Tomorrow sees the first unveiling of IBM Notes/Domino V10. Personally I’m really looking forward to it and on October 23rd we will have our own unveiling in Norway, arranged by us in the Norwegian IBM Collaboration Software Group (ISBG). Now that HCL has taken over the development of the the IBM Collaboration Software portfolio, they have started slowly revealing their plans for the Domino platform.
I’ve worked with IBM Notes/Domino (formerly known as Lotus Notes/Domino) since 1997. In those years, the death of Notes/Domino has been predicted so many times. But it hasn’t happened yet.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it could have been at better health than it has been for years.
But as I’ve written several times in this blog, a new initiative has been started, lead by HCL taking over the development of the platform. And they’ve got hundreds of people working on it.
In the past weeks I’ve been part of a group of people who have given input on the design of the user interface for IBM Notes v11, which most likely will appear next autumn. And it looks very promising.
However, there are plenty of new stuff coming for Domino v10 as well. I’ve summed that up in this blog posting. Check it out for all the goodies.
If you need need an expert on IBM Notes/Domino. Or if you want to know anything about the future of Notes/Domino v10 that is out in October. Or if you need a skilled Notes/Domino developer. Or if you need help with your licensing. Or maybe you want to webify your notes applications and make them available on cell phones and pads? Or do you simply want to make your native Notes applications look more modern and sexy?
We in Brainworker can help you. Please get in touch!
Look, I even got a certificate to prove it:
Long Live IBM Domino, But What About Notes?
June 5th, 2018 | Posted by in Domino | IBM | Notes - (3 Comments)
Photo: Kristoff Bruers
As I wrote in this blog posting, IBM and HCL presented what was new and upcoming in IBM Notes and Domino v10 and 11 at the Engage conference at the end of May. Domino is the server, which they now hope to people will start using as an open development platform with the help of technology like Dokker and Node.Js. Notes is the client, where users traditionally have used the applications developed on the Domino platform, as well as using the email and calendar features the client offers.
They also announced new functionality for the Notes client, but I was very disappointed that there won’t be a new user interface in v10. Instead, HCL and IBM are going with the same design that the six-year-old v9 already has. But on the other hand, what future does the Notes client really have?
In this day and age, a heavy client is not something you want to have to deal with. I have great love for the Notes client, and I’ve defended it against haters several times. Yes, it can be cumbersome to administrate, but the Notes client has an undeserved bad reputation.
A week ago today the annual Engage conference started in Rotterdam, on one of the most amazing conference venues I’ve been at so far, the ship SS Rotterdam, which is a permanently moored hotel ship in the harbour. Theo Heselmans put on a stunning conference, where over 400 people attended. They were IBM Customers, end users, IBM business partners, members from other user groups, people from IBM and I’m sure there were other representatives as well.
As a part of the Brainworker consultant pool, I was treated to this trip by Arne Nielsen, who footed the bill. We did a road trip from Norway to the Netherlands, via Sweden, Denmark and Germany both to and from the conference. It was a nice trip, but I think we will fly next year…
Photo: Kristoff Bruers
I also did a presentation at the conference called “30 tips about IBM Verse.” I was so nervous that nobody would come, but it turns out I got a full room with 50 people. And the feedback was great.
Milan Matejic wrote: “Nice Session for everybody who plans to use Verse Client on a regular basis. Packed with lots of information delivered in a funny and energetic manner.” Aww! Thanks!
Notes/Domino v10 and 11
IBM presented a lot of things around IBM Notes/Domino v10 and v11. I’ve written about most of the Notes 10 stuff in this blog posting, but I will mention the new stuff they presented at Engage about 10:
Domino
- Support for unlimited documents in folders – This really means nothing to me
- Enhancements in Domino Cluster Administration – This was about time
- Cluster configuration document – This means you have a place to you configure the files and directories, which have to be clustered
- Domino statistics and monitoring via New Relic – Great for administrators
- A lot of self repairing and self healing on the Domino server
- Roll out automatic updates of the Notes client from the Domino server – Oh yeah!
