As great as Lotus Notes is for deploying productivity-enhancing applications throughout a company, it still suffers from numerous weaknesses. Here's what users want, as well as a hint of things to come from Lotus.
Rick Dobson and Dave Andrews
From its beginning in 1989 as a client/server platform for deploying distributed work-flow and communications applications, Lotus Notes has grown into a leading groupware platform, with an installed base of almost 4000 companies and more than 1 million users worldwide. Managers at companies big and small alike say that Notes' document databases are an excellent way to store unstructured data. Notes users can access multiple databases of documents, participate in electronic discussions, and route messages to quickly access and disseminate information. However, if yo
u scratch the surface of a typical Notes success story, you'll often find a tale of administrative and programming complexities. An informal survey conducted by BYTEof chief information officers (CIOs), developers, and users indicates a number of areas where Notes could improve (see the text box, opposite page). Lotus hopes to address these and other concerns in a major upgrade of Notes that the company hopes to release in the middle of this year.
Notes is now available in server versions for OS/2, NetWare, Windows, Windows NT, and Unix, and in Windows, OS/2, Unix, and Macintosh client versions. The product provides a platform for a multitude of decision-support, customer-service, and problem-resolution applications developed by internal corporate programmers and third-party developers. "There's almost nothing I can think of that we don't use Notes for," says Jim Charles, CIO at Computer Language Research, a tax-automation software company based in Dallas, Texas. "It's how we have reengineered, to use
a cliche, our company," he adds.
Other software companies have released programs that compete with certain aspects of Notes (e.g., BBSes for electronic discussions, E-mail programs, relational databases with replication, and work-flow management programs), but no currently available product directly competes with the document-based Notes. Microsoft's Exchange Server and Oracle's Documents might challenge Notes, but neither product is slated to ship until later this year.
Meanwhile, CIOs working at large, multiple-server Notes installations say they lack tools for managing and fine-tuning their Notes installations. Developers who have mastered the Notes macro language for creating applications lament the lack of an integrated procedural language similar to Visual Basic. In addition, our interviewees say that Notes could beef up its reporting capabilities, further improve the efficiency of its replication engine, and introduce more granular control of replication options. A number of users also as
ked for an overall increase in speed, lower cost, improved database access, and a
better interface
for end users.
Lotus says version 4.0 of Notes will address most of its users' requests. The company said it's still too early to disclose details, but it announced general goals for version 4.0 when it made a prerelease version available to about 200 Notes developers in October.
Lotus says Notes 4.0 will let end users create agent programs that perform such activities as scanning news wires for specified information. Mobile users will find it easier to connect to a Notes network, and they'll be able to preconfigure their systems to selectively extract information, such as key portions of Notes databases, the latest mail messages, or appropriate modem dialing rules, in background mode. The Notes Mail interface will be replaced by cc:Mail. Notes' user interface will be enhanced, making it easier for users to store and navigate information.
Lotus also said that it will imp
rove the performance of Notes' servers, increase the number of users supported by each server, and offer tools for easier administration and management. With LotusScript, developers will have access to a BASIC-like scripting and macro language that will also work with other Lotus and non-Lotus applications. The company says that LotusScript will communicate with other scripting languages--such as Visual Basic, Applications Edition-- through platform scripting interfaces such as OLE2.0 automation.
The early word from developers who have seen or are using the alpha version of Notes 4.0 is that it's an ambitious upgrade that will address many of the product's current weaknesses. With Notes, Lotus already provides a platform that can literally allow a company to reinvent itself, but the process usually requires a good deal of effort. Lotus hopes that the next release of Notes will solidify the company's position in the ever-evolving groupware market.
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Many users want the Notes interface improved. Notes currently limits its Views to one line, which arbitrarily cuts off the descriptions shown on the screen.
What Notes Users Want
