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The release of the latest version of Lotus Notes and Domino is slated to happen in early October, bringing with it speed enhancements, bug fixes and loads of new features. I've been using the beta versions for a couple of months, and Lotus has lifted the NDA so we can let you know what is coming.

That said, I'm basing my observations on what I see currently in the 8.5.1 beta, and it is subject to change. IBM Lotus makes no guarantees that the functionality I discuss here will make the shipping product in a couple of weeks. Now that the lawyers are happy, let's get you up to speed.

When I Say Speed, I Mean Speed

When Notes 8.0 was released, it was a beautiful update to a very stale looking client. It looked great, and had features users had been clamoring for, but unfortunately it was slow. With each point release since, the speed has gotten better, but with 8.5.1 is really feels like they finally got it right. The client uses less memory than it did in 8.5, so there's more left for other system processes. In addition, everything from startup, to switching between apps is much faster. Simply upgrading a user to 8.5.1 should really alleviate previous speed issues.

In addition to speed increases, lots of little annoying bugs have been fixed. Also, some things that would crash the client have been fixed as well. So overall there should be a much better, more stable experience for the end user.

Client Improvements

Notes 8.5.1 is more than bug fixes, it adds a bunch of features, and brings back features that users missed. One example of the latter is unread marks. In Notes 8.0 and 8.5 unread marks in the client were bold and black in color. In all previous versions of Notes, those unread marks were red in color. You could change those in 8.0 and 8.5, but it would have required IT help to change and update CSS files and the like. With 8.5.1, they have added a preference to make it simple for users to make the change themselves.

There are also enhancements to spell checking. You can tell Notes to correct common errors such as changing the misspelled "teh" to "the" and you can have Notes automatically correct when you accidentally start a word with two capital letters. Notes can also be set to capitalize the first letter of every sentence automatically. These are all checkboxes under a section entitled "Instant Corrections" within the Spell Check Preferences.

Instant Correction Preferences in the Notes client

The Calendar gets a huge overhaul in 8.5.1 as well. Federated calendars was something introduced in 8.5, but didn't work really well. Basically the concept was that you could subscribe to an external calendar (through things like Google Calendar and the like) and they would show up in a different color on your calendar. They kinda worked, but subscribing could be problematic and the information wouldn't pass through to your mobile device.

That's changed with 8.5.1. Subscribing to calendars is much easier, works well, and passes information through to your Blackberry or iPhone if you check the "View this calendar when off-line or on a mobile device" box.

There is also decent support for clicking Add to My Calendar links on the web. In the past it just didn't work well, and the team at IBM Lotus worked hard to make this go off without a hitch. If there is a theme that Lotus has really focused on, it's making things easier overall for the end user.

Adding an iCal feed to your Notes calendar

Simplification

Even the way things are labeled has undergone subtle changes. The Replicator tab is now called Replication and Sync which was done to make it easier for end users to understand what is going on. In addition, a button labeled Application-Specific Options was added for users to figure out where to update settings for individual applications within the Replicator.

Another minor tweak is with tables. If you use tables a lot within your email messages, you know that in order to resize the table in the past, you had to view the ruler and then set margins within that ruler bar. Now you can simply drag and drop the borders on the table itself. It's a minor thing, but something that will save new users time, and work the way people new to the product expect it to.

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