Lotus Notes and Me.
I don’t know if I have mentioned it on my blog but in my day job, I work as a IT guy helping client burn more dollars on soon-to-be-obsolete business application. Just kidding. On a serious note, I work as a contractor and help client’s IT team in delivering their project(s). The nature of the job involves moving from one client to another from time to time.
All my past clients have used Outlook/Exchange as their mail platform except the current client who uses Lotus Notes.
If you have never worked with Lotus Notes, consider yourself lucky! Lotus Notes is the SUCKER. The people who designed it must have something against humanity. Seriously. Here’s sample of wonderful Lotus Notes behavior:
1. In your Inbox, if a mail is selected and you hit Delete Key, it doesn’t get deleted, Lotus just ‘marks’ it for Deletion! If you hit Delete key again, it will unmark it! To delete the mail, you have to hit Delete key and press F9 to refresh. I guess the designer never heard of the Trash/Recycle Bin concept.
2. Quick, How do you compose a new email in your favorite email client? Ctrl + N, I hear you say. Not so with Lotus Notes. To create a new email, oh wait, Lotus calls it ‘New Memo’, you have to hit Ctrl + M.
3. If you are in Inbox and press F5 (The windows standard for ‘Refresh’), Lotus Notes locks itself (behaves like Locking your workstation using Ctrl + Alt + Delete)! Nice, huh?
Let me say this out loud, LOTUS NOTES SUCKS. There goes, I said it in public, I feel better now.
If you want to get more laughs head over to The official Lotus Notes sucks site.
Event with this state of affairs, you would find proponents of Notes who say that Notes is more than an email application. It’s a database, It’s a RAD Environment, Da Da Da. Yawn. Lotus Notes might do N number of things but it doesn’t do email well. Period. I like Davey Bob’s comment on Lotus Notes.
Let me expand on that a bit. I have this nifty tool. I can hook a plow up to it and plow my field. I can hook a cart up to it and pull stuff around with it. I can get onto it and ride it around, even up a hill. I can teach it tricks, like putting its front part up in the air. I can get a variety of attachments and accessories for it. Everything revolves around this tool…there is nothing I cannot do with it if I am willing to spend the time to understand how to use it. But I must accept any shortcomings in the tool because I can do anything with the tool.
Problem is, the tool is a freaking donkey!! It is temperamental. It is slow. It frequently falls over and refuses to move. The steering mechanism is too coarse-grained to be effective in all situations. And so on.
Can I plow a field with a donkey? Yes. Can I do it better with, say, a tractor? Hell yes! Can I dig a hole and pull the dirt away with a donkey? Yes. Can I do it better with a dump truck? Hell yes! Can I get onto a donkey and ride it around? Yes. Could I even put skis on its feet and ride it down a mountain? Yes. Is it going to work well? NO!
IMHO, Notes is a donkey. The engineers are so impressed with all the things one can do with Notes that they have lost sight of the fact that it doesn’t many of them very well. There is a point where a one-size-fits-all-problems tool is good too have. But invariably, these tools break down in their common denominator approach to problems that are not always common.
So what’s the moral of this post?
In your next interview, if interviewer asks you ‘Do you have any questions for me?’, ask him if they use Lotus Notes. If they do, start running in opposite direction and save your life.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
@1. You must be using a 10 year old version of notes, my mail gets deleted when I click delete
@2. CTRL-M creates a new mail, as in Firefox. why would I use CTRL-N what does N stand for, does not make sence to me
@3. I agree, F5 should really be F9.
- Thomas
June 13th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Hey Thomas,
Thanks for your comment.
1. I am using Notes 6.5. Is that too old?
2. All the *desktop* email clients I know uses Ctrl + N.
June 14th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Notes 6.5 is several years old. The current version is 7.02, and 8 is in public beta. 7.x deletes emails immediately (though there is a way to undelete them if you need to).
F5 is not used as refresh even in Microsoft’s current versions of Outlook. They use F9. Only Windows Explorer uses F5. Other Microsoft applications use various keys for “refresh”. So there IS no “Windows standard” for refresh. That being said, lots of people want Notes to use F5 for refresh, so you’re not alone.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Hm… I didn’t know Outlook switched to F9. Thanks for the information, Rob. Even then I don’t think it’s a good idea to lock the program on F5.
