New Features in Notes Client 8.0

Kategorie: Notes/Domino 8.x

Overview Lotus Notes 8 Beta comes in two configurations: standard and basic.

"Standard" configuration means that you can access applications on both Domino servers and IBM WebSphere Portal servers (you must create an account on the home Portal server before you can access Portal applications). Employing an intuitive and completely redesigned user interface, the standard configuration includes both new and familiar functionality for mail, calendar, contacts, and instant messaging, as well as introduces "activities," "composite applications", the Composite Application Editor, and a set of productivity tools (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program) based on the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard.

"Basic" configuration means that all the server-based applications you can access reside on Domino servers, and includes both new and familiar functionality for mail, calendar, and contacts, plus familiar functionality for instant messaging.

Note: For information on what products you need to install to take full advantage of the standard configuration's features, see the Installation section of these release notes.

Activities
Activities takes advantage of a collaboration concept called Activity-Centric Computing (ACC) to organize and categorize e-mail, chat histories, documents, and Web pages according to the activity they support, rather than according to information type. Using a self-service platform, team members can work together on a project in a secure, central, online location. You can perform several actions to Activities from the Notes 8 client's "Sidebar." For more information, see the release note "Activities," under "New in this release."

Composite applications
As well as being compatible with all your existing Notes applications, the Lotus Notes 8 Beta introduces "composite applications." By leveraging the Eclipse programming model, Notes 8 will allow a developer to create an application that integrates two or more components-- from Domino sources, WebSphere Portal sources, or a combination of Domino and WebSphere Portal sources. Users can be more productive because they work with the different components in a unified way.

This beta release provides three sample composite applications, and gets you started creating your own composite applications.

Composite Application Editor
The Composite Application Editor provides tools for editing composite applications or composite application templates that reside either on a Domino server or on a WebSphere Portal server. For example, you can create a new application page and add components to the page. Components can include Notes applications (.nsf files), portlets from IBM WebSphere Portal, or Eclipse views designed using a tool such as Lotus Designer. You can then create wires between components that allow them to interact in an application.

Productivity tools
Without installing additional software, you can now create, edit, and save ODF-compliant documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from within Lotus Notes, as well as import and export them to other standard formats, including Microsoft Office.

The following list represents an overview of the new features that are available in IBM Lotus Notes 8 Beta. These features apply only to the current Beta release of Notes 8, and may not accurately represent the features available in the final release. Features are subject to change. For more comprehensive information about new features, please refer to the on-line Help files, and to the Documentation Updates chapter of these release notes.

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Client

User Interface (UI)

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• A new, Java-based client option with a newly-designed UI, including an "Open" button to access your bookmarks.
• Better single log-on integration. For more information, see the Client Help topic "Synchronizing your Windows NT/2000 password with your Notes password"
• Name change from 'Welcome Page' to 'Home Page'.
• Support for Themes - Notes components support the OS theme for increased font size, and when using High Contrast mode.
• Support for displaying view column sizes in KB, MB, or GB.
• Replication/Sync page improvements.
• Unified Mail and Calendar preferences.
• Hover Help/Tool Tips for Action bar items.
• Folder name change from "Databases" to "Applications".
• Multi-level "Undo" operations, including more operations that can be undone.
• Additional "Undo" operations for tables.
• Usability improvements in the Application Open dialog.
• Enhanced Attachments dialog allows access to Windows-based places, for example, My Documents, Desktop, or My Computer (Windows only).
• Property infobox has better contextual graying.
• Names and text fields have been enhanced to show ellipsis (. . . .) instead of allowing multiple lines in a field.
• An enhancement to support URL lengths greater than 250 characters.
• Improved options for Network Failover/Network Awareness. This includes, for example, saving a document in another server replica during a failover.
• Viewer support for Open Office-formatted documents.
• Support for feed reader; see "Feed reader functionality in Notes 8 client" in these release notes for additional information.
• Support for multiple monitors (Windows only).
• An Eclipse-based Help system that allows you to display context-sensitive help in a side panel while you work. In addition to help for Lotus Notes, this Help includes sections on Sametime Connect, Activities, the Composite Application Editor, and the IBM Word Processing, Spreadsheet, and Presentation tools, all of which you can choose to install as part of the client install. Note: The content of the beta Help is not final.

Installation

• Eclipse install handler manages aspects of of the download and installation process, such as: New Install, Upgrade, Uninstall, and Administrator control over installation parameters.
• Support for Administrator override during Notes installation.
• Support for launching the Notes client via command line.

Contacts

The former Notes and Domino Personal Address Book is now called Contacts; functionality that was previously included in your Personal Address Book is now included in your Contacts. New features available with Contacts include:

• Improvements to the Contact and Group forms, and to the Preferences UI.
• Ability to include a photograph of the contact in the record.
• Ability to add up to 10 phone numbers.
• An additional street address set.

Calendar and Scheduling

• Unaccepted calendar entries display as "ghosted" entries in the Calendar view for new meeting and reschedule notices. This feature is turned off by default; users must enable this feature in the Calendar Preferences. This feature requires a Domino 8 Beta server.
• Cancelled meetings can be displayed automatically in the calendar or removed outright. This feature is turned off by default; users must enable this feature in the Calendar Preferences.
• Entries with short durations, for example 1 minute, display in timeslot views with a duration of 15 mins, to allow the user to see more information about the appointment. This feature is turned on by default.
• All Day events now display in the full day rather then just in the top area.
• Calendar Form UI Improvements, including Day At-A-Glance
• Users can locate free time for a subset of their Invitee list.

