Wednesday, April 24, 2013
I am sorry I am a user...
Because someone can get a patent for 'slide to the right' to unlock. My Android phone used to be 'slide down' to unlock to get around this patent. I guess too many people slide their phones in their pockets and 'butt dialed' too many people so now it is 'slide up' to unlock, meaning my phone is now in my hand. All of this is completely arbitrary, non-intuitive, and in no way inventive or unique! But to be safe, I have filed a patent for a motion sensitive method of unlocking a phone which involves a one finger salute. I am going to be rich! It is only a matter of time before you can just wave at your phone, or point at it, or whatever, to unlock it, so I am just getting ahead of the curve.
My real point? The 'X' to close a window on Microsoft machines is on the top right, and on the top left for Apple machines. WTF? Did studies show too many users closed their windows when they were trying to get the Edit or File menu? A user interface should be designed for consistency so users don't have to think about how to accomplish a task. Is it a button? An action menu item? A tool bar button? What does that icon mean anyway? All I am saying is spend a few minutes thinking about your buttons and actions. Does 'Close' do a save and close? How do I get out of this document? Why is it different than all the rest?
This is one of those issues dating back to the early days of Notes. Hitting ESC closes a window. So does clicking the 'X' on the top. So do I need to include an action to close a document? Well, if you do it for one form, you have to do it for every form. Consistency is all it is cracked up to be.
Make it easy for your users to accomplish the task your application is supposed to help them achieve, and everyone will be much happier! It is not Notes that sucks, it is your UI!
Friday, January 25, 2013
And for those of us not going to Connect 2013...
Which pretty much means this won't apply to anyone who reads this. In my experience, the people who need the most help don't tend to seek it out in either blog posts, PlanetLotus.org, any of the forums or at user group meetings.
In any event, I was recently asked by a client why I sent him design changes in an NSF versus an NTF. This is a topic I dealt with rather frequently when I was a Technical Director at Teamstudio. Many people think it has to do with design inheritance, but it doesn't. The biggest differences are an NTF will not show up in an 'open database' dialog box, hiding it from every day users. Also, any scheduled agents will not run. And lastly, design elements in an NTF can not be previewed in a web browser. Which all make an NTF a great way to manage design changes.
But from an inheritance view point, that is controlled at the database level by the fourth tab on the properties dialog, indicating either inherit from template or it is a template. At the design element level, it is controlled by a setting in the design tab of the elements properties.
At design refresh time, either manually invoked or by the Design task, databases are refreshed at the database level by the inherit from setting, and then at the design element level. And as was the case with my client, I was making modifications to the mail template, and wanted to be sure the process was repeatable for the next release of Domino. So my changes where in a database that could be an NSF or NTF (but best practice says design elements should be in an NTF). These changes were used to refresh design elements at the element level in the mail template. This results in a cascading design refresh situation - the template gets refreshed from the custom design element database, and then the user mail files get updated by the mail template. Note that this element level inheritance is not inherited. So, the user mail files get ALL their design changes from the mail template, not some from the template and some from the custom design element database.
And in a final comment about design inheritance, a review of what databases are being used in your environment (a common precursor to upgrades, server consolidation, or migration from Notes), needs to include design element level inheritance, and not just database level inheritance as shown in the database Catalog.
I usually recommend a manual refresh of the template from any updates I send, and then allow the design task to refresh all the user files. This is the cleanest way to ensure updates take place in a controlled manner.
I hope this helps. And if you are going to Connect 2013, have a great time!
In any event, I was recently asked by a client why I sent him design changes in an NSF versus an NTF. This is a topic I dealt with rather frequently when I was a Technical Director at Teamstudio. Many people think it has to do with design inheritance, but it doesn't. The biggest differences are an NTF will not show up in an 'open database' dialog box, hiding it from every day users. Also, any scheduled agents will not run. And lastly, design elements in an NTF can not be previewed in a web browser. Which all make an NTF a great way to manage design changes.
But from an inheritance view point, that is controlled at the database level by the fourth tab on the properties dialog, indicating either inherit from template or it is a template. At the design element level, it is controlled by a setting in the design tab of the elements properties.
At design refresh time, either manually invoked or by the Design task, databases are refreshed at the database level by the inherit from setting, and then at the design element level. And as was the case with my client, I was making modifications to the mail template, and wanted to be sure the process was repeatable for the next release of Domino. So my changes where in a database that could be an NSF or NTF (but best practice says design elements should be in an NTF). These changes were used to refresh design elements at the element level in the mail template. This results in a cascading design refresh situation - the template gets refreshed from the custom design element database, and then the user mail files get updated by the mail template. Note that this element level inheritance is not inherited. So, the user mail files get ALL their design changes from the mail template, not some from the template and some from the custom design element database.
