HCL Notes Reviews

HCL Notes has features similar to what we can get on other products such as Outlook, with everything in one place. We find that Microsoft is more efficient compared to HCL Notes. We have seen some database issues where the mail takes a lot of time to send and receive. Managing and streamlining all the mailing section, calendars, teams, chats, and everything has been challenging.

Office 365 has advantages over HCL Notes, offering a better interface and better categorization of emails. We get different kinds of options, including mail suggestions and AI options that can help users. Meetings, calendars, everything is in one place, making it more efficient.

Office 365 offers a better interface and categorization of emails, along with options such as mail suggestions and AI features. Meetings and calendars are all integrated in one place.

My main use case for HCL Notes is that it serves as the client machine to connect to HCL Domino, ensuring that the communication between HCL Notes and HCL Domino is secure. If I want to have a client-based system without using a web road, I can achieve an extremely secure connection between my Notes and my Domino server, making it integral to the platform.

HCL Notes has three components forming the client, which I consider crucial, namely HCL Notes, HCL Nomad, and HCL Verse. These components work together to connect to the Domino platform; however, if I look at Notes by itself, it feels limited as it is typically bundled with HCL Domino and not available as a standalone product.

The offline access feature in HCL Notes helps me significantly due to its strong replication mechanism, allowing me to work wherever I am, and when I connect, it facilitates two-way replication of information. Notes has offered offline replication for a long time, and while other modern platforms provide it today, the robustness of Notes allows me to schedule it in the background without worry.

The security framework of HCL Notes is effective in managing sensitive information because it runs on the same encryption and database encryption mechanisms as the Domino server. Each database on my laptop is encrypted and can only be accessed by logging into my Notes client with my passwords, ensuring that if my laptop is lost, the data in the Notes databases cannot be recovered by anyone else.

The security at the encryption level provided by HCL Notes is wonderful.

Our use case for HCL Notes is that we use it for critical production databases and a lot of administration databases.

We use it for email and calendars extensively.

We have experience working with the offline access feature in HCL Notes, as we can use it offline.

I have it on my laptop and can look at the databases when not connected because I have local copies.

The security framework of HCL Notes is very helpful for us, as it is very secure with database encryption and key distribution capabilities.

I only use HCL Notes for email services. When dealing with businesses, particularly professional entities such as ministries or other companies that provide military-related items, using HCL Notes ensures smooth communication without reservations. If I contact them using my Gmail account, I might not receive a reply or be asked to switch to my company's HCL Notes-based email.

I primarily value HCL Notes for its security features. The software's secure communication is particularly useful when dealing with professional entities. It ensures that business is conducted smoothly, allowing me to use my organization's email confidently, as opposed to my personal Gmail, which might not prompt responses from some entities.

We use the solution for mail implementation, app development or business processes.

We use the tool for mail services.

We use HCL Notes / Domino for application development, plus the usual office functions like email, personal and group calendaring, to-do and so on.

We like to call HCL Notes / Domino the Swiss Army Knife of application development technologies.  The variety of applications that can be developed is almost endless. We have used it for CRM, warehousing, product management, fuel sales, safety management system, aircraft dispatch, aviation logbook, order entry, vacation scheduling, expense reporting (in multiple currencies), etc.

We've got several key production databases within Notes. We are a chicken hatchery. We produce chickens for eating meat. We produce 10 million a week, and every single egg is traced on a Notes database. Every single delivery note is printed out from a Notes database, and many reports come off it. 

We're all on-premises. We've got two data centers, one in the north and one in the south, and they, in effect, are private clouds because people log onto them from everywhere around the country.

Most users are on version 11, but our servers are on version 12. We've got probably 50% of our head office onto the desktop version 12. We've been waiting to upgrade it till they release 12.01, which they did yesterday, so we'll be upgrading everybody to 12.01 in the new year.

We grow 6 million chicks a week up to fully grown and ready for eating, and to do that, we have 120 lorries that move around the country moving the chickens. Every single movement of a lorry is recorded on a Notes database, and delivery notes, animal transport certificates, and all other such things are sent out. We've got auto-texting facilities within it, so as soon as it's all been planned, a text goes out to every driver with the start times and the sites they're going to. So, there is a lot of automation.

We've got mobile versions on iPads on farms, where they key data into an application, which then comes straight back through into a database with reports coming off it. We've got a different version for the hatchery one, which we use in our turkey business for hatching the turkeys, and that's a variation on the theme. 

For the tablets, the programming was incredibly simple. We already had a database written that was used, and we made a tablet version of it in a day and a half. It uses HCL Nomad, which is the mobile version of Notes. It uses that, and it makes the database look totally different when it's on an iPad. You open the same database on a computer, and it looks conventional. So, it is dynamic. It swaps between the two. It is very easy to mobilize. It probably took five minutes per tablet to install the app. You open up an iPad and install the app from the App Store. You then do a Control+O and open the database.

We use it for email and as a full CRM tool to manage customer contacts. It's not just for email; we also use it for paper documents, insurance processes, and other things. 

All processes in our company have been recorded in Domino databases, although we're in the process of migrating to another platform.

We had many integrations with other products, including SQL and accounting software. However, this has been a significant challenge because HCL Domino is an object database, not a relational database. We've had to use numerous third-party products for integration, and it hasn't always worked smoothly.