Lotus Notes 8: can it support these features?

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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Dear forum users,

I work in a company which the last year moved from a linux based POP3 account to Domino and Lotus notes, for a major mail experience. We encountered lots of problems, many of them solved, but there are some critical ones which we haven’t already solved. The problems are listed below; we will appreciate every solution. I repeat, every tiny comment will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advantage for your answers,

Best regards

Andrea

  1. Notes clients loses configurations. It happens that after windows automatic update lotus notes loses his configuration. After the launch of the application you have to reconfigure as if it is has just installed for the first time. Any suggestion on how to solve it?

  2. Sometimes happens that many notes client receive from the internet email with attachments mentioned “xxxxx.dat”, with written in the email “see attachment xxxx.pdf” (case of pdfs). Ever had this trouble?

  3. Automatic return receipt. If you need, in lotus notes you have to tell the client all the times that the message needs the "return receipt". Is there a function to set for all the outgoing messages the return receipt header without human actions?

  4. Do you know a template which is similar, in functions, to outlook? (ex. Message views per dates, etc)

  5. Lotus email savings. Is there a method to save lotus notes emails in one format which can be opened with lotus or another mail client (ex. .msg outlook or standard .eml)?

  6. HTML compatibility. It happens that html mails in notes are hard to digest. Sometimes many of them stucks lotus notes; sometimes ther the "copy and past" render of html sources (from web pages ecc. to a LN mail) is horrible and deforms all the original layout. Why?

  7. Is there a way to change rapidly signature in lotus notes (not going in 30 jumps on all menus for manually selecting the signature)?

  8. Is there a way to select the second email contact of a addressbook member when sending an email via lotus notes (as in outlook)?

  9. Is there a way to delay email sendings, so the messages lies for some minutes in the outbox before being sent?

  10. When printing an email, if the senders name are too large it happens that recipients names are “inpiped” one on each other, cutting half a page for only showing the email addresses. Do you know how to adjust the recipient’s view?

  11. Sometimes lotus notes tells that there isn’t any “sitemap” and you need to restart Lotus Notes. Do you know why?

  12. Is there a way to use word as a editor for lotus notes emails (it’s more complete than the integrated one)!

Thank you!

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Subject: Re: Lotus Notes 8: can it support these features?

See my responses to the best of my knowledge in-line below.

  1. Notes clients loses configurations. It happens that after

windows automatic update lotus notes loses his configuration. After
the launch of the application you have to reconfigure as if it is
has just installed for the first time. Any suggestion on how to solve it?

Never heard of this happening; sounds like (a) the client has been installed for multiple users, and (b) either Windows is either deleting or not storing the user profile, or something else changed, like the computer was added to the Windows domain when it wasn’t before, or something else which would cause the old profile to be invalidated.

  1. Sometimes happens that many notes client receive from the
    internet email with attachments mentioned “xxxxx.dat”, with written
    in the email “see attachment xxxx.pdf” (case of pdfs). Ever had this trouble?

See the topic “Configuring TNEF Conversion” in admin help.

  1. Automatic return receipt. If you need, in lotus notes you

have to tell the client all the times that the message needs the
“return receipt”. Is there a function to set for all the outgoing
messages the return receipt header without human actions?

Well, given that return receipt is often blocked for security/anti-spam reasons at many servers (including my own) and also can be blocked by the recipient in many mail clients (such as Outlook), relying on return receipts is, well, not very reliable. The way to do this, however, is to modify the Calendar Profile and Memo forms to provide the user the option to make this the default and also to query that default and apply it.

  1. Do you know a template which is similar, in functions, to

outlook? (ex. Message views per dates, etc)

a. IBM Developer

b. DWA R8.0.2

c. Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook (DAMO)

  1. Lotus email savings. Is there a method to save lotus notes

emails in one format which can be opened with lotus or another mail
client (ex. .msg outlook or standard .eml)?

There are third-party approaches to this, none of which I am familair with. This question has also been brought up many times in these forums before, and there are some hand-coded approaches that can give you a starting point as well. But the question needs to be asked what the business purpose for this capability is? If it’s for discovery purposes, then you need a server-side solution.

  1. HTML compatibility. It happens that html mails in notes are

hard to digest. Sometimes many of them stucks lotus notes; sometimes
ther the “copy and past” render of html sources (from web pages ecc.
to a LN mail) is horrible and deforms all the original layout. Why?

Notes R8 clients use Microsoft IE to render html mail unless you disable that feature in the client preferences. The Notes R8 mail template also adds a more “Outlook-like” framework to the experience.

  1. Is there a way to change rapidly signature in lotus notes

(not going in 30 jumps on all menus for manually selecting the signature)?

No. Support for multiple signatures (and better support for rich text signatures) is being heavily investigated for future releases, probably as early as 8.5; check out Mary Beth Raven’s blog (http://www.notesdesignblog.com) for the public-facing aspect of this.

  1. Is there a way to select the second email contact of a

addressbook member when sending an email via lotus notes (as in outlook)?

Not that I know of.

