One of the toughest things about being an admin in a small business is staying up to date with the improved functions in new releases. Domino Admin is just one of the many hats I have to wear.... I'm also network admin, firewall admin, AIX system admin, SAP admin and manager of other admin and PC support people. We've been on Notes since release 3 and the last time I had formal admin training was for release 4.5.
I've been to Lotusphere most years and get a great overview of new features and functions in Domino and new tools for administration. I read the release notes and new administrator help documents to try and find out what new features are there. If I was rebuilding the environment from the ground up I think I could enable and use many of the advanced features that have been released in R5, R6, R7 and R8.... but I don't know how to retrofit all of those advances to my current system.
I also don't have an easy way to evaluate the new features that will provide the most return for the least effort. I also don't see any documentation that walks through these processes - like say.... implementing password recovery when you've already got an installed base of users with existing id files.... or implementing mail policies for quotas, archiving and attachment management.... or implementing the CA process ( I kinda stumbled my way through this one and "think" I have it right... but would like to know for sure).... or I don't know one of the many other new features that have been released.
Notes /Domino 8.0.1 is here now and Note / Domino 8.5 will be here soon.... wouldn't it be great if the next Domino release.... or next Admin Client release.... included an Administration / Upgrade Wizard - an application that could either look at your configuration and see what new technology has been implemented and what hasn't that could present a list of 5 or 10 admin features with explanations of what the benefit is that you could click through - answer questions and then have it go and create all the needed changes - or give you physical steps to follow.
If not from IBM/Lotus - this sounds like a good product for one of the companies that make administration tools - an SMB Admin Wizard or Admin in a Box. If it were priced for the small business market I think an admin helper would go over really well.
What do you think?
BTW - to those of you who were at Lotusphere last week and heard the continual refrain to -
"post it to Ideajam...." - I'm going to - so please go promote it.
1 comment:
Hi Chuck,
in fact, there is something on the horizon just about your issue:
the Domino Configuration Tuner
At Lotusphere was a session about this tool (although the description didn't mentioned it):
ID207 Tuning Your Environment -- Best and Worst Practices for IBM Lotus Domino
Unfortunately, I forgot, when it will be available. But it will work for Domino 7+ and be offered at no charge.
Thomas
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