Google Gears shifts into reverse

eWeek have published another piece on the Google push to overtake IBM and Microsoft on the desktop, with the obligatory ten piece Death-by-Powerpoint slideware (PCMag had a similar article). I admit that I'm a little jaded after 20+ years of seeing vendor slide sets but this one really pushed the limit on feature beat-up e.g.

• The Google Drawing Editor supports Copy and Paste between applications.
• Google Docs have Rulers with Tab stops plus Spell check.
• Google Spreadsheets have a Formula editing Bar and simultaneous editing for fifty users.

You can have fifty people editing the same spreadsheet? I can understand the need for multiple people to view a spreadsheet within the context of an on-line meeting but once you open the spreadsheet up to multi-user editing then who's going to clean up the mess and verify the data afterwards? Consider that once you get more than a dozen people into a face-to-face meeting there is a high risk of the agenda being abandoned UNLESS you have a very capable chairperson. It would be unimaginably worse with an on-line meeting based around a spreadsheet ... hey, that number doesn't look right... I'll just change it while no-one's looking...

Then there was this wonderful (but totally meaningless) slide with no external references. I'm intrigued to know what measurements Google used to set the scale on the X and Y axis but I don't think there's an answer to that question.


However once you pass over the fluff and bubble there were some interesting snippets in the articles.

• Google is disabling Google Gears for Docs. It intends to rewrite that component so it can handle HTML5 and modern Web browsers. Now I don't have a problem with a software company rewriting their code to include new technologies, but it does show that the Google architecture is no more future-proof than Microsoft Exchange. In other words, Google has some good ideas but there was nothing extraordinary about their initial implementation of those ideas. On the other hand, Notes/Domino continues to provide backwards compatibility even while it evolves to include new technologies eg X-Pages. Score one for IBM.
  
  
• Google is implementing this change in three weeks time. Your company may have made a significant investment in learning and applying Google Gears to your applications but after May 3rd you're back to Square One. That's another big gotcha in the cloud computing scenario - consumers are completely disenfranchised in their preference for software versions.

Google has some interesting ideas and a ton of money to fund research into those ideas, but I'm starting to think that they just don't understand collaboration. It's not about giving everyone simultaneous editing access to the same spreadsheet - email - Wave - other file type, its about providing your people with transparent access to the aggregate intellectual property contained in your organization so they are empowered to better perform, and refine the process of, their own work. Sometimes that work occurs within the context of a meeting, but more frequently it is an individual activity reinforced by easy access to team knowledge.

Leaving aside the multi-user access, I'm thinking that all of the 'new' features Google are crowing about have been standards in Microsoft Office and Open Office for years. I'm glad to see Google providing competition in the Office arena but IMHO they need to lift their game.

I'll stick with Symphony.
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Bringing applications back from the grave...

I had an interesting chat with a customer who was reviewing a "new" prebaked offering from one of my competitors and wanted my recommendation whether to buy the application. I wasn't really comfortable doing that since I saw a large conflict of interest bubbling to the surface even if I liked the application, however since I had no NDA with the supplier, courtesy and curiosity won out and I had a look.

Have you noticed how easy it is to tell when :

• an application was originally written in R6/R7 ?
• the developers have used that application to learn about R8.5 design elements?
• multiple designers have sequentially modified an application with no documentation to guide them?
• large chucks of the original application have been removed and rejigged to bring it "up to date"

In the end I merely commented that all of the coding seemed to be in Lotusscript and he needed to consider whether that suited his strategic direction for the future (and I hope it does). I guess the real question is whether a facelift will allow complex R7 apps to survive in a Brave New XPage-centric world, or whether they need to be rebuilt from the ground up. I suspect the latter, but I'm not in the shrinkwrap market.

