Fw: Responses to Frequently Asked Questions about IBM Lotus Notes & Domino in December 2005

This note contains links (URLs) to technical support documents regarding 
IBM Lotus Notes & Domino, as well as links to key information helping you 
derive the most value from your software licenses, and helping you be the 
best possible system administrator. Previous mails have focused on lists 
of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) answered by technotes. This month the 
mail focuses on another Frequently Asked Question: Availability of the 
6.5.5 maintenance release. We also address APAR information, a new 
tutorial on Domino Domain Monitoring, previously distributed tutorials, 
and the support web site redesign.

You are receiving this notification because you are one of the Lotus Notes 
& Domino customers, who have called us for technical support in the past 
year. If you do not wish to receive notifications like this one from Notes 
Domino Information at IBM, please reply to this email and change the 
Subject field to 'unsubscribe'.

The list of links to FAQ Responses can be found in a Knowledge Collection 
(http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=463&uid=swg27006575), which we 
encourage you to bookmark because we update the collection periodically.

Notes/Domino release 6.5.5 is Available
The English version of the 6.5.5 maintenance release for Notes/Domino was 
made available for download from your Passport Advantage site just before 
the December holidays. The physical media (CDs) are planned to be 
available for the English version by January 27th 2006, see here for 
details: 
http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/8/877/ENUSZP05-0538/ENUSZP05-0538.PDF
National Language Versions for major languages, i.e. German, French, 
Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified 
and Traditional Chinese, are planned to be available on CDs by March 3rd 
2006, see here for details (click here). Download versions are typically 
made available 4-5 weeks before the physical media.
Other language versions, incl Danish, Swedish, Norwegian Nynorsk, Dutch, 
Finnish, English International, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, 
Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Czech, and Polish are planned to be available 
by May 26th 2006, see here for details: (click here).

Planning information for upgrading to release 6.5.5 is available from the 
Upgrade Central page:
Title: Upgrade Central: Planning your upgrade to Lotus Notes/Domino 6.5.5
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21226336

Information about the >900 fixes contained in the 6.5.5 maintenance 
release can be found in the Notes/Domino fix list: 
http://www.lotus.com/ldd/r5fixlist.nsf/Public?OpenView
Incremental installers for migrating from release 6.5.4 to release 6.5.5 
are available on the developer Works site:
Domino: 
http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/search.jsp?q=Domino+Server+6.5&k=&dt=SOFTWARE+UPDATE&sb=r&rs=ESD-DMNTSRVR

Notes: 
http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/search.jsp?q=Notes+Client+6.5&k=&dt=SOFTWARE+UPDATE&sb=r&rs=ESD-DMNTSRVR


Release 6.5.4 has been our most reliable release so far. Although data are 
still too sparse for releases 6.5.5 and 7.0 to compare, there is no doubt 
the fixes contained in 6.5.5 will take reliability to the next level and 
continue the trend of raising the bar with each new release.

APAR (Defect) information on the Web
We now offer information about closed APARs (defects) on the Self-Support 
Web site. Closed APARs for Notes and Domino 6.x, as well as Sametime and 
Quickplace 6.5.1, have been accessible from their respective product 
support pages for several weeks. This allows you to track defect 
information directly and ensure you are aware of known issues. Here are 
the URLs:

Domino 6.x APARs: 
http://www.ibm.com/support/search.wss?tc=SSKTMJ+SSKTWP&rs=463&rank=8&dc=DB550+D100&dtm

Notes 6.x APARs: 
http://www.ibm.com/support/search.wss?tc=SSKTWP+SSKTMJ&rs=475&rank=8&dc=DB550+D100&dtm

Sametime 6.5.1 APARs: 
http://www.ibm.com/support/search.wss?tc=SSKTXQ++SSKTXQ+SSQSRN+SSQSPW++&rs=477&rank=8&dc=DB550+D100&dtm

Quickplace 6.5.1 APARs: 
http://www.ibm.com/support/search.wss?tc=SSYSVG&rs=2338&rank=8&dc=DB550+D100&dtm


New Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM) tutorial
A new tutorial on Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM) has been posted to our 
web site. DDM probes can help you monitor key system parameters and spot 
potential problems before they cause an outage. DDM was introduced in 
version 7, but much of the functionality is available in different places 
within version 6. You only need a single version 7 Domino server to take 
advantage of DDM and monitor the performance of version 6 Domino servers 
in your network.

