HCL Notes Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services Reviews & Insights

Score3.5 out of 10

92 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for HCL Notes are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Seamless Integration: Users have found that HCL Notes can be easily integrated with other software platforms, such as Sametime chat, Concur, and Productivity Management System. This integration allows for seamless communication and access to various tools and resources.

Efficient Calendar Management: The calendar management feature in HCL Notes is highly praised by users. Once they accept a meeting invite, their calendar is automatically updated, and they can easily view all their meetings for the day or week. Additionally, users can book meeting rooms, and the availability of these rooms is visible to all employees, making it convenient for planning meetings.

Robust Database and Custom Applications: Users commend the strong database of HCL Notes which is extremely scalable and can handle thousands of users effectively. They also appreciate the enterprise-grade framework for developing custom database applications in HCL Notes. This simplicity of access makes it convenient for users while reducing administrative burdens.

HCL Notes Reviews

7 Reviews

Professional, Scientific, and Technical ServicesInformation Technology & Services6Management Consulting1

HCL

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

December 19, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

HCL Notes provides business collaboration functions, such as email, calendars, to-do lists, contact management, discussion forums, file sharing, websites, instant messaging, blogs, document libraries, user directories, and custom applications. It can also be used with other HCL Domino applications and databases. I particularly use it for email, calendars, and to-do lists. It helps me to be more organized and save time by making everything stay at on place with easy access and user-friendly experience.

Pros

Helps me with notifying the email status.
Helps me with better organization of my time on calendars.
With the help of calendars, I am also able to use to-do lists to adjust my time and hence saving me a lot of extra effort.
I can also save important notes as well.

Cons

Could be more user friendly with a better UI.
Can add time blocker to be synced with google.

Likelihood to Recommend

HCL is well suited for emails, calendars and to do list. Helps in organizing my work and time as well. Has a good UI but can be improved. It should also be able to sync with Google Calendar so that I just have to update my calendar at one area only.

Karan Kundra

Data Engineer I in Information Technology at Innovaccer Analytics Pvt Ltd (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Convenient Platform For Global Organizational Management

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 1, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

HCL Notes (or formerly known as IBM Notes) is used by my company in all its regional offices worldwide. HCL Notes in my company serves many functions such as emails, sending meeting invite, booking meeting rooms, accessing to my company intranet, template sharing, leave management, notebook entry, creating to do list, raising IT issues to global IT team, and even booking guest room for business travel in other countries. As the result IBM notes standardized my company processes across all regions. In short, it enables fast and easy global communication within the company.

Pros

HCL Notes can be integrated with other software platforms such as Sametime chat, Concur (expense management platform), and Productivity Management System (platform for consultants/analyst to access to assigned projects). For example, once the status of my claim expenses is changes by the finance team, I'll receive automatic notification from Concur to IBM Notes.
Calendar Management - Once I accepted the meeting invite, it will automatically block my calendar and all I need to do to see all my meetings of the day/week is to simply check my calendar in the HCL Notes. Moreover, I can book any meeting rooms in my company and the booking will be made visible to all other employees so that they can see the availability of the room when planning a meeting.
Secured Platform- All email from the external party will be hold by the delivery system of the IBM Notes. User can either allow or block the email or site easily.
Global Meeting - Regional or cross-regional global meeting can be easily participated remotely. With HCL Notes installed in my laptop/notebook, I can conveniently join company meeting from my working desk or even when travelling.

Cons

HCL Notes needs to largely improve the quality online web/internet browsing as HCL Notes takes considerably long time to connect and load of the web content.
The links shared in HCL Notes emails won't be connected often and the web content won't be visible sometimes. I need to copy and paste the link in Google Chrome to view the web content.
Sometimes, HCL Notes will get jammed and need to restart all over.

Likelihood to Recommend

I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.

