Uh Clem's Admin World

Got an email from IBM Tech Support with a link to their ftp site to download the Notes 8.0.2 client CCH1 hotfix.  This hotfix supposedly fixes the hang on startup and maybe a few other SPR's I blogged about.

Bad news is that you will have to contact tech support to get it.

Since I never saw any posting of an 8.0.2 "Revised" client they told me about 3 weeks ago I decided to call them.   The latest word is a Cumulative Client Hotfix (CCH1) is scheduled to be released this Friday (10 Oct).  The CCH will be a download that you will install over top the 8.0.2 install.   They were not sure whether it will be posted on the Passport Advantage website, or whether you have to call tech support and request it.

So this means you can not go straight to the hotfix for now.  You will have to install/upgrade to 8.0.2, then apply the hotfix.   I will have to investigate the Smart Upgrade option for this one.

Sometimes when I have 5 or 6 emails in a row in my inbox, and I want to delete them, I just hit the delete key in rapid fire succession to delete those emails.  This use to work fine in 7.x, but now it seems the 8.x client can't keep up with the deletes.  It ends up deleting about 4 of the 6.

Yeah, yeah, I know I can "click - shift click" to select those messages then delete, but sometimes it's just faster to rapid fire the delete key.

Anyone else experience this?

I loaded 8.0.2 on my laptop yesterday.  The upgrade went smoothly although I'm still amazed it takes 10 minutes and the progress bar goes across like 50 times.

I'm having a small issue with the integrated Sametime.  I'm noticing that the floating ST buddy list window (as in the R7 client) keeps loading.  The integrated version also is connecting.

I'm getting the following error in the status bar:

You cannot use IBM Workplace instant messaging because Notes is already logged on to the IBM Lotus Sametime server.

What?  "IBM Workplace instant messaging"??  Hey IBM,  I think you need to scrub your error messages a little better.

Anyway,  my upgrade was from 8.0.1, but I also noticed the old, floating buddy list window is still popping up on upgrades from 7.0.3.

I have my first Domino 8 server upgrade (from 7.0.3) scheduled for next week.   I have been planning to use 8.0.1, but now I hear that 8.0.2 might be out in the next couple of days.  I am considering just using 8.0.2, but one of my co-workers asked me if I'm crazy.

In the past I have waited at least 30 days after a point release to put it in production.   So why has my thinking changed?  Have I been lulled into a false sense of security with ND point releases?  The last point release that I remember being a disaster was 5.0.3, which has been, like, 7 years.

How fast are you planning to put 8.0.2 into production?

I was just reading a post on Ed Brill's blog  by Tom O'Neil from Codepress.  He talks about how he built an app in 3 hours what the .Net team has taken 1000+ hours and counting:

"I jokingly created an app in three hours with requirements from the .NET team. They are currently on hours 1000-1500 and are they are probably halfway done. Granted, their web-app was more slick than my three hour application but I completed the requirements."

Now I love these type of stories, even if they are anecdotal sometimes.  My company is in the process of making some business processes SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley act - It's a U.S. thing) compliant.   We have Notes for messaging and collaboration, but we really are just getting into creating apps.   I would love to have a handful of strories like this to really drive home how much Notes is a rapid application development (RAD) platform.

So if you have similar stories like this, please share them with the Yellowverse.

I started getting the error below when I launch my Notes 8.0.1 client.  I also get it when I try to set a different bookmark (workspace of course) as my homepage.   I searched the web and only found one posting which was ND8 feedback in the ND8 forum, but this posting related to starting the admin client first, which I am not doing.

So I tried to do the obvious and create a ClientBookmark.nsf file using the bookmark.ntf template.  This seemed to work!

Even though the problem "seems" to be fixed I'm left with some questions.   Why is there a ClientBookmark.nsf in addition to the Bookmark.nsf?   Isn't one enough?  Also, why don't I find any documentation on this?

It was always useful to easily see what point release was installed when you launched Notes.  Not anymore!

Changing the Notes password for the average user is not a trivial task.  It is way more confusing and buried than it should be.

First the user will find the "Change Password" option under "File-Security-User Security", at which point they are challeneged to enter their current password.  How many people would easily find this and know this is where you change your password.

Now the user security screen has 10 different buttons or menus to click on and the "Change Password" button is kinda lost in the middle.  For 98% of my users changing the password would be the ONLY reason they would ever go into the user security screen, so why don’t they make it more prominent?

Now comes the confusing part. When they click on "Change Password" they get a prompt asking for another password.  Now is this the current password, or is this the new password?  It is not obvious.  It is made more confusing because the user is forced to enter their current password TWICE!

How hard would it be so that when they click on "Change Password" the prompt says "Enter CURRRENT Password", and not just "Password".  I never understood why it asks for their current password a second time anyway.  If it is a security requirement, then fine, clarify the prompt.

The usability team at Lotus have done a great job on 8.x, but they need to put some energy in the nooks and crannies of the client.

 

So now that 8.0.1 is out I can start planning my rollout.  The first step was to deploy it to my boss and a few IT colleagues.  Their first questions were "so what's new?"  I realized I was going to need to communicate to my users what IS new with this version over Notes 7, but with limited training time I needed to hit the highlights that mattered most to them.  So I started looking into the "What's New" docs in the readme and on the IBM sites.  I quickly discovered that a lot of these materials are a lot of fluff and stuff that my users really don't care about.  What I need is a nice, short list of the most important features that the users will really care about.

So what do you think are the most useful features that the user will REALLY care about, or REALLY like?  A few that come to mind are message recall,  new attachment handling,  quota guage, and integrated Sametime buddy list in the sidebar.

So  I figured on the eve of heading to Lotusphere 2008 I would use Bleed Yellow to try keeping a blog.  Seems like a nice place to start.  So here it goes.

I've been a Notes admin on and off for 15 years now.  I started in 1993 when V3 first came out.  Boy have things changes.  So maybe I can help get an admin community started here as well.  Any other admins interested in giving it a go with me?

So I'm guessing you are wondering why I called this blog "Uh Clem - Notes Admin".  Well the second part should be self explanatory.  The first part is a reference to something that goes back to the seventies.  If you google it and find something about clowns, you will have found it.  Check it out.  Also, my initials are CLM, so that kinda sounds like Clem, so I kinda took the alias of Clem.

So I will blog mostly about administration of Lotus solutions:  Notes, Domino, Sametime, Quickplace, Portal.   These are the primary systems I am responsible for and have the most experience in (Portal less so).

So see you all at Lotusphere.  Check out my posting of "Lotusphere Lore" on the ls2008cult.pbwiki.com site.   Say hi to me if you run into a guy that kinda looks like "Q" from Star Trek TNG.