Title: Lotus Education on Demand: Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM)
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=463&uid=swg27007060

Previously distributed tutorials
The following Notes/Domino tutorials have been distributed in previous 
mails in the second half of 2005. Please consider forwarding these links 
to colleagues, who may be interested in the tutorials.

Title: Lotus Education On Demand: Lotus Notes 6.5 Client, Mail and C&S 
Features 
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg27006578

Title: Lotus Education On Demand: Lotus Notes Instant Messaging
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg27006579

Title: Lotus Education On Demand: Lotus Domino Server Controller and 
Domino Console Tutorial
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg27006421

Title: Lotus Education On Demand: Lotus Domino 6 Smart Upgrade Tutorial
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg27006422

Title: Lotus Education On Demand: Lotus Domino Certification Authority 
Tutorial
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg27006424

Title: Lotus Education OnDemand: Using NSLookup to Troubleshoot DNS and 
SMTP Mail Issues
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=203&uid=swg27006840

Title: Lotus Education On Demand: Using Telnet to Troubleshoot SMTP Mail 
issues
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg27006824

Title: Lotus Education On Demand: Lotus Notes 6.x Client Installation
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&uid=swg27006722

Title: Lotus Education On Demand: IBM Lotus Domino Web Access Support and 
Troubleshooting
Link: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg27006825

Support web site re-design
Please note that our self-support Web pages have undergone a redesign 
based on customer feedback, industry standards and a desire for 
consistency across the IBM software brands, and feedback from our own 
Support Engineers. The new design was implemented over the second half of 
December 2005 and offers task-based navigation and a variety of new 
features. An example is the addition of support content links (much 
requested by customers) including links for the IBM software support life 
cycle, upgrade central, product fix lists, release status, and details for 
buying and managing IBM software support. We've also added links to a host 
of helpful forums and newsgroups. Last but not least, help-related links 
for the site itself are now always at hand in the right column of every 
page. They include important resources like real-time site availability 
updates and easy access to the ability to translate the page into another 
language.

The best way to appreciate these dramatic new improvements is to visit the 
support pages:

Title: Lotus software support
Link: http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/support/

Title: IBM software support
Link: http://www.ibm.com/software/support/

We have strived to not alter URLs, so your existing bookmarks should still 
work.

General Self-Help Resources
In closing, here are some other ways that you can access IBM Lotus Notes & 
Domino self-help support information on the Web (not specific to version 
7):

1. Register for My Support, which allows you to build a custom portal of 
support information and to subscribe to email notifications:
(This is a great service! Tens of thousands of subscribers have already 
signed up).
(Please consider subscribing to alerts for new content about the product 
you work with). 
http://www.ibm.com/software/support/einfo.html to learn more.

2. Visit the IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino product support pages at:
http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/support/notes/support.html [Lotus Notes]
http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/support/domino/support.html [Lotus 
Domino]

3. Participate in the user-to-user IBM Lotus Notes & Domino forum at:
http://www.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf

4. Access IBM Lotus Notes & Domino Product Documentation, Release Notes, 
White Papers, Redbooks, etc at
http://www.lotus.com/ldd/notesua.nsf/0b345eb9d127270b8525665d006bc355/e5e5f0ea9f656d548525698100567174?OpenDocument
 
[Lotus Notes]
http://www.lotus.com/ldd/notesua.nsf/0b345eb9d127270b8525665d006bc355/8313e8d10f025dee8525698100541f6d?OpenDocument
 
[Lotus Domino]

5. Access the IBM Lotus Notes & Domino DeveloperWorks page for downloads, 
learning resources and more:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/products/notesdomino/

6. Determine what problems are fixed in each release by viewing the IBM 
Lotus Notes & Domino Fix List database:
http://www.lotus.com/ldd/r5fixlist.nsf

7. Subscribe to the Lotus Notes or Lotus Domino support RSS feeds:
http://www.ibm.com/software/support/rss/lotus/475.xml?rss=s475&ca=rsslotus 
[Lotus Notes]
http://www.ibm.com/software/support/rss/lotus/463.xml?rss=s463&ca=rsslotus 
[Lotus Domino]
For help with RSS and for links to all the Lotus software RSS feeds, 
visit: http://www.ibm.com/software/support/rss/lotus/ [All Lotus products]

Kind regards,

The IBM Lotus Notes & Domino team