Skip to main content

Testing and Clarification

After seeing some responses from the Notes/Domino community complaining about the apparent lack of testing I thought I'd better do some clarification.

Although I come from a long background in Notes with mult-server environments, I'm currently enjoying something of a break while I get the early child-rearing period of my life completed. I'm now at a small business with only ONE production server an no need to worry about screwing up other people's systems. If anyone has to wear the blame for a problem - it's me.

That said, we're doing things here that I've never seen done at any of my previous (and much larger notes/domino installations). We have some business/industry critical stuff running on Domino and it's being used by most of the biggest names in Australian banking.

We have a backup server which does nothing and could be down for weeks without anyone noticing. I always upgrade this first. We're soon going to be moving to a cluster - where I'll have to be more careful of future upgrades - but until then... anything goes.

I'm not a fast mover with upgrades, we've only been on XP for 2.5 years, and I still have one WinNT server (our PDC). I'm not forging ahead with Active Directory because it still has yet to earn my trust.

After doing every major and every minor upgrade of Notes/Domino without ANY issues since R5, Notes/Domino has well and truly earned my trust. I can't say that about any other software in my long history in the computing industry.

Our Notes/Domino DRP is so well developed that - well, secretly I suppose I want it to fail so that I can prove it to management. Well... no, I don't really want it to fail - but I think you get the idea.

Finally - do I rely on IBM's testing? well... Yes and No. I trust that IBM has tested the core components of Notes/Domino (Mail, HTTP, HTTS, SSO etc...) much better than I, with my own meagre resources could do.

I don't trust that any third party applications developed for us, developed by OpenNTF or developed internally have been tested - for obvious reasons.

We have good test plans for post-implementation which really haven't changed all that much from one version of N/D to the next (other than adding new systems and new procedures to the list). If I make it through these tests, then the server has been tested as well as it can be.

The bottom line: Testing and implementation can be VERY quick - provided that you have the right plan, the right backup and the right software.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to Change Your Notification Options for New Lotus Notes Mail in version 8.x

Don't worry, I'm not patronizing you (my readers), I just decided to re-document this for one of our internal users and thought you might want to be able to use it in your own user documentation. WHAT IS THIS DOCUMENT ABOUT? Some people who don't get a lot of mail, like to be notified when such an event occurs. Notification can be; via a sound via a pop-up box via the system tray (where the computer clock is) The pop up box looks like this; Other people, who like myself, get too much mail would rather not be notified. The aim of this document is to tell you how (and where) to turn these options on and off. CHANGING YOUR SETTINGS To change your settings from the Notes 8.x client; On the Menu, click File , then Preferences... On the left hand side , click on the little plus sign to the left of Mail to expand the options. Click on the option marked Sending and Receiving . In the middle section, under receiving, you can control your notifications. If you untick the box mark

How to Create an Auto-Response Mail Message in Lotus Notes 8.5.3+

Why would you do this? Suppose that you have an externally accessible generic email address for your company; support@mycompany.com or info@mycompany.com. You might expose this to the web and allow people to send messages to you. Setting up an auto-response email will tell the senders that their message reached its destination and that it will be dealt with accordingly.  It's also good practice to include links to FAQs or other useful information. Why 8.5.3 The techniques we'll be using here work in older versions of Notes but some of the options seem to have moved around in 8.5.3.  I figured it was a good time to show you where they've moved to. The Procedure Start Domino Designer and open the Mail file to be modified.  A really quick way to do this is to right-click on the application tab and choose "Open in Designer". In the Left hand panel of designer, expand Code and then double-click Agents.  A new window should appear. Click the action

How to Do a Mail Merge to Email using Lotus Notes

Why do one? In today's "green" world, it makes much better sense to send out emails than letters but you still want to personalize them. Sadly, by itself Lotus Notes doesn't support mail merge to email. Of course, we know that outlook does (but then it lets anyone and anything send emails for you - even when you don't want them to). So, how to do it in Notes? OpenNTF The first port of call is OpenNTF ( http://www.openntf.org/ ). This place is full of great things but most of them are really badly documented. Still, these guys give things away for free and they develop in their spare time, so we should be grateful for what we get. There's a great little project there called MailMerge Excel to Notes . Go there, click on releases and download the ZIP file. Getting to the Code The installation is tricky though I've noted that since I asked the author about the install, it's been updated (so maybe these steps are less necessary). Unzip the files to somewher