Notes:
- Forwarding multiple mails in ONE EML-file including attachments and formatting – Yeah… Outlook could do that ten years ago
- Scheduled mail delivery – Have to send out an announcement tomorrow before lunch, but you won’t be at work? Schedule it!
- Mail policy checks BEFORE the mail is sent to the server – This one I liked. You can actually prevent people from sending out confidential emails
- A new “Team Calender” – This can also be used as a Team Mailbox. But most important: You can overlay the Team Calendar over your personal one! Yay!
- Forwarding meeting invitations to other persons – Should have been made 10 years ago. But it comes with a twist that the competition doesn’t have: You can set up when you create the meeting whether people should be allowed to forward the meeting invite or not
Sametime:
- Persistent chat – This means you can log off Sametime in your Notes client, and then continue the conversation, uninterrupted, on your mobile client. And vice versa.
iNotes:
- Nothing new here, but it was strongly hinted that when the lacking functionality in IBM Verse is in place, Verse will replace iNotes as the Domino webmail platform.
Nomad:
- What’s Nomad? It’s the ability to run your Notes applications on an Ipad, without the need of any coding! Everything (except mail and calendar) will work! I got to do testing with this on an Ipad, and it worked beautifully
HCL Places
- This was the biggest news. Turns out that HCL, who took over development of the ICS portfolio (except IBM Connections), have started developing an alternative to the Notes client. It is more reminiscent of an application with feeds, but it’s still early days.
The first beta of Notes/Domino 10 will be out in June, and the second one will be out in August. We did get to se the new Notes 10 client, and I was severely disappointed. It looked just like V9, but Feeds, OpenSocial Component and Composite Application Editor will be removed. This an attempt to make the client lighter. It also stems from customer feedback that almost nobody was using these features of the client. You can also change the colours of the client in totally different ways than before, but a visual impression is so important, that I really wish the design of the client had been changed.
Notes/Domino v 11 will be out already next year. That version will have a much tighter integration with Active Directory, so that you will be able to create Notes users in AD, and then they will be automatically created in Domino Directory as well. Another vision for Notes/Domino 11 is that of low code. It will be even easier than it is today to set up applications, both for mobile, web and the client itself.
Also, the Domino Designer might get killed off, so that you can the Visual Studio Plugin for coding instead. The idea is that anyone should be able to code a Domino based solution, without much, if any, knowledge of the Domino platform. With new and improved APIs they will be able to read from and write to Domino. Personally, I hope they also get rid of Eclipse.
It was also revealed that over 200 developers (TWO HUNDRED) were working on the next versions of IBM Notes/Domino. And at one of the presentations, the lead developer agreed with me that Xpages had been a blind alley. Thank you! I’ve been saying that for years. And: There’s no end of life date for Notes/Domino.
There was also talks about IBM Domino in the cloud. You can already today move your Domino applications to the cloud or run them in a hybrid environment. This will be made even more easy in the future.
Phew! That was quite a lot about Notes/Domino 10 and 11. What else did we learn?
IBM Watson Workspace
Watson Workspace is something IBM is pushing really these days. They have already made templates for various types of businesses, that will make it easier for organisations to have spaces where teams can collaborate, and have their data analysed in ways that will make it easier for you to make quick business decisions. At least that’s what IBM says. It can also be integrated into IBM Connections Cloud. Contact your local IBM sales person, or partner, to give it a try.
I also attended a few sessions where organisations did presentations on what they are using IBM’s Watson technology for. I especially liked Margo van der Stam’s presentation about what the Dutch tax office is doing by automatically processing letters from the public. It was very interesting to hear about the challenges they have by making the automatic process recognise things like addresses, censoring the names of the sender and decide on the right cause of action. It’s all still in being developed, so there is a manual review as well.
