You need Notes

John Wargo's book, Blackberry Development Fundamentals just arrived!!!! I wish I could run home..... It's gonna be a LONG night reading this!! 

Well, looks like GMail is having issues, at least here in the wonderful suburbs of NY.... just another reason why trusting your email to someone else can be a BIG mistake....

Go Lotus!!

OK, so I'm on 24X7 (like a lot of you), but the economy reduced the number of days I can work (ie, forced day off).  So we took my daughter and her friends to the "Jersey Shore", in this case Belmar, NJ.  (FYI - over 16 years old, $7US for a day pass) - plenty of free parking if you don't mind walking a few blocks.

Nice day, sunshine, slight breeze, not too humid. Absolutely perfect. And best of all, other people were covering while I was gone!!

If you live in the NY/NJ/CT/PA area (or further out), there are a lot of nice beaches in NJ.  Just sit back, enjoy the surf, the sand, the people, the breeze and forget about what's going on until they let you back into the building..... (of course, all hell broke loose as soon as I got back... I wonder sometimes if they just save it up...)

Anyway, just a reminder that we all need to take a break now and then.  Just don't forget the sunblock!!!

Later,
George

Last Friday was such a fun day - a lot of it revolved around the BES server throwing error messages on the console. 

First, someone deleted BB users address books from their home server.  So we go looking for a backup and OOOPSSSS, not backed up.  It seems making a copy to our backup server was never in the setup documentation.  Well it is now!!

Then we see that a user is not getting emails - the BES is throwing errors about the inbox missing. I go look, it's there. I do a fixup, still there and so is the error message.  Replace the design, same thing. Compact to remove corruption, you guessed it.

Now at this point (or sooner) an experienced BES admin would know what to do (I'll tell you the answer in a minute).  But since I'm the backup admin for the BES, I haven't a clue.  Thank goodness for RIM support!! Bottom line, there was probably some corruption (from the BES' point of view) and the $Inbox, $Trash and $Sent all got removed from the BES state db.  The user was able to send, but not receive.  The fix is fairly easy:   http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/KB11741 .  I guess it's time to consider admin training for the BES.....

Later,
George

Does anyone know if the BES server can run on Foundations yet?  If it doesn't do we have any idea as to WHEN???? (hmmm, I may have asked this questions somewhere else, if so I apologize)

For those of you who haven't noticed, a few of us have posted some tips & tricks in response to Denny Russel's blog entry:

http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/DennyRussell/entry/what_s_your_best_lotus_notes_tip1

Perhaps the rest of you would join in and help?  Let's keep the Lotus community spirit going folks!!!  There are plenty of cheerleaders on the field, now let's hear from the stands.

<Opinion on>

The more we contribute to help each other, the more misconceptions and miscommunications (I'm being nice, spell that last one "LIES" ) we can crush coming from the other camps..... to put it plainly the better your customer understands your product/service, the more willing they will be to spend their budgets (if they have one right now, unlike me) and invest in you and your products/services.  For those of you who serve multiple sides, it is still in your best interest to help; you will gain a lot of respect from the rest of us and that, my dears, can make all the difference in the world between a win and a loss. Just my 2 cents......

<Opinion Off>

Later,
George

No remarks about the fact that I haven't been blogging.... my personal issues aside, let's hope the third time's the charm....

Ok, so I went down to the latest NY/NJ/CT LUG and it was, as usual, great.  Not just because Kathleen McGivney brought awesome homemade cookies (YUM), not just because IBM brought snacks and our hosts at Pru fed us pizza, (notice the food theme?), but because the information and discussions were great!! 

Last night Declan Lynch came all the way to NJ just to show us Xpages.  His explanations and examples were very clear and informative.  And to have him there in front of us so we could ask questions - EXCELLENT!  We also had Akiba Saeedi the UC2 Program Director from IBM who gave a great live demo of what's coming in the 8.5 version of Sametime. (yes, Virginia, it really is as fast as they showed at Lotusphere!!)

All of this is thanks to our local Lotus User Group (http://www.tristatelug.org), and I do mean THANKS guys and gals. For those of you out there who have a Lotus user group near you, ATTEND!!! For those of you who's user group hasn't been meeting (hmmm, I can think of one in upstate NY.... ), get going again.   And if you are one of those unfortunate folks who doesn't have a user group nearby, well, you know what to do.  You really don't know what you're missing and you may just learn something new (how horrible!!!) 

