Running BES and Traveler on the same R8.5 Server

Is it possible to install Traveler on a Domino R8.50 server that is already running BES 5.0?

The server runs on Windows Server 2008.
At first glance I don't see a problem, but has anyone done this before?
Are there any gotchas I need to know about?
.

Putting the Microsoft Cart before the Lotus Horse

Ed Brill and Thomas Duff have already commented about Microsoft's suggestion of 'discarding' applications that aren't completely supported by Windows 7 or, as Microsoft's Norm Judah puts it...

“There’s also the question as to whether customers really need an (incompatible) application,”

IMHO any Operating System is only useful insofar as it facilitates a users interactions with their chosen software applications which drive their business. If Windows 7 is incapable of supporting those existing applications for a business then it is Windows 7 that is incompatible and should be discarded. After all, a computer with a shiny new operating system which won't run your chosen applications is like the proverbial chocolate teapot.

I probably wouldn't have blogged on this issue except this example of Microsoft's approach to marketing their shiny new technology bought the phrase 'Big Lie' to mind, and while googling that term I came across the following description of ... well, you can guess who (the underlining is mine):

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it".

If Bleeding Yellow meant I had to behave like that then I'd want a blood transfusion ... I guess the standards are different in Redmond.
.

Will Domino R8.51 run on Windows Server 2008 R2?

A customer wants to run Domino R8.51 on Windows Server 2008 R2 but that version of Windows Server isn't listed as a supported OS. I'm sure the answer is that it runs OK, but can someone point out an IBM document that approves of that configuration?

A customer wants to know...
.

OT: Is .docx the new standard?

I just had an email discussion with a client who had sent me a file with a .docx extension. My response to him was that .docx was a proprietary Microsoft format and I would prefer it as Open Document Format or even as a .doc so I could read it. His response was that Microsoft was the standard format and I needed to get software that could read it.

It's always difficult having these discussions with clients but I managed to gently walk him through saving the file as a .doc and resending it to me.

So I'm curious about the rest of the world. Has .docx succeeded in becoming the new standard or does the rest of the Lotus world insist on receiving .doc as a file format?
.

How far can you go with Lotus Foundations Branch Office?

I've been looking at Lotus Foundations Branch Office (LFBO) recently. First up, full marks for the Foundations Team for upgrading the documentation to a standard worthy of IBM. Well done guys. Second, let's see how far LFBO goes as a Domino server. Here's an except from the LFBO Administration guide.


Lotus Foundations Branch Office contains a Lotus Domino server that may be used like any other Lotus Domino server, but there are some Lotus Foundations Branch Office licensing differences:

• It must be used as a ″spoke″ within an existing Lotus Domino Enterprise server ″hub and spoke″ infrastructure
• It must connect into a hub that is a Lotus Domino Enterprise server or IBM Lotus Domino Messaging Server
• It can be used with up to 500 users
• The Lotus Foundations Branch Office server cannot be clustered
• It does not include bundled packages normally included in other Lotus Domino® packages, such as IBM® WebSphere® Application Server, IBM WebSphere Portal Server, IBM Tivoli® Directory Integrator or IBM DB2® Enterprise Edition packages

I can live without clustering and the Websphere/Tivoli/DB2 bundle but the gotcha is in the hub and spoke rule. A Foundations server can't be a hub so you can't create a hub and spoke topography consisting of just two Foundations servers. To be fair to IBM, they are selling this unit as a Branch Office solution so you're getting exactly what you paid for.

Where I'm unclear at the moment is how LFBO works in an organisation with (say) 900 users equally divided between three sites with the primary site as a Domino Enterprise server talking to a couple of remote LFBO servers on the spokes. It might need some technical juggling to reconcile the Foundations security model with the existing Domino Enterprise server address book, especially if you are migrating two thirds of your existing Domino ids into Foundations ids.

One things for sure... this model will take more than 30 minutes per server to set up and bed down.
.

Notes R8.5 Help: User-Hostile by design?

Is it just me or is the new eclipse-based R8.5 Help system user-hostile by design? I needed to check the syntax of the 'or' operator in a Hide-When formula so I opened R8.5 Help and clicked on 'Index'.

• Typing in 'or' gave no results;
• Typing in 'Formula' bought up two entries - 'adding to background' and 'wallpapering table cells';
• Typing in 'Hide-When' gave four results which I can't list here because you can't copy and paste from the Help screen and I didn't feel like typing out the results (but take my word for it - they were useless).

At that point I thought to check whether I was actually in Designer Help so I used Alt-Enter to open the Properties Box but unfortunately the new Properties Tab doesn't tell you which database you are looking at. Using the 'Search' feature of Help brings 72 results for Hide-When... none of which seem to cover the way to construct formulae.

Eventually I opened up the R8 Designer Help file on my server and found the answer there in less than a minute.

Bring back the old Notes Help system... please
.