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I work with one of the few organizations left in the world still tied to (and crippled by) Lotus Notes. I joined here about 2 or 3 years ago and I was only familiar with Notes by its name. In fact, I'd never worked in a really large organization where I was tied into "enterprise"-style email software before. It was almost no time at all before -- independent of talking to anyone else -- I grew to hate Lotus Notes with a seething rage. I strongly believe that there is no lower organizational-capability to software-quality ratio than what is demonstrated with Lotus Notes. It is literally incredible to me. I mean that. Sometimes I think about Lotus Notes, and I *cannot believe it*. The most obviously disgraceful thing about Lotus Notes is that it completely flouts all software conventions of the last 15-20 years. In terms of user experience, the design elements are all misused and confusing, things are nested where they shouldn't be, and, in truly maddening display of odiousness, the hotkeys are either completely randomly assigned (or don't even exist) and are completely unmappable. CAN NO ONE AT IBM FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAP HOTKEYS? I cannot stress this enough. Other sickeningly frustrating facts about Lotus Notes: * There's maybe a 5% chance that, when I click "Reply to all" on an email in Notes, it will replace the _All_ that I'm trying to reply to with _only myself_, and if I don't notice that the "To:" field is set to me only, I'll write an important email, send it out, go do something else, come back an hour later, and see my message in my inbox. Because I sent it only to myself. Because Lotus Notes sucks. * Lotus Notes lets you download attachments (I use the term "attachments" loosely, since they're really just files embedded as icons arbitrarily into the body of your email), which is actually a shocking piece of real functionality. Except when you download them, it keeps the modified/created date as the date you received your email. So if I have to go get a file from an email last week, when I go to my Downloads folder to open it, I have to remember the exact filename because Notes is garbage and it's now sorted randomly into God knows whenever I loving received the email. How did you even do this? Someone had to specifically write functionality to gently caress up the experience for downloading attachments. * Why am I downloading attachments and opening them instead of just clicking on them? Well, Lotus Notes of course allows you to double-click an attachment to open it. Unfortunately it seems to just arbitrarily choose a random program to open it in. So, GOOD LUCK. It's not your OS's default applications. * Relatedly, I set my default system to open all .html files in a text editor by default. Lotus Notes actually somehow figured this out, and will abide by this. Unfortunately, it also believes that any URL link to a website is an HTML file, and so attempts to open all links in a text editor. * Lotus notes has a great feature in its calendar app. Event reminders default to "30 minutes prior" alarms. Because Notes is modern software, of course, you can change that. You can adjust the number, you can adjust whether it's minutes or hours or days. In fact, you can also adjust whether it's a reminder *before* or *after* the event. Bravo fellas! Nothing more useful than a reminder that an event began 30 minutes ago. (I assume/hope/pray there is some edge case that this actually makes sense for.) * Lotus Notes comes with webmail. It's got great functionality where if you type at any time in the browser, it'll start "searching" your webmail. (It actually seems to filter and re-sort, I guess?, by a column... It's not a full-text search.) Unfortunately, if you search and then scroll the page, the results all disappear. Then if you search again, it will tell you there are no results for the exact same search you just made. Because they all disappeared. * When Notes gives you an event reminder for a repeating event, you can Snooze it, Dismiss it, or Open it. If you click Open, it will ask you which event in the series of repeating events you'd like to Open. If only there was some way to determine that. * Lotus Notes, when viewing your calendar, displays prominently the number of days/weeks/months left in the year. Someone had to add this. Rather than make the calendar open in under 15 seconds, or maybe add mappable hotkeys, they said, let's ensure people always know it's 126 days (just checked!) until the end of the year! * When you paste a URL from your browser's location bar, Notes automatically formats it into a link. It also adds markup so it is bold, underlined, and blue, so it looks a link. So even if you de-link it after pasting it, you can rest easy knowing that it's still gonna look like a link until you manually fix that too. THANKS LOTUS NOTES! * In the webmail, when composing a new message, the first button at the top is "New message" -- because that's what you need easy access to when writing a new email: the ability to write another new email. "Send" is number two. It has really neat functionality where if you accidentally double click it, it will throw a JS popup warning you "FORM CANNOT BE SUBMITTED TWICE". Thank you for the information! I don't know what I was thinking! * it'd be awesome if Lotus Notes let you right-click a link from an email to copy its URL. I can select the text and choose "Copy", which .. copies the whole text of the entire email. Or I can do "Copy Document Link" which creates a link to the email I can send any other Lotus Notes user (SO HELPFUL). Instead I have to reply to the email then right-click the link -- or the "Hotspot" as they've bafflingly decided to refer to them -- and copy it that way. I once commented to my coworker that I have always wanted to meet a Lotus Notes developer so I could just scream into their face "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU", and I feel like this is the closest I'll ever come. I'm restraining myself though. Instead I'll just leave you with this simple riddle: Q: What's worse than the Holocaust? A: Lotus Notes.