I also saw demos on how to make scripts and customise the templates so that you can add your own actions that you can trigger Watson to do. It is a very promising technology.
Sponsors and partners
The sponsor room was great, with a constant stream of food, snacks and drinks. It was also nice to talk to several of the business partners and sponsors about that they could offer for Office 365, Notes/Domino and IBM Connections.
And speaking of IBM Connections. There was nothing announced about Connections. Less than a year ago at Social Connections in Vienna, it was all about IBM Connections Pink. Now? Quiet. The only times it was mentioned was whenever IBM denied they were only thinking about cloud customers, or when it came to integrating IBM Watson Workspace into communities in IBM Connections.
In addition, I attended a couple of sessions about how to leverage your Notes/Domino data by using various types of technologies and development platforms. Especially Paul Withers talk about Node.RED and the Domino APIs was great. I’ve worked way too little with stuff like this and should really get my act together.
The people that you love
And that was the technical stuff. Another important part of the conference is the social bit. On Tuesday the sponsors and speakers were pampered to a great dinner, with tribal drumming and didgeridoo playing, on the deck of the SS Rotterdam. In beautiful weather, I might add.
On Wednesday Theo took us speakers, as per tradition, on a secret tour. We started the evening at the Dutch Pinball Museum and ended up with a dinner at the Euromast tower.
The next morning Arne and I drove back, and thanks to lots of road construction work on the German Autobahn, we weren’t home in Norway until 3 in the morning. And I had to be at the train station at 04.20…
Once again, Thanks for a great conference, Theo. You give us other user groups something to really strive for! And thanks to all the attendees, especially my fellow IBM Champions and the other speakers, for helping to make it great. See you all next year!
You can see my entire photo album from the conference here:
Other people’s blog postings:
- Rainer Brandl
- Martin Pradny
- Gabriella Davis
- Milan Matejic
- Daniel Nashed
- Andrew Magerman
- Matteo Bisi
- Paul Withers
Run Your Notes Apps on Your Ipad Without Any Development
March 28th, 2018 | Posted by in Domino | IBM - (4 Comments)The conference IBM Think was held in Las Vegas from March 19th to 22nd. Over 30 000 people were there, and the conference covered subjects like collaboration, IBM Connections, blockchain, cloud, encryption and artificial intelligence.
As I’m an IBM Champion for ICS and the leader of the Norwegian ICS usergroup (ISBG) I was mostly interested in the portfolio of IBM Collaboration Solutions. As I wrote back in October 2017, HCL has taken over the development of the ICS portfolio, except for IBM Connections, while IBM will still be handling sales and customer contact and support. The most surprising revelation that came out of this is that we will get a Notes/Domino v10, and IBM and HCL has already started delivering demos of what they have promised so far.
However, even that news was eclipsed by the demo showed at Think. You can now actually run Notes applications on you Ipad, without any development, what so ever, needed!
You can simply run them on the Ipad, and all functionality will work as if you were in the Notes client. This includes Lotusscript and the Formula language!
Don’t believe me? Take a look at this demo, provided by Alan Lepofsky:
It really seems like IBM & HCL has set a pace we haven’t seen from IBM since…since… a long time. They are even going to do marketing! Now, if this only could be followed by actually talking to and meeting with customers, we might have something. Anyway, that video is awesome, and I can’t wait to show it to the Notes/Domino customers I have left.
As for Connections, on the other hand, it was peculiar how little news that came out of IBM Think. Last year, everything was all about IBM Connections Pink. This year there were a few sessions about IBM Connections Engagement Center, but so far I haven’t seen any announcements about how the development of IBM Connections is coming along.
It’s no secret that when the Norwegian user group have seminars or webinars about Connections, the interest from our members is considerably lower than when we have presentations about Notes/Domino. So I’m wondering about what will happen on the platform. My guess is that it won’t be long before HCL takes over Connections as well. Especially since IBM seems to be focusing everything on Watson Workspace and Watson Assitant. Not to mention quantum computing and big data analysis. Time will show.
