This is the new features of lotus notes 8.5.3

Lotus Notes 8.5.3 delivers significant enhancements to support social businesses and help users get their work done fast, for example:

• Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3 includes entitlement to the IBM Connections files and profiles components adding significant capabilities to help clients become a social business
• Enhanced new mail notification which optionally provides a pop up preview (containing both sender and subject) of new mail messages as they arrive.
• Improved sorting on email subject content that ignores the “Re:” and “Fw:” prefix, from reply & forward respectively, providing a more accurate sorting of your data.
• A new option to search by sender or subject available when you right click an email.
• Optionally leave countered meetings on your calendar. Allow countered meetings to show up in a unique color, with the time the meeting was originally scheduled for as well as maintaining the ability to act on the original calendar invite and with hover text indicating the new proposed time.
• Optionally notify existing invitees when adding or removing attendees from an existing meeting, informing them of the change and updating the invitee list on their calendar invitation, as well as other options which negate the need for a user to process any meeting updates for anything other than a change in time, eg. a reschedule.
• Significant improvements to recent contacts, allowing end users more control over who gets added to recent contacts and improved data integrity.
• Geographic and time zone information is be displayed in the business card.
• Apple Mac usability improvements for e-mail gestures include the ability to drag one or grouped files to the Lotus Notes icon on your dock, and a new mail message will be created with those files attached.
• Embedded IBM Sametime is upgraded to V8.5.1 with an incremental installer to IBM Sametime 8.5.2, and embedded IBM Lotus Symphony is upgraded to V3.0.
• Additional platform support includes RHEL 6.0 Desktop, Citrix XenApp 6.0, and enhanced 64-bit toleration for Microsoft Windows.
• Added ability to remove signature file from a thread

What is interesting is that is now lotus notes can sort the subject easily, without problem.

Prior this version, user have difficulties to sort emails based on their subject, because the “Re: ” and the “Fw: ” are treated differently. Outlook users do not have this kind of problem, but now lotus notes client too . Better late than never.

Hope that IBM much more open mind to user inputs than before.

I had to agreed with them.

I had to live with it, and thought that because it just they way it is, because Lotus Notes is not only an email client, but also a collaborations tool, that why it is slower compare to MS Outlook.

But I was wrong.

When I brought this up to IBM support, they came with a suggestion that I modified a file to increase the performance of Lotus Notes. And they were correct, with it Lotus Notes performance is a faster than before.

These are the steps:

1. Close lotus notes.
2. Open the folder/directory where you install lotus notes client, in my case c:\lotus\notes
3. Find the file “\Lotus\Notes\framework\rcp\deploy\jvm.properties” and edit.
4. Within the file, find the line “vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx256m” and change it into “vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx512m”
5. Within the file, find the line “vmarg.Xms=-Xms48m” and change it into “vmarg.Xms=-Xms96m”
6. Save the file.

Now, try to run Lotus Notes and see the differences. You can also play the setting, depend on your work load and your RAM. If you have more than 2 GB ram, you can try to increase the settings to:

vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx1024m
vmarg.Xms=-Xms256m

This improvement not only affects windows client, but also Linux or maybe Macs.

Please note that, if you apply the fix pack, the setting will be restores, so you need to re-edit it again.

Added: 2011-09-26

This also come from IBM support

If you feel that you have a network problem while using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can follow this suggestion.

Run this command (without the quotes) from command prompt from Windows vista or Windows 7, make sure you run it as administrator.

“netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled ”

This command will disable the windows network auto tunning, see here

And better to apply the latest fix pacth, the latest fix pacth  as I’m writing this post for Lotus notes 8.5.2 is FP3.

Without the transaction log, when the server crash, it will take hours for the server to recovery. It will check every databases one at a time and try to check and fix if it found any problem. And when the database if being fix, the user can’t access it. If the database is big, more than 10 GB, it will take hours to complete it.

With transaction log, after the server crash, the server will ready in less than 15 minutes.

Without the transaction log, the backup procedure will become a problem. In my case the total databases size is more that 1 TB, and it will take almost 24 hours to complete the full backup. And it’s almost impossible to me to run full backup everyday.

