This is the new features of lotus notes 8.5.3

Lotus Notes 8.5.3 delivers significant enhancements to support social businesses and help users get their work done fast, for example:

• Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3 includes entitlement to the IBM Connections files and profiles components adding significant capabilities to help clients become a social business
• Enhanced new mail notification which optionally provides a pop up preview (containing both sender and subject) of new mail messages as they arrive.
• Improved sorting on email subject content that ignores the “Re:” and “Fw:” prefix, from reply & forward respectively, providing a more accurate sorting of your data.
• A new option to search by sender or subject available when you right click an email.
• Optionally leave countered meetings on your calendar. Allow countered meetings to show up in a unique color, with the time the meeting was originally scheduled for as well as maintaining the ability to act on the original calendar invite and with hover text indicating the new proposed time.
• Optionally notify existing invitees when adding or removing attendees from an existing meeting, informing them of the change and updating the invitee list on their calendar invitation, as well as other options which negate the need for a user to process any meeting updates for anything other than a change in time, eg. a reschedule.
• Significant improvements to recent contacts, allowing end users more control over who gets added to recent contacts and improved data integrity.
• Geographic and time zone information is be displayed in the business card.
• Apple Mac usability improvements for e-mail gestures include the ability to drag one or grouped files to the Lotus Notes icon on your dock, and a new mail message will be created with those files attached.
• Embedded IBM Sametime is upgraded to V8.5.1 with an incremental installer to IBM Sametime 8.5.2, and embedded IBM Lotus Symphony is upgraded to V3.0.
• Additional platform support includes RHEL 6.0 Desktop, Citrix XenApp 6.0, and enhanced 64-bit toleration for Microsoft Windows.
• Added ability to remove signature file from a thread

What is interesting is that is now lotus notes can sort the subject easily, without problem.

Prior this version, user have difficulties to sort emails based on their subject, because the “Re: ” and the “Fw: ” are treated differently. Outlook users do not have this kind of problem, but now lotus notes client too . Better late than never.

Hope that IBM much more open mind to user inputs than before.

I had to agreed with them.

I had to live with it, and thought that because it just they way it is, because Lotus Notes is not only an email client, but also a collaborations tool, that why it is slower compare to MS Outlook.

But I was wrong.

When I brought this up to IBM support, they came with a suggestion that I modified a file to increase the performance of Lotus Notes. And they were correct, with it Lotus Notes performance is a faster than before.

These are the steps:

1. Close lotus notes.
2. Open the folder/directory where you install lotus notes client, in my case c:\lotus\notes
3. Find the file “\Lotus\Notes\framework\rcp\deploy\jvm.properties” and edit.
4. Within the file, find the line “vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx256m” and change it into “vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx512m”
5. Within the file, find the line “vmarg.Xms=-Xms48m” and change it into “vmarg.Xms=-Xms96m”
6. Save the file.

Now, try to run Lotus Notes and see the differences. You can also play the setting, depend on your work load and your RAM. If you have more than 2 GB ram, you can try to increase the settings to:

vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx1024m
vmarg.Xms=-Xms256m

This improvement not only affects windows client, but also Linux or maybe Macs.

Please note that, if you apply the fix pack, the setting will be restores, so you need to re-edit it again.

Added: 2011-09-26

This also come from IBM support

If you feel that you have a network problem while using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can follow this suggestion.

Run this command (without the quotes) from command prompt from Windows vista or Windows 7, make sure you run it as administrator.

“netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled ”

This command will disable the windows network auto tunning, see here

And better to apply the latest fix pacth, the latest fix pacth  as I’m writing this post for Lotus notes 8.5.2 is FP3.

Without the transaction log, when the server crash, it will take hours for the server to recovery. It will check every databases one at a time and try to check and fix if it found any problem. And when the database if being fix, the user can’t access it. If the database is big, more than 10 GB, it will take hours to complete it.

With transaction log, after the server crash, the server will ready in less than 15 minutes.

Without the transaction log, the backup procedure will become a problem. In my case the total databases size is more that 1 TB, and it will take almost 24 hours to complete the full backup. And it’s almost impossible to me to run full backup everyday.

With the transaction log, I only to run the full backup every week, and I only need to backup the transaction log  for daily backup. Yes the full backup will take up to 24 hours for 1 TB data, for for daily backup, it take less than 1 hour backup.

So, if you have a medium size or large lotus domino server, I highly recommend that you to run it with transaction log enable.

Before that, these are a few tips.