Opinions?
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Hi... My name is Graham and I'm an Information Slob

Last year I started using Eric Mack's eProductivity but backtracked when I found that it did funny things to the web access on my mail file. Recently I've had good reason to start testing it again (and you can read whatever you like into that statement) and after using it for a month I've realized that I'm an information slob. My hard drive is like a Black Hole storing every email / download / half-baked project I ever created, but Heavens knows where.

Installing eProductivity is a giant wake-up call to get my act together. In the last month I've:

• trimmed my Inbox down to c.40 emails (and I'm still pondering those)
• got into the habit of filing OUTgoing mails.
• realized what my top three projects are and started refiling old documents to support those initiatives.
• started hunting around for a paper copy of David Allen's book: "Getting Things Done"
• signed up for the eProductivity Weekly Tips Newsletter
• considered signing up for the free eProductivity Webinars held every Friday at 10:00am – 11:00am PST (aaaaargh!!! that's 5:00am Sydney time!).

Even Old Dogs can learn New Tricks.
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Microsoft takes one on the chin - I bet that hurt!

As of last night the US290 million patent infringement judgment against Microsoft has been reaffirmed and the injunction that bars the company from selling current versions of its MS Word software has been reinstated. This also applies to copies of Microsoft Office because they include Microsoft Word as a component of that software suite.

After the initial adverse judgment in August, Microsoft had persuaded the Federal Appeals Court to stay the injunction while it heard the appeal. Now the appeal has been heard and the Federal Court has affirmed the original judgment.

This is going to provide some interesting gossip over the Christmas break.

There's still time to buy your loved ones a copy of MS Word for Christmas. The injunction doesn't take effect until 11th January 2010.
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What is the $$$ cost of migrating Notes applications?

I've just started talking to a customer who is looking at migrating away from their R6.5 Notes environment with the help of their current Business Partner. They have the usual half dozen CRM + Helpdesk + Asset Manager apps and " ...will migrate them when the email migration is finished."

OK, we've all heard it before, but what I need is a White Paper which exposes the pain and the cost of rewriting Notes applications in other environments. Does anyone have anything beyond anecdotal evidence which can be presented to a CIO?
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There's just one catch ...

I normally stay away from Infoworld. Their technique of splitting a short article across multiple pages to force you into viewing 3-4 times as many ads as other web sites is a pain in the butt and I am also mildly disgusted when IT publications use pop-up ads. Sure they get some money for it but it puts them in the same classification as websites for Acai berry weight-loss treatments. So these days when I choose to read an article in Infoworld I just select the print button and read through the straight text without the ads. But I digress ...

I was reading Infoworld's review of Microsoft's new web-based application suite which they will be throwing into the ring against Google Docs and IBM Symphony, and this line caught my eye:

But there must be a catch, right? Sure, and it's a doozy: Microsoft's applications don't really work. During the Technical Preview, documents imported into the online versions of Word and PowerPoint are read-only.

I think that line sums up the entire Microsoft marketing strategy since they moved away from their core Windows and Office strategy: "Sure we have products that we position against Notes / Java / Mozilla / Internet Search / Google Docs / any other new market, but they don't really work (unless you let Microsoft provide the definition of 'Work')",

Microsoft software: Just say No.

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Should old Notes databases just be left to die?

I've always been impressed by the backward compatibility of Notes. Late in 2008 I re-met an old client who was still running a Notes database I had built in Notes R1 (yes, R1) some 20 years ago. His Domino server had moved up to R7 by then but the app was still chugging along storing client records and printing sales summaries. It sounded like a story for the IBM marketing machine except for the fact that he was in the process of replacing the system with a purpose-built CRM product.

Then there's the customer who wants me to paste a quick-and-dirty XPage front end onto a database he had downloaded from Open NTF. In the end I advised against that approach since it would take a couple of weeks to reverse-engineer and rebuild the undocumented lotusscript agents buried within the existing Forms.

We can also consider one Business Partner's six figure commercial software development project that was originally designed with R7 Lotusscript and is now being retrofitted with XPages to make it more appealing to new customers. I know there are some good people working on that project but maybe they can't see the forest for the trees - new clothes do not make a new man in the world of software.