With the transaction log, I only to run the full backup every week, and I only need to backup the transaction log  for daily backup. Yes the full backup will take up to 24 hours for 1 TB data, for for daily backup, it take less than 1 hour backup.

So, if you have a medium size or large lotus domino server, I highly recommend that you to run it with transaction log enable.

Before that, these are a few tips.

1. Use the fastest and dedicated hard drive that you can use for transaction log. I’m using IBM SAS drive with 15000 RPM, and that still too slow to me.
2. Use raid 1 for transaction log, it recommended by IBM. So if one drive is failed, you still have one to run the transaction log.
3. Backup, backup, backup. Transaction log rely on good backup that support transaction log, it will only clear up the old TXN files after the backup is complete. Without a good backup, your hard drive will filled up by the TXN files.
4. If possible, use the latest Lotus Domino version. I have problem with Lotus Domino 8.5.2 FP1 that crash because the size of the transaction log, even the hard disk still have many free space. After consult with IBM support, they suggested me to upgrade the fixed pacth to FP2, after that the problem is gone.

For me, it saves time. I do not have to add manually the sender to my contacts, and it only able to add sender, not all people in the To or CC. Now, with Recent Contacts, all the To and CC names (or email addresses) will automatically added to my Recent Contacts list, and saves a lot of time.

But, there are users who do not like this feature, specially users who like to have their contacts clean and manage able, they only want to add names to their contacts only if it important, while Recent Contacts will automatically add all of them.

Luckily, Recent Contacts have many options, you can choose it in Contacts preferences.

You can choose that Recent Contacts DO NOT automatically added:

1. Any names to Recent Contacts, for short to disable the Recent Contacts feature.
2. CC and BCC names to Recent Contacts, so it only add names in the TO field.
3. Names from emails that I receive (Only add names from email that I send), that already explain it.

So, for users who really hate this feature, they can simply disable it.

One of the annoying thing about this feature, it will add invalid or junk names (or email addresses) to Recent Contacts, specially when users received spam emails with a lot of email addresses in the TO and CC fields.

Do you want to go with this features or not, is your choice. I personally like this feature, and once in a while clean up the Recent Contacts for junk names.

After all it run well, then I found this technote.

Duh, I hope I found that technote much more earlier, before I upgrade my windows and domino into 64-bit version, that will make it a lot easier.

Please take a special attention on point seven (or six), “7. Before restarting the Domino server, run the offline maintenance on the following system databases from command prompt.”

If you have a large domino databases, and you have only limited down time, than copy entire domino data directory may be is not an option. In my experience, copy 1,2 TB of domino data will take more than a day. And after we start the new server, it give a lot of  error messages and the fixup process run almost on all databases.

So we did it with another way, we create a additional server, create replica of all databases to the new server, and after that we only need to switch server id. It take a longer time to replicate (almost a week), but the down time is minimum, less than a hour.

So, which way is your choice, either copy the data all create replicas.

“Can’t open view”

and displayed a blank database

Tried to run the following tasks:

• Fixup
• Updall
• Compact
• Convert
• Replace design
• Search the internet

Without any luck.

These are the list what the new improvements or features that I like the most.

1. Save as EML

What my users like the most, save email as eml, so now they can ‘attach’ email as attachment. Many companies who have tight security, maybe do not like this feature, but for other companies, they just love this feature. It better than IBM can disable or enable this feature depend on the company policy.

2. Close email after Forward/Reply

Now, you can choose if your email will be automatically close after you forward or reply it.

3. Group Icon

Now you can quickly see that the email address is a group or not right from your type-ahead list. There will be an icon in the front of email address indicate the the email address is a group or not.

4. Default font for email

Now you can set your default font for your email.

5. Forward from Trash folder

Previously, you need to restore email in case you need to forward it. But now you can forward it right from your trash folder.

6. Pretty Signature

Now you can use rich text as your signature, rather than that boring plain text or that confusing html file. To bad, you still  can’t have multiple signatures.

7. Make Contact / Group private

You can share your contacts to others people if you give them the right to access it, but now you can also make your contacts or groups private, so only you who can see it. Other people who have access to open your contacts will not see it.

