Get the most from Notes®

Category Lotus Notes
Some of you may have noticed the new tag line we are using at Teamstudio, “Get the most from Notes”. We feel this new tag line is more representative of what Teamstudio is all about. Our products and services help those building and managing Lotus Notes/Domino-based applications get the most out of the Notes/Domino platform.

Most Lotus Notes developers already know this. Whether you are using CIAO! to help control your application development environment, Configurator for global search and replace, Delta for database comparison and merge or another Teamstudio product, getting the most from Notes is what you have been doing with our products for more than 12 years.

Products and services for Notes Admins from Teamstudio are not as well known, but many of you have been “getting the most from Notes” by using our products for more than 5 years. Whether you are using Build Manager to help control the deployment of applications to your production environment or another product or service to help you manage ACLs, agents or overall usage of your Notes applications, you already know how our new tag line is consistent with the products and services we deliver to you.

So what happened to “Just Enough Governance for Notes”? Did it go away?

Although we did decide to change the tag line, we still feel the need for IT governance in the Notes world is important. We know it is an area where Teamstudio can help, but it is only part of what we do. If you go to the “Resources” section of our Web site, you will find a log of useful information there. And you can still get IT Governance help. Whether you are looking for policies references to help you form your own policies, or sample implementation guides, you will find it here.

I hope you agree that the new tagline, “Get the most from Notes” is more indicative of what we do. I would love to hear from you on this. Please feel free to leave a comment here or email me directly at scott_johnsen@teamstudio.com.

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 9:04 AM | Location Beverly, MA USA | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Category Personal
As we approach the end of the year it gives me an opportunity to reflect on all the changes of the past year and to think about the challenges ahead in the coming year. I only joined Teamstudio just over a month ago. Even in these first few weeks I have been incredibly impressed by the friendly and open ‘welcome’ I have received from across the Teamstudio business. The Monday that I stated was especially tough as the sad news had just reached the UK office about Andrew's death in Afghanistan, but the team here still went out of their way to make me feel welcome and to help me settle in.

My own business background is one of 'big' corporate (Xerox and Vodafone). The change I was looking to make this year - after some 'personal' time out to go travelling and do some more sailing - was to move to a smaller organisation that was more focused, dynamic and open, and could offer me a whole new set of challenges. With the task ahead of us in the coming year, Stephanie [Heit] has certainly given me those challenges! Launching a CRM product means a whole new marketplace for Teamstudio, potentially a whole new set of customers, and definitely a whole new set of processes. It is great to be a part of building this from the ground-up and thankfully, I do not have to do it all on my own as I have the support of the marketing and technical teams here in the UK, as well as the exhortations of the boss to keep me on track!

Our CRM launch activity really gets rolling in the new year. We have planned a series of activities such as a joint seminar with IBM as well as email and print/on-line marketing campaigns to start to really drive the customer awareness around our GEDYS-Intraware CRM offering.

But before all that starts, we have our break over Christmas - and I love Christmas! Two small children and one big kid in our house! We will be driving a few miles over the vacation period, visiting family and friends. The snowfall we have had here and the few delays I have experienced on our motorways recently really pale into insignificance against the challenges of the snow-struck Eastern seaboard in the US, and of course the travel woes of the Eurostar passengers and those stuck on the motorways here in Kent! Even the celebrity host of UK's Big Brother, Davina McCall, was stuck in her car for 16 hours - but kept everyone up to speed through regular Tweets. One of the downsides of Twitter perhaps...

I would like to finish by saying a big ‘thank you’ to everyone that has helped me start to build the platform for our CRM launch, and to say how much I am looking forward to a challenging new year of growth, revenue success, fun and developing my role here at Teamstudio.

Posted by Richard Finlay At 5:19 PM | Location Huntingdon, UK | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Category Source Code Control  Version Control
I recently came back from a trip where I was working with several customers to implement source code control systems. I wasn't in Kansas, but I could see it from my porch. But my real message is that 8.0 and beyond really changed the Notes development environment, and everyone needs to consider implementing some source code controls.

Let me explain. I updated my mail file to 8.5.1 because I wanted to be able to accept meeting invitations in preview mode (a really cool feature in 8.5.1). Then I opened my mail file in 8.0 and discovered I could not accept meeting invites in preview mode. You see, it wasn't just changes to the mail template. This feature also requires changes to the Notes client, even though there were no new features in this release. Because this feature was implemented in the Java views and forms, it was not something I could change by opening the template in Designer and copying. Because it was implemented in the Java views and forms. This would seem to mean the days of tweaking your designs on the production copy of the database are quickly ending.

So now that you have another copy of the database on your server for implementing new features (and maybe fixing things that users think are bugs), you need to be able to tell how the two databases are different. And this is where the source code control system comes into place.

You see, good source control should allow you to identify the user request for the change you are making, and it should help you manage the different versions of your applications. I can't tell you how many databases I've seen with design elements that are named 'Copy of...'. At one site, the developer admitted to me that he could delete all 20 of the private agents in his database that were one-time only data fixes (because the source code control system could always bring back stuff that was deleted).

So, sooner or later, you are going to need a source code control system. I am sure you will find it will actually make your life easier.

Posted by John Kingsley At 7:18 AM | Location Beverly, MA USA | Permalink | Comments (2) |