The magic R word rears it’s head.

Well we have now been told that a number of redundancies are to be made within our dept within the next 2 weeks. Couple that with the “There is a concerted effort to move Notes out of the company” message I was told and it doesn’t bode too well. Fingers crossed.

Name & Address Book enhancements

Whilst the Sword of Damocles, or should I say Migration to Exchange, still hangs threatening above our heads, day-to-day work continues and one of those projects is an upgrade to Domino 8.5 for all our servers.  As a developer I am not hands-on involved with this, apart from bringing our Template for the Name & Address book up to date for 8.5 and moving across some of the enhancements we have made into the previous versions.  We use a number of modifications specifically for our Company’s setup around the use of Employee IDs to link to Active Directory accounts, some improvements in the Groups Form to allow pasting of these IDs into the Groups and the conversion to proper Notes names and the scheduled generation of groups based on the Canonicalised Naming Convention of Users.  However at a time of change, does anyone else have any suggestions for improvements that they have placed in the Name & Address book???

Sanity has to break out??

One of the big reasons for sticking with Lotus Notes within our company has been the customised template that we use that allows users to designate which project they are working on whenever they send an e-mail.   This then copies this e-mail into a Mail store for the relevant project, therefore at the end of every project we have every e-mail that is sent or received on that project.  Very useful if the client starts demanding to know why a particular decision was reached or why a change to the design was made and you can go back and say “Here you go, this is the discussion behind that decision”, or “The change was made because your boss said XYZ”, a very useful thing to have.  However we have been told that Exchange can’t easily do this, or at least force the users to make the decision, it would have to be a manual process they will have to remember every time they send an e-mail. Yeah right like that’s going to happen.

So we have another initiative around File management in general so someone decides, okay lets ignore that requirement for the mail replacement and we will include it in the specification for the file management project.  My problem with this is that the move to Exchange is scheduled for later this year, the file management project is a little further off, slight gap in functionality if you ask me, but then no body did.

However with a requirement to cut costs our File Management project has now bitten the dust and has been shelved, the question is now, exactly how long before someone realises that the move to Exchange must also been history???

Every cloud has a silver lining

Well the rumours are already starting going round about potential redundancies in other departments within our organisation, however it does raise the question that when a department is trying to save money, surely moving your e-mail system from Lotus Notes to Microshaft Exchange is not exactly the best career move.  Well that’s my opinion, not that anyone seems to take note of it!!

The wickedness of M$

Well a quick update as requested.  Things are still up in the air, approval for a move to Exchange has not yet been requested as the paperwork explaining why this is a good idea have not been completed.  An Exchange/Sharepoint pilot is planned, however  the remit for the pilot does not take in our standard type of users.  We have a heavily modified mail template which is critical for most users, but this is not being considered as part of the Exchange move as it is apparently being solved by another project looking at data management which at this time is still in the data gathering phase and I can’t see an equivalent solution coming out of this.

All in all it doesn’t look good, the reason why we should stick with Notes is being put to the side as simply not an issue whilst a justification for the massive expensive and disruption of a move to Exchange can’t possible be made, even if Exchange is better, it can’t be that good to make it worth while.

Oh to be heading to Orlando

Well another year dawns and another Lotusphere goes under attended so once again I end up relying on the Internet to keep me up-to-date.  Sometimes I do wonder if the next time I attend an interview I should enquire “Would you send me to LotusSphere, pppplllllleeeeeeaaaaasssssseeeeee????”.

With Notes 8.5 now released we are already planning a set of upgrades to both servers and clients (still running 6.5 for most users) and looking forward to the hoped benefits of DAOS.

Yes I know that I have kept on mentioning my concerns over Exchange, but as I keep pointing out to my boss, if we decide to move to Exchange tomorrow, it’s going to take a good year or two to move the users and about 5-10 years to convert all our apps.  Is the benefit really there I don’t think so!!!

So in the mean time we still need to go to Notes 8.5, then 9 and probably 10 the way things currently stand.  It does raise a lot of eyebrows over some decisions, but then again I think that’s not a bad idea.

Happy 2009 to all

Well here we go, 2009 a New Year and a professional Resolution I aim to keep.

“I will push Lotus Notes at every possible appropriate moment.”

This means that I am just about declaring war on those within my company who are sat in the M$ Exchange camp.  I am not going to fight a dirty tricks campaign, but I am not going away without a fight.  I will fight FUD with facts and dispell any myths that are being bandied about.

My first goal is to get a detailed justification for why we are moving to Exchange, the only justification I can’t fight is “Because it’s Microsoft” but then again if that is the justification that is put before the board then we find out if Notes’ future is secured or trashed.

Hmm Reality Check

Apparently someone in Management has asked to see some justification for the move. Interesting, if they actually put some thing down on paper to explain the move, then at least I can attempt to defend against any FUD that been included.

Oh what a tangled web we weave….

when we try to deceive.
So Exchange is coming, it’s all been signed off, however no one is going to admit it, no one wants to tell the users, no one wants me to tell the other developers that it’s highly likely that we are going to stop developing new Notes apps.  Any of those is going to cause IT management to have to answer some hard questions, the main one being, “Why are we moving to Exchange”, thus far the only answer I can possibly see that they can justify is “Because it’s Microsoft” there is surely no financial or technological justification that will hold up.  At the end of the day I am sure someone is getting a bung, probably the same manager that has spent a lot of time skiing over the years I have been with the company.

The comment I was told was that “All major developments of current Notes applications will have to be reviewed to make sure that Notes is the correct platform”.  My response, “Will All major developments of any current applications on any other platforms be reviewed to make sure that it’s on the correct platform” something that surely we should be doing everytime we make any major changes.

I can see that I am going to benefit from this change with new skills, however I can quite categorically say that “Lotus Notes Rocks” and new will I consider that changing, unless Lotus fuck it up completely.  So whilst this blog might cover migration issues from here on, the phrase “I bleed Yellow” will be true for some time and my next move into a new job at a new Company will be to be a Lotus Notes Developer.

Reality sinks in.

Sound the alarm, Exchange is coming.  Yes it really does sound as though it’s happening now.  I do have to ask one question, well a series of questions really, so anyone out there able to come up with real answers to any of thease??

1.  Exactly how much better than Notes did Exchange have to be to justify the cost of migrating 5000 users?

2.  If we are keeping Notes on as a Development platform, where exactly are the savings??

3. The real crunch – Is it possible to modify Outlook to add extra functionality to you Mail experience??? Something we have done to Notes and seems to be a business requirement.