Our Collabsphere Session about O365 from the viewpoint of an Admin and a User

Hogne Pettersen and I gave this session today at Collabpshere.

It is a mix of good, bad, bewildering, and impressive views about the whole O365 story, solution, and parts within it.

We could spend all day discussing this and are happy to do so if anyone wishes to ask for our help.

For more details, follow us on our Twitter accounts at @LotusEvangelist and @NordicCUG

Shoot me NOW! The Life and Death of an O365 Admin and User from Keith Brooks

Can you name 5 reasons why you like Outlook?

This is my question to you, if you say you prefer Microsoft Outlook over Lotus Notes.

So far, no one ever got past 3 reasons.

Seriously, you can't give reasons, yet you just want to get rid of Notes because of why?

I stress that I am looking for reasons that are true, not a "we heard Notes is dead" or some other Microsoft fed lines. Maybe now I can reply, really, I hear Ray Ozzie is retiring and with him goes all of Microsoft's developers, so be careful out there. He's like the pied piper, people will follow him anywhere. I know I would.

Technical reasons, even functionality reasons are acceptable. BUT, realize if you are on R6, or even R7, the problem is yours, not IBM's. IBM did it's part, they made R8 so much of what you asked for, yet you didn't upgrade for some reason. But I digress.

The ONLY thing that comes up is the ability to schedule an email to be sent in the future. And yes, it has uses, but even that can be done in Notes(with a little coding of a simple agent), set it up once and then use it forever.

Saving an email locally is possible now, natively. But to all those that demanded it, what was wrong with you printing to a PDF printer file all these years? Talk about over engineering something.

No one ever demands to use Exchange. Sad but true. Even Exchange administrators respect Domino for it's ability to stay up and keep running no matter what chaos is going around it.

So come on all you Redmond readers, hit me with it, or anyone else.

I'm bored by the usual answers, provide me with more to think about. Extra credit if you can justify the same function is available in Office 365 as it is in the outlook client.

In case you were wondering, LotusLive Notes is the Domino iNotes client and it does 95% of everything like the 32bit client.

BLF in the sign above stands for Bluff, or so the site said.

Where did you go wrong?

Ever wonder why companies move to Exchange or Gmail for email? I often ponder this as well. I also deal with it weekly, sometimes too late in the game to save the poor souls.

I can understand the feeling that "it's just email", which we all know is not the way to keep a company on Domino. If they really only use it for email, they will leave Lotus eventually. Shame on me, you, IBM and others for not encouraging more workflow and application solutions in their earlier days of the network.

Maybe it stems from politics. A new CIO,or more likely a new CEO. They want "Outlook". Notice they never say "Exchange". DAMO (Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook) allows for your users to have Outlook and run a superior server on the back end....Domino. The CXO will never know. Yet rarely does this get done.

The admin left, got fired, the server is in the middle of nowhere and thus it is difficult to find a Domino admin. A lame excuse if I ever heard one, yet also commonly put out as a reason for dropping Domino. If you are reading this and this is your predicament, call me NOW! Because of a similar situation we have hired 3 people around the country to cover these types of situations.

Server crashes all the time. I don't think so. Not if you have set it up properly, maintained it properly and of course cluster it which would mean you have 100% uptime.

The Client crashes all the time. Not on every one's machine. Just like Windows, Java or any other program if you have a problem, fix it. When your car gets a flat tire, do you trade it in for a new car? Again, if this sounds like you, call me NOW!

The UI is ancient. Really? So a tabbed interface is ancient? which is why Microsoft and Apple and Firefox use it? Show me another mail client you can manipulate what you see and move things around, not to mention dock or undock pieces and parts to anyplace on your desktop. Sorry that is the R8/8.5 UI. You probably have an R5 or R6 or R7 client which your IT staff has failed to upgrade in years and thus you are stuck in an old client.

And Outlook 2003, going on 6 years old now, is really new, isn't it.

Yes, if this is the case call NOW and we will help you, against your IT staff's wishes move to R8. Hang on, you can do it for yourself, go download it from IBM's Lotus site.

"Sharepoint is our strategic direction". Excuse me while I fall on the floor laughing. I had someone recently give me that line and I asked if they could elaborate on what that meant or quantify it in a value and ROI way. Received a nasty look and they walked away. Next time I should not ask about the ROI I guess.

What should you be doing more regularly with your customers, especially the ones only using Domino for email?

Talk to your clients, but listen once you have them in a discussion and let them lead you more to a solution they envision which will be much easier to "sell" to them afterward.

Show them. Try pointing them to an app on your website, encourage dialogue to find how an application can fit into their world. Xpages apps, even simple ones will go far.

Communicate with them. Send them links to openntf.org and ask them what they want to try to use.

Show them again, planetlotus.org and your favorite developers blog posts.

If you really get stuck, skip over your contact and go for the CXO directly so they can't say no one ever tried to talk to them or show them what is out there for them. After all you have nothing to lose at this point.