So how far can you stretch the rubber-band? Sure you can take an existing DB, upgrade the ODS and whack in some XPages over the weekend but is that a good thing? Aren't we just creating the 21st Century equivalent of 1980's COBOL spaghetti code?

Maybe Microsoft does have some benefits with their 'rip and replace' approach to technology. Applications developed with their tools may be over-budget and over-schedule but at least the code is fresh.
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eProductivity v. Domino Web Access - A tough choice

I'm putting my review of eProductivity on hold because I've run up against a technical anomoly. I run a Domino 8.5 mail client and use Domino Web Access for mail at least a half dozen times a week. At present the eProductivity template doesn't support DWA and I need to make a choice between the tools.

DWA wins out because I need to keep my business going. When eProductivity does support DWA then I'll install the new template and resume my review. It's a real teeth-grinding shame because I could see how eProductivity was ... well... making me more productive.

Eric, you're invited to post a response here to comment on your plans and schedule for eProductivity and DWA.
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eProductivity: Automating a Mess gives you an Automated Mess

I run three email accounts:

• a personal hotmail account that I've had since the Dawn of Email.
• a business hotmail account that I ran for a while until I started ...
• ... a business Notes email account running off my own Lotus Foundations Server.

In my last post about eProductivity I pointed out the difficulty of setting up meaningful Projects when I was working from a disorganized email environment. My attempt to straighten out my business Notes email account led me inexorably to my other email accounts and the painful realization that my lack of email organization included a lack of boundaries between my personal and business email accounts.

So after deleting well over a thousand obsolete emails and sending out a mailstorm of "Please use my other email address" missives I am almost back to Square One of evaluating eProductivity. The setback was painful to fix but a real eye-opener at the same time. This time round I should be able to build on a more solid Foundation (pun intended).

So when was the last time you flushed out your mail file?
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eProductivity for Lotus Foundations - Post 2

The install of eProductivity was fairly painless but the next step was less so. Now that I have modified my mail file to support eProductivity I need to reclassify the data that's already there. Fortunately I don't keep every email I get but until now I've never had a fixed set of criteria for determining which emails I discard. It all depends on my mood at the time.

Now I haven't read David Allen's book but from glancing through other people's blogs about eProductivity I've picked up three principles for dealing with information:

• Write it Down: Information needs to be effectively stored if I want it to be available later. This means make an entry in my EPD ("eProductivity database" - previously known as my mail file).
  
  
• The Two-Minute Rule: If an item (email, task, idea, whatever) can be completed in less than two minutes then do it now. If not, then see Rule One.
  
  
• Dispose, Delegate or Defer: Pick in of these options for each new item in my EPD. In the past I've been heavily reliant on a fourth 'D' word - "Delay". BTW the snailmail in-tray on my desk is about 15cm high (6 inches for you Imperial die-hards) and there are documents in there dating back to mid-2008. I probably need to Dispose, Delegate or Defer all of that also.
  

The new features in my EPD include the ability to convert each incoming (and outgoing) email into a new Project or a new Action within an existing project. That's quite handy because it makes me think whether I need to keep that email. I'm reasonably up-to-date with filing my email In-Box but I still have occasional meltdowns about what folder I should be using to file a particular email. eProductivity allows me to file things where I like but still track them by Project.

After a frustrating twenty minutes of failing to process my mail effectively I had a light bulb moment and realized that I hadn't created a strategic approach to my mail. Let me emphasize the point that this frustration was not the fault of eProductivity - it was my own failing of not having a defined process to deal with email. It's sort of like watching my three year old son sweeping a room. There's lots of activity and the mess sometimes accumulates into little piles (more by good luck than good management) but there is no predefined process to move the dirt from the floor into the final repository. In the past I've been very good at getting email out of my InBox but now I've recognized my system of filing email wasn't tailored to support my business objectives. That Aha! moment alone was worth the effort of installing eProductivity.