And in a final comment about design inheritance, a review of what databases are being used in your environment (a common precursor to upgrades, server consolidation, or migration from Notes), needs to include design element level inheritance, and not just database level inheritance as shown in the database Catalog.
I usually recommend a manual refresh of the template from any updates I send, and then allow the design task to refresh all the user files. This is the cleanest way to ensure updates take place in a controlled manner.
I hope this helps. And if you are going to Connect 2013, have a great time!
Thursday, November 15, 2012
We learn from our mistakes
But can we learn from others mistakes? Absolutely. Let me give you some examples.
Adobe Acrobat takes forever to load every single piece of functionality known to man, and then let's you view the one document that you wanted to see. It takes longer for Acrobat to load than it takes me to get the information from the file I was looking for. And apparently it is so buggy that you get an update every single day. Now, this is all historical, and may have changed because it was these issues that led me to remove all things Adobe from my system. Yes, I have been Adobe free since '03!
Lessons to be learned? First, the initial response time sets the tone for your interactions with users. Look at you applications. Opening a document shouldn't take minutes. Do you have a massive PostQueryOpen that initializes every possible variable? Try initializing them just before they are used. Same thing for your action buttons - do they do a lot of initialization before showing a dialog box? Users don't notice or care about small delays after they answer the dialog, because the system is now doing something they asked it to do. Just let them tell it first.
Second lesson, and I see this in Notes shops everywhere, just because you can make a minor change very rapidly doesn't mean you should. Users don't really like constant changes. They would much rather have a set expectation when changes are going to be made available. Every Monday is probably a bit excessive, but you need to balance the expectations for when I can get this fixed versus the rapid application development that Notes is famous for.
Here is another set of mistakes that we all should learn from. I have Verizon for my cell phone, internet, cable, and home phone. Every single interaction I have with their applications is PAINFUL! They have an app for my phone that let's me control my DVR's. When I start this app, like Adobe, the first thing it does is load up the TV schedule. Why on earth would I want to see the TV schedule on my phone? I can't watch TV from there, so why would that be the first thing that they do? What I do is click on the DVR tab. Every time. Is that so hard to remember? Use a cookie, or a per user profile document. I talked about this before - it is real easy to track what users do to identify commonly used features, and features that are not even used. The gamification aspect comes from rewarding them for reaching milestones, like closing their 100th To Do.
Their web experience is just as painful. After I sign into their site, they pop up a message box trying to get me to buy FIOS. I already HAVE FIOS and you should know this because I signed in! Don't ask your users for information you should already have. The misery continues when I go to view my account. The first thing I get is spinning wheel, spinning wheel, spinning wheel and I finally get entertainment news! I pity the fool who gets his news from Verizon's web page! They may have that set as their home page, but I only go to that site when I am forced to.
The lesson here is you need to know what your users are doing. This is a combination of tracking their activities and plain old walking around and watch them use you application. When you see them struggle to perform a task or even find a function, you know you have some work to do to improve that. I watched a user do something to 10 documents, and it took forever. I knew that the operation was only changing one field, so it shouldn't have taken that long. When I looked at the code, I discovered several thing. First, it was intentionally designed to only allow a maximum of 10 documents at a time. And guess what? This function was rarely used because it was so painful to use. There were no consequences to not performing the function, and it was hard to use. The other thing I found is that the action had a ComputeWithForm on a very complex form. Come on people - only one field was changed. We need to help our users be productive, and stop stifling them with arbitrary processes.
To finish up, I generally don't generalize. And I know Verizon is a large company, but they seem to have a systemic lack of knowledge about what their users are doing. I do know that we were talking to one division within Verizon to get them to implement source code control. The developers response was it takes too many clicks! And that would get in the way of their rapid application deployments. Just sayin, schedule your updates.
Adobe Acrobat takes forever to load every single piece of functionality known to man, and then let's you view the one document that you wanted to see. It takes longer for Acrobat to load than it takes me to get the information from the file I was looking for. And apparently it is so buggy that you get an update every single day. Now, this is all historical, and may have changed because it was these issues that led me to remove all things Adobe from my system. Yes, I have been Adobe free since '03!
Lessons to be learned? First, the initial response time sets the tone for your interactions with users. Look at you applications. Opening a document shouldn't take minutes. Do you have a massive PostQueryOpen that initializes every possible variable? Try initializing them just before they are used. Same thing for your action buttons - do they do a lot of initialization before showing a dialog box? Users don't notice or care about small delays after they answer the dialog, because the system is now doing something they asked it to do. Just let them tell it first.
Second lesson, and I see this in Notes shops everywhere, just because you can make a minor change very rapidly doesn't mean you should. Users don't really like constant changes. They would much rather have a set expectation when changes are going to be made available. Every Monday is probably a bit excessive, but you need to balance the expectations for when I can get this fixed versus the rapid application development that Notes is famous for.
