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Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
Julian Buss, January 24th, 2012 21:27:49
Tags: Lotus Notes
You know, my small iOS App NotesBook syncs the content of your personal Lotus Notes Journal (Notebook) to your iPhone or iPad. The App was made with our upcoming toolkit for development of iOS Apps for Lotus Notes, Domino To Go.
Several users of NotesBook asked me to allow creating new entries for the personal Lotus Notes Journal (Notebook) right on the iPhone/iPad. Since a few days Domino To Go provides the technology for doing just that, in Domino To Go I can now create new NotesDocuments and push them to Domino without the need to modify the target NSF database (previously, we needed a special XPage in the NSF). That means I can do stuff like this now in my iOS App: var db = new NotesDatabase('http://server/roaming/jdoe/journal.nsf', 'notesbook'); var doc = db.createDocument(); doc.replaceItemValue("subject", "my new entry"); doc.replaceItemValue("body", "content of my new entry"); doc.save(); db.uploadChanges(); Without the need to modify the design of the NSF, all done by standard Domino HTTP POST requests. So, technically creating new entries for the journal on the iPhone/iPad is no problem anymore. I just wonder if that actually makes sense. Because: it will only be possible to create a new entry, but not to edit entries. The journal entries in Notes contains RichText, and there is no RichText editor on the iPhone or iPad. And even if it where (for example, I could use a CKEditor embedded in a browser component), it would only allow to edit portions of the RichText, while stuff like sections would be deleted. Furthermore, to edit entries I would need to download full Domino documents to the device, which is currently not possible without modifying the NSF (we need a special XPage for downloading full documents to the device). In the end, editing existing entries is not possible. That means the flow would be: - create a new entry on the iPhone or iPad with plaintext for the body - click a "save" button - the entry will be uploaded to Domino (or queued if the device is offline) - the entry will be displayed beside the other entries, but without the possiblity to change it So, does this makes sense? Or would it only annoy users because they don't understand why they can create a new entry on the iPhone/iPad, but not edit it afterwards. On a side note, I already fixed some small bugs in NotesBook and I'm planning to support the Notebook part of iNotes, too. After that, I'll look into downloading images and/or attachments to the device. Update 7th june 2012: NotesBook 3.0 is now available and supports creating new entries and editing existing entries. Furthermore, it supports password protection and attachment downloading.
Comments (9) | Permanent Link
1) Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
As a customer and someone who made a comment about adding entries, I think adding entries and being unable to edit them is better than not being able to add them. most of the time I just want to make new notes, not edit existing ones. I would also love to see something like a password protect option on the app. 2) Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
TinyMCE-like light editor can be used if possible. But Evernote for instance warns the user like "you may lose some changes, are you sure". A response document may be created for the old format to prevent losing all changes. BTW, we were looking for a solution but you need to run an Addin task for NotesBook, which is not appropriate for many companies (and admins)... Just a feedback :) 3) Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
Carl, thanks for the feedback. I'll add the option to create new entries, and we will see if I find a solution to edit existing entries in the future. I thought about a password protection, too. Question is, what to do if the user lost the password? Serdar, working with a response document or something like that is a possibility, but that requires some logik on the Domino server, that means the NSF has to be modified. That would not be possible in most cases. 4) Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
I think, that editing entries would be great. As Serdar mentioned Evernote has a warning, if the user wants to edit a document that contains rich text elements. I´m using Evernote a lot at the moment and I have some docs with RT elements like lines or text attributes and some docs without any richtext BECAUSE I´m editing these docs from my iPhone, too. And I agree with Carl that a password protection option would be nice on the iOS app. How about the integration of a masterpassword or masterquestion on the mobile device to reset the password? And if access is denied with both, the app automatically deleted from the device, so the unauthorized user can´t recover the data because of missing connection and DB information :-) 5) Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
Another idea - Is it possible, that Notesbook stores the last view, e.g. By Category, or maybe to set the preferred view in the settings? Can the Navigator on the left more like the Navi in the standard iOS Mail app, e.g. that the user can choose all or only a single category? IMHO with many entries both existing views "All" and "By Category" are a bit unclear. 6) Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
good idea, I'll look into that. 7) Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
Great app! Is there a way to add multiple Journals? I would like a centralised journal to sync to certain people. 8) Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
Mark, thanks for the kind words :-) Support for mutiple journals is not implemented yet, but I plan to do it. But it will take some more weeks - keep an eye on my blog! Did you see that version 3.0 was just released? 9) Looking for feedback: if NotesBook allows to create new Journal entries on the iPhone/iPad... (iOS App for personal Lotus Notes Journal/Notebook)
Great news, thanks Julian |
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Get in touch: Thanks for reading and have a nice time here! Please note my Apps for iPhone and iPad:
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