Windows. Notes automatically pops up when it receives focus. That's horrible. Granted, other applications are guilty of this too.

I dislike how when someone sends me an email with an web address (say https://google.com), and it's not identified as a specific web link, when I click on the underlined link, I get a "document not found" error. What does that mean?

Notes also doesn't like multiple monitors. It isn't particularly good about choosing where to display things when you use muliple monitors (hover-help appears in a strange place, if your second monitor is to the "left" of your default monitor).

Now for the good parts. I like the Calendaring, I like how it interfaces with "resources" (ie rooms for meetings, resources in a room like a projector etc). I like Sametime (in fact, I'd be willing to say that I REALLY like Sametime). I'm not too fond of the contacts, however.

The collaboration capabilities of Notes appears to be pretty nice. But only if the people you're collaborating with also use Notes. And only if those two people can actually access the same databases. Which they can't if you are collaborating with another company. Or a completely different organization within your large company. Or some other government agency that isn't sold on Notes. Or sold on using your Domino Server to facilitate collaboration.

Understand, Notes Defenders, that I am NOT criticizing the back-end capabilities of the Domino system, simply the end-user experience (which, since I am not a Notes developer, nor a Domino Administrator, I have to use the Notes interface). THAT is where Notes really really needs to improve. I haven't used Notes 8 yet. Oh, I noticed that IMAP functionality has it's own set of problems and incompatabilities...

I can't believe this post is still alive. My company uses Notes for project (bug/feature) tracking and document sharing and, like almost everyone else here, the users hate it mostly because it's unintuitive and slow. Why are there two ways of searching for information? Why does the entire UI hang when you update the information?

It isn't just Notes that is really bad. The support page is awful. First I get an error message in Notes saying that there was an error opening a window. Now this message is less the helpful. They might as well say a dingo ate my mother. So, I click the search IBM button and it comes up with an article about the error message I had just received. Great, I think. Well, I was wrong. The article blames "conflicting software." They go on to say that they had traced it to a video driver on one system but none the less it is OS specific. Now this is basically a direct quote from the IBM support page. Again, less than helpful so I start checking my system. I did find the "conflicting" software. There were two processes still running that IBM's wonderful programmers did not shut down. They were ntmulti.exe and ntaskldr.exe. Both of which are part of Lotus Notes. So, you guessed it ladies and gentlemen. IBM was right it that it was conflicting software. It was their conflicting software. I told them that they could contact me to arrange payment for finding their problem.

OK the end user experience is not like Outlook. But you can't rapidly build commercial applications (web enabled) in a few days using one developer in Outlook can you. Notes is a database platform not an email program like Outlook is. Most criticism of Notes is based on ignorance and parrot fashion chanting.

lotus is very slow, hangs up the pc, is not intuitive, the address book sucks so i use text files

says there are new emails in my inbox after i have already read them

tells me i have missed appointments when i was actually at them.

ok i shall start again.

lotus application messed up my post.

i wish to send an email not build a database so why does lotus insist on bundling it all together.

i can open ie, log on to my webmail, write and send an email, all in the time it takes lotus notes just to send the email i had previously written.

i find it easier to just put all my emails in a text file and then copy and paste them one after the other. then spend 20 mins watching the screen.

if i want to build an application then i ask IT to do it - i dont care what they use but to use the excuse that lotus notes is good for applications and is more than just an email client is not helpful when all i want to do is send an email.

"the digital equivalent of being kicked in the groin upon arrival at work every day"
I have to say it: this is the best description of Lotus Notes (and Domino...) I've ever seen!

I'm a knowledge manager, and have worked in two Notes environments for large corporates in the last 10 yrs (latest one version 7.) Thankfully have now escaped the hell - and yes I am good mates with a domino administrator.

My god it sucks! We all know about the clunky email/calendar but can I give you a little insight into the user experience of the databases? My last company's KM program is basically going down the toilet because they cannot afford to get out of the ?????? contract with Notes and move across to Microsoft.

The benefit of notes is that it is quick and easy to set up a database. this was ground breaking 8 - 10 years ago...but fast forward and the firm has literally thousands of small databases with poor search, loads of duplication, no standard taxonomies across the piece. So - they need to throw even more ?????? at expensive search solutions like Autonomy.

