Blog In Progress

A senior consultant who spends a lot of times on airplanes mentioned to me that he always tells the office staff to send him an attachment, not a Quickr link. Why? It turns out that he manages his email mostly on his Blackberry, saving the attachments to be read/edited while on the airplane.. Before boarding for a long flight he replicates his Notes mail down to his laptop, then works on the items on the flight. If he finds a Quickr link instead of an attachment he's stuck.

Quickr has an offline mode which I've never had much success implementing, but it wouldn't solve this guy's problem except by accident. He can anticipate what documents he plans to work with while disconnected and download copies. But a the link in an e-mail may be to any of dozens or hundreds of places. He's unlikely to have synchronized the right one to his laptop -- and to have done it recently enough to be sure he's looking at the current version of the document.

Within a year or two this problem will go away with the advent of "Internet everywhere". In the meantime, I'm not sure we have another solution for him.

I won't be at Lotusphere so let me know if any new ideas to help this guy (did I mention he's a managing partner?) surface.

I support a group of management consultants. They regularly circulate big attachments to each other. They all have Quickr set up. They all started with the preferences option for "When sending e-mail with attachments" set to "Prompt me" as to whether to save the attachment to Quickr and send a link. But they never do it!


As an older techie it pains me to think about all those copies of large attachments filling up hard disks and downloading across multiple links of questionable speed and reliability. But it's all magic to the user community. They don't see any benefit and it is another few clicks when sending. It should be no extra effort to the recipient providing Quickr Connectors are installed; it may even save a click or two as compared to opening an attachment.

So, can technology fix the issue? Is it possible to force "Always send links" when all recipients are internal (and therefore have guaranteed access to a Quickr place and the Quickr Connectors)?

The phone lines are open...

First, I hope you've all had a wonderful holiday season and wish you health, success and happiness in the new year.

2009 was a bit "interesting" for me from a business perspective. My major support client had a fairly dramatic drop in their business, so my commitment there was reduced. Besides being a financial hardship it gave me some new challenges in terms of setting limits, managing expectations and anticipating needs. I had basically been available for technical support and hand-holding 24 x 7 (although I do have my Blackberry turn itself off every night at 11 so I can get some sleep) and they were no longer paying for that availability.

A few of my small business customers were also hurt by economic conditions enough to affect their business with me. And it was a tough economy for picking up new clients.

Looking forward to improvement all around in 2010.

On the technology front I did have a lot of time available to explore on-line resources, hang out on social networking sites, and delve into new technologies.

I got three production Domino mail/application servers upgraded to Domino 8.5.1 (two Windows and one Linux). I got DAOS running on a server where it made a big difference. I've got Blackberry Enterprise Server running on Domino 8.5 -- it was on Domino 6.5 not long ago -- and it pretty much just sits there and runs. That's the way I like technology to work. I also added Traveler to one Domino server for a single iPhone user. It was a fairly trivial setup and the user is thrilled but I don't know what the impact would be if we had a bunch of users hitting it.

I spent a fair bit of time evaluating Symphony vs MS Office 2007 as a replacement for MS Office 2003. Much as I like Symphony for myself Office just made more sense for a consulting organization that's constantly exchanging documents still in progress with clients. And Symphony still has some odd shortcomings -- envelope printing is still a work in progress, in fact all printing is still a bit hit or miss, and there are some unfortunate problems with formatting changing as you pass a document back and forth between Office and Symphony. I'm looking forward to the next version but I think it will remain an option only for very large organizations that can make ODF their own standard and for folks that can use it internally and pass finished content along in pdf.

Looking ahead 2010 looks like the year my last NetWare servers will finally be retired. This will likely mean getting up to speed on Active Directory and Windows Server as a file-and-print solution. But if money stays tight we might end up with Open Enterprise Server, or even an appliance-type solution for file sharing and lose managed printing.

In general in 2010 I'm counting on spending some time (and clients' money) replacing hardware that's overdue because of cutbacks in the past 18 months. On the laptop/desktop side that means I'll be getting to know Windows 7.

Postings to this blog over the year have been spotty. As many others have noted the ability to "microblog" and post status updates all over the Internet preempts a lot of posts. I've also started posting a few items on computer security and I've set up a new blog for that, theremustbe.posterous.com.

I hope to be even more interactive on matters technical and personal in the coming year so please feel free to post a response or contact me directly. I'm still looking for business as a consultant and VAR for small business or for network administration (Lotus, Novell, other Linux or Microsoft). I'm continuing to look for interesting things to write about.

About that contact stuff:
Twitter
Facebook
E-mail
LinkedIn

I'm also on Bleed Yellow and Greenhouse (and usually remember to launch Sametime) if you want to reach me that way.

A very quick post for anyone it may help:

I attempted to update a multiuser Notes client install on Windows XP from 8.5 to 8.5.1. I did it by just running setup.exe from the install kit, as I always do. However, in this case setup did not recognize that the existing install was multiuser and when I went to login as the user it acted like a clean install -- no names.nsf, etc. recognized.

