Outlook To Talk To Notes

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1001-978606.html">http://news.com.com/2100-1001-978606.html</a><br /><br />This may be of interest to system administrators. Do you manage a Lotus Notes installation? Are you subjecting your users to that horrid interface for their email and calendaring needs?<br /><br />"Microsoft announced on Friday free software that lets companies running IBM's Lotus Domino e-mail server--designed for the Lotus Notes e-mail application--give employees access to Microsoft's rival e-mail program. Microsoft Outlook 2002 Connector is add-in software for the IBM Lotus Domino Release 5 messaging server, that, when installed on a Lotus Domino server by a system administrator, lets a company's employees tap into Outlook 2002 and use most of its calendar, contact management and e-mail functions. Employees can also choose to continue using Notes."<br /><br />And that, in turn, means that your users can sync their Pocket PCs with their desktop. :) This will also ease your migration to Exchange 2003 which allows Pocket PC 2002 and Smartphone 2002 to sync directly against the server. Remember, when you dispose of your Lotus Notes and Domino CDs, do so in an environmentally friendly manner. :lol: I know IBM already sells an Outlook connector, but if I recall correctly, it isn't free and when I used it on a Notes 4/Outlook 97 workstation, it was far from perfect.

[Daniel]

Anit-Microsoft: Embrace and extend
Microsoft: Best e-mail client now better
Me: Great if you use office and domino

Daniel

[Jonathan1]

Been using Notes. It may not have a pretty GUI but I can honestly say that we have never in the 5 years I have worked for my company been hit with a single virus outbreak. NEVER. Malicious code can’t been embedded into the e-mail since it doesn’t run HTML. And an e-mail when opened is just that. Words. You don’t have to worry about your e-mail formatting, deleting, or modifying your system or files. Do I get pissed with Notes? Hell yesssss. The way they manage their databases is bizarre to say the least. The GUI is all over the freaking board. But that is a small price to pay for not having to play cleanup after Nimda and the like.

[cherring]

notes, Nooooo!

[mwille]

Notes ? No problems with it what so ever... like mentioned above, no viruses for over 2 years now ! I sync with outlook at home and with Notes using Lotus Easysync Pro at the office... again, no problems.. :roll:

[carphead]

Everyt ime I get in a battle in the Notes VS Outlook there's one very simple word to use which wins every time....

CADENZA

No other sync program beats this. The main advantage is part of it becomes a INBOX client so I can just dial up to my corporate network and use the inbox to download and manage my email.

I'm a MSCE and a LCP and to me OUTLOOK is to heavy and complicated for most people. The client in NOTES 5 and (even more so) 6 is better. Most people use Outlook because it's the norm not because it's the best.

As a product Notes/Domino is better because it's more flexible than Exchange/Outlook. I've seen ERP systems built around Notes before but the best I've seen with Exchange is a nice email client.

Don't even get me started on Viri!!!!

I've said my piece now hit me baby!!! :roll:

Regards,
Daniel

[Anthony Caruana]

I use Outlook XP at home and Notes in the office. After using both products for a number of years my conclusion is that the two products can not be compared

Exchange /Outlook offers a full feature mail and scheduling environment. Notes offers this plus a fairly rich application environment. While the Notes interface is clunky the easiest way around this is to go to the iNotes Inteface through a browser. This is nicer than Outlook imho

If all you want is mail then Exchange/outlook is fine. But the religious war of Notes vs Microsoft is as pointless as Palm vs Pocket pc. Both are good but they are different; one will suit some people better than the other.

[Anthony Caruana]

One more thing. If you car seperate the backend and frontend then you give end users the one thing they most want; choice.

[carphead]

The problem is that quite often it's not pratical to offer a choice. Outlook and Notes clients are very different beasts. For support reasons I seriously doubt if both would be implentmented.

The reason this might come in handy is if a company wanted to change the backend to Notes instead of Exchange. One of the attractive features of Notes is that Groupware is only a small part of it's abilities. With Exchange it's about the only thing it does well!!

[fulltilt]

Yeah notes is nice. But how 'bout the clunky look and nonstandard, unintuitive windows feel.
Is that just the implementation I'm using (R5) or is that how it exists 'out-of-the-box'.

At least Exchange/Outlook from an end-users perspective is fairly straight forward.

Maybe I'm a Microsoft baby...

(Ha, I'm at home when coding Cobol-74)

[arkman]

I don't have any problem with Outlook, but can't stand Exchange. Have you ever tried to administer an Exchange Server(s) with a fairly heavy load? Nightmare, or at least it was for us. In the last few years we have scrapped Exchange, but kept Outlook. We have now moved the backend (i.e. Exchange's functionality) to a linux based server put out by Bynari (www.bynari.com). This is working out very well and TOC is much less.

Whatever the Choice it is always good to have one! ;)

[peterawest]

Two weeks too late.

Just two weeks ago we moved our remaining Notes e-mail users over to Exchange (kicking and screaming I might add :twisted: ) so that we could end all of the problems with supporting two mail clients.

They still use Notes for their workflow applications, since it blows away Exchange Public Folders, but for mail, it's Outlook or nothing. 8)

[Kirkaiya]

From a purely PPC sync perspective...

When I was at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young 2 years ago, we were using Lotus Notes, and I synced with my iPaq using some 3rd party lotus-to-ppc sync software, I think it was from River Run Technologies, or something like that.

