View Larger Map I've got a new measure for how long it takes to upgrade Domino.
One of my customers was upgrading one of their servers this afternoon. They gave me a call just as I was leaving to walk down to their office for a regular afternoon visit that I make. They mentioned that they were just starting to upgrade the server.
By the time I arrived, the upgrade was finished and the server was up and running.
So now I've got a new measure for how long it takes to upgrade a Domino Server:
It takes about five blocks.
Which I reckon is pretty neat.
**Update**
In the short time since I posted this blog entry, it has received a lot of hits. I feel a touch guilty that such a flippant entry is attracting so much attention. My postings usually contain more hard information than this one. However, the example I give is important. Does your CIO know how easy it is to upgrade Domino? Do they realise that in the world of Exchange the concerns are overwhelmingly about the cost and complexity of Exchange upgrades? See here.
If your CIO don't realise this: should they? After all, the cost of ownership is a 'bread and butter', 'live or die' issue for CIOs. They deserve to know when they're running a good system with a low TCO.
Here's a (fairly) quick description as to why software that adds corporate disclaimers will break email encryption and electronic signatures using Public/Private key standards like X.509.
I'm talking about the software used in many organisations that adds a standard corporate disclaimer at a gateway when the emails are being sent to the internet.
(And when I speak of electronic signatures I'm not talking about signatures that show your phone number and corporate logo. I'm talking about electronic signatures that prove that you were the person who sent this message and that nobody has tampered with the message.)
Imagine the structure of an email:
Header information used in any SMTP Message (SendTo, Subject, SMTPOriginator and Routing fields, etc)
Multi-Part S/MIME Message
The body of the text is here.
Any attachments are also contained here.
If you've encrypted the message, this will be a box of encrypted information, entirely unreadable unless you have the Private Key to read this document. You created this encrypted version by using the Public key of the Recipient which you've got in your possession.
(One of the 'parts' might be a plain text version of the body of the email in case the recipient is unable to read MIME formatted messages on their email system. But it will still be encrypted if you encrypted this email.)
At the end there's the electronic signature. If any single byte of information within the Multi-Part SMIME Message is changed, then the signature is invalidated.
It's conceptually impossible for anybody except the original sender (who also possesses the Recipient's Public Key) to legitimately create or change the Multi-part SMIME Message component. Any attempt to do so without the Sender's Private Key and the Recipient's public key will:
a) break the electronic signature, and b) mean that it is no longer properly encrypted.
Any attempt to "staple" a disclaimer onto the end of the message after the sender has pressed "Send" is an attempt to tamper with the message. That's exactly what the electronic signature is guarding against.
(The Header information isn't encrypted, so the Subject or the SendTo fields etc. could be changed without breaking the encryption. Some of these fields can also be changed without breaking the signature, but this doesn't help you because they won't display a disclaimer. I guess there's a chance that you could squeeze the disclaimer into the Subject line after the email has been sent: that's not a pretty approach, but it might work.)
If you really want to have a corporate disclaimer and also allow encrypted/electronically signed emails, the best bet would probably be to tap into Notes' standard (non-electronic) Signature functionality to add the disclaimer before the message is sent, so the sender will sign and encrypt the message which already has the corporate disclaimer in it. You set up users with a (non-electronic) Signature that has the disclaimer, and then find a way to prevent them from changing/removing the disclaimer (possibly by making changes to the mail file design).
Another alternative would be to use a tool like PGP Zip to create an attachment that is encrypted, and simply email that.
The third approach would be to delay the point at which the email is encrypted, so that it isn't the client who does this, but it happens at the Gateway instead. There's at least one commercial product that does this.
Somebody recently asked how much turning on the Domino 8 Design Compression feature affected CPU performance. I suspect that in most cases it improves performance rather than hurting it.
Back when Network Compression was introduced (in the days of Domino 5) there was a lot of concern that network compression might add to server load.
At that time, some measurements were performed, and it was found that the additional CPU load was fairly minor: less than 10%. Since then, we've been through four or five generations of CPU improvements. The ability of CPUs to perform calculations like those used with compression has improved many times over: which means that compression uses a lower percentage of a CPU's potential with each generation.
As a result, in 2008 it's rarely possible, and I suspect not worthwhile, to measure the difference that network compression makes to a CPU's usage.