The fix was simple -- uninstall then re-install selecting multiuser/"Anyone who uses this computer".

I don't know if this is a widespread issue but since no data or settings were lost by uninstalling I plan to do that as standard practice for multiuser installs from here on.

Happy Holidays.

David

I recently turned on DAOS (Domino Attachment Object Service) on a Domino server following Paul Mooney's wonderful step-by-step instructions

The server is the cluster mate of a production mail server. It is intended primarily for failover and availability when the main server is down for service so the hardware is minimal. But it did have two physical disks -- one for the operating system (Windows) and one for Domino. So I was able to route the transaction logging files to C: and not have it impact Domino.

The Domino data drive contains primarily mail and CRM databases. The drive was down to 8GB free on a 128GB drive. After turning on DAOS, with the DAOS directory on the same drive as the data directory, and waiting for the files to compact the drive now has 54GB free!

Thank you Lotus.

P.S. The primary production server has plenty of free disk space left. It appears to not be a good candidate for DAOS primarily because of transaction logging. It has a single very large RAID5 array holding both the Windows and Domino partitions. My understanding is that transaction logging would cause a big performance hit in that configuration.

A couple of disparate events have gotten me thinking about the user interface for collaboration/social media sites and the question of whether a UI can be so intuitive or self-documenting that formal instruction is not needed.

I'm a relatively recent Facebook user. While I love what the site does I find it the most confusing and random selection of screens and tools out there. There doesn't seem to be much organizing logic to know where to find what. The overall sense of bewilderment is certainly enhanced by the site's slow updates so sometimes you think something's not where you expect it but in fact it just hasn't refreshed yet. I see some of the same issues, although not to the same extent, on LinkedIn.

What's going on here? Huge numbers of people use these sites voluntarily. There is no instruction offered or expected. Folks muddle through. Perhaps it's an age thing. Do younger users have more of a feel for how these sites work, or perhaps just more tolerance for unexpected behavior on a web site?

The same issues apply with corporate collaboration tools.

A professional at a company I support recently wanted a file sharing tool for use on a project with his client. Since the company used IBM Lotus Quickr for internal file sharing I set up a simple Quickr place for him. I set the Library as the home page for the place and hid the extraneous features as much as the standard place designs allow. Here's what it looks like:


His reaction was that he couldn't use that with his clients; it was too confusing and hard to use. He ended up going with another tool (inteRoom from Mayopi) that offered fewer features because he felt it was easier. The solution he used is shown below.


Is the second example, while attractive, really any easier to use? Enough so that it's worth giving up functionality and storing data outside the firm's KM solution? Is either one harder than Google Docs which, like Facebook, is expected to be intuitive and self-documenting?


What is the proper expectation when rolling out web-based collaboration tools? Do we assume the end user can use sites like Google Docs? Do we need to pre-qualify the users and provide instruction in some cases? What makes a web tool easy to use? Is it the same for everyone?

A theory I've relied on for many years is that the folks who design computerized tools are not the best ones to decide what's intuitive or logical for a non-technical business user. That applies to word processing, file navigation (e.g. Windows Explorer) or web sites. I'm frequently told by non-technical folks that one program or site is easier to use than another. I look at them and can't detect a difference. The end-user perspective is the one that counts, but is there a way to predict what that will be for any particular group of users? Microsoft spends huge amounts of time and money on usability testing and yet whenever they make a UI change it's almost always criticized. How are mere mortals supposed to guess what will be easy for our users?

Notes stopped responding while I was writing this the first time; I had to use print screen to save it for retyping. My general moaning is that I'm seeing way too much crashing, random delays and odd behavior lately. Happens across multiple machines. Maybe it's me? I've taken to keeping two computers on while I'm trying to work so I can turn to the second one to get something accomplished when the first one decides to take a nap. I can't find a common factor. I'm suspicious of the new McAfee version 5 but I've seen similar issues on machines with other protection products. I'm thinking the number of things that try to update themselves in the background, load onto the task bar at startup, monitor your activity and generally be "helpful" is overwhelming computers that are perfectly up to the task of running the foreground programs I'm using.

Moving on to check in on some ongoing efforts...

Notes/Domino 8.5.1. The changes in the Notes client from 8.5 to 8.5.1 are subtle but it does seem to be a bit faster. As many others have reported the speed difference in Designer is amazing; like night and day. I've upgraded one server and it appears to be a non-event as with most Domino upgrades. I will start rolling it out to other production servers as soon as I can create the maintenance windows. And for anyone interested, Domino 8.5.1 appears to run fine on Windows 2000.

I'm still testing Symphony. I currently have only Symphony, no MS Office, on my laptop. But I'm getting slightly discouraged. Minor but noticeable formatting changes when exchanging documents with MS Office may be a killer. And some Word formatting is lost or damaged so that even if you don't touch that element it is changed when the document is reopened in MS Word. I don't recall this being so much of an issue in earlier testing with Open Office. And WordPerfect had it handled years ago. So what's the issue with Symphony? I'm looking at things like bullet lists, headers and paragraph borders -- pretty basic stuff for word processing these days. Also, the envelope printing in Symphony 1.3 is still not quite ready for the business world. It seems to work on some printers and not on others.

