Lotusphere 2008: BOF101 – startling news!

I went to BOF101 ((IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 Client Roaming) last night (Tuesday) to hear about the plans for (re)introducing roaming back into Notes 8. The BOF was moderated by Richard Wilson and John Banks. Besides these two Jeff Eisen sat in of the BOF.

The plans discussed were the plans for Notes 8.5 so I guess it’s official not roaming wont be back in Notes 8.0.1 – at least for Notes 8 Standard. Roaming is supported, as it has been previously, in Notes 8 Basic. There are some nice things planned for roaming incl. a complete overhaul of the architecture. For one Lotus is planning on supporting roaming using file servers instead of Domino servers for in-office roaming. This is nice – especially for sales offices. Besides this and other good stuff there was a recognition that roaming needs work and we had a good discussion.

What was a little startling to me was that they hadn’t really thought of roaming plug-ins. For me roaming means that a user can log off one machine, log into another and the eperience will be the same. Well it appears that this will not be the case. Currently the plan is to roam the “basic” Eclipse configuraton files but not the plug-ins directory which means that installed sidebar plug-ins may or may not be available on the workstation you roam to. Additionally plug-in parts of composite applications will need to be redownloaded. As the plan looks now, although Lotus was taking lots of notes (no pun intended), you will have to rely on plug-ins enforced to be installed via update sites for corporate wide mandatory sidebar plug-ins. I guess there’s no “My Widgets” for roaming users as it looks now.

It sounded like Lotus is looking for design partners for roaming so if you feel you have somthing to contribute on the matter now would be a good time to raise your voice.

Decisions are made by those who show up!