German client - A NIGHTMARE!

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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Hi R6 suffering fellows, hi IBM,

usually we do not use a x.0 version of a product… but what I have heard about R6, sounded encouraging: “At least as good as 5.03”.

So we did migrate from Exchange 5.5…

AND NOW THE LAST 2 WEEKS I DID NOTHING ELSE THAN RUNNING FROM ONE CLIENT TO THE NEXT - collecting, working around or even “fixing” all the errors!!

Here is a shortened list:

Serious bugs:

=============

If you click on any Calendar link (on the left bar or the welcome page), the frameset often shows surprising things: the mail frameset, a new memo, todos…

The only way to open (at least the view) it is View | Goto… Calendar

One client CAN NOT create any calendar entry: “Duplicate PUBLIC name CSEVENTOBJ in USE module CSCalendarEntry_de-DE”. This appears about 15 times…

The replication schedule… falls to a deep sleep on most clients (but not on all!!!).

Any priority setting in the replicator is always set to normal, when the client is shut and reopened.

General bugs (in both language versions):

=============

If you have more than one pop account at the same server, you get a pop protocoll error.

(work around from this group: place the popserver’s IP in the second account - hrmm, so I should look every week, if the IP has changed?? And: what should I do with the 3rd account?!).

We use a mixed environment (90% german, 10% english), so the mail template is multilingual. After a design refresh (02:00) one language typ of user mail file has no longer a default form! Result: Our english members (or the german) cannot read new arriving internet mails! (-> I had to prohibit design refresh for the memo form in the english clients :frowning:

Ugly things:

============

The memo header is too small, it does not show the subject (same on one english client).

Strange mouse sign on german clients… well … but on one client it’s a big black square (twice as high as a button)!

to be continued…

AM I THE ONLY DESPAIRING AND REALLY FRUSTRATED USER/DESIGNER/ADMIN?!

Uwe Jandt

atacama Software

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Subject: German client - A NIGHTMARE!

Well, I can help you with one of your problems at least…

If you have more than one pop account at the same server, you get a pop protocoll error.

(work around from this group: place the popserver’s IP in the second account - hrmm, so I should look every week, if the IP has changed?? And: what should I do with the 3rd account?!).

Create aliases in your hosts file and point the account documents to those. That way you can have as many POP accounts on the one server as you like.

This is not a new ND6 problem - it has existed since R4.6.

Most of your other issues are not common problems, and I would suggest that they are related to your migration rather than the client itself. ND6 has been exceptionally stable according to all reports. Try a fresh install of one client and see if the issues are still there.

I tend to think that when many people have one experience with a product and one person has a different experience that the problem doesn’t lie with the product…

Stephen Lister
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Subject: RE: German client - A NIGHTMARE!

Stephen, thanks for your quick answer,

one problem which I could imaging has sth do to with migration is the 15 times error message when creating a new calendar entry.

BUT - the missleading links, the not working replicator… doesn’t look, as if it has anything to do with mail data! AND: I find more complaints about this here!

If you search this forum about foreign clients, I think you could find a lot of “common problems”…

Thanks for the better (but also adminstrative more than just one click :slight_smile: workaround for pop. BTW: To you have contol over all of your company’s workstations hosts files?

Uwe

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Subject: RE: German client - A NIGHTMARE!

To you have contol over all of your company’s workstations hosts files?

I imagine it could be done using login scripts (or the equivalent) for whatever network OS you’re running… I do agree that it should be handled better by Notes itself, but until then there’s not a lot else we can do.

Stephen Lister
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Subject: RE: German client - A NIGHTMARE!

you are right Stephen - and I appreciate your help :-))

but don’t you agree that R6 still “comes a bit too early”? (Although a lot of people - me included - would have liked to use it even earlier… :slight_smile:

I’m NOT married to microsoft… but I have never seen such a crazy behaving GUI on any MS product in the last years!

I really had/have a lot of trouble in my company during the last 2 weeks… since I tried to migrate to domino.

It is not easy to convince collegues (not to mention the bosses…), that a program can have a lot of advantages, when all they see is that they almost CAN’T WORK.

nevertheless… I’ still looking forward to… well … some happy times in the future… programming something quick & nice & special, which would have cost me days to do in Exchange.

Uwe

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Subject: RE: German client - A NIGHTMARE!

I’ve had almost no issues with ND6 at all, but I’m running the English version. I’m yet to be convinced that your problems are entirely based on you using the German version, but it’s quite possible…

As you don’t seem willing to follow my advice to isolate where the problem is by doing a single clean install and testing on that I don’t know what else we can do for you. I’d suggest that you put in an official support call to Lotus - this isn’t a formal support venue, and anything that you get here isn’t necessarily official. If you put in a support call then you should get official action on your problems, at least to the point of discovering whether they are in fact based in the German client or elsewhere.

Stephen Lister
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Subject: German client - a single clean install?

thanks again for your reply - on Friday I already got a phone/eMail contact from IBM (only telling me that they will forward… but it’s a beginning :slight_smile: … and if I get any information from them, which are of general interest, I will surely post it here!

