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.

When a mail is sent to you, the sender can enable Return receipt in the delivery option which will help him/her know that you have read his/her mail. There is no direct means to avoid sending the confirmation message to the sender when you open the mail. Incase you want to avoid triggering the automated reply to the sender but want to have the message read, the way out is to use a simple trick. Just select the mail without opening it, click Reply tab on the action bar and choose Reply with History. A new memo opens as a thread showing the contents of the mail received by you earlier. You can read the message here and can also open any attachment without the sender knowing that you have read the message.

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.

Some useful Lotus Notes Shortcut Keys are listed below.
ALT+F5           Restore Notes to default minimized size
ALT+F9           Minimize active window
ALT+F10         Maximize active windows
CTRL+BREAK   Stop operation in progress
CTRL+F6         Switch between open windows
CTRL+Q           Exit Notes
CTRL+TAB       Move to next window tab
DOWN ARROW Move to next entry in Replicator
END                 Move to last entry in Replicator
ENTER             Open selected Workspace icon, window tab, menu item, bookmark
ESC                 Close active window
F1                   Get Help on current feature
F5                   Lock User ID
F6                   Move to next pane or frame
F10 or ALT       Access menu bar
HOME              Move to first entry in Replicator
PAGE DOWN    Move to previous page in Replicator
PAGE UP          Move to next page in Replicator
SHIFT+F10      Access Windows context menus
UP ARROW      Move to previous entry in Replicator
SHIFT+ALT+S Open Search menu