8. Better Recent contacts management

Now you can have the option to include all to your recent contacts list or o Do not put cc and bcc into recent contacts.

You can delete recent contact straight from type-ahead list (just like outlook)

9. Better replication

You have better replication view, now in show in percentage in the right and also can run multiple replication in the same time.

10. View Calendar entries by category

If you like to add category on everything, including calendar entries than you going to love this feature. Now you can view your calendar entries based on their categories, much more easy to find and manage your calendar.

There are many more features that I do not include in this list, what I like the most about the new features is this features mostly affect on users, better user interface, while usually the new features are on the servers, only a few on the users.

For complete list about all the new features of Lotus Notes 8.52 you can go here.

Installing Lotus Domino is not a problem, I use Lotus Domino 8.02.

Problem start when I’m trying to install Lotus SameTime entry 8.02 server, when it starting to install, it always says something about Lotus Domino or Lotus SameTime processes still running.

Unlike Lotus Domino, it seems that Lotus SameTime installation is not as smooth as it should be. It detected others processes as it own. From IBM website it listed mostly because of anti virus software.

But, even I already disable or even uninstall the anti virus software, I still have the problem.

So I try to disable all the softwares and services that running in the background one by one.

All disabled but still having the problem.

One software left, TightVNC that I use to remote the server.

So temporarily I disable the TightVNC and replace it with Remote Administrator.

And it working.

After I disabled the TightVNC, I can install the SameTime server without any more problem.

I’m not sure why there are so much problem when installing sametime server, I also have the same problem when installing SameTime entry 8.51.

Some suggestions when installing sametime server.

• Copy the source into your local haddisk
• Disable network connections
• Disable all anti virus software
• Run the installation
• Enable the anti virus sotware
• Enable network connections

Hope you will not have the problem as I’m.

Posted from WordPress for Android

Thanks to Maria Helm for her advise.

To continue the steps, you should have knowledge about mail journaling, mail-in database, server rules, and how to create a simple agent. Don’t worry this is a very simple agent, you do not need to write a single script.

1. Create a mail in database, give it a easy to understand name.

2. Enable the mail journaling, make sure that mail journalling use send email to not copy to.
Send email to the mail in database that we just created.

3. Create a simple agent to reply every email with your custom message.
Dont worry, this is a simple agent, no script required.
When you in simple agent, enter will close the simple agent, it is better that you type the out of office notice somewhere else like in the
notepad, and then copy paste it into the agent.
Run the agen from non ordinary users, in my case i run it with an administrator account.

4. Create server rule to journal every documents excepts, email from your own domain, and you can add more exceptions if you want.

So now every emails from outside of your domain will be captured and then sent to a mail in database, where an agent will be ready to reply with an out of office message.

After searched the web, contacted with ibm engineers, I have note down
several things that can makes lotus notes to crash.

FYI, I’m using lotus notes, 8.5, 8.5.1 and 8.5.1 FP4.

If you have found that your lotus notes crash many times in a day, you can check the list.

Anti Virus

Try to disable your anti virus, if necessary remove it. I know its
extreme, but the are some reports that certain anti virus not very
compatible with lotus notes. If you found disabling anti virus solved the problem, maybe you need to check other anti virus that much more friendly with lotus notes.

Links

Embedded Mime Email

Enable the disable embedded mime email. Its reported that embedded
mime email can crash lotus notes. Thanks to Ying Le Jia for the hint.

Links

Basic Version

Switch to basic version instead of standard version. The Standard version have many features with eclipse, but with more features, it have more possibilities  to crash.

Bottom Preview

Use bottom preview rather then right preview. Its also reported that
right preview pane may cause lotus notes to crash. (anybody can confirm this?)

Adobe Reader 9

If you using adobe reader 9, try to download it to adobe reader 8. Its
reported that after user upgraded their adobe reader to version 9,
their lotus notes start to behave unstable. Thanks to Gunawan TW for the hint.

Links

This list is not completed, will never be completed, because there are still many things that can cause lotus notes (or many other softwares) to crash.