DomBlog.de - Notes, Domino and Stuff

Tags: Domino Notes Templates
I think we all know how powerfull Notes and Domino is within mid sized and large companies. We're often talking about high-end stuff like loadbalancing, failover, performance tuning and so on. But what's about the small companies? Lets say companies with 2 to 20 employees. Is Notes and Domino valuable for such a company? Do you know companies of that size using Notes and Domino?

I do have some of those small customers and I think Notes and Domino is valuable for them too. And the value begins with really basic stuff like email and calender. They don't need RnRMGR or stuff like that, but writing down meetings and share those informations with other colleagues, maybe while they are on the road with a notebook or via a BlackBerry, can be interesting also for a two-man-show.
But that's not all they need. There is a bunch of things you have to do in every office, regardless of the size. Every company has to deal with documents (in whatever format), with incoming mail (I mean the old-fashioned letter - do you remember? ), with administrative stuff like forms for every kind of process. And every company has to deal with customers and all what's related with them etc.
And maybe you agree with me that Notes and Domino is able to handle all of this. But the question I came a long today at lunchtime is, how to handle this for small offices? Where budget for developing is small or not available?
There are some good templates available within the standard installation and certainly the free templates from OpenNTF or the new TaskJam from Elguji Software.
But one of the major task for me isn't solved yet: the management of customer addresses. I'm not aware if there's something available for that task. But maybe you are?

My favorite free available templates are the DominoWiki and the new , which you can use for all administrative stuff, forms or as a knowledgebase etc. Those wikis can be used by everyone and deliver value from the first day on.

Let's start a discussion about this topic. What's your opinion on that topic? Which free available templates do you like, which one do you recommend? And please keep in mind that we're talking about really small companies and stuff that helps them to simplify their daily business.

Posted by Thomas Lang At 3:26 PM Location Frankfurt | Permalink | Comments (5)

Tags:
If you bought a product or used a service, you will ask yourself if the product or service met your requirements. If yes you're lucky and maybe tell it to your friends so that they can use or buy this thing also. The manufacturer or the service provider will be happy too if you as a satisfied customer tell this story to your fellows.
But what if you aren't satisfied? What if you spent money for something that didn't met your requirements or broke down? For myself I can answer this question very easyly: it depends. It depends on how important that thing or service is to me. For example: I bought a software some weeks ago which I like to use. Since it didn't worked as expected I wrote to the customer support. Unfortunately the support wasn't really interested in helping me, so I decided the money was spent to a bad company and I won't use any of their products again.
But there are also other examples. I had an issue with another product. Not a really technical one but let's start from the beginning.
I'm a enthusiastic skier and I try going to the alps several times a season. And if you stay outside a whole day in wind and wheather (and I'm not known as a "good weather skier" - like we call it here in Germany) your equipment is very important. So I invested my money 5 years ago in jacket from KJUS Systems. A brand which is founded from the former Apline skier Lasse Kjus. The jacket wasn't really cheap but I love and used it a lot. But now after more than 5 years I got some trouble with it. I wrote an email to Kjus Systems and told them about. Two days later they answered, had some more questions and came finally back with a answer I've never expected. Because of the very special circumstances and their commitment to the products quality, they replaced my jacket. I was lost for words and have to say a big "Thank you!" to the guys of KJUS Systems!

Those two storries made me think about customer support and my experiences with it. It doesn't matter in what industry you are working, what products or services you are selling or if you've got to deal with collegues on a help desk phone or wherever. It is important for a company to know about the problems their customers or users have with their products. And the customer support is in most cases THE single point of contact. So it is very important to give the customer the feeling that his problems are important for the company. That there will be someone who care's about it. Even if bad processes, illness of colleagues, bad wheather or whatever are making it hard. The customer has priority because he's the one who pays the salary of everyone in the company.

I worked for many customers where this principle wasn't in mind of the help desk people. And I also learned that you can reduce the job of a help desk or customer support to just this:
It's easy to satisfy a customer. Just talk to him. Because it's more easier to make him unsatisfied. Just don't talk to him.

In my experience the customers or users don't expect miracles. They want to be heard and taken seriously. So just talk to them, explain them what happens and even if the result isn't that surprisingly good like my experience with Kjus, the customer will be satisfied.

Posted by Thomas Lang At 3:23 PM Location Frankfurt | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Fun Stuff

Posted by Jens Polster At 2:24 PM Location Sulzbach (Taunus), Germany | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: geekstuff

Now, this really is geeky! Do not click if you are suffering from numerophobia (but I reckon in that case you wouldn't be reading this anyway).

Posted by Jens Polster At 5:48 PM Location Sulzbach (Taunus), Germany | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Smartphone BlackBerry Windows Mobile Symbian
I'm dealing with customers and their users mobile devices, mostly with BlackBerry smartphones. Managing a server and all the related things is somewhat daily business. But when a smartphone user calls in and reports a problem it sometimes get hard to exactly understand which problem the user reports. And after understanding it's hard to tell the user what to do on his device to resolve the problem.
On desktop computers we know remote desktop sessions since years. And it's very nice and easy to explain a user what to do while he's watching at his screen. Now this remote desktop functionallity is available from LogMeIn.com for mobile devices like BlackBerry smartphones, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

And here's a short overview how it works and how it looks:

Posted by Thomas Lang At 8:14 AM Location Frankfurt | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Equinux
Since I'm a Mac user I'm using a TubeStick with The Tube. When a friend recommended CoverScout to me, I looked at the features and bought the software. I've never had any trouble with Equinux so why not?
Here's why not: After I bought the software I tried to use it for what it was made for - match covers with mp3 files. But it won't do it. It just doesn't write to my mp3 files. And yes, I've got the rights to change the files.
So I sent a message to the Equinux support team over their web site. That was on December 22nd. And I received an answer just one or two hours later. Wow. But they only told me to asure, that the user has write permission to the files (I wrote about the permissions in my mail to the support). I answered back half an hour later, that write permissions are available. And nothing happened.
On December 30th I asked again what happened with my mail? Nothing. Until yesterday. February the 3rd. The answer was short. No apologies or anything else. They just told me to put all the mp3 files to my local drive to resolve the problem.
Good idea, but I need to delete everything (including the OS) to have enough space. Good idea? I don't think so.

I don't really need the covers in all my mp3 files. But I spent 30 USD for the f**king software and all those support guys are able to do is to ignore my mails for 6 weeks and give goony advices? I think I don't like Equinux any more...

Posted by Thomas Lang At 10:21 PM Location Frankfurt | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Notes Client
Imagine you need to use a proxy server to connect to the internet. And imagine further, that this proxy need authentification. Not a problem so far, but if the user name is really long, because of a required domain name for example, you get in trouble:

Unfortunatly my user name at a customer is longer than the 23 characters.

There's also an unanswered entry in the Domino forum. Any ideas?

Update: There's an SPR (ZQSA74CKK3) for that bug and plans to fix it in 8.5x.

Posted by Thomas Lang At 11:26 AM Location Frankfurt | Permalink | Comments (5)