HCL Notes Reviews

We have an on-premise deployment. After all, it is an email client. The way you use Microsoft Outlook or any other email client it makes sense to be deployed on-premise. They do have a SaaS version. The way it works when we are working on an enterprise laptop — the laptops that the company has provided us — it is installed on our systems. Other than that, the particular tool or email client can also be accessed via web login. We often use that when we are using it from a smartphone or any other non-company device.  

Our primary use case is just what it is: an email client. It is my stable solution and the only email client that I use. Web meetings are also a part of what we use it for. They have a solution — their adjacent solution is called IBM Sametime or HCL Sametime — which is the chat functionality. But our primary use case is as the email client.  

This is the third or fourth company that I am working for in my career and I have used several different email clients over that time. What happens is that an email client is just an email client. You receive emails, you send emails, and basically all emailing stuff that you normally do — like schedule meetings — goes through that email client.  

With HCL Notes, my organization has been able to do a little more in that regard. They have built in and integrated with other systems like the leave management. Because of this integration, I do not have a separate HR portal where I have to go in and apply for leave. All of that is managed through my email client. So rather than just being an email client, Notes ends up being a dashboard of all the communications that you want to take care of from within the company.  

Another example of integration is our custom IT management system which offers specific capabilities. Suppose I have to raise a ticket. I do not have to go to a separate IT portal and do that. I can create the ticket right through HCL notes. Suppose I want to access some internal files, I do not have to go to another internal portal which is built separately by the company. Again, I can find the files directly within HCL Notes.  

We've got several key production databases within Notes. We are a chicken hatchery. We produce chickens for eating meat. We produce 10 million a week, and every single egg is traced on a Notes database. Every single delivery note is printed out from a Notes database, and many reports come off it. 

We're all on-premises. We've got two data centers, one in the north and one in the south, and they, in effect, are private clouds because people log onto them from everywhere around the country.

Most users are on version 11, but our servers are on version 12. We've got probably 50% of our head office onto the desktop version 12. We've been waiting to upgrade it till they release 12.01, which they did yesterday, so we'll be upgrading everybody to 12.01 in the new year.

We grow 6 million chicks a week up to fully grown and ready for eating, and to do that, we have 120 lorries that move around the country moving the chickens. Every single movement of a lorry is recorded on a Notes database, and delivery notes, animal transport certificates, and all other such things are sent out. We've got auto-texting facilities within it, so as soon as it's all been planned, a text goes out to every driver with the start times and the sites they're going to. So, there is a lot of automation.

We've got mobile versions on iPads on farms, where they key data into an application, which then comes straight back through into a database with reports coming off it. We've got a different version for the hatchery one, which we use in our turkey business for hatching the turkeys, and that's a variation on the theme. 

For the tablets, the programming was incredibly simple. We already had a database written that was used, and we made a tablet version of it in a day and a half. It uses HCL Nomad, which is the mobile version of Notes. It uses that, and it makes the database look totally different when it's on an iPad. You open the same database on a computer, and it looks conventional. So, it is dynamic. It swaps between the two. It is very easy to mobilize. It probably took five minutes per tablet to install the app. You open up an iPad and install the app from the App Store. You then do a Control+O and open the database.

What I like about this solution is that you can use it for mailing, as a client for email, and you can also use it for workflows. So, you can easily develop applications. Even people who haven't got great IT skills can develop some basic applications to use in the company, especially a workflow application. So, it is for mailing and for applications, which is a great thing about HCL Notes.

It is very good for managing and sharing documents on the network or inside the company. It works very well for sharing documents.

It is one of the best products in the world for workflow applications. It works very well for workflows or decisional processes where a task needs to be first approved by someone. After that, the task moves to the next or final stage where another person approves it with some notes or attached documents.

People who are on the move outside the company but need to interact with the database of the company can do some tasks in the HCL Notes application offline. When they have connectivity, the information is updated or replicated in real-time. They can install the application on different devices. They can use it on mobile phones or iPad.

I love this product. I have used it for many years, and I have been a developer for it. If anything, it can be faster in the client version. The client version is a little bit hard. It is not fast. This is the only problem I see. Otherwise, it is a very good product.

We use HCL Notes / Domino for application development, plus the usual office functions like email, personal and group calendaring, to-do and so on.

We like to call HCL Notes / Domino the Swiss Army Knife of application development technologies.  The variety of applications that can be developed is almost endless. We have used it for CRM, warehousing, product management, fuel sales, safety management system, aircraft dispatch, aviation logbook, order entry, vacation scheduling, expense reporting (in multiple currencies), etc.

HCL Notes is a document-oriented database application you can use for things like workflow, information sharing, etc. It's not a business application that does accounting or something like that. You use it on the knowledge side of the organization. People used to think of Lotus Notes and IBM Notes as just email products, but it's far more than that.

I have a software development kit I developed called Notes Tracker. If people purchase a license for Notes Tracker, they can then use it and merge it with their applications. For example, they can see who's contributing, using, or deleting information. It's a general-purpose tool. So I deal with a lot of people who are modifying their applications.

HCL Notes has fantastic built-in security. The email and personal communication components are excellent, but they are some applications provided by HCL that Notes previously provided when it was under IBM and Lotus. Everyone wants email, so that's just part of the product. However, more savvy users can build their own solutions for managing information, and that's the great thing about it.

It's a user-friendly tool for knowledge-sharing applications, and it has great backward compatibility. For example, I started using Notes in 1993. You can take an application from 1993, and it will run without alteration on the latest version of Notes in 2022. 

Some products from Microsoft and other vendors have to change every year. For example, the early Windows application was 16-bit and they increased that to 32 bits with Windows 95 in the mid-1990s. A decade later, they made 64-bit applications possible.

You have to get a brand-new of your application every time Microsoft changes the underlying architecture, but HCL Notes will let you install an application on the latest release, and runs without issue. You can enhance the application to make use of the new features in the latest release, but you can also run it the way it was built back in 1993. 

We use the solution for mail implementation, app development or business processes.

We use the tool for mail services.

We use it for email and as a full CRM tool to manage customer contacts. It's not just for email; we also use it for paper documents, insurance processes, and other things. 

All processes in our company have been recorded in Domino databases, although we're in the process of migrating to another platform.

We had many integrations with other products, including SQL and accounting software. However, this has been a significant challenge because HCL Domino is an object database, not a relational database. We've had to use numerous third-party products for integration, and it hasn't always worked smoothly.

I only use HCL Notes for email services. When dealing with businesses, particularly professional entities such as ministries or other companies that provide military-related items, using HCL Notes ensures smooth communication without reservations. If I contact them using my Gmail account, I might not receive a reply or be asked to switch to my company's HCL Notes-based email.

I primarily value HCL Notes for its security features. The software's secure communication is particularly useful when dealing with professional entities. It ensures that business is conducted smoothly, allowing me to use my organization's email confidently, as opposed to my personal Gmail, which might not prompt responses from some entities.