Database Design compression probably makes an even smaller impact on CPU usage since reading the design of a database is a minority of a server's activity (which largely revolves around documents).
However: if you did, you might be surprised that the impact on overall performance was low and that performance might even improve. Here's why:
There are four main components to a server's scalability:
• The power of the CPU • The amount of RAM • The speed of the disk system • The speed of the network cards and network (not relevant for this discussion)
Whenever the server needs to use a design element for the first time, it needs to read it off a disk. That means that (say) 1,000 bytes of information need to be read off the disk and placed into memory. The server has to wait whilst this happens.
When the server reads a compressed design element, it reads the compressed information (say 500 bytes) of information off the disk and decompresses this information.
On the one hand the CPU has to do more work (decompressing). But it has only taken half as long for the information to be physically read into RAM. It may be that the time taken to read and decompress the data takes less time in total than reading the larger design element took before design compression applied. If there is less of a wait for disk transactions to be completed, then less information needs to be kept in memory, so memory usage may also decrease.
All environments will be different, but these days with reasonably well specified Windows servers I tend to find that CPU is not the part of a server that is overloaded: It's usually RAM that runs short or the disk system that doesn't keep up with the workload.
Component
Normal Status
Implications
CPU
I often find that CPU usage is relatively low. Although CPU usage peaks from time to time (especially with some Admin tasks or mass mailouts), usually CPU usage is 80%, 60%, 40%, even as low as 20%. Depending on your OS, your CPU usage can safely peak above 90%.
If your server were running with a very old CPU with extreme levels of usage and the server's memory and disk usage was OK, then it's theoretically possible that database design compression might cause problems and that it should only be applied with care: perhaps monitor it to see how it works with your mix of server/disk.
In most cases, the additional CPU usage will be very low and you'll be benefiting from faster disk throughput and leading to less memory usage.
RAM
Memory usage tends to be high.
When we move to 64 Bit releases of Domino running under 64 Bit OSes, the memory bottleneck will allow us to scale servers further.
Disk System Speed
Disk usage is often not monitored by customers. Disk queues are frequently higher than we would like.
When disk system performance is an issue, it's likely that Database Design Compression would improve server performance slightly. But you should look at the root cause: disk performance. If disks are slow, more data is queued in RAM, and this can eventually reduce server reliability.
Network System Speed
The Network Interface Card is rarely an issue these days. The amount of available bandwidth (especially to remote sites) sometimes affects performance.
Of course, if somebody has run a scientific test with standard workloads to measure the impact of Design Compression, I'd be interested to hear the figures. However, the actual impact will change depending upon the actual workload, CPU, Memory and Disk configuration of each server, since these factors all interact.
I put photographs into my blog postings to provide a break from the text. This is a Red Wattlebird that I photographed whilst camping at Mount Buffalo in Victoria in Easter 2007.
This question worried me, but (in a fit of honesty) I told them that I didn't think the period was enforced. It's has been a very long time since I installed a demo version.
In the customer's case, I did the right thing and told them that it was imperative that they use proper code for production installations, and I gave them help to make sure they knew how to log into Passport Advantage.
As it turns out, it was easier for them to get going with the demo software they had to hand - and for a limited Test/Proof of Concept installation, that's OK. However, their server is now saying:
W A R N I N G You are using a temporary license. You need to enroll IBM Lotus Domino within 8 days.
.... and it looks like they won't be able to restart Domino after the trial period expires. They will have to install a non-trial version of Domino over the top.
I don't believe this was enforced with previous versions of Domino, but I guess it makes sense that IBM provides some restriction on software made available to people who haven't purchased a licence.
Since I upgraded the design of my Blog to the Notes 7.0.2 design, I've had a slight problem with tags that I've just got to the bottom of.
My Tag cloud wasn't appearing, and when I ran More: Troubleshooting; Update Site Indexes, I kept getting an error.
Today I looked at my log, and it gave a hint as to the cause of the problem.
AMgr: Agent ('replicaCheck' in 'workingcollaboration\weblog.nsf') error message: Invalid formula (@URLEncode("Domino";""Update Sites" Plug-ins"))
The mixup of quotation marks got me wondering why these particular tags were included in the error. It turns out that I had created a document where I had tried to include "Update Sites" as a tag surrounded with quotes. When I removed the quotes (and renamed the tag Update-Sites), the index error disappeared and my tag cloud appeared. Hooray!
