User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

HCL Domino Domino Forum
41

Subject: Perhaps you are using the wrong application?

James,

I’ve seen nothing in your messages to indicate that you are using notes for any reason other than email. It this is the case, and if you have some very strong virus/malware protection, then there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t use outlook… If you really have to stick with Notes, then you can always use the outlook client.

I’m tired of explaining to people that Notes is NOT an email system, that its a groupware database management system with email and workflow capabilities.

I’m a great believer in the right tool for the right job. Notes does so much more than email, and despite your comments, it does the “above and beyond email” things better than any other application I have seen.

If you are not using, and have no plans to use, the extra functionality, then you need an email package.

Gavin.

42

Subject: Perhaps before your users lose more work, you should explain how it works to them.

You may not approve, you may not like it, but instead of whining about it here, why don’t you go and train them. As Stan has pointed out, nurses tend to be quite good at learning, or they wouldn’t be in that job, and you seem much more eager to gripe than to adjust to the product you have to use. Hate it all you like, for the moment, your time might be spent more profitably explaining how Notes works to your users, especially if this is such a frequent problem for them.

43

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

I’ve been following the thread with interest – I just haven’t had a lot of time to reply because I’ve been on deadline for 7.0 (and still am – just waiting for a compile). Besides, people have said a lot of what I would have.

I’ve been considering the “forced save as” technique you proposed for editing attachments. It does reduce the possibility that a novice user will lose changes through not realizing that the attachment is part of the document and they have to save the document too – duh. However, it has drawbacks also: for experienced users, it’s an extra step which will annoy them – and most users are experienced for a far longer period of time than they are novices. It results in the user’s default location (My Documents or the Notes program directory, most likely) getting cluttered with files they don’t want to keep and must periodically do extra work to clean up. Overall I think the drawbacks outweigh the benefits, so I won’t be recommending this approach.

44

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

So the idea of disabling the feature via a policy is also out?

That would be a shame.

45

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

First I want to make it clear that my direct influence at this point is pretty much limited to Designer features, not the Notes client, but I can talk to those people.

Sorry, do you mean you would want to disable the Edit attachment feature altogether with a policy, or you would want to have a choice between the “forced save as” behavior and the current behavior?

I’ve been giving the matter some more thought. As I and others have mentioned, it’s a challenge to know when someone is done editing a file, given the great variety of editing programs out there, and consistency is desirable, so a solution should not depend on being able to detect this.

It’s also a consideration that the files in question may contain private information, stored under access control in Notes and under database-level encryption if using a local replica. In which case, leaving the file anywhere on the disk in “clear text” would be potentially a security risk. However, if the user saves the file now after the Notes document is closed, there’s nothing to delete it. I think it would be acceptable for the file to remain on the disk for a limited period of time – adjustable by policy, default 48 hours – to allow retrieval in case the user is a fathead.

As I noted, the detached edit file is deleted when the Notes document is closed. If the editing program saves the file after the Notes document is closed, recreating the just-deleted file, then the data can be retrieved. When Mr. Schend’s users are losing data, I can only think it’s because they save the file they’re editing, then fail to save the Notes document.

Perhaps the user experience could be improved as follows:

When the Edit Attachment function is used, the temporary file is created in a directory identified by the UNID of the document.

As the temporary file is created, Notes records its timestamp in memory.

Upon saving the document, the temp file is grabbed and the timestamp compared – if it’s different, the attachment is updated.

On exiting the document without saving, the timestamp is compared. If it’s different, the existing save prompt has text added warning the user that their document changes that they are about to not save include edits to an attachment.

Just in case the user cannot read, if they exit without saving changes, and the timestamp is different, the file is not immediately deleted.

On closing the Notes client, there’s a scan thru the temporary directories used for attachment editing. Any files there that have not been modified for longer than the policy-specified cutoff are deleted, and empty subdirectories pruned.

If the user uses the edit attachment function again in the same document, and the file is already present in the directory identified by the document UNID, they are advised that there appear to be recoverable changes from a previous editing session and would they prefer to edit that file, or the current attachment contents?

Does that sound like a significant improvement?

46

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

Does that sound like a significant improvement?

No, calling my users “fatheads” doesn’t sound like an improvement at all, actually.

And locking out my account on this forum wasn’t very reassuring, either. Or was it just Yet Another Notes Bug ™?

