Domino V10 Launch App Dev Demo of REACT App & Office365 Integration

We are pumped! Domino V10 is released in Frankfurt and today we are in Japan for the launch here. Check out the awesome video from the opening session. Reminds me of the Domino R5 launch!

 

Also very pleased to be here with @katoman and @viruke to launch our partnership with K-Trick to bring @panagenda, @KudosBadges, and @BuzzingYa to Japan #ずっとノーツ #dominoforever pic.twitter.com/XPcGGio5kd

— Adam Brown (@adambrownaus) October 10, 2018

 

So leading up to the Domino V10 launch we have been working with the IBM Domino V10 team to create a demo of a heritage Notes App being modernised as a REACT App running on Node with Domino still in the backend as the database store. We also helped the team to integrate their Demo Domino 10 apps with Office365 in a seamless manner.

 

The really awesome part of this is that organisations using Notes & Domino can modernise their applications with no disruption to their daily business processes, and they can pick of the high value apps (using Application Insights!) to modernise components or the full apps themselves. You can bring to your heritage Notes apps more modern cloud based development models and designs as well as integrate other external services to enrich your apps for both Desktop and Mobile users.

 

So here is an example of what we have done and part of Luis's presentation at the launch. We took a typical Notes App that we have used for decades. Our Notes based CRM. Everyone has one right?:

 

 

Sorry about the bluring but this is a real app used every day and is essential to our daily work. A critical business app. I am sure you have some of those in Notes still right!

Now see the same app as a REACT App running on Domino and Node. This time however it is contained in the context of IBM Connections:

 

 

 

Pretty cool eh! Yes that is a Domino App. Everything the users do in this app is immediately reflected in Notes client as it is the exact same database. Using Domino as a NoSQL database! 

 

So what about if the client has moved to Office365. Yes that happens, but the apps always hang around in Notes. What if you could take that same app and deliver it in the context of Office365 with SSO and seamless integration into the Office365 navigation:

 

 

 

 

Now that is really cool and kind of like magic!

 

So how does this all work:)

- Well Domino V10 is the foundation of course

- We then created Node.js authentication layer that handles oAuth user authentication and generations LtpaToken2 cookies as required. This enables us to have Single Sign-on.

- Then the app itself is a React.js front end application and implements the header/navigation interface using 'office-ui-fabric-react' and obtains user info from ms graph using '@microsoft/microsoft-graph-client'

 

We then use some of our own magic - The ISW Office 365 apps loader (Help us think of a better name if you can please:)

- Light weight wrapper around web applications to provide familiarity and continuity in an Office 365 environment

- Uses Microsoft's fabric ui and graph apis to recreate an Office-like header bar with user details and menu.

- Enables single sign-on across websphere and domino via LtpaToken2 generation.

- Office users can be mapped to domino/websphere users

- Enables hosted applications to update browser url, title and favicon

 

So that is the basics. Hope you like it. We are very happy to share more around what we have done if you would like some more information, or even if you are looking for a partner to help you modernise you Notes Apps then also get in touch:) You can reach out to me directly or just head over to www.isw.com.au.

Real world outcome of Domino Designer becoming Free

I was just working with a client to optimise their IBM software maintenance which is coming up in Dec. Amongst other things they are currently licensed with Lotus Notes Collaboration and Domino Enterprise Servers and also have 4 Domino Designer licenses which were all up for renewal.

I explained to them the recently announced changes with Lotus Notes licensing, in particular that come Feb next year their Lotus Notes Collaboration licenses will convert to Domino Enterprise CALs and that as part of this they get an entitlement for Domino Designer with each license. There instant reaction to this was to ask "So does that mean every one of our users can have Designer?" which off course the answer is yes. They were wrapped with this and said that while they certainly wouldn't give it to every user that it is great that they can enable more people to build apps and don't have to be restricted by their 4 Designer licenses.

This has to be on of the exact outcome IBM is hoping to achieve, encourage organisation to do more with Notes and Domino. Back in the early versions of Notes before Designer came along any user could build basic databases and Notes flourished. Obviously Domino Designer was a great step forward when it was introduced however the cost of the license definitely had a negative impact of preventing that grass roots development occurring from basic users.

So then off course the question is should they renew their existing Domino Designer licenses now? I have suggested probably not. They have current maintenance up until Dec 31 so they are entitled to use Domino Designer 8.5.1 and it is probably unlikely there will be another release between now and Feb when their licenses convert. The only reason they would do it I guess is to have support for Jan but this is not likely to be needed, and also the fact that the Designer licenses will also convert to CAL's which they don't really need. So I guess the short term negative of the change is a small loss in revenue for IBM for clients no longer buying/renewing Designer but this should be insignificant to the positive impact that more people building Notes Apps will have on the usage of Lotus Notes within organisations and hence the ROI they get from the product.

So I say good one IBM, Domino Designer for Free is definitely making a positive impact on our clients usage of Notes & Domino! 

Notes & Domino 8.0.1 Web & Mobile Access

Here is a good video showing the new features to be released next year with Domino 8.0.1. Shows the new features of Domino Web Access (and the new Light version) as well as the new Push Email for Windows Mobile Devices.



Lotus Notes & Domino 8 Testimonial Video

Here is a great video explaining some of the great new features in Notes 8.



Workplace Forms & Workflow-Xpress Demo Site at last!

Well here it is at last. I can't say that it is finished as it seems the more we do the more ideas we come up with to make it better.

Here is a link to the ISW Workplace Forms Demo site. We have a few forms on show however the best area is the Form Gateway. The concept is that organisations can have a Forms Gateway where external (and internal I guess) users can gain access to forms they are allowed to complete. They can fill them in and submit them and they start a Workflow process using Workflow-Xpress. We are pretty happy with the progress however it is really just a proof of concept. The possibilities are great though and it is great to see the products coming together in the exact way we thought they would when we started with Workplace Forms last year.

We have many ideas of what else we can do and essentially I can see this turning into a product offering for organisations that are looking at Workplace Forms and are interested in a Forms Gateway. Feel free to make suggestions/ask questions etc.