Notes and Domino v8 were launched for general release on August 17, 2007.
The main new features are:
- The user interface is substantially changed and improved. It offers a rich set of collaborative technologies, including email, presence information instant messaging, teamspaces, telephony (through third parties), and on-the-fly conferences (through Sametime). The applications are increasingly integrated in a natural way.
- Many messages are easily gathered together into clutches of related emails, making it easier to process a given corpus of messages.
- Various tools make it much easier to browse through information. For example, you start off with a search, then right click to find associated people or documents. One has the experience of surfing through your Notes information.
- Has built-in viewers and editors for many MS Office documents.
- Working with Google Desktop, search encompasses desktop files and the Web.
- Rather than email a document to people, it’s easy to save it to a Quikr space for later retrieval.
- Existing Notes applications can be integrated with other applications, using the new composite application editor. Such mashups/plugins are integrated through the Expeditor environment.
- There’s now an activity server, which supports ad hoc workflows.
Overall thoughts:
- Notes/Domino has a rich set of non-email methods of collaboration. The tools are gradually being integrated. Lotus users have a substantial technology edge over Exchange users in this regard.
- There’s plenty of good innovation, designed to help deal with information overload.
- The product architecture should provide for strong integration with mobile devices in the future–we look forward to seeing this vision unfold.
… David Ferris and Nick Shelness
One Comment
Although I recognise the improvements in this new version of Lotus Notes / DOmino, I do not understand the phrase : “The tools are gradually being integrated. Lotus users have a substantial technology edge over Exchange users in this regard.”
I think everyone is in agreement that simply comparing Lotus Notes/Domino with Microsoft Exchange is apples and oranges. So comparing the Lotus Notes UI which ingrates services from various backend servers (Domino / SameTime / Activity Server) with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook doesn’t really do either platform justice, or am I missing the point here ?
On the other hand, the spitting image between the Notes 8 UI and Outlook 2003 / 2007 is a great compliment for Microsoft
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