What do you mean by single clean install? What I can/will do is to install another german client and to register a (german) “clean” user on the server without migrating anything. Then I can play with the UI - and will post the results.

Or do you mean to setup a whole new server?

And: please look at the answer from Mathias (“Uwe is talking…”) - it really looks as if I’m not alone…

Have a nice rest of a Sunday, or good start of the week :slight_smile:

Uwe

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Subject: RE: German client - a single clean install?

Dear Uwe,

you are not alone indeed. The German version has been banned here. But one advise. If you rely on this forum instead of thourougly testing on your own, your domino adventure might stop soon.

You migrate from another product. I can hardly believe that you did not test it thorougly before making the switch.

I do not know any internals of your company but indeed what you are trying to do is some kind of suicide.

Annoyed users is not a good start for a migration, no matter if it is Lotus Notes are something else.

Use the English client with the German mail template, it might help.

All my D6 users are using the English version and it works okay.

Cheers

Heini

Cannot find external name:DOC

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Subject: German client - no guns or knifes around I hope… :slight_smile:

Heini,

of course I tested it… as good & as much as I had the time to do it.

You will agree that a test is - in most cases - sth different to the “real world”.

Maybe I do not tested it thoroughly enough… I first tested the PR in september, then this january we tested R6.0 with 3 clients & 1 week, one english, one mixed with admin/designer, one german.

What is “funny” is that not all german clients behave exactly the same, some do not show these strange frames, other sometimes, other almost always… I believe it must have sth to do with the cache & bookmark.

Still alive… :wink:

Uwe

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Subject: RE: German client - a single clean install?

I meant what you’re going to do - install a non-migrated client and see if the UI still has problems. If it does, then it is more likely that the problems are related to the client, not the upgrade.

Stephen Lister
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Subject: No nightmares here

We’ve migrated without the problems you describe. You say you migrated from Exchange 5.5. Did you have enough Notes/Domino expertise at your disposal, when migrating? An experienced business partner?

The problems you have are certainly no known bugs. ND6.0 has been publicly beta tested for almost two years, these kind of errors would have been noticed.

Save the problem with pop accounts, that has been discussed in the beta forum. You can have as many accounts for one ISP as you want… as long as you use the servers’ IP address for all account documents but the first. So you can have three of them. It’s not nice, I know, but it’s doable. (update: Stephen has a better workaround here )

About ‘Duplicate PUBLIC name CSEVENTOBJ in USE module CSCalendarEntry_de-DE’, you could try deleting the scriptlibrary ‘CSCalendarEntry_de-DE’ and then do a replace design. This solution was given by Lotus for a similar problem in the R5 mailfile.

Design refresh: do the templates have default forms set?

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Subject: RE: No nightmares here

GUI:Interesting that you do not have any problems with the GUI?!

No strange framesets? The clients run under W2K Build 2195 SP2.

When the user sees the “wrong” calendar frameset, i.e. the mailframes instead of calendar frames, and he tries to “swith to mail” (Dropdown in the header of the left frame), he gets a frameset in a frameset.

POP accounts:

When I create 3 pop accounts, one with a name, and 2 with (identical) IP, I get a 100% pop cotocol error.

Design refresh:

The multiling template has of course a default form - and I can even understand the error: it can have ONLY ONE default form. So if the german “Memo” is the default, all the german mail files are OK after refresh and the english are missing the default form. And vice versa.

So my workaround is to prohibit in my english mail files the refresh of the memo form.

But I cannot be the only one who experienced this multilingual “feature”?!

Uwe

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Subject: W2K with SP2? Lotus recommends SP6a at a minimum.

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Subject: RE: W2K with SP2? Lotus recommends SP6a at a minimum.

There is no SP6a for W2k. SP6a is for NT4.

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Subject: You are right. My brain must be dead today.

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Subject: Uwe is talking about the GERMAN 6.0 client

…and Uwe is right.I really love N/D 6 and we’ve tested the product together with IBM for more than 2 years without this kind of problems. But this is the german translation of N/D6 and there are A LOT of bugs. We’ve stopped the rollout of N6 for the non-english regions because of this.

I discussed this with a lot of developers @ Lotusphere.

And btw: I also posted this in the BP Forum 2002 some weeks ago - without any response…

regards,

Mathias Pohl

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Subject: RE: Uwe is talking about the GERMAN 6.0 client

Thanks Mathias :slight_smile:

… it is somehow “nice” to hear that we are not the only one in this hemisphere, who is struggling with the german client!

BTW - You mentioned the BP Forum: As we are also BP… is it open for all, and hrmm… how to join?

I’m almost always get lost on IBM’s web site…

…or get errors…

Thanks for your “company” (couldn’t say it better in my English)

Uwe

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Subject: access to Partner forum

Check out http://www.lnn.com on how to get access to Partner Forum

Hans - IBM Norway