So today I'm stepping back from the coal face so I can look at my email from 30,000 feet and ask myself a few questions.

• What Projects do I want to be working on? Have I been letting the quantity of incoming email for each project determine my work priorities for the day? Hey! Who's in charge here? Me, or the people sending me email?
  
• How do I determine which emails I keep?
• How do I determine which emails are assigned to which Projects? Maybe I need to slice and dice my projects under different categories.

Can the Old Dog learn New Tricks?
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eProductivity for Lotus Foundations - Post 1

Like most of the citizens of PlanetLotus I've seen the posts about eProductivity around and even clicked through a few of them when the fancy took me. So why did I take up Eric's offer to blog about it?

Firstly, because I can see a synergy between Lotus Foundations Server and a Personal Productivity tool (be it eProductivity or otherwise). A large segment of the target market for Lotus Foundations Server will be a SMB directed by a single leading individual and it makes all kinds of sense to help that leader get as much as possible out of their day. Gaining an additional 20 minutes a day productivity out of a janitor might save a SMB ten dollars per day in overtime but generating the same productivity boost for the CEO might add another 5% to the bottom line. I'd like to show that kind of benefit to my customers.

Secondly, because my company (Binary Concepts), is a SMB and I'd sure like to add another 5% to my bottom line.

Third, because in the past I've tended to see these sorts of tools as a commercialized version of one man's desktop. eProductivity is the first personal organization tool I've heard of that is based on a productivity methodology and I want to see how it's different to all of the other PIMs, notepads and glorified calendars I've worked with previously.

The web site for eProductivity lists five activities leading up to installing the software. Now I hate watching advertising as much as the next guy but if I'm going to give a fair evaluation of the product then it's only fair that I RTFM first. Here are the five steps:

1. Listen to a 3-minute testimonial from David Allen.... Well, its actually four and a half minutes, and it expands on the three points listed on the David Allen page.

• eProductivity lets me quickly get things into Notes, into the system I can trust.
• eProductivity, gives me the ability to have both perspective and control,
• eProductivity gives me pretty much every tool that I need inside of Lotus Notes;

You can probably skip it.

2. View some screen shots.... A dozen or so screen shots showing different parts of the application. Move along... nothing earth-shattering to see here folks.

3. Watch the video tour and explore eProductivity.... This is 45 minutes long and is absolutely essential. The video tutorial explains the relationship between the different components of eProductivity.

4. Experience eProductivity: download an interactive demo.... I'll pass on this one. I want to get straight to ...

5. Try it! Use eProductivity for 21 days at no cost.... OK then! Let's start downloading!

The download and installation process was simple enough - basically you are replacing your mailfile template. I dutifully stepped through the documented process but found that the instruction videos all had a common feature ie descriptive text of "Video coming soon..." It was simple enough for an experienced administrator to download and install the template but perhaps it would be better to remove all references to the videos until they are available. I'd say it's a two hour process to watch the video then download and install the template.

The next step is to categorize my mail file into Actions and Projects. Stay tuned.
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Installing VMWare on Lotus Foundations

I've had a question about loading the Vistualization module in LFS and I decided to make it into a separate post of its own. There are three downloadable components required to run VMWare. The LFS update to version 1.1 and the Run package are both downloadable from where-ever you obtained your original LFS software but the VMWare module is only available through IBM/Lotus Business Partners.

You also need to create a free account on www.vmware.com and request Linux licence keys. VMWare will send you an email with a validated login and once you follow the link in the email to get your licence keys you will have the licence keys to paste into the appropriate dialog box when you run the VMWare install. When all of that is done, if you select the 'Add-ons' option from the left hand menu you should see the following entry in your list under the 'Status' tab.

Status = (Tick)
Team = lf-virtualization
Add-on Container = Lotus Foundations Run 1.1
Enabled = Yes

At that point the VMWare module is installed and ready to go. Click on the 'Virtualization' tab adjacent to the 'Status' tab and then click on the button at the bottom of the page labeled 'Advanced Virtualization Settings'. This will open a new LFS interface communicating via Port 8333 and you can begin to create Virtual Machines.