Oh, BTW, if you've been living under a rock, there's a national LUG the first week of August (http://www.IAMLUG.org).  It's free (as in attendance to the event is free, but you have to pay for your own transportation and room) and from what's on the agenda, it's well worth it.  So go check it out.

Later,
George

P.S. If anyone out there knows of companies selling Lotus-related products that are looking for a sales support person in the NY metro area, one of our ranks is out of work and looking.  Please let me know privately or post in comments.  Thanks!!

A few years ago, we purchased a complementary company that, you guessed it, was using Exchange.  We started integrating our way of life into theirs and got a lot of pressure pushing back.  They hated R6 mail and, according to the grapevine, would go out on Friday nights and  their industry peers would laugh at them.  Of course this made them hate it even more.  After that, we purchased another company, same circumstances and, you guessed it again, they too had Exchange and were subject to the same gripes.

Management was unhappy with Notes, because the division blamed most of their productivity issues on Notes mail. We tried DAMO but had issues.  IBM tried to help, but it was not to be.  It looked like the end for Notes there, and the nay-sayers here were using that to try to dump it world wide.

Luckily R8 Standard came to the rescue.  We convinced their executive to hold off on any rash decisions while we tried it for 6 months. We tested the life out of it.  The more we tried to break it, the more frustrated we got (this is a GOOD thing). Once we got it in front of the users, they were happy but skeptical.  So I pulled one out of IBM's bag of tricks.  Ed Brill once posted a picture that an IBMer had used showing Notes 8 side-by-side with Outlook. From a distance it was very hard to distinguish the two. I did the same. Guess what? Not only could the same ratio of the training classes not figure out which was which, but when they saw what the latest Outlook looked like, they gave up!! They hated it!! 

Today, a few are not happy, but not dissatisfied. The rest like it. In fact there are two guys who can't run Standard because of the memory requirements conflicting with their programming development work.

If your shop is thinking of getting rid of Notes mail, tell them to think again.

I'm not trying to upstage anyone from Lotus, but I just found the link for Lotusphere comes to you 2009 in the US and Canada.  And now that I, and those who work for me, have signed up...... :)

http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/events/lcty/americas.html

Correction: it appears to be most of the world - my apologies

Alex Kassabov posted a great point today about where were all the young folks at Lotusphere: http://kassabov.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/where-are-all-the-younguns-are/

This brings up a point that I've been going back and forth with: my youngest son's career goals. 

My youngest son who is currently in community college here in NY state wants to follow in his dad's footsteps and get into programming.  He keeps telling me he wants to do Lotus Notes development, so I keep telling him to learn Java, JavaScript, HMTL, Visual Basic, etc, since Notes is not covered in any colleges that I know of, or at least that he's interested in applying to.  I told him that if he was still interested, the time will come for LN after he gets some other things (like how to design a system and how to use relational databases) under his belt.

My oldest son (the biomedical engineer) keeps talking to him about going into electrical engineering with computer science if he wants a good job.  I completely see his point.  All of the computer engineers that I know can pick and choose what they want, including doing some Notes development as they see fit.  Engineering offers so many opportunities for advancement, what can I say? I don't want him following me just because I'm his father, any more than my father didn't want me following him into pharmacy.  In the end, I just want him to be happy, but I also want him to have more opportunities than I have.  Is this wrong?

It's a tough call as to how to advise him.  There is little exposure to Notes developmnet at the college, or even trade school, level as far as I can see.  Schools like Stony Brook use Notes, but do they actually teach their students how to use it? It's great to have certified classes when a person gets into the workplace, but I wish that IBM and Lotus could become more viral on campuses, and unfortunately, I have no idea how this could be done.

So, in the end, I have absolutely no intention of discouraging him, but I'm at a loss as how to advise him.  Any advice?

Ok, here's my pet peeve of the day (and night).  Yes, I already know that Lotus long ago announced that Notes is not currently supported under V64; let's not go there. I'd just like to know WHEN it will be supported. Where's the roadmap? What about Windows server 2008? Or Windows 7?  Like it or not, IBM has to continue to play nice with Windows customers; some of us are not moving to another type of operating system.

My company makes technology products that use V64 inside and this requires our engineers, product marketers and sales people to use it on their PCs when developing, testing and giving demos.  Meanwhile, we use Notes for many parts of our business, so these guys and gals who are using V64 need to have it working all of the time.