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Aug 28, 2015 02:23
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 16:28 |
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"i use corel draw 3.0 and dBase IV" -OP
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Aug 28, 2015 02:35
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nice shagger callout
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Aug 28, 2015 02:35
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people still use these enterprise e-mail things like outlook and lotus?
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Aug 28, 2015 02:36
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pram posted:nice shagger callout
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Aug 28, 2015 02:36
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it's actually called ibm notes 9 social edition, op, please stay on brand
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Aug 28, 2015 03:02
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Scrotus Notes
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Aug 28, 2015 03:53
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Lotus Scrotes
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Aug 28, 2015 03:53
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can't wait to upgrade to verse
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Aug 28, 2015 03:55
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you can't gently caress lotus notes
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Aug 28, 2015 04:01
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my favourite is sitting someone down in front of Notes for the first time and asking them to figure out how to mark an email as read without reading it
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Aug 28, 2015 15:32
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Flat Daddy posted:can't wait to upgrade to verse 
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Aug 28, 2015 15:35
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made me laugh I have to use Outlook at work and it doesn't seem nearly as horrifying
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Aug 28, 2015 17:06
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i can confirm some of these bugs and features but not all of them the worst one is anything to do w/ text formatting tho like the url thing. if you copy text from a website and paste it into notes it tries to paste it w/ the formatting from the website which is unbelievably awful cause it doesn't just post like html it has to translate the html to notes rich text which is not the same as normal rich text. protip: always paste poo poo into notepad and recopy it before pasting into notes.
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Aug 28, 2015 17:10
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lotus notes 8+ is an emulated notes 6/7 client running on top of eclipse.
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Aug 28, 2015 17:11
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sametime lets me send dumb gifs to my coworkers. that enough for me
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Aug 28, 2015 18:28
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sametime is pretty good but its because its a way simpler program. you can write and distribute plugins for it via eclipse too which is cool.
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Aug 28, 2015 18:37
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Shaggar posted:lotus notes 8+ is an emulated notes 6/7 client running on top of eclipse. 
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Aug 28, 2015 18:45
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in notes, if you double-click on some text in a received email, it instantly changes the email window into an email composition screen, so that you can modify the text, recipients, subject line attachments of the email which you received because why would you want to select text word by word
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Aug 28, 2015 18:51
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the worst is when notes tries to open a link in notes, god drat that built in browser is awful
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Aug 28, 2015 19:05
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qntm posted:in notes, if you double-click on some text in a received email, it instantly changes the email window into an email composition screen, so that you can modify the text, recipients, subject line attachments of the email which you received double clicking any document in notes puts the document into edit mode if available. the reason edit mode is available on received emails is because there are quirky differences in text selection based on which mode ur in.
