The yet to be released Lotus Notes 8 will have an additional feature included for setting up Out of Office messages. This new service can function only with Lotus Notes 8 Client, Lotus Domino 8 server and Lotus Notes 8 mail template. However, the present Out of Office agent is still available for backward compatibility, which means a Lotus Notes 8 client connected to a Lotus Domino server 7 or lower version can still use the out of office feature as available now. The new OOO service is an additional feature and has specific advantages over the earlier agent like an instant response as opposed to a response time of six hours. Another advantage would be the automatic disabling of the feature at the end of the period set by the user without having to manually disable it. In the new out of office service the OOO message can be set even for a period of one hour compared with a minimum of one day with the present agent.

To know more about this, read this post from IBM developer works.

Found a two part article from IBM developer works on how to control spam mails using advanced SMTP settings in Lotus Domino. Written by Edmond Stanton, the article illustrates how to control spam mails by using the Configuration Settings document, server mail rules, and inbound SMTP commands and extensions in Lotus Domino 6 and above.

Should be an interesting read for Domino administrators facing problems with mailbox getting filled with spam mails. Part1 and Part 2 of the article titled Controlling spam: Advanced SMTP settings in Lotus Domino can be found in developer works dated 4th Oct 2004.

Have you ever spent hours in drafting a mail and lost it because your system got crashed? Those of you who had experienced this will appreciate how useful the autosave option is. Lotus Notes client version 7 has this feature included in it, however it is not enabled by default and has to be enabled by users by changing the settings in the user preferences. When Autosave is enabled and if your system or Lotus Notes crashes while drafting a mail, the draft can be recovered without having to start from the scratch. You can assign interval durations at which autosave can happen. To enable this feature go to File - Preferences - User Preferences and in the Basics view enable the Autosave option listed in the Startup Options. Also assign the interval at which the draft must be saved.

What is this Save state feature?
Save state is a feature available in Lotus Notes 7 client where all open tabs when the system is shut down gets opened automatically at next login. This is a pretty cool feature because it helps you open all those tabs at one go without having individually opening them. The best part is that if you once save the state, the tabs open at that instant will be saved and will automatically open every time you login into Lotus Notes unless you clear the saved tab details or overwrite another time by using save windows state option.

You can have any document like mail, calendar entry, a document in a custom application etc. saved and have them open by default in the next Notes login. This helps users save time, particulary those who want several documents in multiple applications to be open at the same time and use them regularly. They dont have to open all applications and open the documents every time, instead they can have it opened once and save the status. All their documents will open by default when they login into Notes every time after that.

Lets check how to enable this feature. Once you are sure that all documents you use regularly are open just click File and click Save Window State. Thats it, all open tabs will be recorded and saved. These documents will open by default in all subsequent Notes login. Iy you want to disable this feature click File and Clear Saved Window State.

Curious to know how the much hyped about Hannover would look like? Take a look at this Demo which gives an idea of how it might look. This is a Conceptual demo and brings out possible features that can be included in Hannover to help improve organizational prodcutivity. However, this is not the final product demo, so features and images shown here may be subjected to change.

The demo runs for a little more than four and a half minutes and takes time to download.So please be a little patient after clicking the link for it to get started.

Are you thinking of having a Comprehensive Faxing  solution for your Organisation? If yes the Domino faxing solution is one of the easiest ways to implement a secure and low maintenance fax solution.

This extends the functionality of Lotus Notes Domino in your organisation into another dimension. Integrating Fax facility with Lotus Notes adds a lot of value to the organisation as it is virtually equivalent to providing every employee an individual fax machine.Faxes can be sent and received easily with other features like getting alerts making it even more attractive. Faxes can be sent to multiple recepients in seconds by using the contacts saved in the Address Book of your mail box without difficulty as in manual faxing.

To  setup this system you will require a Domino Fax Software that runs as an application in the Domino Server. A Fax Windows Services system to convert the content into faxablw content and a fax device connected to the domino server to relay the fax. An administrator workstation is required to install and configure the Domino fax server and manage it.

