Today I fine tuned the new feature of Domino To Go to push new or changes documents back to Domino just via HTTP, without the need to modify the target NSF.

And I did the fine tuning by implementing the most requested feature of NotesBook: create new entries right on the iPhone or iPad. And here we are!



In the video you can see the new "New Entry" dialog and how the new entry is being saved on the device, displayed in the view on the device and pushed back to Domino in the background. Then it's visible in Lotus Notes, too.
And while I was at it, I moved the "settings" button down into the tabgroup, it feels more natural there.

There are a couple of notable things about this new feature:

• The NSF, that means your personal Lotus Notes Journal (Notebook) does not need to be modified at all. It just works.
• I tested the feature against a Domino 8.5.2 server, but I'm pretty sure that it will work with other 8.5.x servers, too.
• If your iPhone or iPad is offline, the new entry will be stored in a local cache.
• When the device gets a network, NotesBook will automatically upload the new entry in the background (when the App is visible).
• Otherwise, the upload is tried again when you resume the App or when you click the "sync" button.
• No, editing entries is not possible at the moment. See this blog post for details.

Again, the actual code in the iOS App to create a new JournalEntry document is very easy:

---
var doc App.notesdb.createDocument();
doc.replaceItemValue("form", "JournalEntry");
doc.replaceItemValue("subject", App.window_newentry.inputSubject.value);
doc.replaceItemValue("Body", App.window_newentry.inputText.value);
doc.replaceItemValue("webcategories", App.window_newentry.inputCategory.value);
var today new Date();
var todayString today.getMonth() + 1 + "/" + today.getDate() + "/" + (today.getYear()+1900);
doc.replaceItemValue("DiaryDate", todayString);
doc.save();
---

All the complicated stuff about storing the data in the local cache and uploading it to Domino is covered by YouAtNotes Domino To Go.

With this new feature in NotesBook I proved that the new code to upload stuff to Domino via standard Domino HTTP POST commands works. That was a big milestone for the upcoming beta.
Just to clarify for those who are interested in Domino To Go: the toolkit has two modes:

a) full functionality when you copied some XPages into the NSF
b) most functionality without any modification of the NSF

Details are documented here.

So we're coming closer to the beta release :-) I'll let you know when it's done.

The next version of NotesBook is planned for sometime in february, I'd like to add support for iNotes based journals/notesbook in this release, too.

You know, my small iOS App NotesBook syncs the content of your personal Lotus Notes Journal (Notebook) to your iPhone or iPad. The App was made with our upcoming toolkit for development of iOS Apps for Lotus Notes, Domino To Go.

Several users of NotesBook asked me to allow creating new entries for the personal Lotus Notes Journal (Notebook) right on the iPhone/iPad.

Since a few days Domino To Go provides the technology for doing just that, in Domino To Go I can now create new NotesDocuments and push them to Domino without the need to modify the target NSF database (previously, we needed a special XPage in the NSF).
That means I can do stuff like this now in my iOS App:

var db = new NotesDatabase('http://server/roaming/jdoe/journal.nsf', 'notesbook');
var doc = db.createDocument();
doc.replaceItemValue("subject", "my new entry");
doc.replaceItemValue("body", "content of my new entry");
doc.save();
db.uploadChanges();

Without the need to modify the design of the NSF, all done by standard Domino HTTP POST requests.
So, technically creating new entries for the journal on the iPhone/iPad is no problem anymore. I just wonder if that actually makes sense.

Because: it will only be possible to create a new entry, but not to edit entries. The journal entries in Notes contains RichText, and there is no RichText editor on the iPhone or iPad. And even if it where (for example, I could use a CKEditor embedded in a browser component), it would only allow to edit portions of the RichText, while stuff like sections would be deleted.
Furthermore, to edit entries I would need to download full Domino documents to the device, which is currently not possible without modifying the NSF (we need a special XPage for downloading full documents to the device).
In the end, editing existing entries is not possible.

That means the flow would be:

- create a new entry on the iPhone or iPad with plaintext for the body
- click a "save" button
- the entry will be uploaded to Domino (or queued if the device is offline)
- the entry will be displayed beside the other entries, but without the possiblity to change it

So, does this makes sense? Or would it only annoy users because they don't understand why they can create a new entry on the iPhone/iPad, but not edit it afterwards.

On a side note, I already fixed some small bugs in NotesBook and I'm planning to support the Notebook part of iNotes, too.
After that, I'll look into downloading images and/or attachments to the device.

On Lotusphere, we presented our new product Domino To Go for the first time to the public. And it was very successful. It seems that have a solution for developing native, offline capable "Lotus Notes" Apps for iPhone and iPad (and Android, in the near future) that the customers really like.

Everyone I showed Domino To Go during Lotusphere told me that Domino To Go is impressive and the way to go. That was quite nice to hear :-)
So for us, that means to proceed on this road and to make Domino To Go available as polished product as fast as possible. And we will do exactly that.

In the next days and weeks we will:

- release a public beta
- follow up to all people we talked to during Lotusphere
- notify people about the beta when it's available
- finialize pricing
- adding more marketing stuff to the website
- selecting some customers to do the first projects with

We are working on the beta release right now, we only want to squeeze one more initial feature into the framework and test some obfuscating techniques so that it's resonable hard to reverse-engineer the code.
Furthermore, we need some legal stuff to protect our code from being distributed freely throughout the net, since we are well aware that obfuscating is no real protection.

So if you want to be a beta tester, please be prepared to sign some piece of paper before getting your hands on the code. Personally I don't like to do that, but since there is no real protection for the code, we feel that this is neccessary.

Did you ever tried to use a Dojo TabContainer (tabbed table) in a non-trivial page with Internet Explorer?

It basically works. But the Internet Explorer is so damn slow that you can see the single tabs below eachother while the page is being loaded, and only after loading they are rendered in a tabbed table. That's not an issue in other browsers like Firefox or Chrome.

BTW the same problem occurs when you try to change stuff like CSS classes with Dojo's dojo.addOnLoad() method... works perfectly in any modern browser, in Internet Explorer, you see the changes happen on the page because the Internet Explorer is so slow.

And it's the very same even in the most recent Internet Explorer 9!  U N B E L I E V A B L E !

It's really a total mistery to me why a company like Microsoft ist not able to create a modern, useful browser.

At Orlando, there was a free public Wifi, just as expected and just like in many places in the US.

In Frankfurt, Germany, there is Wifi, too. But from Telekom which only generously allows 30 minutes (!!!) of free internet access, after that you have to pay. In Frankfurt Airport! One important international airport with lots and lots of international guests. They must think that Germany is some kind of developing country. How embarassing.

Our logo and one of our products (screenshot on the right) was on the big display in the General Opening Session at Lotusphere 2012. Nice :-)

Believe it or not, there are migrations to Lotus Notes, too. During Lotusphere a collegue told me about a big job he is working on: a company in Europe migrates 17.000 users from Exchange to Lotus Notes.

I cannot write more details, but nevertheless, it's good to hear such kind of news.

The last day of Lotusphere 2012 is here: a good time to write down some thoughts.

From the sight of a vendor

You know, YouAtNotes had a pedestal in the showcase. There were less pedestals than last year, but that was no disadvantage - on the contrary! There were more people coming to the showcase and less vendors, which is a good combination (at least for us, the vendors).

We had a very good flow of visitors, and most of them were interested in Domino To Go, our solution for creating native mobile Apps for Lotus Notes applications. Boy, we really got very, very good feedback and everyone told us that our Domino To Go is the way to go.

So, showing Domino To Go on Lotusphere for the first time was a huge success. Now we will have a lot of work after the Lotusphere: releasing the public beta, creating more marketing materials, contacting all the leads from Lotusphere... but we're absolutely looking forward to that :-)

Furthermore, we had good and interesting talks with various IBM executives. And that is one very important thing for us on Lotusphere: meeting people and building connections. Because in the end, the personal contact is invaluable and cannot be replaced by the internet.

About Lotus Notes and Domino

"Social Business" was the motto this year, and for IBM, this translates to "Connections", leaving very few space for Lotus Notes and Domino. I am fully aware that the classic Notes business decreases, since a lot of people want to do browser based stuff, cloud and so on. And I do not have a problem with that.