47

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

I thought you might want to engage in a discussion that might possibly get you something more like what you want in a future version, so I took the time to prepare a thoughtful response. But apparently, you’re just out there looking for something to complain at and take offense over. So, never mind, Mr. Schend – you’re on my blacklist now.

48

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

It’s amazing how people get so upset over something as harmless as being insulted by a company they’re paying thousands of dollars for!

Gosh. Better put me on your blacklist. That way you can feel free to call me a fathead, a dumbass or, hey, go all the way: fucking wanker.

49

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

Wow. Let’s see if I’ve got this right:

(1) You make a new post in a public discussion forum (not a feature-request support channel) with a message that states “And yes, I’m ranting”.

(2) Various talented individuals in the community (who can’t fix the problem) volunteer their insight and some suggestions.

(3) A member of the Lotus Notes development staff (who can’t fix the problem) volunteers his insight and some suggestions, and even proposes a specification to possibly submit to the people who CAN fix the problem.

(4) Your response to (3) is “You’re calling my users ‘fatheads’” and various other insults.

Apparently you’re either new to forums, or need this explained in-detail: debating is welcome and expected, but etiquette is a must. Things have now stooped to “troll” status, and this thread’s probably dead as far as helping you out is concerned.

50

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

I quote:

“I think it would be acceptable for the file to remain on the disk for a limited period of time – adjustable by policy, default 48 hours – to allow retrieval in case the user is a fathead.”

In other words, yes, he is calling my users fatheads. I don’t know of any other way to read that sentence-- my users have suffered from that problem, and he calls people who have suffered that problem fatheads. Period.

Yeah, the thread’s probably dead to helping me out now. But, then again, if the developers call users who aren’t supergeniuses like them “fatheads,” then it’s probably hopeless to try to get a little bit of user friendliness in Lotus Notes. I’ve given up. All I can do now is do my best to ensure that no organization buys Lotus Notes in the future.

Unfortunately, the people who have to support it are not usually the same as the people who decide what software to purchase. Kudos to the sales department, I guess. But when a product has problems that infuriate people to the point of posting rants on forums, well, maybe the design of that product needs to be changed for the better.

51

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

Or maybe the people who are supporting the application could take some time out of their busy days to support the application. That means teaching the users how to use the application, among other things.

Andre’s “fathead” comment assumed that all of the other changes mentioned were in place, that the user had been told several times over the course of the operation that they needed to save the changes, and still managed to forget to save. There are users who manage to do that sort of thing, either regularly (think of a name for them) or occasionally (and would likely use a similar name referring to themselves at that point). And although there was no emoticon, it was clearly tongue-in-cheek.

52

Subject: Attachment is wrong tool for collaboration

James, our shop sounds like the exact opposite of yours so I can give you a completely different point of view on why we keep Notes. We’re a manufacturing shop and we began using Notes 3 in 1994. The marketing department purchased it, and brought it in for a CRM solution and told our fledgling IT department that this animal had email built-in so IT grabbed it and ran. At that time email was a new thing so anything was considered better than nothing. Our quality guys jumped on the bandwagon next and migrated all procedures, work instructions, specifications from paper to virtual using Notes. Then engineering jumped on and migrated the entire ECN (engineering change notice) to Notes workflow - with electronic signature and mail notification (nagging people to perform whatever functions the app called for). Suddenly, our paper processes; which were confined to 3-ring binders, were becoming visible across our new network. For us email quickly became second-fiddle to a bigger goal - get the paper out of the business. Our business creates a lot of paper even if no one creates a single memo (message). Notes is the toolkit to transform your business paper processes into the virtual world. In 2000, we were bought by a big F-500 company that was an Exchange shop. They asked us to drop Notes mail - which we did but the business process automation strategy remained the same and we’ve gotten good at sending mail notification across the platforms. Last year, we built an electronic time card system which completely handles the payroll of our 500 authenticated people - all using domino. Customer service uses it for our RMA process. Every department has several flagship applications. For us Notes is a man for all seasons with over 80 different applications, and a single password for our users. I understand why you don’t like notes because every one of your issues is real. But for us, the things you mention are small potatoes in light of the huge benefit it has brought us. Now - moving to the attachment gig…