Anyway, the video is just awesome. I can imagine the applause in Vegas when it was demoed.
IBM and HCL, who took over the development of the old IBM Collaboration Solutions portfolio a few months back, minus IBM Connections, held a joint webinar today to present their plans for IBM Notes/Domino v10. You can see the recording of the webinar here.
The people who held the webinar were Bob Schultz, GM IBM Collaborative Solutions & Talent, Andrew Manby, Director IBM Product Management Collaboration Solutions and Richard Jefts, GM/VP HCL Collaborative Solutions. The idea is that contrary to what IBM did before, the whole process towards a finished release of Domino 10 will be transparent. And this is just the first part of the new regime of information. There will be more webinars, blog postings and information sessions at the IBM Think conference, as well as at user group meetings.
The main points of what is coming in Domino 10:
- Slimmer, faster and better looking Notes client
- Missing mail features will be added
- Better Microsoft integration for mail and productivity applications
- Use of modern development tools and frameworks
- Better core performance and functionality
- Easy to use authentication and administration
- Even better integration with Outlook and Sametime
- There will be a lot of new development on the mobile experience, both for mail and apps
- The Sametime client will from now on give you persistent chats through all platforms (about time!)
The most important details they gave us about Domino:
- Active Directory integration made much simpler (how I wish that had been the case 3 years ago)
- 256 GB NSF-files!
- Automated database repair
- Replica and synch-up and currency monitoring
- Full text auto update on search and resilience
- Docker Enterprise Edition images will be available
- ID/Vault management improvements
- SAML IPD upgrades (including ADFS4.0) for single signon
- A much improved API which makes it easier to read from and write to NSF files
- Exchange Web Services to connect to Exchange and Outlook clients in a much better way than today
We were given a short demo of some of the Notes functionality, but thus far a new design of the client was nowhere to be seen. New Notes functionality highlights:
- You can edit rich text fields in Word instead of Notes
- You can schedule (ie: delay) emails
- You can mark several emails and send them as attachments in a new email
- You an now invite other s to an appointment or meeting
Something a lot of developers and Javascript fans no doubt will cheer for is that Node.js will be added to the Domino development environment. This will make it much faster and easier to develop modern solutions, both in the Notes client and on mobile and web.
Jason Gary then did a guest appearance and showed how he used Node.js and the REST API to write and read from a very simple nsf-file.
Domino 10 will be released in the second half of 2018. And yes, there will be a beta plan announced. I’ll sign up for it, no doubt.
So, what do you think? Will this make a difference? Will Notes/Domino still have a future? Leave your comments and feedback below.
IBM Notes and Domino Version 10 – A Glowing Saphire?
October 25th, 2017 | Posted by in Domino | IBM | Notes | Sametime | Verse - (4 Comments)
IBM made some pretty big announcements tonight. First of all, Notes and Domino will have a version 10 released in 2018. Yeah, I know. I am as shocked as you.
Secondly, IBM is now leaving all the development of the platform to their partner HCL. IBM has already a partnership with them on several other products in their portfolio.
So what does this mean? It means that the platform is not dead, something which we’ve heard since around 2002 from people.
It also means that for the customers, there will be no change in their relationship with IBM. HCL will do the development, and maybe a times help out IBM. But sales, support, PMRs, licensing, Passport advantage will all still be done via IBM.
So the biggest change is that HCL takes over the development. IBM and HCL are committed to make sure that support, development and continuation of the platform will not be disrupted.
The journey starts now, and thus far the next version of Notes, Domino and Sametime is going under the name “Proejct Sapphire.”