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Aug 28, 2015 19:14
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ibm is running out of fortune 500 companies to rip off
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Aug 28, 2015 19:28
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notes is a very old product. it predates the internet and always on connectivity. For this reason there are many features that are designed to allow you to work offline. including having a local copy of your email database. in order to secure your mail database, notes offers many features that were ahead of its time including encryption that was relatively easy for the user to use. The maildb is encrypted with a users public key and then when they open notes they enter a password to decrypt the associated private key and then decrypt the mail db. ok that's fine. that's pretty cool if its the year 1990 and you need to have your data but also have it be secure. great. well..... heres the thing. the user's private key is not only used for decrypting local dbs, its used for authentication against the server. so the server has a copy of your public key in its directory that it matches to ur user account. All notes based communication uses this public/private key auth. that means no passwords. but wait! we used a password when we logged into notes! That password must be on the server somewhere, right?!? nooope. it only exists as the decryption key to the id file that stores your private key. that id file only exists locally. and the password is only good for that id. if you have multiple copies of your id, like say, on multiple computers you might use, you can and will have different passwords for each id file. hmm. ok but this is 1990, who has more than 1 computer?? no its the year 2015 and this is still how notes works. on top of that all notes services that you access thru non-notes methods (webmail/http/sametime) have a separate password that is stored in the directory. Yes! that means every single notes user has at a minimum 1 id file password 1 "internet" password and then X number of additional id file passwords based on how many copies of their id file they have. Also the private keys expire and when private keys are renewed they are renewed only on the id file the user is currently using but we aren't going to get into that because its as much of a headache as you think and everyone just certifies user ids for 100 years so they don't have to deal with it. ok. ok. so maybe its not quite that bad any more "you mean they got rid of id files and everything uses the directory password?" haha no you silly person. now we have the id vault! the id vault is a database on the server where user id files are stored. every time a user is created, their id file is stored in the vault. (oh I forgot to mention previously there was no default store for ids so if a user loses the id you had to recreate it) The vault will synchronize passwords with any client 8.5.1 or higher. It even syncs the id file pw with the internet password so most of the time now the user's passwords across all of notes should be the same. This actually does work irl ive seen it and its a huge lifesaver, but its still dumb as gently caress. tune in next time when we discuss the mysteries of the administration process and the nightmare of user renames.
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Aug 28, 2015 19:29
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im glad shagger has to deal with lotus notes
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Aug 28, 2015 19:47
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'God save thee, Yosposter Shaggar! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!— Why type'st thou so?'—With my keyboard I used the Lotus Notes.
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Aug 28, 2015 20:07
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mishaq posted:im glad shagger has to deal with lotus notes
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Aug 29, 2015 15:35
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qntm posted:my favourite is sitting someone down in front of Notes for the first time and asking them to figure out how to mark an email as read without reading it why would you ever need to mark an email as read without reading it
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Aug 29, 2015 16:31
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Hammerite posted:why would you ever need to mark an email as read without reading it when it's an email you need to keep but don't want to show up in 'unread email' filters
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Aug 29, 2015 16:33
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i can't find a picture of it, but i had to use a lotus product once that used a random number of 'hieroglyphics' to obscure your password as you typed lol
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Aug 29, 2015 16:38
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Cold on a Cob posted:when it's an email you need to keep but don't want to show up in 'unread email' filters why would reading it mean you wouldn't "keep" it. what are you talking about
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Aug 29, 2015 16:49
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Hammerite posted:why would reading it mean you wouldn't "keep" it. what are you talking about i mean you want to keep it but not read it, move it, or delete it so the only option in this case is 'mark as unread' with outlook i keep everything in my inbox and use a filter to show only unread and flagged emails
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Aug 29, 2015 16:57
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Cold on a Cob posted:i mean you want to keep it but not read it, move it, or delete it so the only option in this case is 'mark as unread' you are talking about marking as unread, the post i originally replied to is talking about marking as read
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Aug 29, 2015 16:58
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oops i mistyped, i meant i mean you want to keep it but not read it, move it, or delete it so the only option in this case is 'mark as read' with outlook i keep everything in my inbox and use a filter to show only unread and flagged emails
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Aug 29, 2015 17:04
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by default notes doesn't have a preview pane so to mark something as read you either open it, hit insert (which toggles read/unread), or click edit -> unread marks -> mark selected as read. if you enable the preview pane there is also and option to have it mark as read when previewed.
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Aug 29, 2015 17:27
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Hammerite posted:why would you ever need to mark an email as read without reading it because you dont need to read it but you're not going to delete it because who deletes email that isn't incriminating? so you just mark it as read. one important part of this is that, like me, you prefer having your unread email account at 0.
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Aug 29, 2015 17:36
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where i work everyone's id is name/site/company and apparently this doesn't change even if you transfer to another site, does that have to do with the user rename nightmare?
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Aug 29, 2015 18:42
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Shaggar posted:by default notes doesn't have a preview pane oh ok. lol
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Aug 29, 2015 20:57
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OP made me laugh shittu software has always been a goldmine for laffs
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Aug 29, 2015 21:07
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My favorite is how long search takes for anything. Like, a good 30 seconds to search through 400 emails.
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Aug 29, 2015 21:39
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all email services are just differing levels of poo poo. but notes is particularly bad.
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Aug 29, 2015 22:33
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