We view attachments as a tool for exchanging mostly static content. As soon as we see users trying to collaborate (edit & re-edit) with attached spreadsheets or word documents, we encourage them to move the document to a file server and train them to use UNC links or mapped drives. UNC’s are not intuitive but users appreciate being shown how they work. While drive mapping is also not a superb solution, it’s much better than using attachments. If the document serves a larger audience, we encourage them to let us transform their spreadsheets and/or word documents into native notes documents and views. As soon as you accomplish this, the information is much friendlier and more forgiving to back-n-forth collaboration. You see, it’s not that the community here is dodging the attachment issue; but rather, many of them have found better tools to help their users collaborate, share, and exchange information. But for a newbie (like yourself - on collaboration that is - I’m not being condescending), this is incomprehensible. Who would believe someone could “dis” attachments - but that’s exactly what I’m telling you. In an automated, collaborative environment, attachments are bad practice. On the Notes side, we haven’t had a report of lost content in years and we add a lot of content daily and do very little training. Training is passed from user to user in each department.

53

Subject: *Funny, Andre doesn’t look much like a company to me. He looks a lot more like a person.

54

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

If you mean the recent problems logging in over the web, it’s probably due to the fact that one or more servers in the cluster that serves these fora is/are usually running beta or prerelease versions of the software. (You can check that by doing a view->source and looking for the Domino version banner below the HTML doctype declaration.) You can usually spot a significant upcoming release (in this case, Domino 7) by a sudden rash of problems in the forum. These people are usually quick to respond to reported problems – just enter the forum unauthenticated and use the feedback link.

55

Subject: *I have to say it sounds better, especially that last bullet point.

56

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

So, in short, anybody you run into who likes Notes is “a Lotus Notes-addicted developer or sysadmin who has NO idea how the normal computer user thinks and won’t admit, even under torture, that Notes is anything less than absolutely perfect”, but anybody else you run into agrees that Notes sucks. This despite the fact that I and others here have admitted to issues with Notes, and you have yet to give an inch. That is why you were accused of trolling.

Amazingly enough, I run into people on other boards and in other organizations who enjoy Notes. Most also admit it has its eccentricities. For that matter, I know people who hate Macs. People differ in their impressions, even though you seem quite sure that you have the ultimate and utter truth and refuse to accept any chink in that truth.

57

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

I think you’ve misunderstood how the attachment Edit function works.

The normal sequence of events is that the user first saves the file they’re working on outside of Notes, and then saves the Notes document that has the attached file. This saves the updated file attachment into the document, and then deletes it.

They might choose to not save their changes in the outside program, but in that case it’s hardly fair to blame Notes for their losing their work.

They might choose to not save their edits but not save the Notes document, in which case, once again, they have been prompted whether to save their changes.

The temporary file is deleted when the Notes document is closed. If the editing application is still open, there’s nothing to prevent the user saving the file. If they just use File Save, most applications will create a new copy of the file with the same name in the temporary directory. So, their changes are still available – they just have to know where to look for the file. Their work is not lost at that point.

Now, if they open the same Notes document again, and again select Edit, will it overwrite their changes by detaching a new copy of the original file with the same name? I only have Notes 7 to try with so I’m not certain whether this is a new thing, but when I try it, it does not overwrite a file with the same name – it makes up a new filename like ~3586661.xxx (where xxx is the file suffix of the attachment). The user’s previous changes are still not lost.

I’m sure you will be happy to know that in Notes 7, there is also a dialog that comes up when the user tries to exit the Notes document after using the attachment edit function. This dialog, which contains a checkbox that the user can use to ask not to see the message again, explains the procedure for attachment editing so that the user knows that they must exit the editing application first.

It’s a little hard to know what more Notes could do to prevent loss of data. The editing application could be any program, including a multiple-subwindow application that was already open when the user started editing the file and remains open after they have closed that file; we really have no sure way to tell when the user is done editing. Suggestions would be appreciated.

I will think about your other points and write more later.

Andre Guirard

IBM/Lotus Development

Domino Designer Client Team

58

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

Personally, I thought that the edit attachment functionality was obvious, even during the beta program. No other change a user makes to a document “takes” if it isn’t saved, and I’ve yet to have a Word doc or Excel sheet save changes to the original file if I didn’t save the changes. If common sense isn’t enough, then this ought to have been:

To edit file attachments

When you choose to edit an attachment, Notes opens the file in the application the attachment was created with. When you save and close the edited attachment in the application, Notes replaces the old file with the updated file attached in the document. You do not have to delete the old attachment from the document and attach the newly edited attachment. When you close the Notes document, click Yes to save the changes in the attachment, or click No to reverse the changes.