Beyond that I've had the feedback: "Don't even bother. Business users will never accept anything except MS Office." That may be true.

I think the best market for Symphony may be smaller organizations. They may have less need to exchange documents still in the collaboration stage outside the organization and will be happy with the ability to export finished documents to pdf. But even in very small companies I'm seeing the demand for MS Office in order to interact with third-party applications.

Remember Nettiquette? The idea was that if everyone who used the Internet followed a set of conventions then everything would work smoothly and there would be no conflict. It was a perhaps naive idea even back when the Internet was a fairly obscure place frequented by a small self-selecting group possessing some shared technical knowledge. The notion has pretty much dropped from discussion now that everyone and her grandmother is using the Internet -- and often not even aware that that's what they're doing.

The Internet from the beginning was based on trust, cooperation and consensus. If you missed it, check out Steven Crocker's reminiscence in the New York Times, "How the Internet Got Its Rules". A brief excerpt:
Everyone understood there was a practical value in choosing to do the same task in the same way. For example, if we wanted to move a file from one machine to another, and if you were to design the process one way, and I was to design it another, then anyone who wanted to talk to both of us would have to employ two distinct ways of doing the same thing. So there was plenty of natural pressure to avoid such hassles. It probably helped that in those days we avoided patents and other restrictions; without any financial incentive to control the protocols, it was much easier to reach agreement.

As financial and other incentives became stronger the spirit of cooperation and consensus waned. Today SPAMers, botnet operators, perpetrators of DOS attacks, government censors, content providers and ISP's do not feel bound by nettiquette, the RFC process, or any restrictions other than "what can I get away with?"

I was recently struck by a parallel to the Internet situation. In a series of articles on the problems related to too much boating traffic and development on Candlewood Lake in western Connecticut, the News-Times interviewed the commodore of the lake's last yacht club who lamented that people didn't know or didn't follow the "rules of the road". Maritime "rules of the road", having been developed over hundreds of years, are quite complex and at times obscure compared to the rules of netiquette. But the dynamic seems identical: The rules held as long as they only needed to govern the behavior of a relatively small, self-selecting and technically proficient group. To that group, the need for and benefits of the rules seemed self-evident.As soon as anyone with the price of a speedboat could get out on the water the rules fell aside.

I'm sure others can come up with similar examples.

So how do we adapt when our domain -- be it the Internet, the water, or anything else -- stops being private and clubby and starts being more subject to the general rules of public behavior? I'm not offering any answers, just hoping that it's helpful to frame the question.

I took some vacation (Very nice stay in Stone Harbor, NJ, with a whole lot of family around), and there was preparing for vacation, and usual summer distractions, and posting snide comments on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, so I haven't blogged much lately. Here are some misc. updates.

I had posted that we were testing Symphony 1.3. I haven't had much buy-in on the testing. For my own part, I find the newest version pretty easy to use. Definitely a lower learning curve than MS Office 2007/2010. Biggest issues are PowerPoint presentations and Word documents with extensive tables that don't display properly on screen. That could be a deal breaker for this organization -- a consulting firm that needs to regularly exchange not-yet-final documents with big companies using MS Office.

I had been keeping a Domino 4.6.5 server running, mostly as a curiosity but I found semi-production tasks creeping on to it so I bit the bullet and updated it. Moved it to slightly newer hardware, Windows 2000 server and Domino 6.5. Will probably go to Domino 8.5 on Linux if new hardware ever becomes available (as I say, a low priority machine). I found a few gotchas on the way moving from SMTP MTA to modern SMTP transport. I still can't make it send directly to the Internet but it works fine using a non-Domino "smart host" for SMTP. Mail is minimal; mostly very old e-mail addresses. This was our the only Internet gateway many years ago and every now and then we find something still using that routing.

Back on the production servers (Domino 8.5) I've seen a few odd things with the interaction of Directory Assistance, third-party CRM as part of DA, clustered mail servers, and BES. I may have to get the hotshots to look into it. Issues with replicas getting out of sync (resolved by clearing replication history), some entries not appearing in Blackberry lookups, and old data lurking somewhere the Blackberries can find it. Maybe related, I'm told our use of the Short Names field in the actual Domino Directory -- putting several aliases there -- is not recommended after R5.  Practice has been to put the Notes aliases in User Name and all of the Internet address variations in Short Name/User ID. Every now and then we get a case where on a message to mixed internal and external addresses the external users see the Notes id instead of the Internet address. I thinks it's a client-side issue related to having the internal folks in multiple directories but there's a lot of interaction to sort out.

I hope everyone had a good summer. This should be an interesting autumn between Windows 7, Notes/Domino 8.5.1, and the lingering uncertainty about budgets and business direction.

And the less said about the New York Mets' season at this point, probably the better.

David