Chris-Linfoot.net

Well, I promoted it.

Here's why.

Users ask for it.

Often.

Now, we can try and educate them to use other features that are often so buried in the UI that only we geeks can find them, if they exist at all.

We can cite concerns over security, SOX compliance or whatever.

We can explain that we, the über users, get by very nicely without this feature (I know I do), so why can't they?

But this all misses the point.

While we geeks may operate in a web 2.0, portal oriented, rich collaboration environment, most users still think purely in terms of file system locations and, if these file system locations are on a network server, users tend only to think of these at all where they are mapped to a local drive letter.

Many users have become very adept at organising their work around a file system / file server paradigm and feel no compelling need to do things differently. Unless we can demonstrate some tangible business value to be realised through organising work other than via the file system on a file server, then there's really no good reason to change this.

Sure the ability to drop an email into the file system is not for everybody, but it does have value for some users (including some quite influential ones) and Notes' only serious competitor does this and has done for years.

(Aside: A feature somewhat like this was added to OpenNTF Mail Experience quite some time ago per my suggestion.)

For sites that don't want this feature, leaving it disabled by default and controlling it via a policy is all that is needed.

Remember, not everybody wanted message recall, but we got that in ND8 for exactly the same reasons:

1. Users want it.
2. Outlook does it.

I leave it to your conscience but, before demoting this idea yet further, please think of the users.

Category: Misc
Technorati: IdeaJam IBM Lotus Notes Save+Email

1. Ben Rose19/05/2008 13:20:33
Homepage: http://www.jaffacake.net

I'm with you Chris, people do ask for it a hell of a lot.

Maybe I should take a look at IdeaJam at some point, i've still not been.

2. Robert Harris19/05/2008 13:27:35

Isn't this what Quickr is supposed to address? Create a place that will allow you to file messages outside your mail file by product / project / topic area. I have not had the good fortune to work extensively with Quickr yet (a project for this Fall), but this is the impression of one of the features of the product that I have received from all the sales / technical overviews I have seen.


Robert

3. Chris Linfoot19/05/2008 13:31:56

@2 - that is the typical tech response - "there is a feature which does that".

Trouble is, this isn't a feature to which most users have access and it is not one that most would choose to use even if they did.

We need to spend more time listening and less time preaching.

4. Nathan T. Freeman19/05/2008 14:12:26
Homepage: http://nathan.lotus911.com

Part of the problem here is that Notes does not, and never really has had, a native format for saving a SINGLE DOCUMENT. What would you "save an email" as? You can export it, for sure, as the OpenNTF Mail Experience does by creating a .eml. Would that be okay with you for regular emails? What about stuff like signatures and encryption envelopes? If a message was encrypted in the original, should it be encrypted when saved directly?

One of the struggles that IBM has had with DXL is the perception that this is an appropriate job for DXL. Which means it would need to support signed/encrypted content -- being able to import & export both. Westford has leaned away from this objective, and is instead producing a separate backup/restore API. I don't think that's slated for 8.5, though.

Perhaps this would be an excellent time to request of them that we get on-the-glass access to that API, so that it's possible to export a given Notes document as a binary blob that can then be organized as a standard file. The format, though, wouldn't be open any time soon if the objective is full fidelity.

On the other hand, if you're willing to lose things like encryption and possibly some aspects of detailed rendering like personal stationary, I could create something that will save the message as DXL in about 15 minutes. You know my email address and where to find me on IM.

Ah, and as a measure of last resort, it WOULD be possible to save each message as it's very own .NSF. That might seem like a lot of overhead, since the minimum size of the file would be 256KB. But it would work, and in many cases the message being saved is already larger than 256KB in the first place, so maybe it wouldn't even be noticed.

What would probably suck is designing some sort of "import" mechanism to bring all those NSF back off a file share and into a single mail file for the user.

5. Keith Brooks19/05/2008 14:17:12
Homepage: http://www.vanessabrooks.com

@2 Quickr will handle attachments. This is talking about save a specific email as a txt file or whatever you need in a location outside your mail file and lotus.
Chris, this function is available as File Export, ok you need to say you want it in 1 of 4 types but that's all there is to it.
You want a button that calls it up, as you said openntf does it, so could you edit your own mail template in your org and add it.
but it is in there by default.

6. Carl Tyler19/05/2008 14:25:31
Homepage: http://www.iminstant.com

Years ago, Notes would save a single document as an NSF, I can't for the life of me remember which scenario would do that though, I will have to think harder.

This is one of those things that Outlook users do all the time, I often have customers send me word and Excel files that contain embedded outlook emails near paragraphs or numbers that they relate to. Obviously I think this is stupid, but lots of people appear to be comfortable doing it that way.

7. Julian Buss19/05/2008 14:36:32
Homepage: http://blog.youatnotes.de

Chris, I am not with you in this case.
Generally spoken, I always agree about "listening to users is important". In fact, the major part of our own software proucts are based on dedicated user feedback.

But in this case my opinion is that if users want to stay in the stoneage, we must not let them. Managing work using a file system are really old-fashioned and has its problems:
file systems does not replicate and are therefore not distributable. If a user uses a file system, he always tends to use the local computer, not a network server. That means no other one has access to this information, and you have no backup.

No, in this particular case the user needs a CRM/Office automation/project system in which he can push his mails.
The his requirement (having all information at one place) is satisfied and the other requirements (backup, distributing, access for others), too.

8. Nathan T. Freeman19/05/2008 15:04:42
Homepage: http://nathan.lotus911.com

@6 - it was the original version of the SMTP router. It would encapsulate individual messages as an entire NSF, and send them as a MIME attachment, where they'd be extract at the other end.