OK - you could argue that this is a fairly standard info. management issue; that if the dbases were better managed we'd avoid alot of it; that if we stuck shiny front ends onto everything it would be better...but it still doesn't negate the fact that we have a population of users who HATE notes, have been turned off by the dreadful email functionality and don't want to engage with it at all.

I had users who would come to me wtih information management requirements and the first thing out of their mouths would be "can we find a way to use something else instead of Lotus Notes?". They would BEG me to get sharepoint in, or instead try upload info to external servers e.g. Huddle.

oh and I've seen some of the new stuff - Lotus Connections makes a good corporate facebook - but development is sloooooooooowwww......

"thousands of small databases with poor search, loads of duplication, no standard taxonomies across the piece"....is that Notes' fault or the person/people who designed the applications?

Personally I don't blame IE when I come across a bad website......

Comments

ghjk

The Lotus Defenders STILL DON'T GET IT!

How many times does one have to say that the end user experience (ie the UI) is pretty atrocious?
LET ME SAY IT - OUTLOOK SUCKS! It's a personal viewpoint, not an industry standard that people dislike a particular product.

Really, when I interface with the email-like view of the database, I expect certain things to exist. Searching in Notes is not nearly as simple as it should be (take recent versions of Thunderbird for a clue as to what is "easy"). Though, I admit that it's easier in 7.x than it was in 6.x.
Don't make me go near Outlook on search. It SUCKS!

By the way, the highlighting of messages by holding shift and dragging is ... TERRIBLE. Imagine, if you will, a server spews out thousands of emails to you (in error) due to some other misconfiguration issue. You have 12000 of these emails, and few of them seem to have any reliable way of distinguishing them based on a searching criteria. Click and drag through 12000 of those emails, and tell me that's better or as good as selecting the first one, scrolling down to the last one in the list, hitting shift-click to select all the ones in between.
Or you could select all documents, and use the click and drag to DE-select the docs you won't want to include . . . . (and shift-click has been available since well before your post, when R8 was released)

Right-click context sensitive help would be really nice (I dont' want to see "Document Properties" when I right click on a Memo Message - it doesn't seem appropriate to me).
May not seem appropriate to you, but it is to many. Context-sensitive right click again has been available since well before your post.

I started out using a nice X-term based environment (*nix), and grew to really like the "focus follows mouse" behavior. I've found mini-apps to mimic that behavior (TweakUI, etc) in Windows. Notes automatically pops up when it receives focus. That's horrible. Granted, other applications are guilty of this too.
So, Notes is behaving the way Windows dictates and it's Notes fault?

I dislike how when someone sends me an email with an web address (say https://google.com), and it's not identified as a specific web link, when I click on the underlined link, I get a "document not found" error. What does that mean?
Means you need to hire a new Admin. I've met many MS Admins who suck too.

Now for the good parts. I like the Calendaring, I like how it interfaces with "resources" (ie rooms for meetings, resources in a room like a projector etc). I like Sametime (in fact, I'd be willing to say that I REALLY like Sametime). I'm not too fond of the contacts, however.

The collaboration capabilities of Notes appears to be pretty nice. But only if the people you're collaborating with also use Notes. WRONG. And only if those two people can actually access the same databases. Which they can't if you are collaborating with another company. WRONG. Or a completely different organization within your large company. WRONG. Or some other government agency that isn't sold on Notes. WRONG. Or sold on using your Domino Server to facilitate collaboration. WRONG.
Now you need to hire new developers as well as a new admin. You can collaborate usngi domino with anyone who can use a browser. Anywhere.

Understand, Notes Defenders, that I am NOT criticizing the back-end capabilities of the Domino system, simply the end-user experience (which, since I am not a Notes developer, nor a Domino Administrator, I have to use the Notes interface). THAT is where Notes really really needs to improve. I haven't used Notes 8 yet. Oh, I noticed that IMAP functionality has it's own set of problems and incompatabilities...

I won't waste any more time ripping on Outlook/Sharepoint/OCS/SQL etc (which I had to suffer for almost a year) in comparison with Notes/Domino/Sametime - they don't come close. The Lotus suite has been a collaboration platform since BEFORE Outlook existed, and continues to expand and improve on its functionality and usability. I can set up a fully functioning collaboration environment for 500 users in less than one day (including server build and user creation) that include document sharing with check-in/check-out, versioning, workflow, email, calendaring and instant messaging. On ONE server.
Can you do that with M$? I think not.