IBM is already working on plans for the next major releases of Lotus Notes beyond 7.0. Last week, on May 3, visitors to the blog site of Ed Brill, who heads up worldwide sales for Lotus Notes and Domino, were asked, "If you could add one feature to Lotus Notes 7.x, what would it be?"
As of May 9, his question has garnered 184 comments, although many respondents circumvented the question's one-feature limit by submitting multiple posts.
To kick off the thread, Brill provided his own request – multi-level undo – and that was reiterated by seven posters. However, the most requested feature was for an improved user interface for Notes. "It's time to give the Notes client UI a much-needed facelift," wrote one respondent. When people say Exchange is better than Notes, said another, "What they are saying is that the Outlook interface is . . .nicer than the [Notes] mail template. A top UI for the next release would top off a lot of end-user complaints."
Only a handful of responses mentioned specific suggestions for improving the UI. One asked for "a first-class, richly configurable Welcome Panel that resembles a Web portal." Another suggested UI improvements such as "more user-selectable columns in folders/views, having preferences all in one place, or rules that can act on documents already in the mail file." Still another requested "a sexy modern mail template with a single UI in Notes and on the Web."
Finally, one user said, "What would it be worth if every part of the Notes mail experience, which. . .is the Notes interface for the majority of users, from the toolbars to the icons to interaction and behavior, was consistent, modern, clean and inviting? There is no point in having the superior everything if it's not appealing to look at."
P.S. Brill has requested a moratorium on suggestions, because the thread is now so long it has become unwieldy.