Other stuff to look forward to:
- Domino will now support the Mail client for Mac as they already do for Outlook via Exchange ActiveSync
- There will be constant development for the Domino platform, so that it will be easier to integrate with other platforms and solutions
- IBM will hold jams (currently called Domino 2025) for ideas about the future of Notes/Domino where people will have meetings, talks and other ways to give IBM feedback
- IBM Champions and the user groups will be invited to be much more involved in the future
- The Think conference (taking over for Lotusphere/Connect) will have a much larger presence for Notes/Domino than what we feared
And just to be clear: This covers the entire family of IBM Notes, Domino, Sametime and Verse, both on premise and in the cloud.
Here’s the portfolio that’s a part of the HLC partnership:
IBM Notes and Domino
- IBM SmartCloud Notes
- IBM Notes Traveler
- IBM Mobile Connect
- IBM Verse
- IBM Mail Support for Microsoft Outlook(IMSMO)
- IBM WISPR
- IBM Enterprise Integrator (LEI)
- IBM Sametime portfolio
- IBM Connections Chat/Meetings
- IBM Client Access (ICAA)
I was today on the IBM Champions call where we were introduced to this. And some of the questions raised in the Q&A was: Is this too little too late? Will we be able to get customers to invest in Notes/Domino? Will the platform be relevant?
Let’s find out. The journey is #2025.
IBM Domino is Not Dead – It’s Just Gone into the Clouds
September 21st, 2017 | Posted by in Domino | IBM - (1 Comments)
I’ve heard since 2002 that IBM Notes and Domino was dead. And while the platform is certainly an endangered species these days, there’s still stuff happening on the Domino front that companies and organisations contemplating on leaving the platform really should pay attention to.
IBM has now launched a service that makes it possible for you to upload and run your IBM Notes applications in the cloud. This will become a very important addition to IBM Connections Cloud and SmartCloud Notes. It’s also something a lot of IBM customers and partners have requested for quite some time.
The service is called IBM Domino Application on Cloud (DAV) and all maintenance and servicing will be done by IBM. Ed Brill announced this in Tokyo during IBM Notes/Domino Day (isn’t that a wonderful name for a day?) on Tuesday September 19th. The service will be launched in October, so set your clocks!
DAC will be using CENTOS and Docker. The latter is something IBM has said they will be relying heavily on in the future. This will therefore be included in FP10 for IBM Domino 9.0.1, which will be released soon.
The data centers will be placed in the US, Europe and Pacific Asia (Japan). Australia, China and other locations will follow suit.
To use this service you must have your own IBM Notes/Domino license. The maximum size of any given .nsf file will be 25 GB.
The following functionality is promised:
- A Domino environment built around your organisations cert ID
- Users can deploy their own custom built .nsf applications
- The .nsf files will be available both via our IBM Notes client, ICAA and via web browsers
- The data will be encrypted
- Mail agents and scheduled agents will function as they do on your local server
- You can replicate between the cloud and your local servers
- All server upgrades, maintenance and backup will be done by IBM
- You can have a Domino cluster if you choose
- You can have DAOS if you wish
- Domino Access Service is optional
- You pay a monthly license pr .nsf file ($27) and you must signup for at least a year
- You can have more than Domino server if needed
- Monthly reports about all your Domino applications
- A tool that analyse your applications so that you can decide what applications to scratch, which you want to keep locally and which you will move to the cloud
Thus far IBM has only offered a cloud solution for email and calendar, via IBM Verse, så a lot of people began cheering when these news were unveiled.
Here’s IBM’s video presentation of the new offering:
Magic, pink and Star Wars – The ISBG Spring Seminar 2017
July 7th, 2017 | Posted by in IBM | ISBG - (0 Comments)
The Norwegian IBM Collaboration Solutions User Group’s (ISBG) spring meeting was held at PwC in Oslo on June 7th and 8th. Around 60 ISBG members, presenters, IBM-partners and people from IBM were there during the course of those two days.
