Notes & Domino 8.5.1 were released about 10 days ago and we are seeing a record deployment pace. 8.5.1 contains hundreds of  bug fixes since 8.5. Having said that, 8.5.1 is not completely free of problems. So how do you know if and how you will be affected? The simple answer is a frequently overlooked step in the upgrade process: Read the Release Notes (non pun intended). The 8.5.1 release notes are wonderfully organized into about two pages of LIVE links, so they are (1) very digestible, and (2) always up to date. To make it easy on you, I have pasted the release notes below. Feel free to contact me directly with any further questions or concerns.

Release notes - IBM Lotus Notes, Domino, Domino Designer 8.5.1

Smart Upgrade is a way of pushing Notes client updates to targeted end users via server side configuration. Nevermind the fact that it is hampered by 458 MB client distro, it can be useful in certain circumstances. HOWEVER, I just learned a lesson the hard way. According to the documentation, you basically create a Smart Upgrade database based on a specific template, attach or link to the client installation package of your choice, specify source and target versions, link to this database in the server config doc, and then "create or modify a desktop policy settings document and a master policy document" and "edit Person documents to assign users to the master policy."

Here's the rub...

Apparently, if there is an EXISTING desktop policy applied to users that has the DEFAULT Smart Upgrade settings (i.e., no values), then ANY Smart Upgrade kits matching the users source version will be pushed to the user.

Nice.

Thanks QA.

My postmortem analysis leads me to believe that you could prevent this by specifying a list of names who should have access to the Smart Upgrade kit on the Administration tab of the kit document, but this isn't clear in the Smart Upgrade documentation that if you don't do this then everyone with a Desktop policy that has the default settings and a matching source version will get the upgrade.

UPDATE: This might also bite you (Smart Upgrade not prompting users). Thankfully, it saved me from having a bigger problem.  Ironic that a bug helped save me from another bug :-)

IBM announced today the official release of Lotus Notes & Domino 8.5.1 on October 12. This long-awaited release brings support for the iPhone via ActiveSync, which allows wireless synchronization of email (including attachments), calendar, and contacts with the iPhone's native applications. If you're wondering how that works, the best way to describe it is, install or upgrade to the 8.5.1 Domino server with Traveler, make a few taps on the iPhone, and  "it just works." Windows Mobile and Symbian support are also improved.

In addition, Lotus Notes 8.5.1 adds a bevy of long-awaited end user features such as auto-correction of common spelling and typing errors, easier link sending, attachment visibility, vCards in signatures, more business card integration, and more intuitive archive features. Power users will notice better table resizing controls and a roaming Workspace. In addition, Sametime chats are now in their own thread so you can chat if Notes is busy working on another task.

Administrators will be pleased with enhancements to policies, like the ability to push and enforce client contact synchronization settings, and improvements to DAOS (the amazing disk storage recovery feature) and compression that reduce network utilization.

Developers will benefit from performance improvements in Designer and support for Xpages in the Notes client. Also, as of Notes 8.5.1, the Domino Designer client is available free of charge. Anyone who wants it will be able to download it and use it. The trick is that if you want to deploy any applications you build to a Domino server, then you will have to license the server and/or clients.

Perhaps the biggest news though is the simplification of the end user licensing model for Notes/Domino, which is moving to a Client Access License (CAL) model with two flavors: Messaging and Enterprise. I can help you weed through what this means to you if you want.

Lotus 911 has had various code drops of 8.5.1 in the labs for months and we are very pleased. A few of our customers have even been running the beta in production, so (although every environment should be evaluated independently), my recommendation is "Don't wait. Plan your upgrade ASAP and enjoy the enhancements." :-)