Mogana Tashiani

Research Analyst and Consulting (Technology) in Professional Services at Frost & Sullivan Asia-Pacific (Management Consulting, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Lotus Notes Insights

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

June 11, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Lotus Notes is used by most of the departments in our organization. It is used as documentary storage for all the requirements at a single place categorized accordingly. It has the client wise requirements along with their specific details.

Pros

It consists of all the client requirements arranged in a user-friendly manner.
We can customize the Workspace as desired.
It can hold the contacts of the organization in one database and can be readily accessed.

Cons

It can incorporate the latest updates as per market standards
It lacks behind in the access speed if It contains more data.
Migration to a new database takes much time.

Likelihood to Recommend

Lotus Notes is well-suited to holding the requirements and file details, etc. in one single application.

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (Information Technology and Services company, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Notes is dead! But not really - it can still benefit you!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 28, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization is a small IBM Business Partner. We use Notes for email and application development. It provides us secure access and storage of our mail data. Since we are small, it's used across the organization. We can also do team scheduling through calendaring and/or custom applications. We also write business-critical applications in Notes and Domino for our customers.

Pros

Calendar and Scheduling are extremely mature and implemented well.
In general, email is email. Notes is the frontend just as Outlook would be. The presentation and implementation of the mail system are on par with any other vendor in the market.
Although at certain points the integration could be tighter, Notes integrates well with the other IBM Collaboration products like Connections and Sametime. It is a single point of entry for enterprise collaboration.

Cons

IBM need to solidify their roadmap for IBM Notes and work more on marketing the software.
Lately, the fix packs (or feature packs) have had some bugs - more so than ones prior to the 9.0.1 version. This needs a little more attention.
Though it is great with newer hardware, especially SSD, the Eclipse-based Notes Client can still be rather slow to load for some users.

Likelihood to Recommend

Notes for mail is well-suited for organizations of any size (from 5 to >100,000) and I've supported organizations throughout the spectrum. Though some of the modern application platforms are also good, Notes is also well suited to provide users with a solid platform through which to do their job. However, without professional service or someone with prior knowledge on the staff, it could be quite daunting for smaller organizations.

Chris Whisonant

Lead Consultant in Professional Services at Best Methods (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

15 years of experience

View profile

What is IBM Notes doing?

Rating: 5 out of 10

February 6, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have worked with Lotus Notes and Domino since 1996 from Version 4, 5, 6.5, 8.0 and 8.5, but my last couple of projects all are migrations from Lotus Notes/Domino to Exchange Server. Some companies still only keep Domino/Notes applications. Regarding the business problems, I don't think have any technical issues, but sales and marketing issues.

Pros

Fifteen years ago, IBM Notes was the best email platform in the world, both client side and server side. Even the Server application and email box, can be accessed it from the Lotus Notes client and web browser.
IBM Notes is good for user management, database management and server management
Server controller, certificate authority, replica and administration process are also strengths.

Cons

IBM should release new version for Notes with new functionality in every couple of years, instead focus in project and out-sourcing

Likelihood to Recommend

IBM Notes has lost too much marketing share, at least in the email space.

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (Information Technology and Services company, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

IBM Notes & RAD

Rating: 10 out of 10

February 5, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use IBM Notes/Domino as a development platform, no email. Most of the Apps are for Departmental and some are for multiple departments and large number of users.

Effective Level of Measurement:
#1 Workflow Apps - IBM Notes is secure, Ease and Fast to develop, intergrate with Lotus Notes Mail or any other email platform easily.
#2 Intranet Sites/Apps/Document Management - Very quick and easy to put up an app like Order Online, Document Library, Room Reservation, HR apps, or an Inquiries type of apps.
#3 Clients/Servers Apps - Secure and easy to intergrate with any other databases (Oracle, SQL, DB2, mySQL) or platforms (J2EE, .NET, AS400) using Lotusscript Extension or Web Service.
#4 With the new release of Domino 8.5.3* and 9.0* (xPages, Extension Library, Dojo), design apps for mobile are very easy and quick.

IBM Notes Versus Sharepoint:
http://www.lialis.com/lotus-notes-versus-sharepoint/

Pros

Time efficiency and faster turn around of development.
Workflow Application Design.
NOSQL database advantages.
Easy Web Services development and deployment. This make it so easy to connect with other databases like Oracle, SQL, etc.
Notes Sercurity is (A+++)

Cons

First: For a smaller/lighter web sites and pages and internet, Notes don't have a lighter version to do so. IBM needs to improve this and come up with better solution, something like JSP or ASP platforms.
Second: Notes license that can provide free to users for education/self learning/testing. IBM needs to more Advertise and doing a lot more better in Sale of the product. The product is very good, but still unknown to many people. We need to show that IBM Notes is not just a mail product/platform but it can do more and better in the databases and application development as well.
New version of Domino (8.5.3x - 9.0x) have lot of improvement in term of performance and web development (Xpages) but lack of documentation/education/training. Most of the Notes Developers still new or very new to XPages. I have developed a few application in Xpages but it was very difficult to getting help and resources. We need more sample Xpages Application and more available templates for download and learn.

Likelihood to Recommend

+ For a small IT team with higher turn around and higher expectation, Notes is the best platform that I see so far.
+ For workflow application Notes still #1 to me.
+ NOSQL is a big plus.
+ Very easy to develop/deploy Web Services.
+ XPages is very COOL, even better if jQuery can replace Dojo

- IBM needs to do more to sale Notes and get more users; the License/Cost need to adjust in order to attract more people to learn (especially, college students); if possible, we need a lighter xPage/Domino framework for Internet Pages design.

Tom Le

Lead Application Developer/Lotus Notes Domino Developer in Information Technology at Verizon (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

18 years of experience

View profile

Notes basics

Rating: 10 out of 10

February 5, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

One of the few reliable and industry standards that are present in Information Technology for more than 20 years. Security, offline functionality and RAD that are present since early releases are enhanced in last few years with powerful XPages "framework" (Java Server Faces implementation), great administration tools (ID Vault, DAOS, compression of data and design, etc.) and user UI refreshment.

Pros

Security
Rapid Application Development
Offline Work

Cons

Steep learning curve
Lot of functions unknown to users

Likelihood to Recommend

Suites small, medium and large companies equally. High security standards. Need to solve wide rage of problems through custom developed applications.

Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology (Information Technology and Services company, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

10 years of experience

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Convenient Platform For Global Organizational Management

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 1, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

HCL Notes can be integrated with other software platforms such as Sametime chat, Concur (expense management platform), and Productivity Management System (platform for consultants/analyst to access to assigned projects). For example, once the status of my claim expenses is changes by the finance team, I'll receive automatic notification from Concur to IBM Notes.
Calendar Management - Once I accepted the meeting invite, it will automatically block my calendar and all I need to do to see all my meetings of the day/week is to simply check my calendar in the HCL Notes. Moreover, I can book any meeting rooms in my company and the booking will be made visible to all other employees so that they can see the availability of the room when planning a meeting.
Secured Platform- All email from the external party will be hold by the delivery system of the IBM Notes. User can either allow or block the email or site easily.
Global Meeting - Regional or cross-regional global meeting can be easily participated remotely. With HCL Notes installed in my laptop/notebook, I can conveniently join company meeting from my working desk or even when travelling.

Cons

HCL Notes needs to largely improve the quality online web/internet browsing as HCL Notes takes considerably long time to connect and load of the web content.
The links shared in HCL Notes emails won't be connected often and the web content won't be visible sometimes. I need to copy and paste the link in Google Chrome to view the web content.
Sometimes, HCL Notes will get jammed and need to restart all over.

Likelihood to Recommend

Mogana Tashiani

Research Analyst and Consulting (Technology) in Professional Services at Frost & Sullivan Asia-Pacific (Management Consulting, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile