IBM Domino Collaboration: Step-by-Step

Step 3: Administer The Domino Server
Domino Administrator is the main management interface for Domino server. In addition to the Domino server, Administrator can connect to Sametime server. Reviewers, however, were not able to access the instant messaging server. For this installation, reviewers used simple TCP/IP settings with a Domino Directory. Solution providers can certainly extend Administrator and control Domino through DNS, LDAP and even server clusters. Clusters now can use multiple ports so they are more stable.

Administrators can configure user settings with policies, groups and other security features. On large deployments, the new Administrator can start remotely through a domain monitoring database. IBM improved Domino's security certificates by accepting large keys, certificate key rollovers and Web-based single sign-on tokens. Policy settings are more flexible.

To find out default settings, the best place to start is the Configuration tab.

Reviewers encountered a couple of problems when changing Web Access in the Messaging settings in the Configuration section. Domino's Web interface could not open Web pages. Using the browser also did not help, since the Web server at the Domino server box could not load the pages. We encountered a similar problem when setting an SSL option during the Sametime installation.

Step 4: Add Value with Symphony
Symphony is Domino's productivity tool. Symphony's document and spreadsheet are extremely useful editors for workers that need to interact with Microsoft Office files but are not running Windows or are using Office. Symphony can open and save Office Doc, Dot and XlS files, including exporting to PDF.

Symphony works best when using the open document format. Reviewers migrated between Symphony's various formats successfully. Though not quite as extensive as Word, the Symphony editor comes with useful formatting features.

Symphony Spreadsheet comes with the basic features for manipulating cells. The three simple formulas the tool now supports can pop up and fill the cells automatically. Within minutes, even the most novice users can learn the products right away.

Surprisingly, Symphony was missing from the tool. Opening the help menu only opened a general help tool. After some searching, reviewers could not find the help menu in Symphony. Because Symphony was developed in Java, it loads slowly.