This can be a great resource in organisations where documents have to be frequently faxed using a common fax machine shared by several employees.To know more on the domino fax solution visit this page.

Lotusphere, the annual summit of the worldwide Lotus Community is scheduled to take place in January next year. The mega event where developers, administrators, IT and business professionals looking for collaborative and software solutions get together will be for 5 days from January 21 – 25 2007 in Orlando, Florida.

Registrations have already begun and are still open for reservation. Hectic planning on the programs for the 5 days is on and the conference content also suggests having lots of Practical core Lotus Notes and Domino content, Hands-on sessions and Real-Time Collaboration.

The registration fee for a single user is US $ 2095, which includes fee for all 5 days of activity and JumpStart technical primers or hands-on sessions. This registration fee however, does not include travel and accommodation charges. There is also an offer of special pricing for groups of 20 or more members from an organization. To know more on Lotusphere 2007visit this page in the IBM’s website.

IBM has announced the release of Lotus Notes 7.0.2 Client for the Mac OS X (Tiger) users. The release is expected to happen before the end of this year and comes close on the heels of its Lotus Domino Web Access 7.0.2. The release of both the web access client and the rich client in the same year has brought in great excitement among Mac users who have been eagerly waiting for this.

Jason Dumont, IBM Senior Product Manager says Lotus Notes 7.0.2 has several features including “Lotus Notes-based and S/MIME-based encryption, secure log-off and the ability to change their own passwords, as well as everyday productivity enhancers like spell-checking, unread marks, out-of-office agents, alarms and much more”.

This makes Lotus Notes and Domino a more versatile messaging & collaboration tool capable of residing in multiple platforms like Windows, Linux and Mac. Although IBM has made inroads into the Mac users market earlier with its web access client, the release of Lotus Notes 7.0.2 rich client will help IBM penetrate deeper into the market and increase its overall market share in the Messaging & Collaboration space.

For more information visit this page in the IBM website.

When a mail is viewed it appears different for each user based on their mail box design and settings. The most common difference being the width of each line in the mail is different for every user. Web based mails generally tend to have smaller width when compared to Lotus Notes or Outlook. To avoid this when composing a mail we can set the standard width of each line, so that the alignment is more or less the same when opened in any other mail client. To do this follow the steps below.

1. Login into your Lotus Notes account and go to File, Preferences and User Preferences.
2. Click on the mail tab and go the Internet View, the section named Composing Internet-Style Replicas will have an option to wrap each line after a certain number of characters.
3. Choose the number of characters to wrap every line and move to the next line.
4. Click OK and save the settings.

Lotus Notes has introduced the welcome page from version Notes 6 and above. When you log into your Lotus Notes account in these versions, the first page that loads up is not the Workspace as it used to be in the earlier versions. Now you get a welcome page, which can be customized to look the way you want it.

However the workspace is still available as it is best suited for those who use other applications. The default Notes welcome page is simple and has options to open the Mailbox, Calendar and the To Do List and the Contacts. There are several other built in welcome page options that you can choose. To explore and select one of them follow the simple steps below.

• Open your Lotus Notes Account.
• You will get the default welcome page, the first line will contain a text “Click here for Welcome Page options” followed by a black arrow pointing downwards. Click on this arrow.
• You will find a Dropdown menu called “Current Welcome Page selection” listing all the options available.
• Click any one of them to select that as your default Lotus Notes Welcome Page.

Creating a Customized Welcome Page
It is also possible to create a customized welcome page of your choice. Follow the below steps to create your own welcome page.

• Open the Lotus Notes account and click the black arrow to edit the welcome page options.
• Click on the tab “Create a welcome page”
• Notes will prompt you to select a name for the page you create. Enter a name and click next.
• Notes will prompt you to choose whether you want to use frames or a personal page. Frames are rectangular boxes that can be used to display the content you want. The areas of these frames can be altered as per your needs by pushing dragging the margins.
• The Personal page gives multiple layouts that you can choose from and options to add pictures, applets and links. You can also choose the background color of your choice for the layout.
• After selecting the layout you want click finish to instantly get the chosen layout as the welcome page.