IBM invested a lot of resources into XPages and making Domino and Designer a "kick ass" development platform again. While it can be discussed if they reached the "kick ass" goal, personally I'm very happy with XPages, Domino Designer and the Extension Library. All of that feels modern to me and enables me to create very, very good solutions very, very fast.

Even more I (and many other business partners and developers) are concerned about the NSF database format. Everyone knows that NSF is great, but it's old and has it's problems (32K anyone? Full text indexing latency? Scalability with many documents?).

And just as I expected, IBM simply does nothing about it. Nothing. Not. a. single.word. about. improving. NSF.
Or did I miss something?

That's a dissapointment. NSF is falling behind other No-SQL solutions, and while XPages might attract new developers, the will be scared away again when they learn about the ancient problems of NSF. What a pity.

So, what did IBM announce in the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino space?

No Notes 9, but a Notes and Domino "Social Edition". IBM claims that jumping to version 9 would scare customers because such a version jump seems to need huge "migration projects". That is true, so using a different name is a smart move.

But to be honest, I didn't saw anything that would justify a big version jump anyway.

There are some nice improvements like embedding "social containers" in mail (that means, you can receive mails where you can actually do things without leaving the mail context, for example approving a workflow). But nothing big such as a client with a smaller footprint or an XPages RichText editor matching up to the Notes RichText editor.

Lotus Domino gets some improvements, too, for example stuff like OpenAuth support needed to work with other social software. As far as I see, these improvements are made by using "plugins" (like the Extension Library), the core of Domino remains mostly untouched.

So, mostly Notes and Domino stay where they are while being improved here and there.

Notes Plugin for the Browser

One really nice announcement is the upcoming general availability of a plugin for the browser, which executes Lotus Notes applications. That's great for organizations wanting to standardize on the browser and get rid of the Notes client. From what I've heard, the plugin weights well below 100MB and runs the Notes application in something like a basic Notes client.
The plugin will be first available for Firefox and IBM is considering which second browser to support.

Connections, social this, social that

If I would get a dollar for every time I read or heared "social" during this Lotusphere, I could retire and relocate to a sunny island of my own. On the marketing side, all this social wording is ok for me, because if a customers buys this social thing they have to come to IBM. Microsoft has nothing in this area.

On the personal side, I don't see any difference in working "social" than in our past and present way of working. What's "social" about? As far as I understand, it's about working together, in a community. While members of the community might be collegues from my own company or customers.

Guess what? We are working this way for years. I cannot see what's really "new" with this "social business" approach.

OK, I can build some kind of internal facebook. I can store files so that everyone can actually access them. That's nice and can be helpful, but for us and our customers it's only nice to have, not must have.

And again, even if this sounds old-school, E-Mail is the primary communication channel for us and our customers. And I fail to see why I should replace my E-Mail inbox with an activity stream that spams me with a zillion of notifications. I hate this in facebook, and I would hate this in any other internal, facebook style tool, too.

In my E-Mail inbox, I can mark mails as read and unread, I can move them out of the inbox when I'm done with them. Can I do such thing in the activity stream?
If not, how do I seperate items where I have to work on from items I'm done with?

Don't get me wrong, Connections is a great tool if you have the problems that are solved by Connections. And IBM is creating a market where Microsoft has nothing to compete, that is very good. But it's clearly an enterprise tool and therefore not that important for most of the medium and small businesses out there.

I think for those companies, XPages, Domino and Notes are still more important (in that order).

Resumee

For us, it has been a great Lotusphere. There is a lot of business opportunity out there for our new Domino To Go product.
For Connections, it has a been a great event, too.
For Domino, XPages and Notes there were highs and lows.

Beside that, there were some other important new products, too. Like IBM Docs (think Google Docs, but better and from IBM). It has a great name, and is a great tool.

On the personal side, I enjoyed this special community once more very, very much. You, the people I talked with, the people I do business with, the people that read my articles, you make the difference. Thank you.

Some impressions about setting up our booth, the environment and the welcome reception:



The video is made with iMovie on the iPhone, the music is a little bit too loud, I will make that better in the next video :-)