Clever Calendaring The Notes R5 calendar has been redesigned to provide an easier-to-use interface, holiday support, and more notifications and print options. It has been integrated with task management so you can add a scheduled interaction to a task assignment.

R5 lets you view a group of calendars on one screen to see at a glance who is in the office. Free or busy capability is much more efficient than in Exchange. In R5, one copy of a user's calendar is on the server. All other servers reference this copy, so the calendar is always in sync in a dynamic lookup.

To offer better mobile support, Notes is moving to a single certificate that can be restored if it's lost, compromised or corrupted. Eventually, we would like to see Notes certificates placed in a secure database on the NOS.

For the mobile user, Notes currently provides several location profiles and you can alternate between them depending on your location. R5 will make it easier to configure your profiles and provides more replication options.

Notes offers a common development environment for its applications using modular design elements. The Headlines Page is modifiable, so you can control sections by adding or deleting content in the application template's form and creation profile. You can lock down anything you don't want changed since the majority of users won't (or shouldn't) have designer access. Notes also lets you maintain both NSF and traditional HTTP directory definitions of content source. The layout area in R5 is in HTML, not Java. R5 adds HTML 4.0 and JavaScript, as well as ActiveDoc and ActiveX support. Notes classes are exposed to OLE (Object Linking and Embedding).

With R5, developers can create real-time access to databases via Enterprise Integration Links. You can then retrieve information by accessing DB2, Oracle and ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) stores using transaction monitors and servers, such as MQSeries and Tuxedo, or using CICS transactions via COM or an Active Server Page. You can still run all Domino applications in R5.

R5 adds LDAP 3, S/MIME (Secure MIME) and X.509 certificates to the Notes client. You can run Domino with Microsoft's Internet Information Server as the HTTP stack to use the same server port. New configuration tools make R5 easier to install with an ISP connection.

Lotus expects R5 to have a much smaller footprint than its predecessor--18 to 22 MB for a typical client installation. It will have Win32 and Mac PowerPC versions, but no 16-bit client support; Lotus feels the Web experience is compelling enough for the upgrade.

Nancy Cox is a contributing editor at Network Computing. She can be reached at ncox@cmp.com.