1. Use the fastest and dedicated hard drive that you can use for transaction log. I’m using IBM SAS drive with 15000 RPM, and that still too slow to me.
2. Use raid 1 for transaction log, it recommended by IBM. So if one drive is failed, you still have one to run the transaction log.
3. Backup, backup, backup. Transaction log rely on good backup that support transaction log, it will only clear up the old TXN files after the backup is complete. Without a good backup, your hard drive will filled up by the TXN files.
4. If possible, use the latest Lotus Domino version. I have problem with Lotus Domino 8.5.2 FP1 that crash because the size of the transaction log, even the hard disk still have many free space. After consult with IBM support, they suggested me to upgrade the fixed pacth to FP2, after that the problem is gone.

For me, it saves time. I do not have to add manually the sender to my contacts, and it only able to add sender, not all people in the To or CC. Now, with Recent Contacts, all the To and CC names (or email addresses) will automatically added to my Recent Contacts list, and saves a lot of time.

But, there are users who do not like this feature, specially users who like to have their contacts clean and manage able, they only want to add names to their contacts only if it important, while Recent Contacts will automatically add all of them.

Luckily, Recent Contacts have many options, you can choose it in Contacts preferences.

You can choose that Recent Contacts DO NOT automatically added:

1. Any names to Recent Contacts, for short to disable the Recent Contacts feature.
2. CC and BCC names to Recent Contacts, so it only add names in the TO field.
3. Names from emails that I receive (Only add names from email that I send), that already explain it.

So, for users who really hate this feature, they can simply disable it.

One of the annoying thing about this feature, it will add invalid or junk names (or email addresses) to Recent Contacts, specially when users received spam emails with a lot of email addresses in the TO and CC fields.

Do you want to go with this features or not, is your choice. I personally like this feature, and once in a while clean up the Recent Contacts for junk names.

After all it run well, then I found this technote.

Duh, I hope I found that technote much more earlier, before I upgrade my windows and domino into 64-bit version, that will make it a lot easier.

Please take a special attention on point seven (or six), “7. Before restarting the Domino server, run the offline maintenance on the following system databases from command prompt.”

If you have a large domino databases, and you have only limited down time, than copy entire domino data directory may be is not an option. In my experience, copy 1,2 TB of domino data will take more than a day. And after we start the new server, it give a lot of  error messages and the fixup process run almost on all databases.

So we did it with another way, we create a additional server, create replica of all databases to the new server, and after that we only need to switch server id. It take a longer time to replicate (almost a week), but the down time is minimum, less than a hour.

So, which way is your choice, either copy the data all create replicas.

Because this is a brand new server, and our first though this is only a hardware problem, on Friday we called the IBM support and hope that they can change the hard disk.

After we received the ticket ID, one of IBM support person called us and I explained the problem to him. After discussed, he want me to run the diagnostic tools the check the entire system. I though “What?”, but I followed him anyway, download the diagnostic tools, run it and send the result to his email address.

On Monday, we still do not received any news or any update, and on Tuesday I called the IBM support again and ask about my ticket status. Then I’ve got another call from another IBM support person, mentioned that the first IBM support person is not available so he will take over while he away.

Again, I explained the problem and re submitted the IBM diagnostic tools result to him, and he promised to update me about the status.

About one or two hours, I received his email, mentioned that the result that I just send to him is not complete because my server is not have a IPMI driver. So he gave me the link to download the IPMI driver and ask me to installed the driver. After that, I re run the diagnostic tools, and again re submit the result.

On Wenesday, there no update from them.

On Thursday, the IBM support person called me again and updated the status. And he said that the firmware in my server is not up to date, and require me to update the firmware. I though “What?”.

The problem is simple, the light activity in one the hard disk is not working (while in another four hard disks is working well), thats all. I really sure this only a small problem, maybe only something wrong with the bracket. Why update the firmwares?

On the phone, He mentioned that I need to update several firmwares, I said to him, just give me the list in the email, and I will look into it

When I received the email, I’m shocked.

He mentioned that I need to upgrade not only one, or two but four firmwares..

• Integrated Management Module
• IBM System x uEFI update for 3620 M3/3630 M3
• ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller Firmware
• IBM FW HDD SAS-1.09 Windows 32-64

And not forget, he also add a little warning at the end of his email
“Please backup your data before updating the firmwares”

Great.

I consulted with IBM BP, and hope that somehow they can do something about it.

