We have been trying to get DWA to function properly since about April or May of this year (2008). Admittedly, we have never used Domino, etc. before.
DWA just seems like unfinished software! It seems like beta software to me, and poor beta at that. Maybe we just were unfortunate with our timing. A Firefox security fix in FF3 apparently closed some weird access method used by DWA. I can’t believe IBM can’t do better than this! I really want this to work…
Does anybody believe that IBM does not provide a way to tell that there are unread messages in a mail folder using DWA?! What good are mail filters if you have to manually find any email that gets filed away by a filter? Darn! What is this?!
On the administrator side it seems that everything is more complex. I have been terribly disappointed. I have always detested Microsoft and held up IBM as a good example. Is this an IBM product?
Please, someone give me some encouragement! Is this likely to improve?
you’ve not used Domino before. I suggest you get some training. You also don’t mention what platform your server is running on. If you don’t know anything about the administration then you’ve got problems since you don’t understand how it’s configured. Are all users web users? Do you have policies in place etc… If you want simple web mail with zero administration use gmail.
Certainly training can help. However, John’s pointed out some valid concerns. Sometimes people who’ve used a product for a while get used to ignoring flaws. Someone coming in new, on the other hand, will notice them–plus they may be frustrated by things they are used to doing elsewhere.
Not working for IBM, I can’t make statements about how/when John’s concerns will be addressed. However, I’d suggest creating “Enhancement Requests” or, if they already exist, getting added to the list of interested customers.
As for bugs related to Firefox, support should be able to write SPRs for those (having been that route many times, it can be frustrating waiting for some SPRs that aren’t ranked as important to get fixed).
Regarding the administrative difficulties, perhaps John can elaborate on some of the concerns he has–then, perhaps, folks can offer some helpful tips. Training could be a big help in this area–plus experience. Having gotten tossed into Notes/Domino administration out of the blue (about 3 months after all our admins quit ), it has been an interesting experience. Some things work amazingly well…and some things are frustrating beyond belief.
Personally, I think the new v8 Web Mail is a big improvement over earlier versions. However, it still is a far cry from the full Notes client. John’s right about some fairly important functionality missing and I, too, am hopeful those shortcomings will be addressed in upcoming releases (sooner rather than later). I’m not sure what his constraints are, but he might want to look into running the Basic v8 client where possible.
Subject: Have you obtained the latest 8.0.1 hotixes
Sorry to hear you are having such issues.
Are you exclusively a FF3 shop? I find it really ironic that organizations will block upgrades from IE 7 to IE 6 but not from FF2 to FF3. Did you have similar issues with FF2? DWA has added a lot of missing capability within Firefox via signed script and then changes to FF3 have caused lots of issues to DWA and other apps which were using signed script. We have hotfixes now that resolve most of the critical usability issues. Have you obtained the latest hotfix for 8.0.x?
I hear your need for folder unread counts. You are not alone, and we are working to add this capability in a future release of iNotes, but regrettably, it will not be in 8.5.0 either. We actually implemented this capability in an earlier release and then found that it consumed much more server CPU and hence resulted in the product not being as scalable. We therefore decided not to ship that feature and are in the process of reworking it. We prioritized scalability over this feature. In hindsight, perhaps we should have offered a way to enable the feature and warn about the increased CPU consumption. Those with spare CPU on server would probably have been very happy to have such a feature.
Can you be more specific about what Administration issues you are encountering? Domino provides a lot of power and lot of knobs that might be turned. In most cases the default settings should work well. If you can be more specific with your issues, perhaps you might help us improve our products further.
Sorry guys, I was so disgusted I “walked away” for a few days…
We have about 3400 users all using DWA 8.01 with “some hotfix.” We had contractors come in to set us up, but the State ran low on funds and they are gone. We got very little knowledge transfer. About 5 of us in MIS have Domino client proper, but I try to use DWA myself to understand how to help our users. We really do not have an Administrator, per se.
We are actually doing better than we should be, I suppose.
One new “gotcha” in the last week is that fairly frequently (not half) when we create a new account, no mail file gets created. We were told a “fix,” but it takes a couple of days to take effect. Unfortunately this two day period seems to start over if you get excited and try to do it again. Oh well!
Thank you all for your responses. I am comparing this experience mostly to our previous iPlanet installation. Creating and deleting email accounts was soooo easy! I know Domino Web Access is much more than email, but without email it is not very useful…
), it has been an interesting experience. Some things work amazingly well…and some things are frustrating beyond belief.