IM Improves IBM Messaging Systems

Client connections

The new IM features in the Notes 6.5 client make this upgrade worth the expense, especially if your company has embraced IM. Notes 6.5 also does an impressive job of integrating presence awareness using the Workplace Instant Contacts window. Simply sign into Notes and you'll be authenticated to Sametime automatically. Presence awareness is incorporated into the Instant Contacts lists, the Workplace for Notes Welcome page and the Notes inbox.

This is how it works. If my co-editor Bruce were logged on to the corporate Domino system and sent me an e-mail, upon opening that e-mail I would see a presence indicator that shows his status and the status of anyone listed in the To:, From: or cc: fields. The presence indicator says if the user is active, away, in "do not disturb" mode or offline. Additionally, if the sender or other recipients of an e-mail were online when I opened the e-mail, I could open a chat session with any or all of them simply by right-clicking on their names in the message header and selecting "chat with" from the menu.

Lotus is taking IBM's workplace metaphor seriously. The intention is to make it possible for users to live in Notes. E-mail, calendar, tasks, IM, a Notes database and Web search facility, and a Web browser are integrated. With the addition of a launcher window in 6.5, users can add links to their favorite applications and documents by dragging and dropping them into the launcher. Many nontechnical information workers will be able to do everything they need to on their computer systems using Notes as their primary interface.

E-mail Enhanced

Since most of us spend a lot of time dealing with e-mail, Lotus has added some welcome features to Notes mail. In addition to a number of visible action icons that help you keep track of which items you've replied to or forwarded, you can mark messages for follow-up at a later date, which automatically adds the item to the Notes Follow-up folder. Thanks to the Notes QuickRules wizard, you also can mark an address as non-grata, and mail from there will be instantly deleted--I easily created a rule to delete automatically those annoying messages from the boss.

The Notes calendar in version 6.5 supports another welcome capability--drag-and-drop item creation. Simply drag any document or e-mail onto the calendar icon to create a new calendar event.Unwanted Mail

I'm disappointed Domino 6.5 doesn't add any additional server-based antispam measures over the previous release. Basic support for adding real-time blacklists and verification of a sender's valid host names and domain aren't enough ammunition in the fight against spam. You'll need to invest in a third-party product that includes message analysis and spam identification to make a serious dent in the amount of unwanted, inbox-cluttering e-mail your users receive. Also, Lotus says it doesn't plan to release a version of Sametime server that will run on Domino 6.5 until first quarter 2004, so to take advantage of all the nifty new IM and presence features, you'll need to maintain a 6.0.x server to run Sametime. Domino 6.5 server runs on a number of host operating systems, including AIX, AS/400, S/390, Linux, Solaris and Windows 2000/2003 Server.

Ron Anderson is Network Computing's lab director. Write to him at [email protected].

Post a comment or question on this story.