I used to recommend IBM xSeries to many people, and one of the reason because they have a very good support, but now, I have doubts, BIG doubts.

Update:

On monday,  wrote them email mention that I will not do the firmware upgrade and they responded that they will their support to us to upgrade the firmware.

On Tuesday, one support come and a good thing is that he also bring a new hard disk. He upgraded all the firmware and it took more than one hour, but the light still not blinking. Then he replaced the hard disk with the new one, but the light still not blinking. Then he tried to plug the old hard disk into another slot, and the light now blinking. By that, the support engineer said that the problem is in the backplane of the server. And he will come back again tomorrow with a new backplane.

On Wenesday, he came again with a new backplane. After he switch the backplane with a new one, now the light is blinking fine.

So, the problem was in the backplane, not in the firmware or the hard disk. The diagnostic tools from IBM unable to detect the malfunction in the backplane. And it took more that a week for IBM to identify and fix the problems, that a big disappointing for me.

But the good thing is, that now the server working fine without any problems.

“Can’t open view”

and displayed a blank database

Tried to run the following tasks:

• Fixup
• Updall
• Compact
• Convert
• Replace design
• Search the internet

Without any luck.

My friend did, and I can only imagine how it feels.

He gave me his shattered usb flash disk.
Fortunately, the memory chip that contains the data was not broken, only the usb connector was separated from the main pcb.

After quick search in google, I found that is easy enough to fix the broken usb flash disk.

www.datarecovery-ct.com/data_recovery_ct_flashdrive/data_recovery_ct_flashdrive.html

Based on the website, I connect the usb connector to the main pcb, soldered it back and give it a try.

It works.

So, if your usb flash disk is somehow broken, don’t panicked. If the memory chip is still intact there is still hope.

Have the spirits of Christmas by installing Christmas applications for Android.

This is the list of Christmas Apps for Android.

Christmas Tree Live Wallpaper

Make your android more a live with this live wallpaper. There are plenty of live wallpaper for christmas, and this is just one of them.

Christmas Magic Live Wallpaper

Another live wallpaper for your android.

Panda Theme-Christmas Carol theme

Christmas theme for you android.

Bubble Blast Holiday

Like Bubble Blast, where you have to blast all the bubbles in the screen with limited touch? This is the holiday edition, if you like Bubble Blast that you going to love this.

Talking Santa

Talking Santa is funny, makes my kids giggle. You can poke on his head, shake the phone, give him cookies and roll a snow ball on him, and repeat everything you says. But don’t forget, to ask for Christmas present.

Angry Birds Seasons

If you love angry Birds, that you must love this sequel. Please beware, that this game is addicted.

All of these apps you can search it in the market, as far as I know all this apps are free.

There are many others themes, applications Christmas related, fell free to find it in the android market.

Merry Christmas.

These are the list what the new improvements or features that I like the most.

1. Save as EML

What my users like the most, save email as eml, so now they can ‘attach’ email as attachment. Many companies who have tight security, maybe do not like this feature, but for other companies, they just love this feature. It better than IBM can disable or enable this feature depend on the company policy.

2. Close email after Forward/Reply

Now, you can choose if your email will be automatically close after you forward or reply it.

3. Group Icon

Now you can quickly see that the email address is a group or not right from your type-ahead list. There will be an icon in the front of email address indicate the the email address is a group or not.

4. Default font for email

Now you can set your default font for your email.

5. Forward from Trash folder

Previously, you need to restore email in case you need to forward it. But now you can forward it right from your trash folder.

6. Pretty Signature

Now you can use rich text as your signature, rather than that boring plain text or that confusing html file. To bad, you still  can’t have multiple signatures.

7. Make Contact / Group private

You can share your contacts to others people if you give them the right to access it, but now you can also make your contacts or groups private, so only you who can see it. Other people who have access to open your contacts will not see it.

8. Better Recent contacts management

Now you can have the option to include all to your recent contacts list or o Do not put cc and bcc into recent contacts.

You can delete recent contact straight from type-ahead list (just like outlook)

9. Better replication

You have better replication view, now in show in percentage in the right and also can run multiple replication in the same time.

10. View Calendar entries by category

If you like to add category on everything, including calendar entries than you going to love this feature. Now you can view your calendar entries based on their categories, much more easy to find and manage your calendar.

There are many more features that I do not include in this list, what I like the most about the new features is this features mostly affect on users, better user interface, while usually the new features are on the servers, only a few on the users.

For complete list about all the new features of Lotus Notes 8.52 you can go here.