The issue: Though it actually does work most of the time under V64, I can give Lotus horror stories about when it doesn't (if they're ready to listen).  Two examples:

- I've seen Standard crash and burn right in front of my eyes.  Myself (and others) have had to uninstall and re-install the client in order to get it to even come up again.  I'm still trying to figure it out, but it may have something to do with full text indices going bad on the local replicas after a major data replication. But, I have no way to comfirm this since there is no support.

- Single sign-on does not work at all. Talk about bummed-out users!! We just got them to go to single signon in 6.5.5, then this...

Now in Lotus' defense, I have NEVER seen Standard 8.0.2 go as fast as it does under V64!! It's simply amazing!!!  When it works, it works really well!! If IBM would only put the time into perfecting Notes under V64, they could make heads spin on the performance end. The fact that some of our legacy Notes client apps, even those over 10 gig,  fly on my V64 machine is a testimate to how well 8.0.2 is built and the potential that is in store for all of you in the future when 64 bit OS's become the norm (do I hear Windows 7 anyone?)

Oh, and before you ask, we can't (won't?) run dual boot with XP or V32, or run either in a virtual session.  Yes, I know it will probably work, and may even get around the issues we're seeing, but I'm hitting a lot of resistance to that idea. Our whole message to our customers is the advantages of running in 64 bit mode.

So Lotus, if you read this, please let me know when I can expect some relief.  I'm more than willing to help you test and I invite you to contact me anytime (heck I'm 24X7 now, what's a few more hours going to hurt?). 

So far I've addressed being a loner, but I did call this blog You Need Notes.  So let's explore that for a moment.

If you haven't read MSNBC today, there's an article about what happened to the new White House staff when they all got to work their first day.  They found that the White House was in "the dark ages" from a technololgy standpoint (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28787998/).

If you're new to Notes and want to find out why you need Lotus Notes and other Lotus products, go and read this article.(if you already know Notes, then go have a chuckle)  Afterwards, go to the Lotus pages on the IBM website (http://www.ibm.com/lotus) to find out what you (and the White House) have been missing.  And if you're worried about security, Lotus Notes has an answer for that; always has.

Oh, one more thing (my apologies to Steve J), If the previous administration had used Notes, I'm betting that the new one could have just kept their Macs.....

Ok, so enough with the sobering stuff.  Every so often you get a problem that is so big, you just don't know what to do. You don't have anyone who can give you advice.  Nobody answers on notes.net or newgroups.  You've hit a wall and the wall in the corner office wants to hit you.

My advice:

1) have a service contract with IBM/Lotus (you should have this already)

2) Try for a reasonable amount of time to solve it yourself

3) But, don't wait forever to call them for help

What's reasonable? Let's put it this way, your boss shouldn't be reminding you every time that you have a problem to call IBM; how's that?

They have helped me with a lot of problems (some self-inflicted).  They also will keep with you as long as you need to and hound you until the issue is closed. 

Now this may seem like a no-brainer, but you know what? Never having been in an admin position before this, I never knew I could call them. And they will help with development issues too.

These are very nice, VERY smart people.  Do they always have the answer? Honestly, no.  In fact there were a few times a few years ago that I got conflicting advice. But for the past 2 years, they've been rock-solid, right-on-target answers.

Now there's a LOT to be said for researching issues by yourself. Getting the answer handed to you all of the time impedes the learning process. But there comes a time when you have to stop and think of the best interest overall of your business and your users. 

Like I said in my intro, I was in this shop by myself for a long time.  It's tough being the only full time person on Notes, especially when you were trained as a developer all of your life and are suddenly thrust into admin; whole different set of rules. Not only that, every time something is wrong with Notes, regardless of who's responsible, who gets the finger pointed at them?

Best practices were slim at best, especially when it came to turning over my code to an admin department (regrets to Paul Mooney). I never really saw a need to test my code another time, after all, hadn't I just tested it? And it really gets hairy as to where to draw the line as to what is acceptable and what's not.  There were a few other developers around, but in different departments.  Did I have the time to check their code? No. Would they even let me? Except for one person, HELL NO!!

Hey, I was raised at IBM with code inspections.  I was a JAD leader there too. I've worked at Castrol as a developer and at BD as a consultant in the past. Then I came here: medium size company, VERY small IS shop, and almost had my head handed to me when I talked about checking each others code. Go figure.

Now, I don't want to sound depressing or looking for sympathy, that's not my point here.  You all need to know that it's very hard to "follow the rules" from a best practices point when you're the only game in town.  And I know I'm not alone, because I've met many others like me.

If you are a loner in your Notes department, please sound off. Would be good to hear from you.

Next.. what to do when you get a problem that is WAY over your head....