Technology's Influence on Community

Lotus Notes and Adaptability to Needs

Lotus Notes/Lotus Domino

     We were most fortunate to have as the technological basis for our community, the Lotus Notes (and later, when the server was renamed, Lotus Domino) products.  Since this premiere example of "groupware," there have been many other products introduced, none as rich or as versatile.

     The concepts behind Notes were based on facilitating human communication.  The product's creator, Ray Ozzie, had used an on-line threaded discussion system at the University of Illinois, which had been conceived and implemented by David Woolley; you can learn about that predecessor to Lotus Notes in David's writings, especially "How I Invented Computer Conferencing."

     Of all the features of Notes that the Forum exploited, however, there is one that made much possible, and it's a feature that still no competitor has perceived as significant:  Templates.  Instead of having a hard-wired design, each and every Lotus Notes database carries it's design in a template, which can be changed without losing any of the existing data.  Because data is managed in an internal object-oriented store, it survives independently of the specific template applied.  That allowed us to experiment with different design features without disrupting the on-going process of community creation, because individuals could try out new design ideas without affecting the entire population.

     Other intrinsic features of Notes/Domino that are used by Lotus, Lotus Notes Network, and individual Business Partners include:

Notes/Domino Version History

     Lotus Notes has been through several major revisions since it's commercial birth in 1987.  With each new release, Lotus' product has both improved, and gained wider adoption by customers.  Major releases (R2, R3 ...) typical represent major changes in features and functionality (for example, with R4 came group calendaring and scheduling built into the e-mail template).  "Point" releases represent improvements, enhancements and bug fixes.  Since 1996, these point releases have generally been produced quarterly, and called Quarterly Maintenance Releases (QMR), not every one of which are identified in the following table:

Hardware Technology

     Despite the lofty title, the very first "Notes Net" was a borrowed computer under the desk of Francois Koutchouk at Lotus.  At the time, he had the riches of four (count 'em, four) 9600-baud modems...which is how Scott Brown came to be connected with the nascent service.

     The server became a permanent fixture, and had to be expanded to more servers maintained by the Lotus Information Services (IS) organization to keep up with the growing population of users and applications.  That put the computer and communications technology on more solid footing, with backups, emergency power, and a support staff.  And, the number of databases accessible to the BP continued to grow beyond the Forum itself.

Discussion Database Design

     The original "Partner Forum," introduced in mid-1991, used the then-current Discussion Database template distributed with Lotus Notes R2.1.  That provided the basic capabilities (threaded discussions, categorization, alternate views, etc.), but it had few content controls.  For example, while the user's name was filled into the Author field, it was left editable, so individuals could change that name for publication.  Fortunately, the original author's name was also carried in the document, so we could resolve the masquerade to a particular person if necessary.

Technology Enhancements

     In the Autumn of 1995, at the urging of several of the Forum members, the discussion about the design of the discussion database was turned into a simple database of its own.  That relieved the general population from being exposed to the details of that dialog, and clearly focused attention by those interested on the issue.  However, having started the "discussion about discussion design," Lotus virtually abandoned it, and made no plans to implement any of the ideas.

     As we discussed earlier, Alex Wilson designed a new Forum in 1996, and he produced a radical departure from the off-the-shelf Discussion templates offered by Lotus with its product.  Working from his experience as a Core Regular, Alex designed, implemented and tested:

     In an exercise of Urgency over Importance, Alex's design was appropriated and the deployment bungled.  Lotus had made the decision to add Worldwide Partners to the Forum, which had heretofore been accessible largely to North Americans.  Contract programmers at Lotus, responding to the demands of their customer, were in a great hurry to deploy something.  Without consulting the participants in the "Forum Design Discussion," they appropriated Alex's design and severely damaged it, removing many of the features they deemed too time-consuming to implement.  The resulting corrupt design was hash, and it was deployed several successive times, confusing everyone in the Forum in the process.  In retrospect, it would have been better for all parties to continue on the collaborative path and arrived at a comprehensive design to suit all the parties.  As it was, the "rush" job deployment was first attempted in March, 1996...but practical use did not occur for another four months.

     Despite the bungled deployment of Alex's "BP Technical Forum 96" design, his design became the basis for Mike Woolsey's subsequent work for this Forum, and several other discussion database designs within the Lotus Business Partner Program.  It is a landmark design that has stood the test of time...and subsequent evolution.

Continued Evolution

     Some of the features that Mike Woolsey has added to subsequent iterations of the design include:

Managing Forum Transitions

     Some of the logistics in getting so many interested parties to collaborate in changing from one Forum design to the next have proved more complex that they might appear at first glance.  The first two such transitions were months in the process, with most changeovers taking place over a two-month period...but with several months before when no one was certain which Forum was active.

     Once the design stabilized in 1996, subsequent transitions have been quicker and better managed.  That's because the operations professionals at LNN now know how to properly install and use the Forum database design.  And, changes to that design can be tested on "live" on-going discussions by individual users to debug them before they're turned over to Lotus for deployment.