Here is another set of mistakes that we all should learn from. I have Verizon for my cell phone, internet, cable, and home phone. Every single interaction I have with their applications is PAINFUL! They have an app for my phone that let's me control my DVR's. When I start this app, like Adobe, the first thing it does is load up the TV schedule. Why on earth would I want to see the TV schedule on my phone? I can't watch TV from there, so why would that be the first thing that they do? What I do is click on the DVR tab. Every time. Is that so hard to remember? Use a cookie, or a per user profile document. I talked about this before - it is real easy to track what users do to identify commonly used features, and features that are not even used. The gamification aspect comes from rewarding them for reaching milestones, like closing their 100th To Do.
Their web experience is just as painful. After I sign into their site, they pop up a message box trying to get me to buy FIOS. I already HAVE FIOS and you should know this because I signed in! Don't ask your users for information you should already have. The misery continues when I go to view my account. The first thing I get is spinning wheel, spinning wheel, spinning wheel and I finally get entertainment news! I pity the fool who gets his news from Verizon's web page! They may have that set as their home page, but I only go to that site when I am forced to.
The lesson here is you need to know what your users are doing. This is a combination of tracking their activities and plain old walking around and watch them use you application. When you see them struggle to perform a task or even find a function, you know you have some work to do to improve that. I watched a user do something to 10 documents, and it took forever. I knew that the operation was only changing one field, so it shouldn't have taken that long. When I looked at the code, I discovered several thing. First, it was intentionally designed to only allow a maximum of 10 documents at a time. And guess what? This function was rarely used because it was so painful to use. There were no consequences to not performing the function, and it was hard to use. The other thing I found is that the action had a ComputeWithForm on a very complex form. Come on people - only one field was changed. We need to help our users be productive, and stop stifling them with arbitrary processes.
To finish up, I generally don't generalize. And I know Verizon is a large company, but they seem to have a systemic lack of knowledge about what their users are doing. I do know that we were talking to one division within Verizon to get them to implement source code control. The developers response was it takes too many clicks! And that would get in the way of their rapid application deployments. Just sayin, schedule your updates.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Big Iron and Big Pipes are here!
So let's consolidate some servers! With the powerful servers and higher bandwidths available today, it makes sense to look at combining several servers into more central locations. This can reduce costs for maintenance of older boxes, facility costs, and improve overall performance as less time is spent replicating databases between multiple servers.
I recently worked with a client on a consolidation project and want to share some observations. Their strategy was to build the new servers and, before they moved users to the servers, wanted to test the performance of the central servers. We used the Server.Load capability that comes with Domino. This has been around for awhile (I worked with it's predecessor, NotesBench, 15 years ago). It is an engine that has several scripts that can be used to simulate thousands of users. It has two basic modes - initialize the environment and running the workload. The initialization phase is key. After all, simulating several hundred users is pretty useless. The challenge of several thousand users is creating that many mail files and populating them with data.
Here is the critical take-away - when running the workload tests, there is a built in delay between each user session which makes sense. Aside from me, I don't know many users that go flat out all the time. And this delay is a random number. The problem is during the initialization phase, you are not collecting statistics, so you don't need to 'simulate' real users, just create the mail files. But this delay can be up to 15 minutes. So, doing the math, creating several thousand user mail files with up to 15 minutes between each user can take days (and yes, do use multiple workstations to attack the server). So, please, help yourself and reduce this delay. What you need to do is take the built-in initialization script, copy to the clipboard, paste into Notepad, CHANGE THE DELAY, and save the custom script. Here are the first few lines
* N85 Mail Initialization Workload
* Script to initialize databases for NotesBench N85Mail
* Pause a random interval (0-15 min) so multiple processes are staggered well.
pause 0-900000
I recently worked with a client on a consolidation project and want to share some observations. Their strategy was to build the new servers and, before they moved users to the servers, wanted to test the performance of the central servers. We used the Server.Load capability that comes with Domino. This has been around for awhile (I worked with it's predecessor, NotesBench, 15 years ago). It is an engine that has several scripts that can be used to simulate thousands of users. It has two basic modes - initialize the environment and running the workload. The initialization phase is key. After all, simulating several hundred users is pretty useless. The challenge of several thousand users is creating that many mail files and populating them with data.
Here is the critical take-away - when running the workload tests, there is a built in delay between each user session which makes sense. Aside from me, I don't know many users that go flat out all the time. And this delay is a random number. The problem is during the initialization phase, you are not collecting statistics, so you don't need to 'simulate' real users, just create the mail files. But this delay can be up to 15 minutes. So, doing the math, creating several thousand user mail files with up to 15 minutes between each user can take days (and yes, do use multiple workstations to attack the server). So, please, help yourself and reduce this delay. What you need to do is take the built-in initialization script, copy to the clipboard, paste into Notepad, CHANGE THE DELAY, and save the custom script. Here are the first few lines
* N85 Mail Initialization Workload
* Script to initialize databases for NotesBench N85Mail
* Pause a random interval (0-15 min) so multiple processes are staggered well.
pause 0-900000
Remove at least three zeros from that pause line. You will be so much happier with the results.
