Notes App Dev - There's still interest out there.
Category App Dev
I just wanted to share what I did last evening, as it relates to some of the App Dev discussions that have been going on.
In the "Day Job", I'm just a corporate Notes developer at a transportation related company. I'm not a Business Partner so I don't have a great "Feel" for what's really happening in the market other then what I hear from the Planet Lotus feed. In my little corner of the world I know that Notes is "safe" because we appreciate the ability to create custom apps to help our business. Unfortunately I wish the survival of my company was 'safe' but that will be a post for another day.
Anyway, about a year ago my VP of IT, Don, left our company to go into consulting other companies with transportation and logistics related needs. He's currently working with an outfit that uses Lotus Notes though I imagine they're not getting the most out of it. They have a LOT of Lotus Notes applications it seems, but no in house developer or even much of an IT department I think. What happened to them, I believe, is that all their applications grew independently by consultants. Each to fill a specific need at the time. There was no "grand plan". No one to be "traffic control" and try and get things into an organized and efficient system. So none of their apps talk to each other. There's lots of redundant data.. etc. I think you get the picture. Obviously this causes a lot of frustration to them and a perception that the software might be a limiting factor.
So Don talked to my CEO and got permission for me to, on my own time, demo for his client some of the apps that I've written in Notes. Specifically my CRM or "Sales System" as we call it. It's maybe up to 15 or so databases now, and uses Axceler's Notrix to pump shipping and billing data down to Notes so our sales force can replicate it and have it available during the day as the go from customer to customer making sales calls in an "offline" state.
So last night was actually the 2nd demo I gave to this company. On the first demo, several weeks ago, I had some lower level people involved. But last night I was talking to their CEO and VP of Sales and Marketing. My impression was that they were blown away by the demo. They really liked my application, though that wasn't the point as we don't sell it. But showing them a system that ties data together logically. That integrates well with an external database.. that was designed from the beginning to make sense and be usable to the end user... I think that was eye opening for them.
There were lots of comments about "Didn't know that could be done" or "Is it possible to do this?", or "What if we wanted this?" etc..
So who knows what will come from this. For me personally, Don now owes me a case of beer for doing the demos, but I'm pretty sure that his client now has a much greater appreciation for the power of Notes as a Development platform then they did before.
And that's a good thing.
I just wanted to share what I did last evening, as it relates to some of the App Dev discussions that have been going on.
In the "Day Job", I'm just a corporate Notes developer at a transportation related company. I'm not a Business Partner so I don't have a great "Feel" for what's really happening in the market other then what I hear from the Planet Lotus feed. In my little corner of the world I know that Notes is "safe" because we appreciate the ability to create custom apps to help our business. Unfortunately I wish the survival of my company was 'safe' but that will be a post for another day.
Anyway, about a year ago my VP of IT, Don, left our company to go into consulting other companies with transportation and logistics related needs. He's currently working with an outfit that uses Lotus Notes though I imagine they're not getting the most out of it. They have a LOT of Lotus Notes applications it seems, but no in house developer or even much of an IT department I think. What happened to them, I believe, is that all their applications grew independently by consultants. Each to fill a specific need at the time. There was no "grand plan". No one to be "traffic control" and try and get things into an organized and efficient system. So none of their apps talk to each other. There's lots of redundant data.. etc. I think you get the picture. Obviously this causes a lot of frustration to them and a perception that the software might be a limiting factor.
So Don talked to my CEO and got permission for me to, on my own time, demo for his client some of the apps that I've written in Notes. Specifically my CRM or "Sales System" as we call it. It's maybe up to 15 or so databases now, and uses Axceler's Notrix to pump shipping and billing data down to Notes so our sales force can replicate it and have it available during the day as the go from customer to customer making sales calls in an "offline" state.
So last night was actually the 2nd demo I gave to this company. On the first demo, several weeks ago, I had some lower level people involved. But last night I was talking to their CEO and VP of Sales and Marketing. My impression was that they were blown away by the demo. They really liked my application, though that wasn't the point as we don't sell it. But showing them a system that ties data together logically. That integrates well with an external database.. that was designed from the beginning to make sense and be usable to the end user... I think that was eye opening for them.
There were lots of comments about "Didn't know that could be done" or "Is it possible to do this?", or "What if we wanted this?" etc..
So who knows what will come from this. For me personally, Don now owes me a case of beer for doing the demos, but I'm pretty sure that his client now has a much greater appreciation for the power of Notes as a Development platform then they did before.
And that's a good thing.
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