And unfortunately I am stuck with Notes 6.5 as client uses it.
June 18th, 2007 at 1:26 am
All the desktop email clients you know use Ctrl+N. Sure, Outlook uses Ctrl+N to create a new mail message — if you happen to be on the mail tab. If you’re on the calendar tab, it creates a new appointment. If you’re on the contacts tab, it creates a new contact. Notes uses Ctrl-M to create a new message, no matter where you are, no matter what you’re doing. Which makes more sense? Ctrl-N, which sometimes does what I want, but sometimes does what it thinks I should want? Or Ctrl-M, which always does exactly what I want?
As for locking the program, the usual argument against it is that you should lock your OS, but your domain administrators can unlock it. They can’t unlock your Notes client, and that’s a good thing.
-rhs
June 25th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
We’ve been on notes 6.5 for three years now. We just upgraded (if you call it that) to version 7, and the UI looks exactly the same, which means the upgrade was meaningless to the users. At this rate, we’ll be upgrading to notes 8 about the time IBM stops supporting it. Aside from the annoying and quirky differences between Notes and everything else most people use, the lack of effort to make the UI a more enjoyable experience demonstrates how the decision makers who rule over this deluded notes domain do not care about the users. My requests to selectively use OpenNTF were denied without explanation. Software implemented poorly will suck. Notes implemented for email and calendaring sucks.
June 26th, 2007 at 2:36 am
Richard,
Outlook does have global short cut for creating new email, Ctrl + Shift + M creates new email whether you are in Inbox or not. Ctrl + Shift + C to create new contact. In addition, you can use Ctrl + N to create new email if you are viewing Inbox, which you use most of the time.
June 29th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Agree with you, am having tough time figuring out Notes. If you reply to a mail, the mail is marked as unread! You can not mark a mail unread/read. Can not save a mail. Can not import/export contacts. Etc etc.
June 30th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
If your mail is marked as unread when you reply, that’s got to be the result of a customization someone has done. It’s definitely not the out-of-box behavior. And yes you can mark a message unread/read. While in a folder or view, just select Unread Marks from the Edit menu and you have various choices for marking all or selected messages either read or unread. Or just use the Insert key as a toggle.
JD — Thanks for the Outlook keyboard shortcut. I knew about Ctrl-N, and the fact that it is sensitive to where I am drove me crazy. (Sure, I’m mostly in my Inbox, but at least once or twice a day I’m in Calendar or Contacts and it frustrated me that there wasn’t a keystroke to create a mail message.) Now that I know about Ctrl-Shift-M, I’ll be a little happier — though, come on… a three-finger shortcut as the only 100% consistent way to do the single most common operation everyone uses the program for? That’s just poor design, IMHO.
JonB — Notes 8 has a completely revamped UI. The years of IBM not caring about end-user experience sre over. It will be well worth the upgrade, when you get there.
July 13th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
You should do a little research to keep from looking like a fool.
If Lotus Notes is so bad then why did Bill Gates decide that the only person fit to fill his shoes upon departure was none other than Ray Ozzie the inventor of Lotus Notes?
Lets consider this for a moment.
Bill Gates wants to step down as chief software architect of the most powerful software company in the world and he must find a replacement. Whom does he choose?
I venture to say, now I know this is a ’stretch’ but how about another brilliant, sits on top of the world kind of software architect. A wise choice from the Bridge playing buddy of Warren Buffet, wouldnt you say.
Your take on Lotus Notes is from your view; at the bottom. You are talking about little interface crap that only people like you care about. Those that make the worlds economies flow see things differently. They are looking at things from a long term cost vs benefit perspective.
July 16th, 2007 at 12:43 am
To RK:
you CAN mark read / unread in Lotus (at least in 6.5 and 7). However you have to either
- drill down about 4 menu levels under preferences EVERY time you want to do it, or
- dig around and personalise your toolbar first (or whatever Lotus calls that process - the words are not the same.) Then once you have the appropriate icons and remember that they mean read/unread (since they are unlike any other icon anywhere) you can mark read/unread at one click.
