Catégorie : Volt

After having tested, tried, read, watched all I could do, find about Domino VOLT, I was starting to feel frustrated.
I’m more a hands-on guide then a reader of instruction manuals. I prefer to reverse-engineer and learn from the example.

Today I realised that these last days I was kind of stuck, and I was convinced I was stuck the same way then when starting to use Notes 2 almost 30 years ago.

I was missing something. Or I was looking at Volt from the wrong angle.
30 years ago, my programming was done in an advanced Basic (Memsoft), with multikey files.
So the coding was sequential.

Starting to develop with Notes, I hit a plateau as I was just not getting the views, forms, etc.
One day, a colleague (thank you Patrick Günter) was able to shine a different light on Notes and that was it.
I had understood and was able so start serious developement.
Today I finally understood I was looking at Volt with my Notes radar and was not using the right wavelenght…
I think I can explain the major difference this way.

In Volt, you have forms and views. And in the application to develop, you may

– open a view
– compose a document

basically that’s it

If you compose a document, and save it, you get a blank screen. You actually don’t see the result in a view like in Notes.

To see that you have to program it. It is not there out of the box.

While you are developping you don’t see any view. You create forms and for each form, there will be a corresponding view to browse through the data, page by page.

From that view you can edit or create new records

Because I had not dataset available in Excel, this part was not visible to me, which explains my unease these days
Now once I had imported a simple table and then deployed my test database, I found out that from the application manager, the ‘Show data’ option opened something akin to the view manager in a notes database, and that the ‘Launch’ option enabled me to create a record – one menu option for each existing form, akin to the Create menu in a notes database.

Now, coming from Notes, the web environment is not at the center of our preocupations. In VOLT it is.

So for each form, you get an http://…. link that enables inputing the form, in fullscreen mode or inside an iframe (= compose a document).

You get a link to show the data (= open a view). Another link enables you to shwo graphs about the data.

And you get this for each form in the application.

Armed with this, you can integrate that data into whichever website you are working on to give it data handling capabilities.

Lego pieces if you prefer.

To me this is the xPages we ought to have had back in 2010. But then again, it was another decade, and now we are in our new time-space and not the old one.

Now, the other issue I had was that as I had create a form before importing data from a spreadsheet, once I wanted to do it, it did not work.
VOLT cannot match the columns to existing fields just like that. So what you have to do is input on the first line of each column the variable name of each field.

Makes sense, but when you’ve tested creating apps by importing spreadsheets and letting VOLT create the forms, it needs to be said.

And these imports onto an existing dataset or for the first time are possible from the ‘Show data’ function where for each form there is a tab in which the view is shown and from which you may import.

Well, as my grandfather used to say : if you explain things to me for a long time, I understand quickly….

Guess that now my VOLT light is turned ON !

Switching Domino Volt ON

Coming out of Engage 2020 in Arnheim, I was all excited at the thought of getting started with Domino Volt. Yet the virus disruption we are under just wreaked havoc into all my plans. And when I wanted to get going, I discovered that the beta download was not possible anymore and the normal download not possible yet…. tough luck…yet so frustrating as the confinment was giving me at least 3 hours of extra time per day – no metro, bus, train, plane, car to take anymore.

So I contacted Begoña Sanchez, the HCL Client Advocate Manager and she got the issue solved in a few days with the help of her colleagues. I must say I had written off the possibility as large companies with their procedures often have no way to handle an outlier who was not even able to manage the March 31st deadline… And, again, HCL surprised me and the outlier I am was offered a no-fuss practical solution. Many thanks and bravo.

So, as I am often working off-line, I installed a V11 Domino server on my Thinkpad T590 with 64 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD, which is to say a nice workhorse. I then proceeded to install Domino Volt. Some configuration stuff later, I was in Volt working on my first application.

Except I could not save anything….so I started searching, told myself I ought have installed an https connexion on my server, did it, no change.

Anyways at some point logic thinking came back, I de-installed all and started from scratch. With a slight change…. going through the install procedure that came with the file step by step. 10 minutes later all was working.

