Once again, this blog will let you down, because this entry is not announcing the availability of the Lotus Notes/Domino 8 public beta. But as we all know, the beta is coming very soon, and I want to prepare you with some information you'll need to participate.
Beta feedback forum and Lotus Registration
Your dW Lotus team will host the feedback/discussion forum for Lotus Notes/Domino 8. It will be a completely public discussion, and you can browse it anonymously all you want. Most of you reading this blog already know this, but just in case, you'll need to use your free Lotus Registration user name and password if you want to participate via your Web browser -- add main topics, add responses, and so on. And we want you to participate so that development can get all your valuable feedback.
If you already have a user name and password to participate in our forums for Lotus Notes/Domino 6 and 7, Sametime, and so on, then you have the user name you need for the Lotus Notes/Domino 8 public beta forum. You don't need to do anything else. If you're not sure whether or not you already have a user name or if you forgot your password, visit the Lotus Registration page and use the Forgotten User name and Forgotten Password forms.
Note that your Lotus Registration user name has a first name-last name syntax because it's also used as your screen name. If Britney Spears were out of rehab, and she may or may not be depending upon when you read this, she'd sign into the forums with her user name "Britney Spears" with the space in the middle of the user name, not her head.
If you're wondering why our Domino-based Lotus forums don't use the main IBM registration system, then I'll point you to Tara's previous blog entry, "Why do I need so many registrations?" for the explanation.
Notes client access to the beta feedback forum
I'm 99% sure -- because some of you will squawk if we don't -- that the beta feedback forum database will be available for Notes client access and replication via our public Domino server cluster, Notes1/Notesweb and Notes2/Notesweb. Similar to browsing via a Web browser, you can connect to these servers with your Notes client and browse anonymously to your heart's content. But if you want to participate via your Notes client, you'll need to use our other registration system so we can grant you the appropriate author access. For the full details on Notes client access, read our (slightly out of date, but still accurate) article, "Viewing the Lotus Developer Domain in its native Notes format."
Registering for the beta downloads
The dW Lotus team doesn't administer or host the beta downloads themselves, so I can't be certain of the exact details, but it's safe to say you'll need a separate, free IBM registration account to sign in and download the beta kits themselves. If you're a regular IBM Web site user/customer, it's safe to say you already have one of these accounts, too. It's the same user name system used for other areas of developerWorks besides Lotus, PartnerWorld, My Support, on and on.
Blah, blah, blah, just tell us where to look for the beta announcement
The official entry point to all things Lotus Notes/Domino 8 is http://www.ibm.com/lotus/nd8. You can go there now for material on version 8, and it's where the announcement and all the links to the beta program will be available.
Finally -- Britney, if you're reading this, I just checked, and it looks like someone already grabbed "Britney Spears" as a user name. If it's you, have fun trying out Lotus Notes/Domino 8! If that's not you, I think the "Christina Aguilera" user name is still available.
Craig Lordan | 23 February 2007 10:30:00 AM ET | Westford, MA | Comments (2)