  1. Select the file attachment by clicking it.

  2. Choose Attachment - Edit.

  3. Edit the file, then save it in the application you used to edit the attachment.

  4. When closing the Notes document, click “Yes” to save the document.

The F5/F9 issue is a non-starter. It’s not consistent across Windows apps. It’s not even consistent across Microsoft-branded Windows apps. There is no standard refresh key (and no key AT ALL in most apps that securely locks the application).

In an application as large as Notes (which is really more of an operating system than a conventional application), I can’t understand anyone expecting to intuit everything. There is only one “defined” function key in Windows, and yet nobody ever seems to use it. (That’s F1, by the way, and it is supposed to open Help. It does that in Notes as well.)

I do suppose, though, that the “chrome” could look a bit more like typical apps on the host OS. That won’t be much of a winner in Windows, I don’t think, but an all-Aqua Mac client would be striking. I have a feeling that the Eclipse/SWT-based client will probably be a bit more conformist, if only to poke through the abstraction layers more efficiently.

59

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

Personally, I thought that the edit attachment>functionality was obvious, even during the beta

program.

I’ve addressed most of this in my other post, but a few things to remember:

  1. You might find it obvious, but you’re probably a system administrator, or a software developer, or at least an expert user. At my workplace, we give Notes to NURSES. Nurses aren’t what you would call heavy computer users… we’ve had to teach some of them how to use a mouse. Not to rag on nurses, of course, the work they do is a lot more important than any software developer’s job… but that’s exactly WHY Lotus should be making their life easy by making applications simple.

I’ve yet to have a Word doc or Excel sheet save

changes to the original file if I didn’t save

the changes.

  1. But you have to save twice. Once in Excel, once in Notes… that’s enough right there to make Notes inconsistant with almost everything else on the system.

The F5/F9 issue is a non-starter. It’s not

consistent across Windows apps. It’s not even

consistent across Microsoft-branded Windows apps

There is no standard refresh key (and no key AT

ALL in most apps that securely locks the

application).

Notes is (mostly) an email client. Show me one other email client that doesn’t use F5 for refresh. I’ll wait. (Ok, ok, yes, web-based clients… but all applications do, and all web browsers do, and it might not be a “Microsoft standard” but it’s definately a “what users expect” standard.)

As for locking out Notes, who cares? You can lock the terminal a LOT quicker and easier by using Ctrl-Alt-Del, Enter in Windows (or the security menu in OS X), and that locks out ALL your applications at once without any need to log back in to each application individually. I’d say it’s kind of dumb for Notes to replicate functionality that already exists in the OS, and to use a keyboard short that also already exists in the OS… but for something else!

60

Subject: RE: User Interface Disasters in Lotus Notes

Yes, as a matter of fact I would expect a secure application to have a separate lockout from the OS. Check the Windows lockout again: any administrator can unlock a locked workstation. In a lot of organisations, that means everyone that uses Windows, but even if the admins group is done right in your org, that means that the user who hit WinKey+L or CTRL+ALT+DEL, Enter is not the only person who can bring the workstation back up. If Notes is running, the session would still be running with the previous user’s ID. That is completely unacceptable in a secure environment. Do you really want someone who has extended IT permissions interacting with medical information with a doctor’s or nurse’s ID and authority? Are your patients aware that you approach security in that way?

I’m not a system administrator, and while I develop applications for Notes, I am not what you would call a “power user” of the Notes client. I rely on my user community for usabilty feedback and comments on how my applications react to the things that people who live in Notes (people who use, rather than develop, applications) do every day to get their jobs done.

And no, Notes is not (mostly) an email client. There are installations that use Notes that way, of course, but email is a relatively small part of the overall picture everywhere I’ve worked (and for the clients I’ve worked for). Most of the internal mail is notifications from Notes applications and document links sent user-to-user. Editing and saving attachments to documents is not something you’d need to do a lot of in email, so apparently non-mail applications have some significance in your organisation as well.