For a couple of days now I had noticed that the automatic synchronization between my Nokia E65 device and the Lotus Traveler server did not seem to work.
I had to force synchronizations.
When I looked in the main status page of the client software it said that everything was fine: "Connected to server. Device is currently up-to-date.".
Yeah right. That is at the same time that I - accessing the servlet on the traveler server - could see that the server was waiting to add calendar entries to my device.
I turned up the log level in the client.... no information there.
So, here is the fix for you. It' mid-80's again: Turn off the phone and turn it on again. Et voila - automatic sync is automatic again.
Jens Bruntt January 26th, 2009 22:28:11
I just found something interesting inside my Lotus Notes 8.5 client running on Ubuntu Linux. Have a look:
It's the designer client. I am modifying the design of a folder.
How did I do that?
Right-click on a folder in your email and select "Design folder...".
If we are that far then surely the fulle Designer on Linux can't be far away.
Please :-)
Jens Bruntt January 22nd, 2009 16:17:12
Storage of Notes data on DB2 (NSFDB2) looks to be an option that has now been put in retirement.
First I saw this: NSFDB2 is dead: Long Live .NSF
And then what really made me think that retirement was a reality: The orignial JMP103 Lotusphere session by Bruce Lill who had to redo his LotusPhere 2009 presentation because IBM asked him to not talk about NSFDB2.
NSFDB2 will be supported but no bug fixes will be produced and no new features will be developed.
This leaves the company I am working at with a problem. Luckily, we had not yet put all our eggs in the NSFDB2 basket. We were about to put them all in there this year, but that is definately not going to happen now.
At Convergens our main line of business is with a product called Profile ESDH. It is a Lotus Domino based document management system used primarily in the public sector.
Some of our customers put millions of documents in this system.
And these customers experience something called View Contention. It's basically an issue that comes up when we have lots of documents, lots of document-saves and lots of users that need to access the same views.
Then, when the server needs to index those central views, there is contention. All users experience that everything (in the app) stops until the indexing of those views is done.
It had been our plan to have all "views" be served as Query views from DB2. And at the same time we had wanted to change the UI quite drastically in order to utilize the possibility to do queries, narrowing down the number of view rows that needed to be displayed.
Of course we know about view optimizing. We have worked extensively over the last half year to bring down view index sizes, simplifying view selection formulas, bring donw the number of user-sortable columns, etc.
And we have had a lot of success doing these things.
But that does not remove the possibility of experiencing Contention. So, naturally we and our customers are concerned about this. We would like to be able to say that there won't be a Contention issue with our application in the next four years. NSFDB2 was what we had planned should be the Silver bullet, and now that is not going to happen.
One of my colleagues picked up some discussions on the web that could point towards a way of fixing our problem. What that has been discussed is to have View Indexes be stored outside the actual NSF. Similar to the way that DAOS stores attachments outside the NSF.
Putting the Views outside the NSF would open up for possibilities like not having the NSF lock up when you write a Note to it while the indexer is indexing.
It also would help in keeping the NSF size below the 64 GB limit.
Here is a couple of links mentioning this:
http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/erik/ titel
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd85forum.nsf/DateAllFlatWeb/6a4139d04690a21c85257539007a2aa1?OpenDocument titel
The problem of course is that this is just discussion. And I really would like to have a solution to Contention now.
We definately need to put on our Thinking hats.
Jens Bruntt January 21st, 2009 08:19:02
I have now had Traveler running for three days. Not a lot, but enogh for me to start thinking about how to actually use this new addition to my Swiss Army Knife collection.
My device is a Nokia E65, making me am one of all those potential new users of Lotus Traveler that now might become actual users because Lotus Traveler 8.5 supports the Symbian Operating system that the higher-end Nokia phones are running.
Lotus Traveler is an extremely cheap way of letting the users of a Lotus Domino infrastructure have access to PIM - Email, Calendar, Contacts, To-do and Notes - on their mobile device. It's cheap because it's free to Domino users and because it's extremely easy to set up.
It took me about 30 minutes to get Lotus Traveler added to the Infrastructure at our (small) company. Configuring Traveler is easy - it's a seamless add-on to the Domino server with the configuration options available in the Server Document.
To me it looks like the Lotus Traveler client is very well integrated into the Nokia phone. It just works. Email syncs into a folder just like you have a folder for text messages (sms).
The calendar entries sync into the built-in calendar.
To-dos sync into the built-in calendar book.
The contacts sync into the built-in address book.
I haven't got a clue where Notes come from or sync to (sorry, haven't found out about that yet)
Sync'ing happens very fast. When I add something to my device, it's available within a couple of seconds on the Domino server, and when I add something to my mail or calendar, I usually wait for less than 10 seconds on the device.
I have started thinking about how to actually use this new tool. The calendar- and contacts sync'ing makes perfect sense to me.
The email-sync is a feature I don't think that I have a very big need for. I spend most of my day with my Notes client open. There is no need for me to get two beeps telling me that I have new mail.
I have an idea though. There is a configuration option in the Traveler client where I can elect to only sync "Urgent messages" which translates into "High" as a delivery importance inside the Lotus Notes email. So, when someone sends me an email with "High" delivery importance, it will sync to my phone.
I can build something on top of that.
I have now created a couple of mail rules in my email. Here they are:
So, if the email subject contains "haster" (urgent in Danish), when the sender is our Nagios server or if my wife sends me an email, the importance is changed to High, and it will sync to my phone.
Makes sense to me.
Jens Bruntt January 18th, 2009 17:26:03
We don't have many Windows-based Domino servers in our administrative network. Our email server for instance is running Domino 8.5 on top of a CentOS Linux.
I wanted to try out Lotus Traveler with my Nokia E65. What to do?