This is the laneway where I live in Melbourne: seen from the end with the graffiti. The graffiti varies from pointless tag signatures to very creative works of art: and occasional poetry. At the top centre/right you'll see a little tiled Space Invader work that appeared in a lot of places around Melbourne a few years ago. The laneway is looking a little quiet in this photo because many of the cafes have closed for the night and taken their chairs and tables inside.
From time to time, the city and the State (of Victoria) use this stretch to advertise Melbourne. This ad was shot just to the right of my photo:
I've reviewed the Notes 8.5 Public Beta 1 documentation on Roaming. As well as allowing the Notes 8.5 Standard client to roam like previous versions, there are some enhancements, including the ability to use a file server, and the ability to roam Administrator and Designer preferences.
Another welcome return is the ability to install Notes 8.5 'on a stick' (or USB drive).
I've put together a description of what's new. A fair amount of it is lifted word for word out of a number of documents in the Domino 8.5 Administration Help. But I've consolidated it to focus on what's new, and I've interspersed some commentary of my own.
Summary of new Roaming Features
The Administrator Help Documentation provided with Notes/Domino Public Beta 1 outlines some of the updates to the Roaming functionality: Read it for a full description of roaming.
First, Roaming is now supported for the Notes 8.5 Standard client. With Notes 8 it was only supported for the Notes 8 Basic client.
Secondly, there are also some new options which I've collated below.
Roaming (re)introduced for Notes 8.5, including roaming of Feeds & Eclipse functions
Roaming for the IBM® Lotus® Notes® standard configuration user is introduced in this release. A new Roaming policy settings document is introduced to support this functionality, as are two new roaming-specific databases (a feeds subscription database (LocalFeedContent.nsf) and an Eclipse™ plug-in data and preferences database (RoamingData.nsf)). User files configured for roaming now appear in a single Roaming Applications folder on the Notes replicator page. As well, a new Notes preference panel, Roaming, is now available for file server roaming-enabled users.
Domino Administrator & Designer Roaming
Roaming user functionality is available for the Notes client and IBM® Lotus® Domino™ Administrator client. If the Notes client is started before the IBM® Domino® Designer™ client, Designer settings can also be roamed.
It wasn't possible to roam the Administrator or Designer with previous releases of Notes.
Roaming available to either Domino Servers or File Servers
Notes roaming user functionality for the Notes Standard configuration is available, for use with either Domino server roaming or file server roaming. Domino server roaming was available with previous releases. File server roaming is new to 8.5.
For file server roaming, specify the file server to roam by mapping a network drive or specifying a file share.
For file server roaming choose one:
Click Local to specify that Notes replicates roaming data from the computer you are working on to your roaming [file] server.
Click Remote to specify that Notes uses NSF database links to access data on the roaming [file] server. Using this mode, only one Notes client can be active at a time because NSF sharing is not supported in a file share.
The words "access data on the roaming [file] server" are particularly interesting. Back in the early days of Notes (3) it was a supported option to run with your Notes Data directory on a file server. This was convenient, because it meant that no matter which PC you logged in on, you'd see the same personal files. However, at a relatively early stage it became apparent that the Notes' clients dependence upon immediate access to configuration files meant that this led to client crashes. To ensure Notes client stability, IBM dropped support for running with your data on a file server. But because of the simplicity and convenience of this setup, many customers continued to run Notes this way, with varying levels of success. See:
Title: Is running Client Notes.ini and/or Notes Data directory on a File Server a supported configuration? Doc #: 1086958 URL: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21086958
The implication from the Beta documentation is that IBM is officially reintroducing a way to run Notes with most configuration files on a file server. It looks like some files (like the Cache and the Desktop) will still be run on a local disk.
Roaming Policy Page
A new Domino Roaming policy page is used to configure Notes Standard configuration users for roaming.
The Replication page contains a Roaming Applications folder, containing the applications that have been enabled for roaming. Users can enable or disable replication for all applications in the Roaming Applications folder, not individual items within the folder.