The only problem I had was the ever-persistant Firefox glitch that sees any new web interface with LFS as a security exception.
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Application Design: "In the long run, we're all dead"

A recent post over at edbrill.com got me thinking about design philosophy. 'Jason' was talking about his role in migrating existing Notes apps onto the MS framework and declared...

" ... most Notes apps start out poorly designed, have tons of little bells and whistles added over time and as it becomes unscalable developers bandaid the whole thing together with scheduled agents and buttons and all sorts of nonsense. It's hard to just migrate that mound of crap overnight. If a company does it right, they'll spend the time they should have spent originally with the Notes app project and put together a sound design and data model...."

Now there's all kinds of emotive language tied up in his post but lets skip over that for the moment. Of the millions of Notes applications in use today there will be a high percentage which either were built decades ago using Notes R1 / R2 / R3 / R4 or R5 development tools and reflect the technical limits of those tools, or were built to serve a particular need and were so successful in that role that they 'grew like topsy' to fulfil other roles.

Jason's beef seems to be that those Domino applications don't map to his definition of a "sound design and data model". I'd say Jason is falling into the trap of taking a subjective set of criteria (in this case, the capability of the MS toolset) and using it to judge the business value of the existing application. It's a classic IT beartrap - seeking to define the success of a business application using non-business criteria.

When designing applications it's certainly important to pay attention to accuracy of data modelling but its also important to ensure that the application is affordable and available. Unless a business is already far advanced with their implementation of a Business Maturity Model then it's highly likely that their data models and workflows will not fit neatly into Jason's definition of a sound design and data model. Sure, you can take a long term approach and stall the database development until the business gets all of its Ducks in a Row, but in the long run, we're all dead. Incomplete design models and ever-changing business specifications are a fact of life. The Power of Notes is that it has always been capable of helping a business 'where the Rubber meets the Road' and providing good IT applications for the Here and Now. Perhaps Jason should just upgrade his toolset to Domino Designer 8.5 and see if his problems are still insurmountable.
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OT: Bill Gates proving that MS doesn't have a 'Chinese Wall'

In the Age of Napoleon the British navy was under threat from woodworm. In the Age of Obama (TM) there is a different kind of worm threatening to scuttle Her Majesty's fleet. When the RN standardized on 'Windows for Warships' as the operating system to run the computer systems on their ships there were a number of voices raised in warning about the unsuitability of that OS to perform as required. If you follow through some of those links in that article you will eventually wind up with the statement of Bill Gates given in 2002 when the State of New York and others took on Microsoft Corporation. That's where our story starts...

Have a read of the following sections of Bill's statement from 2002:

216. In a purely theoretical world, one could imagine developing modest software programs in such a way that any module could be swapped out in favor of a similar module developed by a third party. The replacement module would need to conform identically to the interfaces expected by all of the modules with which it interacts. In the commercial world, it is hard to see what value such replace-ability would provide even if it could be achieved. [Apart from allowing other companies to compete with Microsoft - GD] For Netscape Navigator to suffice as a replacement for Internet Explorer, for example, developers at Netscape would have to devote enormous effort to matching the functions of Internet Explorer and enabling those functions to perform in precisely the same way as Internet Explorer. When they were done, they would have software that is nearly identical to Internet Explorer (a “clone”), providing little or nothing in the way of new value.

217. In addition, if Microsoft were obligated to allow ISVs to clone all the functions of all the “Microsoft Middleware Products” in Windows, Microsoft’s ability to improve Windows would be hampered because the interfaces between modules would necessarily be “frozen” so that third parties could write to them. Given the large number of “Microsoft Middleware Products” in Windows under Section 22.x, the effect would be to freeze large parts of Windows.

The sentence I underlined could have been taken from any book on good programming practice. Was Bill really suggesting that Microsoft doesn't document and adhere to the specified APIs when passing off code requests between Windows and other Microsoft applications? Surely the two development teams don't have access to each others internal documentation? If so, it makes it difficult to continue to claim the existence of the legendary 'Chinese Wall' between Microsoft's OS developers and their application developers. I don't think anyone every took that claim seriously but it's interesting to read Bill testifying to the fact that it technically can't exist.
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How to 'Foundationize' your shrink-wrapped Domino application

Johanna Cook is the key contact for Lotus Business Partners looking to tweak their shrink-wrapped applications to run on Lotus Foundations server.

Johanna has posted a new entry in the Lotus Foundations wiki detailing the steps to download the 'IBM Smart Business Developers Kit'.

I'm not in the shrink-wrap application market myself, but I recommend that those of you who are look to expand your market reach by converting your product into a 'native' Foundations application.
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Engineers need good Foundations

The Boys from Pittsburgh have done it again. Baerware have announced the release of businessPRO AEC for Engineering Project Management.

I haven't reviewed this product - engineering isn't really my specialty - but I was certainly impressed with their earlier businessPRO and docuPRO products. If engineering is your thing then check it out.
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Foundations: Selling Domino consulting to SMB

One of the biggest challenges in selling consulting services to SMB is helping customers to catch the vision of how Domino applications can help their business. For many of these people, their previous computer experience has been limited to reading their Hotmail, typing their invoices in Word and balancing their accounts in Excel. After they have bought Foundations and installed Symphony, the idea of spending an additional 'x' thousand dollars to develop a software solution for their business may well be the last thing on their mind.

Here's a way to expand their vision...

Back in the dim distant past Lotus (before they were IBM/Lotus) bundled up a set of basic Domino applications as a free download. Those R3/R4 applications are still available and, unlike Microsoft's 'rip-and-replace' application roadmap, Domino applications are backward compatible which means that these databases will run in the Domino version 8.x environment provided with Foundations.

Now don't think that I'm suggesting these databases will fit the bill for today's business environment - for a start, none of them are web enabled. What these applications will do is provide a discussion point for you and your SMB client to talk about what they could achieve with Domino, and since you were the nice guy who gave these databases to the customer for free then its only natural that they will turn to you when they want them tweaked. Then once you have engaged them in that conversation it's up to you to show the business benefit of a full system analysis and application development lifecycle.

These files shouldn't be mentioned in your first approach to your customer. I'd say they are best used after you've installed and configured Foundations and you're running out of excuses to call the guy. Ring him up one last time and tell him you've got a freebie. Send him the list of files and offer to install the ones he wants onto his server for free then call him up a fortnight later and ask him how he liked it.


Here's the list of applications:

1. Things to Do,
2. Requisition Approvals,
3. Application Tracking,
4. Book Reviews,
5. Budget Planning,
6. Call Tracking,
7. Clip Art Gallery,
8. Contract Library,
9. Correspondence,
10. Customer Service (five databases -- Product Design Problems, Customer Suggestions, Knowledge Base, Data Dictionary, Call Tracking -- as well as a sixth database with documentation),
11. Demo Room Reservation,
12. Employee Records,
13. Event Calendar,
14. Executive Briefings,
15. Expenses Reports,
16. Formula Catalog,
17. Forms Routing,
18. Electronic Library,
19. Icon Catalog,
20. Job Candidates,
21. Job Postings,
22. Sales Management,
23. Library Tracking & Training,
24. Purchasing Item Tracking,
25. Litigation,
26. Lookup Keyword Library,
27. Meeting Tracking,
28. Monthly Financials,
29. Engineering Notebook,
30. Patient Treatment Signoff,
31. People and Facilities,
32. Phone Book and Yellow Pages,
33. Presentations,
34. Race Results,
35. Real Estate Management,
36. Recipes,
37. Relocation Expenses,
38. Routing Tracking,
39. Reservation Scheduler,
40. Sell-through Sales Reports,
41. Shotgun E-Mail Communications,
42. Conference Suggestions,
43. Support Conference,
44. Support Center Call Tracking,
45. System Equipment Inventory,
46. Team Consolidate,
47. Team Room,
48. Tech Services Call Tracking,
49. Technotes and Tips,
50. Telemarketing,
51. Travel Authorization,
52. Values and Goals,
53. Wholesale Customer Tracking.

