Friday, October 20, 2006

Domino Administrator/Manager Blogs, Where are you?

Where are the real managers of the network? If you manage or have managed a Domino network, or a Notes network for those of us who have been around since before Domino was born, what issues do you see still today? Are you blogging it?

I see the same ones as I saw years ago.

Basic issues:
Person doc entries incorrect(names or domains or emails or duplicates), basic flaw but pervasively causes 90% of all mailbox problems and in some cases server failures. Usually this is caused by turnover in jr. admins over time.

Connection docs that make no sense or have incorrect IP addresses. Check your logs for this issue.

Server crashes at night same time or close to it - usually an Agent is at fault but maybe an index needs to be recreated.

One user "sees" data, another doesn't - template issues, ensure proper propagation of standard versions. Sometimes related to different versions of clients running 6.5.3 vs. 6.5.5.

Also make sure you have 2 things set up from day one. Server automatic restart on the first tab of the server doc. and notification to you via email or however you want it, when the server fails and restarts.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Mail Routing and No Option?

Mail routing mimics the real world. As long as there is a proper address, the mail, in theory, arrives at its destination.
Like the real world, bad addressing either gets returned to sender or ends up in the Dead Letter Office or in Domino, the mail.box.
When the mail.box starts getting full of bad emails, all mail stops.
This is NOT like the real world.
And so it happens under R7.0.1 FP1(some say all of R7). As soon as we start getting incorrect mail stuck in the mail.box it crashes the server.
How very disturbing.
Now what?
From forum discussions going to 7.0.2 will not fix this. So I am left to go backwards or face a failing server every day?
What about my SLAs?

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Web 2.0 is it doomed?

Is there a difference? Do companies really think differently than consumers?
No.
But do consumers want to have workflow, or approval for posted documents?
Maybe.
Can Web 2.0 provide this?
Maybe, maybe not.

Schools come to mind as a primary target of this problem.

My kids and others in the nation, require signed parental approvals for different events, from pictures to field trips to sports teams to donations.
Now having us email the school our approval is not a secure way to do this, mostly because our kids can sppof emails as easily as the next one.
Do we have a keyring from Verisign with crypto code to enter to validate us?
Do we get issued a digital ID?
Nope.
So how do we get around this problem?
Schools don't have the infrastructure or money to hire devlopers for this and maybe someone like Google or IBM or Microsoft wants to take a look at this.
How many of us intercepted letters from teachers or principals sent home about behavior, grades, truancy? Now how do you think your kids do it today?
Spam blockers, simple mail rule agents :-)
Maybe you should take a look at your mail client.
Companies want to encourage interaction(if you work for one who doesn't my condolences and hope you get out soon) but not without tracking, security and backup because at any time they can be sued or need to bring it all back up, something which is not always available in the Web 2.0 world.