The latest in the series of IBM’s webinars on the upcoming Domino 10 took place on May 24th. This third webinar, presented by Gabriela Davis of The Turtle Partnership and Ram Krishnamurthy of HCL, has been dedicated to updates to IBM Notes Mail, Sametime Chat, and Verse On Premises.
So, what’s new in Notes, Sametime and Verse?
Notes Mail Updates in V10
First and foremost, as we have mentioned, in our earlier article on the first IBM webinar, one of the goals of the version 10 is to deliver users the very best e-mail tool.
Several improvements are going to take place to make that happen.
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Sending Notes email messages as EML attachments + sending multiple messages as attachments to one email:
In v10, we will be able to send fully formatted and intact Notes email messages as EML attachments that can be opened and read by MS Outlook or Apple Mail. This will also enable you to send multiple e-mails as attachments to an e-mail. This is a pretty useful feature when you want to keep somebody in the loop but have several emails to send in order to do that.
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Send Mail Policy Improvements:
Mail policy settings are controlled by administrators. You can, for instance, create a policy to limit the number of attachments or forbid the sending of emails to certain domains.
The client will check before sending using ‘Before send’ hooks in the mail template. Policies can be set at “Warning” or “Deny” level, so the sender sees the warnings and can correct the email before it is routed.
Application developers can also utilize the pre-send hooks in their designs.
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Delayed / Timed Mail Delivery
You can write the e-mail now and send it later. When you create a message, press send but set a delay in delivery options before the router releases. This is controlled by setting an attribute the router will check.
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“Group By Sender” View
Categorised inbox style view by “Sender” will also be available not just in Verse, but in the Notes mail client as well. What’s more, the “by sender” view can be used as an alternate inbox that contains all messages that were received, even those that are filed in folders.
The nice thing is that it will group the e-mails by name, so if the person is using multiple addresses, you will have them all grouped.
The “Type ahead” functionality matches any character string in the name, not just the initial one. Folders also have all inbox actions including setting preferences.
Last but not least, if you have MS Word installed, Notes has plans to integrate it in your e-mail, and transfer that to the person you are sending the e-mail to if he or she has Word installed as well.
Notes Calendar 10 Improvements
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Team Calendar
- Team Calendar is not part of a single user’s mail file
- It can be created using a standard template that can also include a group inbox
- Any member of the group calendar can manage / create / edit the invites
- You can create multiple calendars and see team schedules in one place
- You can also overlay your group calendar with your personal calendar to see everything in one place
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Forward Invites To Others
- Invite other people to a meeting you are invited to. Now you don’t have to be the owner of the meeting to invite to add people of interest to the meeting.
- When you create a new meeting you can decide to allow the people you have invited to send their own invitations, with or without you pre-approving them.
- Invite someone else for a single meeting or repeating meetings
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Color Coding Calendar Entries By Chair
You can visually identify all invites from specific people by color coding your inbox sender colors to match your calendar invite colors automatically. Improving color coding is a great way to improve user experience because it helps you keep things visually organized.
Color coding of calendar entries by chair overrides the color coding by calendar type.
One other new thing delivered by Calendar V10 is that you can delegate your calendar to somebody else while not giving access to your contacts.
Notes Client Updates
- Upgrade from FP10 to IBM Notes V10 via the new update process
- Admin deployed, user controlled, admin override
- Ability to throttle bandwidth / number of updates
- Already being used successfully to deploy cloud updates
- HCL are focused on reducing the footprint of the Notes client by removing some heavy but under-used features like the feed reader, open social components and embedded experience
IBM Verse On Premises V10
The new Verse UI is designed to be more dynamic, more responsive. For instance, when creating a new calendar entry, the contact search is not limited to first name or last name, so you can find the person you are looking for faster.
After you have selected the person you want to invite, Verse will automatically display the availability for that person. Once you have selected the time, you will see the availability changing dynamically.
You can easily select the frequency of the meetings to daily, monthly etc, as well as the length of period for which you want to have it.
On the left, you will have your day nicely displayed as time blocks in your new Calendar Inbox, so it’s easier to see how busy your day is before you schedule a meeting so as you can decide when / if you need a break, etc
Some of the other updates to the Verse on Premises 10 will include:
- Offline support for up to 30 days of information
- SAML authentication support
- Ability to create archiving rules from the client
- Hook before send for things like attachment size
- Integrate a 3rd party EFFS file repository
One other nice feature which was re-entered is selecting a time-zone for your meetings, making it easier to manage your meetings cross time zones.
IBM Sametime V10 Updates
- Community Server Updates
- Simultaneous multiple client logins
- Limited use licensing extended to support Sametime on mobile
Previous IBM Domino v10 Roadmap Webinars are Still Available on Demand