Rich Schwartz told me about that technique a few years back at 'sphere.

9. Chris Linfoot19/05/2008 16:14:46

@5 - Sorry, but export as opposed to just saving and opening in a native format is pretty lame. And there's no equivalent import. And then there's fidelity, which is well and truly destroyed by that approach.

@7 - Then we must agree to disagree. It is possible to arrange for secure file system access complete with backup/DR.

Yes, some systems like CRM can make special arrangements to incorporate emails. We have implemented the SalesForce connector for Lotus Notes which does this, so that customer emails are stored with other CRM records.

But not all users are CRM users and not all uses are so structured as CRM so I believe there is a place for a feature to save emails as files.

10. Bruce Currier19/05/2008 16:51:09
Homepage: http://jttp://www.sealinfo.com

Personally, myself,m I think this is a bad idea, but as an admin, this is the number one reason why every year we have to fight with the executive team to stay on Notes/Domino and not migrate to Exchange. They think they want it (but I doubt that many of them would really use it once they had it).

11. Chris Linfoot19/05/2008 17:10:54

This is the number one reason why every year we have to fight with the executive team to stay on Notes/Domino and not migrate to Exchange.

That ought to be a good enough reason to vote to promote the idea.

12. Nathan T. Freeman19/05/2008 17:19:30
Homepage: http://nathan.lotus911.com

@11 - Actually, that ought to be a good enough reason to write something to handle it for your users and deliver it to them TODAY, rather than cross your fingers for a solution from IBM.

13. Kevin Pettitt19/05/2008 19:50:38
Homepage: http://www.lotusguru.com

Would it help if you could map a quickr repository to a drive letter?

14. Chris Linfoot19/05/2008 20:00:18

@12 - Just some clarification for you.

First, I don't need this. I just don't think we should exclude the possibility for sites that do.

Second, any coding that we do to provide this functionality cannot work perfectly as you yourself have said. Signatures, encryption and message fidelity all vanish. And there's no easy option to open the saved message in Notes.

@13 - Yes. That would obviously help a great deal.

15. Nathan T. Freeman19/05/2008 20:33:15
Homepage: http://nathan.lotus911.com

@13 - Why would that help? A Quickr repository can hold attachments, not the emails surrounding them. What good would a repository do unless I could transfer the whole of a message into it?

@14 - While I'd like to see a capability from IBM regarding this, my response was intended to suggest that if it's that big a deal for Mr. Currier, he should seek a remedy within the current capabilities of the product, even if that means the method-of-last-resort in which messages are saved in NSF formats.

But my money says that if users are concerned with matching capabilities of Outlook, then maintaining PKI integrity isn't important. They wouldn't have digital signatures and encryption in Outlook, would they?

16. Chris Linfoot19/05/2008 20:55:19

They wouldn't have digital signatures and encryption in Outlook, would they?

Actually, yes. Though I have rarely seen it used.

17. Michael Kinder19/05/2008 21:44:53
Homepage: http://www.acadiasolutions.com

I think having a feature to export a message in the MSG format the Outlook message can be stored in would be a good idea. But agree that it should be something the Admins can control users use of. I think most SOX shops would have a major issue with just allowing everyone to be able to save a message off and do what they want to with it.

18. Volker Weber19/05/2008 22:26:00
Homepage: http://vowe.net

The most common format to export Notes mails seems to be to print them into a PDF file. Which brings uns back to the wonderfully formatted outputs of the Notes client.

19. Richard Schwartz20/05/2008 02:45:27
Homepage: http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com

@8 + @6 That would be the ENCAP.OND format, used by SMTP when sending from one Notes uesr to another via SMTP. The feature still exists today. Look at the checkbox on the "Advanced" tab of the delivery options dialog. But you can't expect this to work when opening from the filesystem. The .OND file is an NSF, but it contains no design notes, so it would open just to the default view showing the docnum '1'. Of course, this is a problem that could be solved with some new client code -- but the .OND file is also quite large, even without design notes -- more than 300k for a minimal message -- thus totally impractical without compression.

What would really make the most sense is to export to DXL and include a template reference in the DXL, such that double-clicking the DXL will import the DXL into a temp NSF that is SCT-bound to the appropriate template. But of course, full-fidelity DXL would be needed -- including support for signature (which is there, I think) and encryption (which is not).

20. Joris Van Schuerbeeck23/05/2008 12:51:03

Our shop is working on a mail retention policy,
so we definately don't need nor want this.

But before it would definately have been usefull, as we have people working on projects that tend to make an .nsf for every project they work on to store all the mail.

We are now telling them to print to pdf, as that at least shows the sender / subject etc...
They can never respond to pdf messages of course, but as a solution to store a mail as evidence / project documentation I feel this is good enough.

Joris.

21. John Lindsay13/06/2008 11:42:20
Homepage: http://www.zenocean.com

A bit late in the day but I've just picked up on this thread. I'm with Chris on this and it is encouraging to hear a "techie" say it. "We must listen to the users". One of my pet hates is that while we may understand how to do something, others may not and that may be because as Chris says they do not have access to the required widget or whatever. I regularly have people come into the Organisation with their old (Outlook) mail files because there is stuff in there that they use and they can still access it. However when the same people leave there is not the facility for them to leave with mail files that they may find useful in the future. The industry I am in has a pretty mobile workforce and the ability for them to take (approved) stuff with them is useful. I have people who have worked here are now in Client's Offices working directly for the Client - as they have an ongoing relationship with us the ability to reread old e-mails is really useful. I'll go and vote for it now.

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