What is Lotus Notes?

What does it do

What is Lotus Notes?
I'm not 100% sure, but it's some kind of ANCIENT database/knowledge management system. Best avoided methinks...



[edit] Lol, as I suspected Lotus Notes is cheese! http://lotusnotessucks.4t.com/index.html
Reply:Lotus Notes is basically a client end software which helps you to read your corporate emails. You have to install it on your machine.

It is the same like Microsoft outlook. Outlook works with Microsoft exchange and Lotus Notes works with Lotus Domino.
Reply:Lotus Notes is a client-server, collaborative application owned by IBM Software Group. IBM defines the software as an "integrated desktop client option for accessing business e-mail, calendars and applications on [an] IBM Lotus Domino server."[1].



The Notes client is mainly used as an email client, but also acts as an instant messaging client (for Lotus Sametime), browser, notebook, and calendar/resource reservation client, as well as a platform for interacting with collaborative applications. People who support the Notes client regard the easy interoperability of all of these roles as a major advantage in multiple-application business environments. In the early days of the product, the most common applications were threaded discussions and simple contact management databases. Today Notes also provides blogs, wikis, RSS aggregators, CRM and Help Desk systems, and organizations can build a variety of custom applications for Notes using Domino Designer.





IBM Lotus Notes 7 customized Welcome Page.

Lotus Notes Page in Lotus Notes 6.5

Lotus Notes Release 5 client workspaceThe Notes client can be used as an IMAP and POP e-mail client with non-domino mail servers. Recipient addresses can be retrieved from any LDAP server, including Active Directory. The client also does web browsing although most people configure it to launch their default browser instead.



Features include group calendaring and scheduling, SMTP-based e-mail (HTML based e-mail is available to Java developers), NNTP-based news support, and automatic HTML conversion of all documents by the Domino HTTP task.



Notes instant messaging allows you to see your coworkers online and have chat sessions with them. A chat session can be with one person or multiple people (an instant meeting).



In its latest version (7), Notes provides a web services interface. Domino can be a web server for HTML files too; authentication of access to Domino databases or HTML files uses Domino's own user directory and external systems such as Microsoft's Active Directory.



A design client is available to allow rapid development of databases consisting of forms, which allow users to create documents; and views, which display selected document fields in columns.



In addition to being a "groupware" system (e-mail, calendaring, shared documents and discussions), Notes/Domino is also a platform for developing customized client-server and web applications. Its use of design constructs and code provide capabilities that facilitate the construction of "workflow" type applications (which may typically have complex approval processes and routing of data).



Lotus Notes is a unique environment. It was designed to be a collaborative application platform where email was just one of numerous applications that ran in the Notes client software. The Notes client was also designed to run on multiple platforms including Windows, OS/2, Mac, SCO Open Desktop UNIX, and Linux. These two factors have resulted in the user interface containing some differences from applications that only run on Windows. Furthermore these differences have often remained in the product to retain backward compatibility with earlier releases, in favor of conforming to Windows UI standards. Some of Notes differences include:



Notes requires users to select a 'New Memo' to send an email, rather than New Mail.

Some keystrokes that some other popular mail applications bind to commonly used features do not work in Notes. Examples are:

Notes uses Ctrl-%26gt;M to create a new mail, whereas some other mail clients use Ctrl-%26gt;N for this purpose. (However, Netscape's mail component and Mozilla Thunderbird also use Ctrl-%26gt;M on a PC, or Shift-%26gt;Command-%26gt;M on a Macintosh).

Ctrl-%26gt;R, to create an email reply, also does not work in Notes, which uses Alt-%26gt;2,R for this purpose.

Notes uses F9 as its refresh key and F5 to log a user out without terminating the program. Some Microsoft applications (e.g., Outlook 2002, Explorer, Internet Explorer) use F5 as a refresh key, others (e.g. Outlook 2003, Word, Excel) use F9. F9's use as the refresh key in PC applications pre-dates Microsoft's choice of F5. It dates from the early 1980s, when Lotus 1-2-3 was the most popular PC application.

Deleting a document (or email) will delete it from every folder in which it appears, since the folders simply contain links to the same back-end document. Some other email clients only delete the email from the current folder; if the email appears in other folders it is left alone, requiring the user to hunt through multiple folders in order to completely delete a message. In Notes, clicking on "Remove from Folder" will remove the document only from that folder leaving all other instances intact.

To select multiple documents in a Notes view, you have to drag your mouse next to the documents that you want to select, rather than using Shift-%26gt;Click action. (NB: Lotus plans to address this in the "Hannover" release of Notes, of which more below).

The searching in Notes is a "phrase search", rather than the more common "or search", and Notes requires users to spell out boolean conditions in search string. As a result, users must search for ‘delete and folder’ in order to find help text that contains the phrase ‘delete a folder’. Searching for ‘delete folder’ does not yield the desired result.

Notes's built-in full text search engine will only find email in the currently selected folder or view; if you click search while you're in your Inbox, then that's the only place that the search will look. To the user, it can appear that Notes has lost the email, in this case, when in fact, the user is simply "not looking in the correct place". (The correct place to initiate search is the Notes mailbox's All Documents view, if you want to search the entire mailbox.)

The All and Sent folders exhibit some different behaviors than other folders. Namely, you cannot drag email out of them and thereby remove the email from the folders. The email can only be "copied" from them. This is because these two folders are not, in fact, folders at all: they are views. Their membership indexes are maintained according to programmed criteria rather than user interaction (as with a folder). This technical difference is not apparent to some users. This difference does make sense, however. For example, does an email that is removed from a Sent Mail folder become an email that was never sent? And does an email that is removed from an All view (as opposed to deleted outright) then become an email that no longer exists? And if not, where do you look for it?

Like all popular commercial software packages, Lotus Notes has its detractors as well as supporters. Critics assert that there are dedicated email clients that are simpler, more intuitive and have a lower purchase price. Proponents argue that richer capabilities and advanced programmability are available, and that purchase price is a small fraction of total cost of ownership. Many of the differences mentioned above are seen by some as weaknesses in the product, especially when the user interface is compared to Windows only applications.



Later releases of the product made some headway in addressing end-user complaints. Notes 6.5 (2003), in particular, paid some long needed attention to the e-mail client, which has traditionally been regarded as the product's Achilles heel. Features added at this time include:



drag and drop of folders

replication of unread marks between servers

follow-up flags

reply and forward indicators on emails

ability to edit an attachment and save the changes back to an e-mail

In terms of usability, this release went a good way towards redressing the balance with arch-rival, the Microsoft Outlook/Microsoft Exchange combination, which had incorporated many of these features for a number of years.
Reply:Lotus Notes is a proprietary, client-server collaborative software and email system owned by Lotus Software, of the IBM Software Group.
Reply:Hi,

Lotus Notes is a client-server, collaborative application owned by IBM Software Group. IBM defines the software as an "integrated desktop client option for accessing business e-mail, calendars and applications on [an] IBM Lotus Domino server.

I have used the following book to laren a bit more about Lotus Notes:

http://www.mangotango.co.uk/Lotus-Notes-...



Cheers.