Wednesday started with Roger Johannessen wishing everyone welcome for the very last time as leader of ISBG. From there we moved straight on to Mac Guidera’s keynote. His focus was on how employees today are flooded with too much information. It all just turns into noise. He therefore talked about how IBM’s collaboration solutions can, with the help of cognitive technology, can filter, delegate and prioritise for you.
The systems will lift up what’s important to you, so that you can focus in a much better way. IBM’s solutions will also learn how you work and will help to organize your working day for you.
He talked about IBM Verse, IBM’s web and mobile based mail solution that runs on Domino. You can read his entire presentation here.
What should you choose?
Morten Myrstad from The New Company has just become an IBM partner. The first thing he talked about were weather the rumors about the death of the corporate intranet were exaggerated or not.
His point was that the focus should be on people and a change in the company’s culture. You should choose your tools based on this. The keywords are: Management, solutions and learning.
He did a presentation of various solutions for collaboration, like Sharepoint, IBM Connections, @Workplace, Slack, Google Apps, Office, Episerver and some others. It was all a very good walkthrough the various solutions strengths and weaknesses. You can see Morten’s presentation here.
Detective Watson
Because of a misunderstanding on part of the soon to be leader of ISBG, Hogne Bø Pettersen, the two next presentations had to switch places. The next presenter was therefore IBM Champion Oliver Busse from We4IT. The techies among the audience loved this presentation and welcomed everything he told about how you can use IBM’s Watson technology in your IBM Notes and web applications with open arms. You can see his presentation here. Demo not included.
The world’s fastest growing IT industry is right now sophisticated attacks on and hacking of companies’ IT systems and infrastructure. Most of the time you get hacked without realizing it until a year or so later. Espen Skjøld from IBM Norway talked about the challenges surrounding this.
He also spoke of IBM’s service QRadar Advisor, which also uses IBM’s Watson technology to evaluate and validate security measures in a company. This was a very interesting presentation many people liked. You can read it here.
Human Information Processing
After lunch, it was time for Arne Sigurd Rognan Nielsen. He is a former IBM employee. These days he runs his own consultant business called Brainworker. He has worked with a lot of big customers and have helped them to start using collaboration solutions in an effective way. In his session he talked about how he has done this, and via examples from various customers he demonstrated that what’s important is the knowledge and attitude, not the technology. You can read his lecture here.
Next one out was Felix Binsack, IBM Champion and owner of the TimeToAct Group, which were gold sponsors. His company has had great success with their product XCC, which they’ve now sold to IBM. It has now changed its name to IBM Connections Engagement Center (ICEC). This product makes it much easier to transition IBM Connections into a well functioning intranet which can also act as a digital workplace for both web, mobile and pads. Unfortunately we never received his presentation.
Future of web and video conferencing
Thomas Sigdestad from Enonic held a fantastic lecture about progressive web apps. The trend is that the number of mobile apps are decreasing, and instead people develop web apps. This means web web solutions that consists of one dynamic web page, which acts like an app, and which also works offline.
In his presentation he showed several examples, and it’s also a great presentation for Star Wars fans. You can download it here.
Bo Holtemann from IBM Denmark was next. He talked about the partnership between IBM and Cisco. This means you can now integrate WebEx with IBM solutions like IBM Connections. A lot of people have wondered whether this means that IBM’s own video conference solution, Sametime, has been abandoned. But this was refuted by IBM.
The partnership means IBM will be selling Cisco’s WebEx solution for video conferencing. IBM will then take their cognitive technology into this platform. This will make it possible to get your own personal assistant and other helpful functionality. You can see all the details here.
And then it was time for speed sponsoring where everybody had to visit one of the sponsor stands. The sponsors then had two minutes to present themselves and their products, before you moved on to the next one.
This was followed by the team competition, which included an audio play, questions, bribing the judges and the building of balloon towers. After this it was a short break before the magical dinner with prizes, speeches, thank you gifts for the board members who are now stepping down and not least Rune Carlsen’s incredible magic show.