Install it on the Quickr server of course :-)
(Do not do this at home or while children are watching)
There really was nothing to it.
I downloaded the installation kit.
Stopped Domino.
Installed.
There was only one question in the installation process where I did something extra: I deselected the option where it suggest that the Home Page for the server should point to the Traveler "home page". That would have messed with our Quickr users.
I then started the Domino server, and that was the server-side part of it.
Then I had my Colleague with firewall-knowledge open up the TCP port 8642.
I then pointed the browser in my Nokia E65 to the Traveler home page - /traveler/index.html and downloaded and installed the software.
Finally I had to configure web-username and -password, hostname of my quickr server and what connection (WLAN in my case) to use.
To be honest, this was a bit that cost me some sweat. I had forgotten that some of the characters in my Web Password were in uppercase.
This took me some time to figure out. And when I had gotten past that issue, it started working.
I am using the email and calendar synchronization.
And it looks great. It feels like it is well integrated with the Symbian OS.
Good job Lotus!
Jens Bruntt January 16th, 2009 13:13:28
I just listened to the great podcast where Tom Duff and Bruce Elgort interview Eric Mack and David Allen about their up coming presentation at LotusPhere 2009:
Taking Notes Episode 92: 2008.12.14 - A Productive Podcast with Eric Mack and David Allen: Two guys who know how to get things done with IBM Lotus Notes.
Lots of good stuff in that podcast. Eric Mack says that he recommends Lotus Notes as a personal productivity tool. Personal as in "private" - not just as in "working from home".
I have been thinking about that, and I agree. Lotus Notes is great, also as a personal productivity tool. As my colleague Thomas commented, just for the POP3-client it's a nice tool.
But - can I even buy this nice tool for my Mother in Law? Is there a way of buying just one Lotus Notes client? I checked a large, Danish software portal. Searching for Lotus Notes just found me three virus detectors.
Jens Bruntt January 8th, 2009 18:16:36
I just noticed something that has been an annoyance with Notes until yesterday, and now it's working like I want it.
I switch Notes user-ids by switching locations. Before the 8.5 client this meant that I would have to retype my sametime details every time i switched location.
But now, after upgrading to the 8.5 golden edition, the problem has gone away. I have switched back and forth between a couple of IDs. One where I do not log on to sametime and one where I do. And it just works.
Great!
Jens Bruntt January 7th, 2009 10:33:28
My laptop is an ageing Celeron with Ubuntu 8.10. I have Compiz enabled to show off when Windows users are in the area.
I had an existing Notes 8.5 beta 2 installation. I removed it using the Synaptic package Manager (System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager). In the Package manager I did a search for lotus and asked it to mark all the ibm-lotus-something packages for complete removal.
I did not ask it to remove a package called libmeanwhile1. I have a feeling that one is for the Instant Messaging client that comes with Ubuntu (called Pidgin).
I then clicked Apply.
Notes was gone.
To install Notes I then unpacked the contents of the C1W0TEN.tar file, opened a terminal window and did this:
sudo dpkg -i ibm_lotus_notes-8.5.i586.deb
This ran for a while and then stopped.
I then started the client (Applications->Office->Lotus Notes 8.5) .
First time I startede the client i got a window that wanted me to type 1 to accept the license. Did that.
I got prompted for my Notes.id password, and that was it. Notes was up and running. Looks just fine.
I then stopped the client and did this to install the built-in Sametime client:
sudo dpkg -i ibm_lotus_sametime-8.5.i586.deb
Started the Notes client again. The sametime widget is now in the sidebar. Hmmm. There is a new sidebar Widget for primary Sametime contacts.
That was all. No problems at all. Now on to my Windows client...
Performance:
My Home page just has the standard look. No Sidebar Widgets showing.
Cold start: 19 seconds.
Hot start: 9 seconds.
Hot start definition: I close Notes, wait for 10 seconds and then start Notes.
I start measuring when I click the menu item.
I stop measuring when I have the complete Home page rendered.
Jens Bruntt January 6th, 2009 11:08:05
I am downloading the 8.5 Client for Windows XP and Vista. No problem.
I tried downloading the Debian client install ("IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 for Linux (Debian Install) English (C1W0TEN)" for my Ubuntu) - it said that the file was not available on the server.
I am unsure about which kit is for the Linux based servers. This one perhaps: "IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 for System i English (C1SQ4EN)".
All this is from the Partnerworld download-site.
Exciting.
Jens Bruntt January 6th, 2009 08:51:04
I just installed Lotus Notes 8.5 beta 2 on my Ubutu 8.10 with Compiz enabled.
It works just fine.
First impressions:
- It generally seems a bit faster. I'm not complaining here - 8.0.2 was the release that really improved performance on Linux, and 8.5 improves a bit on that.
- Issues with the built-in Sametime client are now gone (logged on just fine, but also displayed an errormessage on 8.0.2) .
- No need for hacks. With 8.0.2 I had to do a bit of text-file editing and change some permissions to get it working. Not so with 8.5.
- The Bookmark bar (that drops down when you click "Open") displays faster. Nice.
I installed on top of my 8.0.2 installation. No backup. {Standard warning - I'm Danish, we don't use long warnings. Don't do this while submerged in water etc.}
Downloaded the deb edition.
tar xv notes85_notes_linux_deb_beta2_prod.tar
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
I saw some warnings here regarding the sametime- and the Composite application editor. Ignored them.
That's it. 8.5 is in the Applications->Office menu.
When I first started it and opened my Email I received a Java error.
Restarting Notes did not remove the problem. Neither did restarting the OS.
Then i did a new
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
I got a new set ow error messages for sametime- and Composite app editor - new ones. Ignored them.
Then I started the Notes client again. And it worked like it should. Including the Sametime client. Comments (5)
Jens Bruntt December 10th, 2008 16:43:42