IBM® Lotus® Notes® files that are specified for roaming are replicated from the roaming server to the user's local computer. These include the user's contacts, bookmarks, notebook or journal, feeds subscriptions, and Eclipse plug-in data and settings. When a roaming user logs in to any computer on which Notes is installed, their roaming-enabled files are replicated from their roaming subdirectory on the specified roaming server to that computer. On the Notes replicator page (File - Replication - Replicate) their roaming-enabled files appear grouped in their Roaming Applications folder.
Note All applications that are roamed appear in the Roaming Applications folder on the replicator page. While users can schedule replication individually, they cannot delete from this folder. The user's contacts application (NAMES.NSF) may contain their user's user.ID file and dictionary as file attachments.
Note The user ID is double-encrypted for added security before being attached. Because the user ID replicates, users do not need to copy their IDs to different computers when it is modified (for example, by changing the password). Changes may not take effect, until replication occurs. In this case, the roaming user can use the old user ID.
Note Use the "Store user ID" setting on the Roaming policy setting to specify where to store the user's user.ID file.
What gets Roamed
Most of the settings in the user's Notes preferences, except for those that are specific to the operating system's configuration, are replicated. Examples of preferences that do not roam include fonts, communication ports, background printing, bi-directional language settings, and file paths.
For Apple® Mac OS® users, replication copies the information from the Notes Preferences file.
The user's bookmarks application (BOOKMARK.NSF) include personal Welcome pages, toolbar preferences, all bookmarked applications, folders, icons, other bookmark preferences, and settings for framesets.
The personal notebook or journal application is replicated if it is named NOTEBOOK.NSF or JOURNAL.NSF, as named on the Notes Home page (Open - Home). Other applications that are roamed are feeds subscriptions (LOCALFEEDCONTENT.NSF) and Eclipse™ plug-in data and settings (ROAMINGDATA.NSF).
ID File Storage options
When you set up Roaming you can specify where the user's Notes ID file, in which the user's encrypted Notes password resides, is to be stored. The options are either locally, as username.ID or in the user's contacts application Personal Address Book (NAMES.NSF).
For this beta release, this setting does not apply to File server mode.
Considerations for Notes roaming user configuration and usage
The Administration Help file lists the following things to remember:
Roaming user functionality is available for the Notes client and IBM® Lotus® Domino™ Administrator client. If the Notes client is started before the IBM® Domino® Designer™ client, Designer settings can also be roamed.
Roaming user functionality for Notes users on the Apple® Mac OS® platform is not available in Lotus Notes standard configuration in this Beta. Roaming user in Lotus Notes basic configuration remains unchanged from earlier release capabilities.
Notes roaming user functionality for Notes standard configuration is available, for use with either Domino server roaming or file server roaming. A new Domino Roaming policy page is used to configure Notes standard configuration users for roaming.
If you start one of the Lotus Symphony editors before starting Notes, in a single Notes session, many Notes preferences will not be available for roaming in that Notes session. To ensure that all possible Notes preferences are available for roaming in your current Notes session, be sure to start Notes before starting Lotus Symphony.
Roaming against a DB2-enabled server is not available in this Beta release.
The Replication page contains a Roaming Applications folder, containing the applications that have been enabled for roaming. Users can enable or disable replication for all applications in the Roaming Applications folder, not individual items within the folder.
The roaming user feature in Lotus Notes basic configuration remains unchanged from its earlier release capabilities does not take advantage of the new Domino Roaming policy page.
The tenuous link that caused me to select this photograph to accompany this post was the fact that sailing feels like a type of roaming. I took this photo from the Golden Gate Bridge during a holiday in 2005.
I've had a look at the Notes 8.5 Beta documentation on Roaming. Not only is official support for roaming the Notes 8.5 Standard client now supported, there are some new options that I wasn't expecting: including roaming with a File Server.
Also: It's good to see that it's now possible to run the full Notes 8 Standard client off a USB drive "Notes on a Stick".
The Notes/Domino 8.5 Public Beta 1 was made available for download on Friday: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd85forum.nsf/DateAllThreadedWeb/a6a60b2adfabe227852574490072d7a5?OpenDocument
Here's a summary of what's new with Notes 8.5 roaming, taken largely from the Administration help, but partly consolidated and re-written by me to bring it all together into a single description.
Summary of new Roaming Features
The Administrator Help Documentation provided with Notes/Domino Public Beta 1 outlines some of the updates to the Roaming functionality.
First, Roaming is now supported for the Notes 8.5 Standard client. With Notes 8 it was only supported for the Notes 8 Basic client.
There are also some new options.
Roaming (re)introduced for Notes 8.5, including roaming of Feeds & Eclipse functions
Roaming for the IBM® Lotus® Notes® standard configuration user is introduced in this release. A new Roaming policy settings document is introduced to support this functionality, as are two new roaming-specific databases (a feeds subscription database (LOCALFEEDCONTENT.NSF) and an Eclipse™ plug-in data and preferences database (ROAMINGDATA.NSF)). User files configured for roaming now appear in a single Roaming Applications folder on the Notes replicator page. As well, a new Notes preference panel, Roaming, is now available for file server roaming-enabled users.
Domino Administrator & Designer Roaming
Roaming user functionality is available for the Notes client and IBM® Lotus® Domino™ Administrator client. If the Notes client is started before the IBM® Domino® Designer™ client, Designer settings can also be roamed.
It wasn't possible to roam the Administrator or Designer with previous releases of Notes.
Roaming available to either Domino Servers or File Servers
Notes roaming user functionality for the Notes Standard configuration is available, for use with either Domino server roaming or file server roaming. Domino server roaming was available with previous releases. File server roaming is new to 8.5.
For file server roaming, specify the file server to roam by mapping a network drive or specifying a file share.
You can choose either:
• Local to specify that Notes replicates roaming data from the computer you are working on to your roaming [file] server, or • Remote to specify that Notes uses NSF database links to access data on the roaming [file] server. Using this mode, only one Notes client can be active at a time [with any set of NSF files] because NSF sharing is not supported in a file share.
The words "access data on the roaming [file] server" are particularly interesting. Back in the early days of Notes (3) it was a supported option to run with your Notes Data directory on a file server. This was convenient, because it meant that no matter which PC you logged in on, you'd see the same personal files. However, at a relatively early stage it became apparent that the Notes' clients dependence upon immediate access to configuration files meant that this led to client crashes. To ensure Notes client stability, IBM dropped support for running with your data on a file server. But because of the simplicity and convenience of this setup, many customers continued to run Notes this way, with varying levels of success. See:
Title: Is running Client Notes.ini and/or Notes Data directory on a File Server a supported configuration? Doc #: 1086958 URL: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21086958
The implication from the Beta documentation is that IBM is officially reintroducing a way to run Notes with some of its configuration files on a file server.
Roaming Policy Page
A new Domino Roaming policy page is used to configure Notes Standard configuration users for roaming.
The Replication page contains a Roaming Applications folder, containing the applications that have been enabled for roaming. Users can enable or disable replication for all applications in the Roaming Applications folder, not individual items within the folder.
IBM® Lotus® Notes® files that are specified for roaming are replicated from the roaming server to the user's local computer. These include the user's contacts, bookmarks, notebook or journal, feeds subscriptions, and Eclipse plug-in data and settings. When a roaming user logs in to any computer on which Notes is installed, their roaming-enabled files are replicated from their roaming subdirectory on the specified roaming server to that computer. On the Notes replicator page (File - Replication - Replicate) their roaming-enabled files appear grouped in their Roaming Applications folder.
Note All applications that are roamed appear in the Roaming Applications folder on the replicator page. While users can schedule replication individually, they cannot delete from this folder. The user's contacts application (NAMES.NSF) may contain their user's user.ID file and dictionary as file attachments.
Note The user ID is double-encrypted for added security before being attached. Because the user ID replicates, users do not need to copy their IDs to different computers when it is modified (for example, by changing the password). Changes may not take effect, until replication occurs. In this case, the roaming user can use the old user ID.
Note Use the "Store user ID" setting on the Roaming policy setting to specify where to store the user's user.ID file.
What gets Roamed
Most of the settings in the user's Notes preferences, except for those that are specific to the operating system's configuration, are replicated. Examples of preferences that do not roam include fonts, communication ports, background printing, bi-directional language settings, and file paths.
For Apple® Mac OS® users, replication copies the information from the Notes Preferences file.
