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.
Which tools do I have to build my first Hello World app on Domino with NodeJs? I want to build rapidly applications like I am used to with Domino/XPages. I want an IDE with drag and drop controls.
Taking ideas from ideajam was not a dumb decision.
IBM XPages is not going away. If you want to drag & drop you still can. I am sure you can use something like Bootstrap Studio if you want some GUI magic (http://bootstrapstudio.io ) too. NodeJs also is a first class member in the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE.
Personally I love having 100% control over my code and prefer an IDE like VSCode oder IntelliJ so this strategy probably will fit well to me.
I found the client part disappointing but will see what is coming next. I personally hope that IBM will do something with Sametime Limited Use. It currently is a mess and does not help selling full Sametime licenses at all (imho).
Sametime LU is ok only as long as one only needs integration with Notes client because that one does not need the Sametime Proxy.
Having just the Sametime Proxy functionality baked in the domino driven community server itself already would help a lot, to cover iNotes/VoP/mobile devices access. At least for SMB (a.k.a without DB2/WebSphere/STConsole bloatware). According to Google Translate: “a nasty piece of cross-platform bloatware that’s in serious need of a total overhaul”. And btw give us the 64bit community server.
I have to agree on this. IBM basically forced smaller organizations to dive into a websphere centric/DB2 centric mentality, with multiple servers, just to serve up chat for their browser only iNotes users. In addition to centralizing this so the additional architecture/servers are not required, IBM/HCL needs to see that the administration and policy settings are manageable, and permit chats to be saved for iNotes users with the same ease as client users.
Also you can try ClevaDesk, it is realy for rapid building apps on Domino!
Here is the demo portal – http://demo.clevadesk.com
I did more with ClevaDesk in just two hours than I could with Xpages in two days!
Thanks. I ‘ll check that out
Any chance to have Notes client v10 for Linux desktops?
I seem to recall them announcing there wold not be a Linux client going forward. Of course they said there would never be a Linux client and then there was one.
So, is it useless waiting for?
I, hardly, can live without Domino Designer on Linux systems, but not without Notes Linux client.
It’s a desperate situation.
Thanks.
The Linux client for IBM Notes will no longer be updated. So no v10 for Linux.
Sad waste of opportunities. ALl they needed to do is make a Mobile Phone Client. That alone would save the platform. Idiots running the boat.
I think it is a bit late, guys. IBM is losing the war against office 365. Domino 10 should have been ready a couple of years ago.
Now recovering back lost customers will not be an easy task
As a lotus domino developer for 10 years, I can say that, the world is escaping from lotus domino platform. You can search the jobs about lotus notes or lotus domino and only see that migrating from lotus to office 365.
In spite of us posting a question specifically about Domino Offline Services (DOLs), there was no mention of the future/continued support of that product. In spite of the near ubiquitous nature of the Internet, DOLs is a differentiator in that it allows Users to work Offline using a Browser interface without needing the Notes Client. Is there any information on it’s future?
I’m gonna check on that question for you. Stay tuned.
I’m just circling back to see if you were able to find out anything about the future of DOLS in Domino 10 and IBM’s plan to replace the existing ActiveX plugin. Thx in advance for any info you can provide.
I’m afraid that it seems DOLS is not a part of Domino 10. And does anyone still use ActiveX? It stopped being supported, even by Microsoft, around version 9 of IE. Domino 10 dropping support for IE8 component after ten years is more than reasonable. They maintained support longer than Microsoft would have
i would say ..
1. more that half of world population using Mobile along with Android & iOS now a days, IBM should introduce Android & iOS apps capability with notes. its too difficult but not impossible, this will help gain lost customers of LN.
2. IBM should change its its URL structure , the current urls are more static, we should build custom URL structure. like php etc.
3. Webclient should be separate as it should connect directly to RDBMS . Of course, its customer choice whether he want full webapp without client [ like SharePoint] / Web+Client [ transitional notes concept ]…
I think this release is more about moving the platform forward for *existing* customers and gaining *new* customers in the future. To think this will bring back *previous* customers is not realistic. I think once a company invests heavily in leaving a platform, that’s the end of it. However, I could see them winning back some *mail* customers who are still using Notes and Domino applications but are also paying for Exchange/Outloook licenses.
No one will even be using outlook in 5 years. The web experience with o365 is already better in many ways and so much email/cal is already mobile.
Taking out victims, I mean customers, of Skype for Business should be easy. Make sametime presence / IM play nicely with zoom meetings for an extra $1/u/mth.
Firstly the new Lotus Domino V10 should have offered to the existing client with less price than O365 and lure the migrated client with some of there low impacted departments with free for some months for slowly convening customer on this. secondly, like O365 all of the tools in Lotus Domino V10 or next release should available through web with very easy steps. This might help to keep existing customer and get old customers back slowly.