I have used Lotus for 4 years and while you can *eventually* get to a lot of the same functions and views as Outlook - with persistence - I agree, it sucks. Just now, I went to ‘About’ to check which version I’m on. The box with the details won’t go away now! oh dear….
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
The whole donkey quote somewhat confuses me.
The donkey does what needs to be done. Sure, you have to know how to feed it. Sure, you need to know that there are times that it needs to sleep, rest, etc. It can be tempermental, but so can everything.
Certainly, if I buy a donkey, and expect it to be a pick-up truck, and only do what pick-up trucks do, and have never seen a living animal, I too would feel like the donkey only comprised of its hind-quarters, spilling out- well, you know- that stuff.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
I’d rather have the donkey. 1 single tool that might take some time to understand, but after understanding it, I can make it do almost anything I want it to do. Not 1 tool that handles one thing, than - Oh, I need this too- “Okay, buy this now”. ok. I need this now. “Okay, buy this now too.” Add to that, you need to learn each of these new tools. How to develop in them. How to administrate them. How to integrate (if even possible) them. How to get the freakin things to stop blowing up when you put it on a Vista machine.
I’m not sure the pick-up truck will make it across the 3 foot high stream. It’ll go in, but by the time you get in the middle of it, you’re stuck, it breaks down, and it will take 3 days to get it towed out (minus half the parts).
November 30th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Hi Guys, interesting discussion this one. Some of you are obviously IT guys, those who decide what software to buy, and sometimes screw up when they do it. Looking “at
things from a long term cost vs benefit perspective” does not mean that the UI is so bad that 109 out of 110 million users hate it. This is just plain nonsense. What benefit are we talking about? Is this a joke? Get real.
Make no mistakes: a mail client software is only as good as the UI it has and no better. So if Lotus Notes sucks for 109 out of 110 Millions users, it sucks as a mail client, that’s it.
There will always be IT people that refuse to see the end user as part of the equation, as if this would be possible. That’s why they have become more and more obsolete with the appearance of good software like SAP R/3. And yes, I am an IT guy.
In summary: you can preach as much as you want but the facts speak for themselves: 109 out of 110 hate it.
So how about Lotus Notes? Well, it SUCKS, big time! It’s the most poorly designed software history has ever seen. It’s bought by sheer bloody-minded, incompetent IT departments and good old fashioned ignorance people.
Ta da
December 10th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
LOL! That make up some numbers and throw them around.
If Lotus Notes is the best application platform for 109.5 out of 110 million users, then it’s a pretty good collaborative platform.
So how about Lotus Notes? Well, it works out great for our company, but that’s because we aren’t in that tiny percentage of companies that it doesn’t work well for.
I have noticed the engineers and some IT folk that have a difficult time with Lotus Notes, but most end users don’t have much of a problem.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Hi All
I have worked for 4years on exchange at my previous company moved to the new company and they are using notes. Well their are a couple of things that really sucks in notes but its minor UI changes from outlook to notes. but the biggest issue is when sending mail is asking all those questions do you want to send and save save only etc etc just send the damn mail already. if you delete mail its seems to be gone nothing in trash!!!! My inbox is at 26 unread mail showing but their is no unread mail. The only upside I see for notes is the sametime for confrences thats IT!!!!!!!! I am a linux dude and here I vote for Microsoft exchange
March 26th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
It wouldnt matter what version you use…lotus notes sucks. We went from outlook, an upgraded outlook to Lotus notes. I think our company hates us from the merger and we’re being punished :-(. Whoever put together this database wielding mound of poop needs 30 lashes…to begin with. And the whole thing with it coming across as plain text and not communicating with any other system makes about as much sense as the prices of gas right now…can you tell I hate lotus notes. We’ve been on it since August 07 and I have made it a point to say EVERY DAY…’LOTUS NOTES SUCKS’ in hopes that the powers that be hear it. Tell me, what’s the deal with having all those drop downs that mean nothing??? Debugger? arrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh