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What's new in Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.3

Posted on 16th January 2012

With the release of Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.3 there were even more enhancements on the previous version.

In this release there were significant support additions and improvement for all the noted supported mobile devices, Android, Apple & Nokia Devices, there were also some Louts Notes Traveler Server specific enhancements/improvements.

Android Devices

Android installation improvements

The Lotus Mobile Installer is no longer a separate application and the features provided by Lotus Mobile Installer, such as automatic client updates, have been consolidated within the Lotus Notes Traveler client application as of this version.

If the default browser on the Android device is used to connect and then download the Lotus Notes Traveler client for Android, the server and user ID fields will automatically be populated during Lotus Notes Traveler installation. The Lotus Notes Traveler for Android client is now capable of reusing the same information that was previously entered in your browser to repopulate this connection information.

Android mail enhancements

A select text option has been added to the menu when viewing an email. When Choosing this option, you can select text within the mail item and copy it to the mobile device clipboard. The copied text can then be pasted into newly composed Lotus Traveler email message or another application that supports the clipboard paste function.

With this Lotus notes Traveler version comes the capability for Android devices to be able read and send Domino encrypted mail.

As you start to address and enter the name(s) in a new mail message, Lotus Notes Traveler will generate a list of possible contacts that match the entered name/characters. At any point in time, you can simply select one of the options to populate the field. Both contacts and group matches will be displayed in the generated list. If this is done from the mail compose editor, the resulting matches will display an additional icon that will help distinguish contacts and groups.

The maximum file size options for auto-downloading mail attachments on an Android device have been increased to 25k, 100k, 500k, 2M, or 10M.

A Send Action button has been added to the compose mail form. Now you no longer need to access the device menu to send mail.

Mail message signatures can now have multiple lines.

Actions like Send, Save as Draft, and Discard are now buttons within the compose mail form. The Cc and Bcc address fields are now hidden by default, and can be toggled using Hide Cc/Bcc or Show Cc/Bcc within the Message Options.

The user interface in the compose mail editor has been significantly improved. The Actions Send, Save as Draft and Discard are now available directly from the mail compose screen instead of having to access the context menu.

Android calendar enhancements

A select text option has been added to the menu when viewing calendar entries. When Choosing this option, you can select text within the entry and copy it to the Android device clipboard. The copied text can then be pasted into newly composed Lotus Traveler email message, calendar entry or another application that supports the clipboard paste function.

When in the calendar week view, calendar events now display as much of the subject text as can fitted within the view.

You can now schedule, reschedule, modify or cancel meetings with attendees from your Android device.

With Lotus Traveler 8.5.3 comes the ability for Android Users to schedule meetings, reschedule, modify or cancel meetings with attendees from the Android device.

Lotus Notes Traveler for Android now recognises and highlights telephone numbers and conference call access codes within the Subject, Location and Description fields of calendar entries and enables the user to dial them by simply tapping the number.

Performance for changing days or the week when using the swipe gesture has been significantly enhanced.

As you start to address and enter the name(s) in a new calendar entry, as you type, Lotus Notes Traveler will generate a list of possible contacts that match the entered name/characters. At any point in time, you can simply select one of the options to populate the field. Both contacts and group matches will be displayed in the generated list. If this is done from the calendar event editor, the resulting matches will display an additional icon that will help distinguish contacts and groups.

Android home page widgets for mail and calendar

The home page widgets for Lotus Notes Traveler mail and calendar can now be added to your Android home screen. If you press and hold the home screen icon, then select to add a widget, you will now see the following widgets available in the list:

Traveler Calendar
Traveler Mail

There are also small and large versions of the mail and calendar widgets available.

The new Android home page widget for Mail has some nice features and allows for a scroll to cycle through messages, an unread mail count, and has a shortcut button for creating a new message.

The new Android home page widget for Calendar implements a scroll bar to cycle through calendar entries, today's date information, and a shortcut button for creating a new calendar entry. Both of these new widgets take advantage of the smooth scrolling feature available for Android OS 3.0 and later.

Android 3.0.x tablet menus

The Lotus Notes Traveler menus within each of the Traveler applications has been revised to better align with the user and navigation experience expected for Android 3.0.x tablets.

Apple Devices

Selective application sync

Domino Administrators using Lotus Notes Traveler settings as part of Lotus Domino policies can now use the Enforce in child policies feature to prevent Apple iOS devices from synchronising certain applications.

e.g. if you deselect the Mail application sync option and the Enforce in child policies option is selected, then users of Apple devices with this policy will no longer be able to synchronise mail to their device. This option can be used for each application that is supported by Apple iOS devices, including mail, calendar and contacts.

NOTE - Locking the device settings by this method is only available as part of Lotus Domino policies. This feature is not available if you simply using the default device settings that are defined in the LotusTraveler.nsf administration database.

Selective wipe

The capability to wipe only the Lotus Notes Traveler Mail, Calendar and Contact data stored on an Apple iOS device is available with this version.

Notes ID password caching

Apple devices now respect the security policy settings with regards to caching the user's Notes ID password.

The Notes ID password will be cached securely on the Apple device and the user will not have to re-enter their password until the "Auto lock period" expires or the Apple device is locked. This feature requires the 2.0.3 version or later of Lotus Traveler Companion, downloadable from the Apple iOS App Store.

Mail enhancements

When a Apple iOS device replies to or forwards a Notes Domino email from the device, the reply and forward indicators are now properly set on the server side mail database.

You can now add follow up flags to mail. Flags can be set on both the server and Apple device side, and will synchronise both ways.

Folder management

In previous versions of Lotus Notes Traveler, folder management functions were only available on the server side. Now, with the release of Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.3, you can create, rename, move, and delete mail folders from your Apple device.

Nokia Device Support

Nokia Symbian^3

The Lotus Notes Traveler client is now available for Symbian^3 devices in addition to S60 3rd and 5th edition devices.

Nokia Symbian^3 device encryption enforcement

The support for device encryption enforcement is now available for devices using Symbian Anna level software.

If encryption is enforced on the Lotus Notes Traveler server, and the client detects that the device is not encrypted, it will be blocked from synchronising until it is encrypted. If the device is not encrypted, a window will be displayed prompting you to begin the encryption.

HTML mail support on Nokia Symbian^3 devices

Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.3 added support for HTML email viewing on Symbian^3 devices.

Lotus Notes Traveler server

Device level access control for new devices

A new security policy option called Device Access is now available with Lotus Notes Traveler. This policy is disabled by default, but Domino Administrators can use it to set "Require approval" for new devices registering on the Lotus Notes Traveler server, therefore giving the Domino Administrator another level on control on what hand-held devices can connect to the Lotus Notes Traveler Server for mobile mail, calendar & contacts.

Corporate look-up improvements

For name look-up searches that return results of 30 records or more, Lotus Notes Traveler for Android and Windows Mobile now indicates that some results were not returned and that the search should be refined.

When using the Name Look-up feature on your mobile device, group names on your corporate directory will also be returned in the search results. When using the Name Look-up feature on your mobile device, Domino mail-in database names will also be returned in the search results.

In previous versions, when a mobile device did a search for a user using the Name Look-up application, that search was executed against the Domino directory on the Lotus Traveler server. This sometimes led to different results than a look-up search run from the Lotus Notes client. Look-up now uses the user's mail server instead. This can be configured using a notes.ini parameter.

Serviceability improvements

A new option now makes it easier for customers to upload support files to the IBM support file collection site ECURep. The new administrator command tell traveler pmr [log file list] performs a systemdump, collects those log files into an archive, and automatically uploads them to IBM support.

The command tell traveler systemdump now waits for the NSD to complete.

The settings for servlet logging are now linked to the Traveler task logging. Therefore, the level, count, limit, user overrides, and so on no longer need to be changed in /data/cfg/NTSServletLogging.properties. The servlet logging settings are now part of NTSLogging.properties and can be changed using the file or the existing tell traveler log commands.

The command tell traveler log collect collects files into a zip instead of a directory and no longer deletes the NTS*.log files after they are collected. To delete the files, use the command tell traveler log clear.

Mail routing configuration no longer needed on the Lotus Notes Traveler server

Previous versions of Lotus Notes Traveler server required that mail routing was already configured and working in order for the server to process SMS push messages and meeting notices originating from the mobile device. In server configurations where the Lotus Notes Traveler server was not running on the same Domino server as mail services, this is no longer required. The Lotus Notes Traveler server now uses the user's mail server's mail.box for all outgoing messages.

Meeting notices sent from mobile devices

In previous versions of Lotus Notes Traveler, meeting notices, such as new meeting invitations from the device or meeting acceptance notices, had their "Sent By" field set as the Lotus Notes Traveler server address. This has been fixed so that calendar notices are now processed using a similar path to outgoing email and the notices now originate from the mobile device user's identity.

By Mark Donegan

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