Anyway - it did sync my email, calendar, and tasks (I never managed to get it to sync my notes, ironically).

Anyway - about the virus thing - agreed, outlook gets hit all the time, but that's usually because of VBScripts embedded in mail. The version of notes we were using DID support displaying simple HTML mails, there just wasn't any script support (which is a good thing in a mail client, I believe).

As for the back-end - I've never had to administer Domino, but Exchange is an evil beast - getting better over time, but egad, what a slow and finicky thing it is. Not to mention storing everthing in 1 giant "Exchange Store" never appealed to my common sense (whenever it's corrupted, you restore from the last backup??).

Microsoft's 1st portal offering, Sharepoint Portal Server, uses the same basic store (called the "document store") to store all the portal documents, which has led to performance problems, etc.

At some point, all these storage systems (Exchange, SharePoint, and so on), should... crap... for once, I'm under an NDA, or I would talk more about the future of Exchange and SharePoint, which I would so dearly like to do, to address some of the issues people have with them...

Anyway - choice is good.

[Janak Parekh]

Not to mention storing everthing in 1 giant "Exchange Store" never appealed to my common sense (whenever it's corrupted, you restore from the last backup??).
What, you don't like ESE stores? ;) Fortunately or unfortunately, they're here and will stay for a while. Win2k AD uses the same storage technology.

It'll be nice to see Exchange & co. move one day to SQL. We'll see when/if that happens.

--janak

[Mike Temporale]

At some point, all these storage systems (Exchange, SharePoint, and so on), should... crap... for once, I'm under an NDA, or I would talk more about the future of Exchange and SharePoint, which I would so dearly like to do, to address some of the issues people have with them...

I know what you're on about here, and I'm not under a NDA. BUT I'm not going to spill the beans. What I've heard from my Microsoft contacts makes the future of these products look really bright. I can't wait for it to be released. 8)

Notes is safer, but you can still get a virus. All the user has to do double click that vbs attachment and hit launch instead of detach or view. Now, it won't go through your address book and send emails to everyone.... but it can still cause harm to your machine.

[Ed Hansberry]

Notes is safer, but you can still get a virus. All the user has to do double click that vbs attachment and hit launch instead of detach or view. Now, it won't go through your address book and send emails to everyone.... but it can still cause harm to your machine.
I wrote several VBA macros in Excel back in '99 with a Lotus Notes 4x install and got names out of the address book. Has that door been closed?

And no, it wasn't a virus. :)

[PlayAgain?]

I used Outlook at home until Notes was forced on us in work and I was so impressed, I got myself Notes for the home. It's brilliant and does exactly what I want it to.

Maybe I'm just stupid, but I've learned through the use of different operating systems, how to work my way through 'non-standard' interfaces. It really isn't that difficult once you get your head into thinking outside the Windows box.

[mbrinkho]

I know IBM already sells an Outlook connector, but if I recall correctly, it isn't free and when I used it on a Notes 4/Outlook 97 workstation, it was far from perfect.

IBM/Lotus does have a server-side gateway that works between Domino and Exchange servers, and you would be right about it being... far from perfect. The client-side software is called "iNotes Access for Microsoft Outlook". It uses "Domino Offline Services" to give Outlook users the benefits of replication technology in situations where they cannot be connected to a server. AFAIK it could be said that it is free, in the sense that a client access license for the Domino server is free. :)

iNotes Access for Microsoft Outlook (http://www.lotus.com/products/inotes.nsf/allpublic/362043F45C78B88685256857006EFA65)

As for the PDA-sync question I must say that Commontime mNotes ("Cadenza") is awesome - both for PocketPC and PalmOS devices.

[WindWalker]

Add one more to the mNotes Cadenza chorus. I can't think of an application i have owned that gave me no error messages at all for over 8 months, as Cadenza has. It's too bad I had already spent $70 with Pumatech's "solution."

[Estaban]

IT departments lock down email client choices
Most companies supply add-ins and applications for their employees

Only three situations where mixed messaging environments would get any play.

a) Your company has just outsourced IT (to IBM?) and they are slowly converting you (to Notes?).

b) You used Notes/Outlook in the past, have a vested interest in maintaining (contact lists?), before your forced to change.

c) You *hate* _________, and you want to try before you buy.

There will always be exceptions but it general this will not impact market share.

[PHactotum]

I work for IBM Global Services, but please don't take anything I say to be anything but my own opinion.

I see Microsoft's connector not as a way to convert from Lotus Notes to Exchange, but to get the smooth GUI of Outlook with the backend of Lotus Notes. Of course it could be a way of converting from Exchange to Lotus Notes, the users not even knowing that the backend has changed.

I have used Outlook as my primary email and Lotus Notes (I started with Outlook.) My only reason for changing was the fact that my employeers system is Notes. My customers primary email is Outlook.

Both want me to use their email system. So far my employeer wins. It would be best if I could use one front end to both backends with a synchronization, at least a filtered sync, between the two for the calendar.

I still haven't found a way to do that.

[Jason Dunn]

Malicious code can’t been embedded into the e-mail since it doesn’t run HTML. And an e-mail when opened is just that. Words.

See, that would drive me insane. HTML can be potentially dangerous, yes, but plain text has a limit to the amount of data it can convery - give me a nicely formatted HTML newsletter any way over an ugly plain text one.

[Kati Compton]

Then perhaps a mail reader that limits the HTML tags that are actually used? Personally, I'm pretty old-school. I use Pine.