  1. Is there a way to delay email sendings, so the messages lies for
    some minutes in the outbox before being sent?

Other than the simple approach of using a local mail file and controlling replication, the only solutions for scheduling mail ahead of time are third-party templates. There may be something on openntf.org or in the sandbox; I don’t recall off the top of my head.

  1. When printing an email, if the senders name are too large it
    happens that recipients names are “inpiped” one on each other,
    cutting half a page for only showing the email addresses. Do you
    know how to adjust the recipient’s view?

The default setting for the client preference “Expand names field contents when printing” is Disabled; perhaps this is enabled on the clients where you are seeing this behavior?

  1. Sometimes lotus notes tells that there isn’t any “sitemap” and
    you need to restart Lotus Notes. Do you know why?

Sounds like SPR #DCOY7F984F, which is addressed in R8.0.2.

  1. Is there a way to use word as a editor for lotus notes emails
    (it’s more complete than the integrated one)!

Well, despite the problems that any recipient using any mail client other than Outlook might have reading the non-standard HTML that Word will put into a MIME-format message, the answer has been Yes since R5:

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Subject: Trying to add a few more comments.

  1. Notes clients loses configurations. It happens that after

windows automatic update lotus notes loses his configuration. After
the launch of the application you have to reconfigure as if it is
has just installed for the first time. Any suggestion on how to solve it?

I have never seen this, too. However, it looks like there is more than one notes.ini within reach (and maybe the registry gets changed, too).

notes.ini was for some time in c:\windows but in other cases in the Notes programm directory. And of course there might be a home directory, too.

The icon to start notes could be pointing to a special one, too (Properties of the desktop Icon behind …\notes.exe add =…whatever…\notes.ini

  1. Sometimes happens that many notes client receive from the
    internet email with attachments mentioned “xxxxx.dat”, with written
    in the email “see attachment xxxx.pdf” (case of pdfs). Ever had this trouble?

Heard of it, but have never seen. Would gess it is only some domains sending. Would look for bug fixes (are you running current versions especially of Domino? - they would probably be 6.5.6cf2 or 7.0.3)

  1. Automatic return receipt. If you need, in lotus notes you

have to tell the client all the times that the message needs the
“return receipt”. Is there a function to set for all the outgoing
messages the return receipt header without human actions?

Never heard this request, however, it is most likely only a flag in a bunch of forms, and it should not be expensive to a) programm this and b) to show you how you would have to modify future mail templates after updates to have this working again.

But most likely there is other root causes to go for (Bad culture in company or a user feels not be taken serious or missing training or critical computing services have not been running reliable for too long or some combination. I would talk to my Boss about talking to the users Boss on this).

  1. Do you know a template which is similar, in functions, to

outlook? (ex. Message views per dates, etc)

Sorry, I don’t care for outlook. But 8 looks good, the Web interface into 8 does so, too, and IBM is doing a lot on usability.

  1. Lotus email savings. Is there a method to save lotus notes

emails in one format which can be opened with lotus or another mail
client (ex. .msg outlook or standard .eml)?

No. Why would you need one (besides for folks trying to take things along when leaving the company)

  1. HTML compatibility. It happens that html mails in notes are

hard to digest. Sometimes many of them stucks lotus notes; sometimes
ther the “copy and past” render of html sources (from web pages ecc.
to a LN mail) is horrible and deforms all the original layout. Why?

Yes it happens. Problem of the sending side, there is probably nothing you can do - besides updating.

  1. Is there a way to change rapidly signature in lotus notes

(not going in 30 jumps on all menus for manually selecting the signature)?

I guess a short cut to this 30 clicks could be written by some devlopper with acceptable efforts. If this is not an option I would considder macro shareware tools doing a replace of shortcuts (e.g. for professional writers).

  1. Is there a way to select the second email contact of a

addressbook member when sending an email via lotus notes (as in outlook)?

I don’t think so. But 8 has changed a lot in that area (a list of recently used addresses) and might solve this on another way

  1. Is there a way to delay email sendings, so the messages lies for
    some minutes in the outbox before being sent?

No. Why would you do this. Mass mailings into the same domains? Mails could be send by an agent delayed in the frist place, but again you need a developer for this.

  1. When printing an email, if the senders name are too large it
    happens that recipients names are “inpiped” one on each other,
    cutting half a page for only showing the email addresses. Do you
    know how to adjust the recipient’s view?

It can be programmed, this is most likely quite easy. And it might be worth going to classroom.

  1. Sometimes lotus notes tells that there isn’t any “sitemap” and
    you need to restart Lotus Notes. Do you know why?

Never heared of this one.

Sounds like SPR #DCOY7F984F, which is addressed in R8.0.2.

  1. Is there a way to use word as a editor for lotus notes emails
    (it’s more complete than the integrated one)!

Not sure if it is still there but at least it used to be. Never used it. If folks like the Word spell checker better than the one in notes, have a look at Notes 8, you’ll most likely find what you are looking for.

Other than this, if there is featuers for stuff not in the notes editor, they will most likely not survive getting send via the web anyhow =>I would suggest to write somewhere else and send the attachments instead.

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Subject: THANKYOU!

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Subject: gald to help