BTW: Has anyone, anywhere, at any time, ever used the recipe application?

My guess: probably not.
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Foundations Applications: <your name here>

I'm not going to sign up for the Lotus Foundations ISV Developer Toolkit program. I did think about it and even went so far as to log in at IBM and check out the signup form.

Two thoughts stopped me. First, the intrepid Daniele Vistalli is already in that program and will doubtless continue to blog about his adventures so there is no need for me to be there from a Foundations reporting perspective. The second thought was that creating shrink-wrapped commercial products doesn't really push my button. There's plenty of career paths in the Yellowverse and I don't need to follow them all.

However what I can do is review software products that come out of the other end of the LFS toolkit process. If you have developed a product using the Lotus Foundations ISV Developer Toolkit then I'm happy to review it for you and give it a plug on this blog like I did yesterday with Baehrware's BusinessPro.


P.S. I know Ed Brill has beaten me to blogging about the new flash-based IBM Marketing Video about Foundations (Curse You Red Baron!) but I figured I should include a link to it on my blog anyway. Check it out in the 'Foundations Links' section on the left of this screen.
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Foundations Applications: BusinessPro

Yesterday I blogged about VIC to create a baseline for evaluating CRM applications. After spending two hours chatting with Jim and Bob Baehr (yes, the "The Unofficial Poster Child For Lotus Notes, Domino, and Lotus Foundations") on a Skype-based 'Show-and-Tell' session I can put their Baehrware products (BusinessPro and DocuPro) up on the chart and measure them against that standard.

Saying that BusinessPro provides CRM is like saying that Domino provides email. The answer is yes in both cases but if you stop at that point you are seriously underestimating the power of the application.

BusinessPro is pitched as “a complete sales management software suite” and that's a pretty good description. As we worked through the demo I tried to imagine that software helping to run my business and I was impressed by how close it came to my ideal. The interface is a lot smoother than VIC and the business process has been clearly thought out. Sales leads become Quotes which become Purchase Orders which become Invoices. There are options to sell both Goods and Services and the DocuPro software includes a Billing & Timesheet module which links in to the Sales process.

On the other side of the balance sheet BusinessPro tracks vendors and their products which allows easy calculation of profit per sale and that's the kind of information dear to the heart of any SMB owner. Where the Baehrware model really takes off is with the addition of DocuPro. This optional module allows storing and searching of supporting documentation (emails, scanned docs etc) by tagging the documents to the relevant client or sales order. That's hardly rocket science in the Domino universe but all of the other systems I've seen work on a much larger scale. DocuPro is designed for small business and I'm thinking that I'll need another blog post further down the track to properly explore that software.

The things I liked best about BusinessPro are:

• It's built from the ground up as a Release 8 application rather than being R5/R6/R7 code with a facelift. This means that the hooks for integrating Composite Applications are already built into the core code instead of being an afterthought.
• It's already ‘Foundationized’ with the appropriate installer code. In fact this software has the benefit of ongoing development in that department since it was originally designed using the Nitix installer code and later upgraded to work with Foundations.
• The price point is about right at $99 per user for BusinessPro and you can add DocuPro for another $29 per user.
• Baehrware are quite open to implementing changes to assist in localization of the product. They’ve already promised to make some changes to make the software more relevant to the Australian market eg “Australian Business Number” rather than “Tax Number”.