Which just shows that we till can be arrogant and stupid enough after more then 30 years and not read the install instructions fully. And that the install documents HCL produced are detailed enough – and correct – to enable someone like me to et the job done….. let’s say it is a read-pushbutton installation…. ;=)

Working on my first application, I went back to the handbook I got at Engage 2020 and quickly got my first prototype up and running. I still like the concept, the product, the potential, the promise. So I’ll keep going with it and keep posting about it.

One thing I found out today – and search a solution for now – is an unpractical way it works. I found out that unless you do not save the application regularly, you risk overstepping the time-out if you answer a phone or read an email and it takes longer : you get locked out. And after re-logging in, all your work is lost since the last save. Now that is bad news. I mean, sure, I am used to saving, but then, sometimes stuff happens and your fingers are not on the keyboard and your concentration somewhere else. That something like that can happen ought to be avoided on Volt side. I’d expect at least an autosave or a parameter disabling a timeout.

So for now I’ll keep trying stuff out and will report at a later time on what I discover.

High Energy with Domino Volt

After having been able to attend an training session on Domino Volt at Engage 2020, I was really looking forward to get started with it and see how it would fit into the HCL Domino/Notes strategy.

Today’s webinar, I must say, pleasently surprised me. Not that I was expecting a deception, but HCL is steady on course and keeping on doing what they promise : listen to partners and customers, respect their deadlines and give us products that can energize our businesses.

Lets see these 3 points

Listening

At the on hands training seminar (and later during beta), many suggestions were made. Marty Lechleider, the Domino Volt product manager was there, showing us how it works, listening to ideas, discussing use cases.

By the way, which other large software publisher enables you to have a product manager actually teach you the product ? And spend quality time to actually have a real dialogue ?

I keep being impressed how the HCL developpers are available to all of us, really ‘recording’ what we discuss and how often I find those ideas, remarks, criticisms having had an impact in the product

Deadlines

After more then a decade of traversing a desert in terms of product evolution, it needs adapting (and requires investment in time…) to get regular new versions, to follow-up on betas.

However, that is a change I am more then happy to adapt to !

Energizing our business

How Domino Volt will impact our business is still something I am not completely sure of. However, its ease of use, the total integration within the Domino/Notes structure and the totally reasonable cost mean we have new options available.

These new options mean we will be able to offer more services at a better price and be able to compete better.

And, if you look back, this is the first ‘new’ product in the Domino/Notes offering since what ? xPages more then a decade ago ?

We can start presenting a new alternative to google forms and Microsoft forms which to me seem to do some stuff Domino Volt does, but the way I see it, Domino Volt goes much further.

Again, integration, security and hybrid data model single it out.

We can now tell a story about a new product, not face questions about how old Domino/Notes is perceived to be.

As for our business and how Domino Volt will impact it ? Here are my thoughts

Registration forms for our customers’ websites.

Seing how easy it is to get a Volt form ready and how comfortable it is to get the data straight into a Notes database, I can predict that we’ll be replacing all registration forms for our customers on their websites with a Volt registration form.

No more transfers from WordPress or whatever other CMS they are using. At worst an ifram opening the form, and the issue is settled.

Agents on the domino server will route whatever process/communications need be. We can have full integration without the complex overhead of xPages.

Add-ons

Domino Volt will enable us to develop some addons based on customer ideas without them becoming too expensive for the customer. Quite often these small addons translate in big savings, but development costs can quickly rise.

With Domino Volt, we can keep that in check, make our maintenance easier and the customers happy

Extranet functions

There again, getting extranet functions online for a customer will be much easier and affordable, even if these functions are specific.

Such features are often deemed to complex and expensive by SMBs, and with Domino Volt I believe we’ll be able to convince many more to go ahead and reap the benefits of better productivity and easier backoffice administration.

On-boarding new developpers

Domino Volt’s modern interface and concept will make it very easy to get new developpers to work in Domino/Notes. The steep learning curve has just got flatter and it opens the way to important savings when getting new personnel up and running on Domino/Notes.

I’ll leave it at that. I’m looking forward to start developping production applications with Domino Volt and integrate them into our own eco-system.

I am sure that there are many more ways Domino/Volt can impact our business…I’ll be happy to read your thoughts and get new ideas. Just feel free to comment !

Take care all of you and stay safe