The user's bookmarks application (BOOKMARK.NSF) include personal Welcome pages, toolbar preferences, all bookmarked applications, folders, icons, other bookmark preferences, and settings for framesets.
The personal notebook or journal application is replicated if it is named NOTEBOOK.NSF or JOURNAL.NSF, as named on the Notes Home page (Open - Home). Other applications that are roamed are feeds subscriptions (LOCALFEEDCONTENT.NSF) and Eclipse™ plug-in data and settings (ROAMINGDATA.NSF).
ID File Storage options
When you set up Roaming you can specify where the user's Notes ID file, in which the user's encrypted Notes password resides, is to be stored. The options are either locally, as username.ID or in the user's contacts application Personal Address Book (NAMES.NSF).
For this beta release, this setting does not apply to File server mode.
For an article about roaming, my initial thought was to include a photo of a caravan: but I didn't have any that I thought interesting. So here's a photo of a sailboat that I took from near the Golden Gate Bridge. Sailing brings to mind the idea of roaming freely.
For a long time Australia was the world centre of Daylight Saving confusion. Our six States and two (larger) Territories each have power to set their own rules about Daylight Saving. As a matter of courtesy they talk to each other about possible changes, but that never guarantees consistency between them.
Add to that the confusion that arises from being a Southern Hemisphere country. Even relatively recently it has come as a surprise to some software developers that Summer might happen in December/January/February (I kid you not.)
Anyway: between 1988 and now there have been about 11 DST rule changes in Australia. So we set the standard for changeability.
However: Since the US changed its rules in 2007, there has been a flurry of countries adopting or changing DST rules. Typically politicians the world over announce the changes with relatively short notice and email administrators bang their heads against walls..
Pakistan and Morocco have announced in the last week or two that they will be adopting DST starting on 1st June 2008. That's not a lot of notice.
There are two possible approaches to DST changes: laissez-faire and 'all care'. With the laissez-faire approach, you simply instruct users that meetings may appear wrong (usually wrong in views but seemingly correct inside the meeting documents). And what users should do is open and re-save appointments.
The 'all care' approach is to run agents to adjust appointments: either centrally by an administrator on all mail and resource reservation databases, or initiated by each user.
I believe that IBM is working on a Technote for the Pakistan changes... but there are dependencies on how the OS vendor (mostly Microsoft) applies the changes that must be finished before we can do our work.
It's necessary, but not sufficient, to apply an Operating System update. Meetings scheduled prior to the OS update that fall during the summer period will then need to be adjusted.
Views show changes to meeting times following the OS changes, but documents don't change the time they display. Hence, calendar views will be different to calendar documents. Ironically, it's the views (which appear to be wrong) that are trying to adhere to what Notes believes is the user's original intention.
Devices (Blackberries, Mobile PC) also need the portable device's OS to be updated with DST
User communication is important. Encourage users to be aware of the potential for confusion and to act with caution and courtesy
If you think things are difficult, rest assured: things are at least as complicated, if not more so, in the world of Exchange/Outlook, where a special tool (executable) need to be installed and run to adjust appointments.
And here's the quickest possible summary of what is happening to meetings created before the OS change was applied:
You created a meeting for 10am in Lahore before the DST rules were applied to the OS. Now that you've updated the OS, your meeting appears as 11am in the view and 10am in the calendar document. When you open and resave that 10am appointment, it will change the meeting from 10am Lahore Standard Time to 10am Lahore Daylight Saving Time. The view then changes the display of that meeting from 11am Lahore Daylight Saving Time to 10am Lahore Daylight Saving Time. Which is what you *probably* want. (The agents do the same thing.)
* If somebody outside Pakistan or Morocco has invited you to a conference call, then it's probably correct for the meeting that originally appeared as 10am to now take place at 11am.
Sidenote: Why Singapore will never adopt Daylight Saving
The length of days don't change much on the equator.
At its earliest time of the year, the sun rises at 6:47am in Singapore. At its latest, it rises at 7:17am. At its earliest, the sun sets at 6:51pm. At its latest it sets at 7:21pm. The day is so consistent that it never makes sense to apply DST. The longest day is only 30 minutes longer than the shortest one.
The further you are from the equator, the greater the benefit you get from Daylight Saving.
Summer in Australia: a photo I took in 1984 during a trip through Central Australia.
