.Domino Framework

For many years Microsoft have been trying to build a application capable to challenging Lotus Notes.   For just as many years Microsoft have been falling short in that effort.  Recently however I have began to notice that many of the organizations for whom I work Sharepoint is being considered as a solution for applications that would previously be the realm of Lotus Notes.  Could it be that Lotus Notes now does have a viable competitor?  It doesn't seem like it when you compare the products technically.  But hey, to this day I still feel that Lotus 1-2-3 was a superior spreasheet application to Excel and I preferred Netscape Navigator over Internet Explorer.  So who knows what the Microsoft marketing machine can convince senior IT executives.
As I see it, Sharepoint has a number of distinct weaknesses.  First, it still seems to have more hype than substance.  It is not as much out of the box as Microsoft would like us all to believe.  It is also not a single product, requiring the usual mismash of products such as Sharepoint Server, SQL Server, IIS, Visual Studio, Active Directory to work.  And it is a Windows only solution aimed solely at selling even more MS software....
If I had the resources of a company like IBM this is how I would go about baking a killer product capable of resigning Sharepoint to the same fate as the last "great white hope" - IBM Workplace.

1) The base product would continue to be Lotus Notes.  Nobody has ever come up with a product that can compete with Notes for the simplicity  of building and deploying collaborative applications.  Notes consists of a single NSF that contain all the data and code.  By adding integrated security, replication, directory services, and mail services the task of building and deploying an application onto multiple servers has never been made easier.  Add to that the new slick Notes 8.0 UI, composite applications and the as-yet untapped capabilities of X-Pages and you have a platform that is truly capable of rapidly delivering modern high quality SOA applications on both thick and thin client platforms.
2) One of the strength of Lotus Notes has always been the speed with which customized solutions can be developed.  The programming base of Notes does however need an urgent overall to bring it into the 21st century.  This includes completing the work already started to migrate Domino Designer to the Eclipse platform.  Java and LotusScript editors need to delivered quickly along with native eclipse editors for all the other non-xpages design elements.  The LotusScript language must be expanded to offer many of the capabilities found in Java (and VB.Net/C#).  Likewise IBM need to find a way to make  Java available in all the same places LotuScript can be used.  We then have a HUGE army of Basic (LotusScript) and java programmers able to fully leverage the product.
3) Sharepoints' current strengths over Lotus Notes include Document Management and Workflow.  I would turn this weakness into a strength by taking the Lotus Worklflow and Lotus Document Management products and integrating them into the standard Notes/Domino product.  These products have been neglected and are unable to effectively compete as stand-alone products.  It is often an impossible task to convince IT executives to approve the purchase of new products such as these.  But then, if they were part of the core Notes product I wouldn't have to.  I can't believe these products are huge contributors to the IBM bottom line.  If they were, they would get an occasional mention at LotusSphere (outside of appearing on the annual LotusSphere Bingo cards).
4) The out-of-the-box capabilities of Notes would need to be expanded to take on Sharepoint.  Enhanced document library and teamroom templates are needed that exploit the features of document management and workflow and build on some of the great ideas found in QUICKR (including the SNAPPS templates).  Added to that we need a killer blog template - perhaps taking the existing IBM blog template and combining that with the OpenNTF Blogsphere template.    A wiki template is needed - again the openNTF DominoWiki template is a great start.   We would also need to add to the mix some of the social software capabilities  found in Lotus Connections.  An improved PAB that adds some of the profiling capabilities of Connections and even a little sex appeal with something like Lotus911's Carousel.  For DogEars it would be hard to go past LinkJam - and why not throw in an idea/suggestion scheme template (IdeaJam).  For good measure some form of Activity management template is needed.  And while I am not a big twitter fan, a twitter template may not be a bad addition too.  Also build out the RSS Feed manager to be comparable with products such as FeedDemon.

Take the above ingredients and mix in a large yellow bowl until the right consistency is achieved.  Then add to a hot oven and allow to bake for 3-6 months.  Don't cook for too long now or Sharepoint will be selling like hotcakes and the juggernaut may become uncatchable.  Served to a large corporate audience I am sure this new Sharepoint Killer would soon get that yellow blood pumping through the veins of organizations around the globe.

Testing worklow applications can often present challenges if the application itself is not set up with testing in mind.  Amongst the issues workflow introduces into application testing is ensuring that people outside of the test group do not end up being recipients of unwamted email notifications.   To help me test Notes applications I have developed the practice of calling a specific method to send an e-mail.  This method would devise some way of testing for a "production" application.  If the application is not running in "production" then the e-mail notification would be modified to replace the recipients with the current user.  The list of original recipients are then appended to the bottom of the e-mail so that the tester can verify that the distribution list is valid.    Because the tester now receives all the notifications generated they do not need to run around to other people to verify that they got the necessary notifications...

 

An example of the code is provided within the .Domino Framework as part of the baseDominoMessage class contained within the Domino.MailServices namespace.  This implementation assumes the presence of a profile document that contains applications settings, including a designation of the environment of this instance of the application (e.g. Development, QA, Production).  The method also provides an option to bypass sending any message when not running on a production server.

 

 Sub Notify(testSend As Boolean)
  
  If Application.ApplicationSettings.isTestServer Then
   If Not TestSend Then Exit Sub
   Call Me.AppendText("",1)
   Call Me.AppendText(Ustring$(80,"_",1)
   Call Me.AppendText("This notification has been generated from a test database",1)
   Call Me.AppendText("In production the recipients would be: ",1)
   Call Me.AppendText("To: " + Join(Me.SendTo,",",1)
   Me.SendTo = Session.UserName
   Call Me.AppendText("CC: " + Join(Me.CopyTo,",",1)
   Me.CopyTo = ""
   Call Me.AppendText("BCC: " + Join(Me.BlindCopyTo,",",1)
   Me.BlindCopyTo = ""
  End If
  Call iDocument.Send(True)
  
 End Sub