Long Live Lotus Workplace

Yes I said it and I stick to it.
Although not the way most people are thinking.

I was so happy to see it come out, finally an effort was being made to rebrand Lotsu Notes in some way, any way. How bad could it be? right? OK, so the technical side may have had some issues.

But finally someone in Marketing or Sales or Product Management at IBM or Lotus or Iris came up with the idea to rebrand Lotus Notes. If this was Mike Rhodin or not I can't say but hopefully this was the intent, although it seemed to everyone the Websphere people had a heavy hand on it.

You see, how many other products exist in the technology market place for nearly 20 years with the same moniker/name? Not many.

Microsoft is excellent at this gamne. IBM has not always been so good at it. Websphere was an excellent idea for a brand name for a half dozen products to be together and work, with some customization. Rebranding Lotus Notes or Sametime or Quickplace the IBM Communication suite or whatever thoughts really was not so helpful.

Microsoft reinvents it's own every few years or 2-3 versions. Looiing at tyhe client side alone:
Ms Mail? gone.
Jet mail? Who? Gone(check your Outlook and Exchange files and the updates to it's engine in EVERY version since MS Mail).
Exchange Mail 4,5,5.5 gone.
Outlook Express....gone but still in existence.
Outlook 2003 must still exist because few went to office 2007 or outlook 2007 without upgrading their whole infrastructure to Windows 2008 first and 64 bit too. W
Outlook 2007 may be the last time you hear about it.

Next up MS Live, Live Mail or whatever MS will call it. But I am fairly sure it will not be Outlook in name(although will be under the covers just as Jet and Msmail and exchange mail still run pieces of the Outlook client code.

The bottom line is if we want Lotus Notes and Domino to find a new base in a new era within a time frame web 2.0+ we must rebrand it and give up the name we so love and cherish.

Alan Lepofsky's recent post touches on this and it would be interesting to see where this goes.

DAMO demo provides a list of reason to go Lotus

Must be careful, clients now read this :-)
So I am doing my DAMO demo and in all honesty, why would someone still say they prefer Outlook?

After seeing a Notes R8 client, in this case 801, and an Office 2003 Outlook client running DAMO (which the R7 DAMO runs on currently as I eagerly await the beta of Damo FOR R8 for Vista/Office 2007) how could one sit there and still think Outlook is superior.

Sure, I am biased, but really, can Outlook:
1) go modular? Notes R8 standard client can if you click on the drop down of a sidebar option and select open in new window. My favorite function. Why is this important to me? Because sometimes I want the item seen while mail is minimized.

2) Stop adding tons of tabs to my screen for every task? Notes has had a tabbed interface sine R5(I believe) and even Microsoft finally gave in that it was a better choice, just look at IE7.

3) Do anything beyond email? Enough said.

4) Can you open a browser from WITHIN Outlook so you don't have to go out to another screen/browser? I can in Notes clients since R4 which is going on 10 years ago!

5) Provide an ROI out of the box? Notes can and has! Now with R8 the client does make life easier, no longer do I need to open extra applications, multiple sites or services, they all can run from within my Notes client, perfectly happy and waiting for my time of need. Need to look up a client's info, invoice someone, forward pricing or look it up, I can do it all from one client license fee.

6) Create a spreadsheet or presentation or contract on the fly? With the built in Symphony suite I can. In fact, if you had configured it years ago, even in the time of Office 2000 you could do this from within a Notes client or application without looking for your icons. OK, some poeple who know how to edit their toolbars could have done this, but few ever did which is why Microsoft created that mini toolbar that floats on top of everything.

From the "about this database" of the Office Library found in Notes clients.
What does this database do?
This database gives Notes users the ability to seamlessly create and save documents using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Paintbrush, without leaving Notes.

Is there more? Sure, but this will keep you going for a little while.

Evangelism is fun, especially within your own organization.

So few people ever think out of the box, and now there is a software communication client that allows one to stay in the box.

What? No gutter in 8.0.1? And why unread is Bold Black

I can confirm from a high level IBM Executive I met very briefly today that the gutter which I and many so wanted to return and were told it would return in 8.0.1 is not.
It will be in 8.0.2 which is due in Q3 most likely. Of course by then 8.5 is expected(well Dec 32nd)so just wrap the code together get the developers to stop overlapping and get 8.5 out sooner.
Oh and it will be an option and UNABLED by default.

In a 2nd question I asked him why we went to a bold black line for unread emails after the red and I was told because that was a Windows(Outlook) I presume he meant standard.
That is NOT a good reason to do anything. While I admit Microsoft has some nice UI work from their team(although consistency in toolbars/ribbons and function keys still has a long way to go)I do not consider bold black part of that UI work.

Sure, red is a bad color in some cultures and if I was so interested in changing it I could track down the .css file 8 levels down in a some directory and change the color.

Would it be so hard to add a simnple 8 color check box into preferences to accomplish this for the END USERS who want to change it without bothering the poor overworked developers?