groupware and communications

What can I say? I have been working with Lotus Notes since R4.6. I have always found the Lotus documentation very ambiguous. As a consultant, I have to keep up with the latest versions, so we have been using R5 for about 1 year. I purchased ALL of the Lotus Yellow Books for Admin and Development and still find it hard to get the answers I am looking for. I am preparing some training material for one of our clients and thought I would try this book out rather than sending our clients to the $1,300 per course / per student Sys Admin training. I am ONLY on Chapter 3 of this book (Server install)and already I can say that THIS BOOK ROCKS!. It has answered some questions even I have always had (i.e. page 64 explains how to move a server into an OU if an organization decides to use OU's - I have never seen this in any of the Lotus books). I hope the publisher keeps printing this book because I am recommending it as THE TRAINING GUIDE for all future clients that need to know how to administer a Lotus Domino server! This book is a MUST buy, and beginners to Notes will find this book an INVALUABLE learning Aid. EMIS Technologies, Inc. (http://www.emistech.com)

The author demonstrates great expertise in Domino System Administration. In addition to advising which choices to make when Domino provides options, he noted many discrepancies between Lotus documentation and the feature set and functionality of R5 as delivered. The book is based upon Domino 5.0 and Kirkland advises when Lotus has promised to resolve specific problems in future releases. He offers a few work arounds and notes when we just have to wait for an update.

Rob Kirkland admits that he struggled with meeting deadlines to finish this book and he brought in several of his friends to write 7 of the 20 chapters in the book. Perhaps being late explains why this book has so many problems with formatting, punctuation, missing words, words that don't fit the context, and mislabeled concepts. I would estimate there are over 300 of these incidents in the book. Most of them are minor but occasionally I found a situation like this, two different features are explained and they are both labeled with the same name. As the reader, you must decide from your understanding which one is which. This material is not meant as an introduction for beginners but I found these glitches challenging at times and imagine it could throw even experienced Notes Administrators.

The writing was clear enough but the organization of the book was such that you frequently had to leave your understanding of a concept open for quite a long time until an explanation was completed in a later chapter. For example, partitioning a server is discussed early but only at the end is the concept explained. Many times early chapters referred to later chapters for a fuller discussion of features. By the time you get to the end the material is covered pretty well but it is clear to me this book needed another draft. The book is a great candidate for a second edition. Not only could the organization of the material be revisited, the wording and formatting problems could be fixed and the issues resolved by Lotus in the latest updates to R5 could be covered.

I look forward to consulting this book again and again in the field. Despite the problems it is full of wise advice and it is clear that Kirkland understands production environments. One of my favorite aspects of the book is the step by step method of being walked through setting up a new server or adding a new server or deleting a server. The impact of making various changes in terms of performance, reliability, and availability is consistently discussed. I thought the coverage of mail services and routing was particularly strong and the coverage of web server features somewhat weak.

Great Reference. Go here first then look elswhere! I just HOPE Mr. Kirkland and NewRiders come to some agreement and get an updated version for R6/6.5 soon to be 7 out.

Invaluable!!!!! If I had to do in the trenches domino administration and could only bring one book with me this would be it.