An old friend
The next day everybody was up and looked fresh and awake(?) to receive some information from the ISBG board before Barry Rosen from IBM gave his keynote about IBM’s plan for the IBM Notes/Domino platform. He talked about the fact that after you have upgraded to version 9.0.1, there will be no other versions. After this, what you will get are feature packs. These will include upgrades, bug fixes and new functionality.
He also presented a string of new functionality that has already arrived for the platform, and what is expected in the near future. He also presented the fact that you now can choose to use IBM Notes, IBM Verse or Microsoft Outlook with Domino. Both on premise and in the cloud.
Uffe Sørensen then took over and he talked about the “bring your own client”-strategy. It all turned into a very passionate discussion about Notes/Domion. It’s obvious that a lot of people still have great love for the platform. Read the presentation here.
It was then time for another IBM man. This time it was Miki Banatwala. He told us about IBM Connections Pink and what that platform really is. The idea is that after upgrading to IBM Connections 6, there will be no more new versions of IBM Connections. The idea is to do agile developing and push one update at a time. This is just like Facebook does it. This means you can add functionality and upgrade Connections without the need of creating a big project out of it. Read all about it here.
Germans
Andreas Rosen was next up. He talked a little bit about the German user group and what they had done to increase participation from their members. After his he talked about Salesforce, which is a platform a lot of Notes developers have moved to. This is not strange, because a lot of the principles of the two platforms are very similar.
Rosen told how you can integrate Salesforce with Connections, Domino and the OnTime calendar. Read his presentation here.
The next German up was Peer Prieser. He talked aobut how We4IT can help you analyse, develop and modernize your Domino applications. He also talked about how you can use Watson here. Download his session here.
Paul-Christian Garpe from Peda, which were this year’s Platinum sponsors, was next. He talked about the new directive for the protection of personal data that the EU will introduce in 2018. Even though Norway isn’t in the EU, we will be affected by this too. He talked about how IBM’s technology can help you in the preparation for this. Download the presentation here.
REST easy
It was now time for a delicious lunch again, before Anton Löwmar from Edgeguide in Sweden told how their technology could be used to develop and modernize your Domino applications. He also talked about how, with the help of their product, you could integrate data from Domino with Sharepoint and other platforms. Read the presentation here.
Kjetil Herpaasen from Item was the last man out. He did a session that especially the developers in the audience were ecstatic about. He gave us an introduction in Swagger, OSGI-plugins and REST-services. Everything done on the Domino platform. Read his presentation here.
It was then time for the annual ISBG meeting where a new board was elected. I now became the leader, after serving as second in command for the past year. It was then time for a Kahoot quiz. Since it was about Star Wars, I won, but I couldn’t get a price since I’m a board member. There was also prize drawings, and when that wrapped, this year’s spring meeting was over.
The evaluation and feedback afterwards have been great. And the message is clear: We should continue with the spring seminar in the future. In what fashion, remains to be seen. The new board will start working this autumn on what we should do to move forward and meet the drop in attendees. But I can assure you we are motivated!
Bob Voith did his own summary of the spring seminar in his blog here
And you can see the entire photo album from the spring meeting here:
IBM Connect 2017 #3: I’ve Seen The Future of Domino and it is Sapho
February 24th, 2017 | Posted by in Connect | Connections | Domino | IBM | Notes - (34 Comments)I promised a summary of the second part of the Opening General Session. And I will include it here, but this posting is mostly about the future of IBM Notes and Domino. It’s based around four separate sessions and lectures about the strategy around and development on the Notes and Domino platform.
First things first:
- Yes, IBM will continue support and come up with upgrades and new functionality for the IBM Notes client.