A couple of other comments about server consolidation projects. A good strategy is to bring up a brand new server. This means that users will have to re-point their mail files to the new server. Consider renting a tool like Marvel Client from Panagenda to make this change easier.
Secondly, why 'consolidate' a database that is not being used by a person? The problem with the activity number in the Catalog is that it considers any activity as using the database. This activity could be mail being deposited in a database or a scheduled agent running against the database. Neither of these 'activities' represent a person. So, while you are ordering the new hardware, consider an approach offered by someone like Inner Ring Solutions. They have a tool which identify's who is using a database; meaning server, agent, or user; and how often. So, a database that is not used by users is a candidate to be retired, not consolidated. Likewise, a database (not mail file) used by 10 or less users could probably be replaced with some other solution, or be advertised to users as an underutilized benefit. My experience from my days at Teamstudio is that up to 75% of databases in a long standing Notes environment can be deleted because they are not being used. A large part of this inactivity can be easily identified by looking at you Catalog. I have a Catalog tool that will identify such things as databases (not templates) with no documents. Databases with 'test' in the title or file name. Databases with a year in the title or file name (think 1998 receipts).
If you want more information on your server consolidation project, contact me. I've been there and done that before, so I can help reduce the pain of your project.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Back in the saddle!
I am so happy to be back working with customers on Lotus Notes development projects! My 5 years at Teamstudio was a terrific experience (and I would have paid them to do what I did). But I mostly worked with other developers, and they were always afraid I was trying to sell them something. But honestly, having worked with Notes for as long as I have, I know the short-comings and why you need tools like Teamstudio, Ytria, Panagenda, etc. And the prior 7 years I worked for another vendor that nobody heard of which is why I stopped working there. We sold a very targeted product and were only talking to customers to get them to buy something.
But now, I am back to doing projects that people actually want. And people are very creative! And having had to deal with the state of the economy the last several years, everybody is trying to do more with less. Everybody has that one little tweak that will solve a whole bunch of headaches. And those are the kind of challenges I relish. So, I am back in business. Contact me if you want another opinion!
But now, I am back to doing projects that people actually want. And people are very creative! And having had to deal with the state of the economy the last several years, everybody is trying to do more with less. Everybody has that one little tweak that will solve a whole bunch of headaches. And those are the kind of challenges I relish. So, I am back in business. Contact me if you want another opinion!
Thursday, August 2, 2012
It's official!
That small window of opportunity to get my services without any corporate overhead are over. This week I started working for Greyduck Technology. Oh, you can still get my services for that project needing extra resources, or even a second opinion/review of your applications and development environment and practices. It is just that now a portion of my time goes to Greyduck.
I have some great projects already in the works, and am looking forward to working with a company that now has 100 years of Lotus Notes experience on board.
So, stay tuned, and say hello if you see me at your user group.
I have some great projects already in the works, and am looking forward to working with a company that now has 100 years of Lotus Notes experience on board.
So, stay tuned, and say hello if you see me at your user group.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
It takes more programming skill to...
fix someone else's application than to write one from scratch. At the same time, looking at another developers application will expand your own skill set. Here is what I mean. When you stick to your own applications, you tend to stick to what you know. Your first loop may have been using a counter and GetNthDocument. Who knew about getfirst - getnext? And if you looked at some of my later code, the initialize routine only had one line -
Call Main.
(while it might look efficient, it was mostly because only a new subroutine would get the code block that had all my dims in it.)
Looking at other applications will not just show you bad ways of doing things, but other ways of doing things. When you find an application where everything is defined globally, you begin to appreciate why this is a bad idea. Trying to understand why the previous developer did things the way they did requires a deeper understanding of coding practices than just writing something from scratch.
So, while Chief Architect may be an alluring title, don't be afraid to take on a less glamorous project involving 'continuing engineering' (my first job title out of college by the way).
And for a limited time, I am available to review your applications without any corporate overhead. So, drop me a note if you want to take me up on this.
Call Main.
(while it might look efficient, it was mostly because only a new subroutine would get the code block that had all my dims in it.)
Looking at other applications will not just show you bad ways of doing things, but other ways of doing things. When you find an application where everything is defined globally, you begin to appreciate why this is a bad idea. Trying to understand why the previous developer did things the way they did requires a deeper understanding of coding practices than just writing something from scratch.
So, while Chief Architect may be an alluring title, don't be afraid to take on a less glamorous project involving 'continuing engineering' (my first job title out of college by the way).
And for a limited time, I am available to review your applications without any corporate overhead. So, drop me a note if you want to take me up on this.
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