Mail

• An improved mail form, with easier-to-access menu bar choices, requiring fewer 'clicks' to perform desired actions.
• Simplified Mail preferences.
• Updated and additional Letterhead choices.
• User settings to display additional information when composing or opening mail (From, Sent By, BCC, Additional Options).
• Improved, simplified Action Bar buttons.
• Within the Inbox, the ability to see all related messages in a thread. There are two different options: one that collapses all messages under the most recent response, and another that provides the mail thread on-demand from the Inbox.
• The ability to perform operations for an entire mail thread, such as deleting a thread, or moving a thread to a folder.
• Improved Out-of-Office dialog, with new features such as specifying hours.
• Message Recall capability.
• HTML rendering has been improved for Read, Edit, and Print functions in the embedded browser.
• Remote images no longer download automatically when viewing an e-mail from the internet; this prevents spammers from knowing an e-mail has been successfully delivered. Instead, the "Show Images" action is available in the e-mail header, in the View menu, and by right-clicking.

Productivity tools

• Support for the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF), an international standard for sharing and editing editable documents. These open standards-based applications give users and organizations a choice of file formats and frees them from proprietary vendor formats.
• Users can open, edit, and save documents in certain Microsoft Office formats.
• SmartSuite formats can be imported to the productivity tools through an included filter.

Sametime Connect (optional)

• Save Chat Transcript in Mail File feature.
• For more features, see "Lotus Sametime servers and available features" in the Installation -> Software Requirements section of these Release Notes

Composite Applications

Composite applications combine components from multiple applications into a single, role-based work environment. Composite applications can be composed of any combination of Notes applications and Eclipse-based components.

• Support for integrating Notes applications into composite applications.

Activities (limited availability in this beta release)

The Activities function lets teams of users achieve project objectives by participating in different activities. Activity-centric computing organizes tasks and projects by associating multiple types of communications and resources into a cohesive grouping.

• Menu support for activities, and support for dragging-and-dropping from a Notes view to create an activity.

Print

• Print tab labels when printing a tabbed table.
• Print each tab of tabbed tables independently.
• Enhanced support for printing Contacts.
• Print Preview starts on current page.

Reliability and Serviceability

• Integrated logging of Notes client error and warning dialogs.
• Usability improvements made to many previously problematic error messages.
• Added information about error causes, solutions available via a new "Get Information" button.
• Support for logging of Instant Messaging transactions.
• Automatic updating of references to server applications that have been deleted or moved.
• New user interface to enable/disable console logging.

Roaming User

• Support for Directory links.

Search

• Improved Search syntax allows for web-style queries of NSF content.
• New Search Center UI for queries and results (Domain Search, Find People and Find Application, Web / Intranet Searches).
• If installed, Google Desktop Search can be launched by right-clicking Live names, and is also available in the Search Center.
• Help has a new Search that searches across all "books" in a help system.

Spell Check

• In-line spell checking support.
• Support for German Re-Reform.
• Support for additional languages (Kazakh, Maltese, Welsh).

Template

• A new blog template, allowing users to easily create blogs in Notes; see "Web log (blog) database template" in these release notes for additional information.
• Support for RSS feed-enabling of Notes databases; see "Feed reader functionality in Notes 8 client" in these release notes for additional information

Domino Designer

• Support for Composite Applications, including the following:
  • Property Broker Editor to create Properties design element (WSDL file) for composite applications
  • Property broker support for using Personal Information Management (PIM) applications in composite applications
  • Support for using PIM components standalone in composite applications
  • Built-in view filtering
  • Ability to open views without a frameset
  • Portlet generation feature in the Composite Application Editor (CAE)
  • Pre-configured component views in CAE palette
  • Ability to import/export component views in CAE Component palette
  • Ability to add the component view of a current application to the CAE palette
  • NSF component picker in CAE
  • Support of cross page wiring in CAE
  • Ability to copy as link with composite applications
  • Ability to add composite application bookmark to Launcher
  • Improved property broker debugging
  • NSF-based update site support
  • Predefined/hardcoded Replica IDs for Mail, Contacts and current databases
• Support for Mail Threads.
• Infobox property to show partial response hierarchies.
• Support for pictures in Contacts.
• Support for display of ellipsis (. . .) instead of multiple lines in Names field type.
• Support for view column property that displays number format in KB, MB, or GB.
• Support for Out-of-Office changes.
• @Function to compute folder membership for a document.
• "Display as split button" property.
• "Build index on first use" property.
• View column property to extend column to window width.
• Outline entry property displays a separate line above the entry.
• Advanced database property to allow compressed design elements.
• Infobox property to hide view column header.
• Infobox property that allows Administrators to prevent application searches when the application is very large.
• Web Services Consumer script library support.

Domino Web Access

• Domino Administrators can enable Domino Web Access security settings via policies using a Security Policy Settings document. For additional information, see the release note "Using Security Policy Settings"
• Domino Web Access will have a new look and feel. Also, the color scheme will best fit in portal, when the URL includes the &client=wps argument
• Added support and integration of LanguageWare libraries and dictionaries, which provides spell check dictionary support for German Reform language, along with a multi-threaded server spell check engine for Domino Web Access.
• New integrated Instant Contact List Manger interface and refresh of awareness icons
• More feature parity with Notes mail client -- Feature interoperability enhancements including support for Preview Pane, Calendar View filters, Preferred Rooms and Resources, and Managed Mail and Calendar
• Support for RSS feed-enabling of Notes databases; see "Enable RSS feeds for mail Inbox" in these release notes for additional information

Source: IBM readme.nsf