The things I don't like are:

• The design on these applications is hidden. As an innately-curious and ‘ever-willing-to-learn’ Notes developer I find that decision frustrating, unreasonable and a pain in the ass, but as a reseller of Foundations software and appliances I applaud their judgement. An application with hidden design means that end users can’t stick their fingers into the code and make my life miserable with unwarranted support calls.
• There's no single view to show all outstanding invoices over 30/60/90 days but Jim took that issue on board and I'd expect that omission will have been fixed by the time you read this blog post.
• The Baehrware website is slick and high tech but it gives me very little feel for what the applications actually do. There are no screenshots of the products and the product documentation for BusinessPro isn't available yet (although it is available for DocuPro). I'm sure this problem will be corrected over time.

On my personal wishlist for BusinessPro is a browser-based utility to allow data entry by people working full-time on client sites for extended periods (three months?) who need to remotely log their work times into the system for the fortnightly invoice run. They might have a Notes client (and BusinessPro licence) at the office but not on their home PC, or maybe I just don't want short-term contractors replicating my core databases. Nothing wrong in wishing for the moon...

In summary, VIC is a great investment for the serious Domino developer who wants to tweak their own code but as far as producing a Sales Management application to sell into the SMB marketplace Baehrware's BusinessPro leaves it for dead.
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Foundations Applications: VIC CRM

A round of applause for Dave Leigh please! Dave lives in Union, South Carolina, United States of America and you can find his website here. Dave's home-grown Domino-based CRM product (called VIC for 'Vital Information Center') can be downloaded from openntf.

VIC provides:

• Collaborative Customer Relationship Management.
• A 'My Activities' page that gathers all of your scheduled activites and To-Dos in one place.
• Contact Management with multiple contacts per company and multiple divisions and subdivisions per parent company.
• The ability to gather key financial information tailored to customers, vendors, and financial institutions.
• The ability to collect all communications in one place, including incoming and outgoing emails, faxes, and letters
• The ability to annotate correspondence (both incoming and outgoing)
• A Library that stores all manner of persistent information, such as document templates and boilerplate text, worksheets, company newsletters, sales bulletins, or corporate intelligence,
• A Contract Manager allows you to track any sort of contract information, including warranties and service contracts. The notification feature reminds you before contracts are due for renewal
• The ability to Automatically associates incoming emails with organizations and contacts you have on file.
• Product and Service catalogs.
• Letter and Fax writer.

VIC does not require any modification of your existing Lotus Notes templates and is completely customizable by the user. Best of all, VIC is freeware. Dave has done a great service to the Domino user community by sharing the fruits of his labors with us all and I applaud him for his generosity. VIC is a great CRM/Document Management application and I’m busy adapting it to the needs of my own business (Thanks Dave!). I’d recommend it to any serious Domino developer who needs a CRM tool.

However I’ll think twice before recommending VIC to my SMB customers.

Here's why. I know three people who have experienced VIC and all of them agree that it was more than a morning's work to get the software installed and running properly. The problem is not with VIC itself. The application is well thought out, tightly written and superbly documented. It’s just that VIC is quite a few grades above the IT skill level of the average SMB owner - especially one who hasn't used Domino before.

Some Developers might see that situation as a license to print consulting dollar$ and they could be right. I guess it might depend on the nature of the customer with whom you are dealing. If they have a dynamic business model and are looking for continual system enhancement then VIC is probably a good investment for them. OTOH, most Small Business owners don’t want to continually spend money enhancing their systems. They don’t have the spare dollars to keep feeding consultants and they don’t have the spare time (nor probably the inclination) to spend their own weekends boning up on the finer point of software configuration. If they do have any spare time it is probably better spent on mastering the technical intricacies of their own business, be it selling Real Estate, fixing trucks or running a retail store.

So why am I reviewing a Domino application that hasn't been modified for use with Foundations? At this point I'm setting a baseline for Foundations customers who are looking for a CRM product. Later this week I'll review a 'Foundationized' commercial CRM application and explain why I think it is a better deal for SMB.
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