- Yes, IBM will continue supporting Domino but forget what you know about app development on the platform if all you know is the Designer
- Yes, the Domino Designer is set to become a thing of the past
- Yes, Cognitive, Connections and Watson will play a huge part in this
- Yes, in my opinion Xpages is dead (but see the discussion in the comments field who says I’m outright wrong about this)
- The APIs for Domino will be improved, expanded and upgraded
For the first time in years IBM Notes and Domiono was, once again, the center of attention during an opening session. A lot of time was spent on it during Ed Brill’s presentation in part 2. He announced three partnerships with the companies Darwino, Aveedo and Sapho. All of them makes it possible to extend and refresh Domino applications. All of these give you the opportunity to stay on Domino, as well as combine your Domino app seamlessly with applications on other platforms without the need for development. I was especially impressed with Sapho.
In the session about the future roadmap for Notes and Domino, IBM also said that Notes and Domino would be updated via Feature Packs from now on (which basically means no Notes 10, folks). These will come out 3-4 times a year, and extend the features of both the Notes client, as well as the Domino server. It will be optional whether you want to install these and whether you want to enable the new functionality that is added in the feature packs. Security upgrades and bug fixes are also a part of the FPs.
Other news:
- No more Notes client for Linux beyond 9.0.1 FP 7
- 32 bit droppet for AIX and Linux servers
- Template upgrades will be available as a separate download, so that you can use them without having to install the latest FPs
As for what is coming for both the Notes client and the Domino server, I will refer you to my blog posting about the very same subject from last year’s Connect. Yup, nothing has happened since then. But this year they actually showed us demos of most of the stuff you can read about it that blog posting. Last year they only talked about it. FP8, which will give you the ability to show email addresses as internet addresses, support Java 8 in the Eclipse framework and include email template upgrades will be released in March.
As you know, I love the IBM Connections plugins for IBM Notes. My 250 page long manual for the plugins will now have to be updated since CCM will get it’s own plugin! Yay! There’s even a plugin for Box, which I haven’t tested yet.
I spoke to one of the leading men in Xpages development, and he told me “Xpages is dead.” Personally I’ve never ever believed in Xpages, and I never bothered to learn it. “From now on I’m a web developer and a Javascript developer,” he said. And that is certainly what Stephen Wissel showed in his presentation, Beyond Domino Designer.
In the session he pointed out that you should leave the Domino designer and start learning Javascript frameworks like Angular, use Swagger as an API framework, become friends with node.js, make peace with command line tools, learn http and use clients like Postman to test http calls to REST APIs, separate front end and backend and test, test, test. This is pretty much how my previous employer modernised their IBM Notes solutions to lift them to the web and onto mobile.
The most exciting thing I saw when it comes to development of Domino based solutions was a product called Sapho. The product delivers a Facebook-like feed of data from your applications, both on Domino and a host of other platforms. I was amazed that every time someone asked the question “what if I need to do…,” Peter Yared, founder and CTO of Sapho, did it live, in the presentation, there and then! The product was incredibly easy to use, and you could fetch data from all kinds of data sources, including Domino. And you could of course write data back to the source as well.
So what does this mean? It means that you don’t need to migrate. You can keep your data on Domino, but at the same time add functionality to a Notes application which will run on web or on a mobile device. Or you could replace an entire Notes application, but still keep the nsf file on Domino. This is the future of Domino development folks! Spending loads of man hours on using the Domino REST API with Swagger, Angular and so on is incredibly complex, time consuming and complex. There are of course instances where you wouldn’t have much choice, but I think in most cases, a product like Sapho will solve your business needs.
I’ll wrap this up now. But you can still keep the Notes client and Domino, get new functionality, keep your applications and at the same time modernise them. In addition, you can give your users a choice when it comes to mail. They can use Notes, they can use iNotes (webmail), they can use Verse or they can use Microsoft Outlook. The mail is still in the same .nsf file on your Domino server.
IBM is opening up more and more to the outside world, and that is the main strategy these days, also in the future for Notes and Domino.
Stay tuned for more blog postings about stuff I’ve learned here at Connect 2017!
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