I had a meeting with a customer today to discuss a Sametime project.
It became apparent that the different levels of Sametime were causing a bit of confusion. It wasn't immediately obvious which features came with which levels.
IBM either describes the levels with a high level diagram, or with long lists of capabilities. And that makes it easy to get confused.
I'm going to try to give a thumbnail description of how the three editions of Sametime (and two or three side bars) relate to each other that may make it simpler to have a more intuitive understanding of the different levels.
Here's the picture:
The three editions of Sametime: Thumbnail sketches Sametime Entry
You want awareness and the ability to start chat messages. When you see a name in your buddy list or email client (Notes or Outlook), you want to be able to start a chat with them. That's Sametime Entry.
(If you've already got Notes licences, you're entitled to use Sametime entry features from within the Notes client for no extra cost. If not, you buy Sametime Entry and run the Sametime Entry Connect client). Sametime Standard
Chat and presence are good and useful, but there are whole collection of other ways you want to interact. You want to start a meeting and share a presentation or a screen. You want audio or video over your computer network. You'd like to be able to chat on your mobile device. Maybe you want to set up a gateway that allows you to chat with people in other companies or with public Instant Messaging environments like Yahoo or Google Talk. You probably want to think about extending awareness so that whenever you read a name on any of your web servers (no matter whose technology they run on), you can start a chat with that person.
If you want some or all of these features, you want Sametime Standard. Sametime Advanced
You've really bought into the value of Instant Messaging as a tool. Email's great, but there is a whole range of knowledge flowing about your organisation with Sametime. People are sharing experience and knowledge and working a lot more efficiently. (Or that's what you'd like!) Now you want to set up Instant Chat 'rooms' where people can drop in and out to discuss topics. Just like a water cooler, except people drop in and out from anywhere in the world at any time and see what happened whilst they were away.
You want people to be able to pose questions to groups of experts. The right person answers the question in an instant. You want to save those gems of wisdom in a repository that others can find and use. Also, you'd like some neater ways of collaborating on files and working out where people are.
You want Sametime Advanced.
Extensions to Sametime Unified Telephony
After a while, your fingers get tired typing away in chat windows. You find talking into your computer's microphone OK, and you wear earphones to save your workmates from your calls over the network. But you've got an exciting new VIOP phone system, and you'd like to to do a little more than your old PABX. When Sametime's presence awareness shows you that your colleague across the world has just returned to their desk, you'd like to click a button that starts a phone call between the two of you using your VOIP handset. You'd like to start a conference call with your team. You'd like to run a meeting in the meeting room with the fancy new AV camera, and let people in remote sites see you.
To do this, you make use of the Unified Telephony (Unified Communications & Collaboration features) that exist between Sametime and virtually every telephony system on the planet. Externally hosted Web Conferences
Note my use of the term "Web Conferences" here rather than "Web Meetings".
If you want to run web based conferences without the hassle of setting up infrastructure to provide it - perhaps with customers as well as internal staff, then you want Sametme Unyte. Plug-ins
Finally, don't feel limited by the feature set provided in the three Sametime Editions and two Extensions described above. You can obtain (either for free or for a price) extensions to the feature set of Sametime, or write your own Plug-ins to extend the product. Have a look at the Sametime Catalog for some of them.
And a final disclaimer...
I'm not in IBM marketing, and these pages don't represent an official statement of features or entitlement. For up to date information see the Sametime web site. Try it out at the Lotus Greenhouse.
I had heard that recent versions of Quickr were tightly tied to specific versions of Domino. Quickr does a lot of sexy stuff: and that means it's not your typical HTTP enabled Domino application. It really matters that it's accessing the correct Domino engine.
I discovered how true this was by accident today. I booted up an old VM with the intention of upgrading the install of Domino 7 to 8.0.1 to allow me to demonstrate something to a customer.
Inexplicably, the upgraded server started crashing a few minutes after I booted it each and every time.
It took me a few reasons to discover why: When I started Domino, I was starting Quickr 7 on Domino 8. Quickr 7 was unhappy running on Domino 8. Not just a little bit unhappy: "some functions don't work, some pages don't render properly", but seriously unhappy: "I'm going to crash this Domino 8 server - very quickly" unhappy.
