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Ask HN: I am stuck on Lotus Notes 8.5 – help me please

9 points by hestefisk 11y ago

Our company was recently acquired by BigCorp, which uses Lotus Notes 8.5. We have been forced onto it for all email. Any recommendations / hacks for workflow? Does anyone know of the ability to integrate Vim or Emacs to edit email text? SMTP/IMAP has been blocked.

_mgr 11y ago
First advice is to run anything you think of doing past whoever you need to based on any policies you may or may not have. Don't get yourself fired.
- jdc0589 11y ago
  if I could get fired based off the way I input text to my email client, I think I would actually want to be fired.
  - NeutronBoy 11y ago
    But things like accessing the server directly through a third party program would normally be pretty blatantly against most corporate AUP
davewongillies 11y ago
I used to work at EnormousCorp and internally there was fetchnotes, a fetchmail-like command line tool for situations exactly like yours. A bit of Googling seems to only show mentions of it here and there but no downloads or links to source so I guess it never made it to the outside world, which is unfortunate. Lotus Notes 8.0 and later are based on Eclipse though, so perhaps with a little bit of effort one of the Vim or Emacs plugins might possibly work for it?
clarkdale 11y ago
Random keyboard shortcut I use multiple times per day: paste plaintext with ALT+e,s,t,<enter>.
abrookewood 11y ago
Can't help you with workflow, but I was on Notes for many years and to be honest, while the actual client is pretty terrible, the webmail client was OK. Not great ... but bearable.
moftz 11y ago
We used 8.5 here as well. Its a piece of crap. I've worked in places where we had total Outlook integration with Lync and I enjoyed using that stuff much more. 8.5 is pretty much from the time of XP and it shows. Plus, we handle a bunch of very important things through Notes, like purchase approvals. Recently, we've had to renew a license on this software we are integrating into a product for a customer. Except we can't get a renewal because someone can't approve the order because they don't use Notes. Why is everything handled within this aging ecosystem? I have no clue. IBM really made something awful here.
codegeek 11y ago
I wish you luck as I feel your pain. Lotus Notes for email is probably the worst piece of crap (I refuse to call it software) I have used. I dreaded it whenever a company I worked for forced me to use it. To my knowledge, you cannot do anything really. Hope that some day they "upgrade" to Outlook :). I am no outlook fan but in front of notes, it looks like a God send.
A_COMPUTER 11y ago
I hear it has a web interface now, maybe someone could write something using phantomjs/casperjs that could push and pull mail. I Used Lotus Notes at three successive companies, from 1995 through 2010, excluding when I went to college. I went through this. If they're blocking pop/imap, there's nothing (good/worth doing) you can do.
NeutronBoy 11y ago
Use SwiftFile [1] to help soft emails into folders. Based on a few things like sender and subject it will suggest 2-3 folders that you've filed similar emails into. http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24019219 http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24019219
andymurd 11y ago
I have been in exactly the same situation. I quit that job and now ask in job interviews whether they use Notes for email. My view is that Notes use is a symptom of much bigger underlying problems. No-one that has to send or receive email would ever make the decision to use it, so why are they in the position to make that decision?
sheraz 11y ago
I worked at a company with a lot of creative types. As part of a business deal we were moved from outlook to lotus, and that was when all hell broke loose. It happened on such a big scale and with such critical teams that management could not be heavy handed. Creative departments revolted and started using personal gmail account like this (first.last_company@gmail.com). And before you knew it confidential data was bleeding out of the organization. It was a total DIY google apps. Shared folders for projects, funny photos, and everything else you might imagine. I setup a google sheet with links to each creative teams google drive. It was such an interesting evolution of workflow management that came from the bottom up. It was especially interesting to see how non-technical people (designers, account people, etc) used the suite of google tools to self-organize into their own data ecosystem. So the moral of the story here, kids, is dont use Lotus notes because the minions will revolt.

9 points by hestefisk 11y ago

_mgr 11y ago

First advice is to run anything you think of doing past whoever you need to based on any policies you may or may not have. Don't get yourself fired.

jdc0589 11y ago
if I could get fired based off the way I input text to my email client, I think I would actually want to be fired.
- NeutronBoy 11y ago
  But things like accessing the server directly through a third party program would normally be pretty blatantly against most corporate AUP

davewongillies 11y ago

I used to work at EnormousCorp and internally there was fetchnotes, a fetchmail-like command line tool for situations exactly like yours. A bit of Googling seems to only show mentions of it here and there but no downloads or links to source so I guess it never made it to the outside world, which is unfortunate. Lotus Notes 8.0 and later are based on Eclipse though, so perhaps with a little bit of effort one of the Vim or Emacs plugins might possibly work for it?

clarkdale 11y ago

Random keyboard shortcut I use multiple times per day: paste plaintext with ALT+e,s,t,<enter>.

abrookewood 11y ago

Can't help you with workflow, but I was on Notes for many years and to be honest, while the actual client is pretty terrible, the webmail client was OK. Not great ... but bearable.

moftz 11y ago

We used 8.5 here as well. Its a piece of crap. I've worked in places where we had total Outlook integration with Lync and I enjoyed using that stuff much more. 8.5 is pretty much from the time of XP and it shows. Plus, we handle a bunch of very important things through Notes, like purchase approvals. Recently, we've had to renew a license on this software we are integrating into a product for a customer. Except we can't get a renewal because someone can't approve the order because they don't use Notes. Why is everything handled within this aging ecosystem? I have no clue. IBM really made something awful here.

codegeek 11y ago

I wish you luck as I feel your pain. Lotus Notes for email is probably the worst piece of crap (I refuse to call it software) I have used. I dreaded it whenever a company I worked for forced me to use it. To my knowledge, you cannot do anything really. Hope that some day they "upgrade" to Outlook :). I am no outlook fan but in front of notes, it looks like a God send.

A_COMPUTER 11y ago

I hear it has a web interface now, maybe someone could write something using phantomjs/casperjs that could push and pull mail. I Used Lotus Notes at three successive companies, from 1995 through 2010, excluding when I went to college. I went through this. If they're blocking pop/imap, there's nothing (good/worth doing) you can do.

NeutronBoy 11y ago

Use SwiftFile [1] to help soft emails into folders. Based on a few things like sender and subject it will suggest 2-3 folders that you've filed similar emails into. http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24019219 http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24019219

andymurd 11y ago

I have been in exactly the same situation. I quit that job and now ask in job interviews whether they use Notes for email. My view is that Notes use is a symptom of much bigger underlying problems. No-one that has to send or receive email would ever make the decision to use it, so why are they in the position to make that decision?

sheraz 11y ago

I worked at a company with a lot of creative types. As part of a business deal we were moved from outlook to lotus, and that was when all hell broke loose. It happened on such a big scale and with such critical teams that management could not be heavy handed. Creative departments revolted and started using personal gmail account like this (first.last_company@gmail.com). And before you knew it confidential data was bleeding out of the organization. It was a total DIY google apps. Shared folders for projects, funny photos, and everything else you might imagine. I setup a google sheet with links to each creative teams google drive. It was such an interesting evolution of workflow management that came from the bottom up. It was especially interesting to see how non-technical people (designers, account people, etc) used the suite of google tools to self-organize into their own data ecosystem. So the moral of the story here, kids, is dont use Lotus notes because the minions will revolt.