Domino Volt – Getting on with Business, Lightning Fast!
In the era of COVID-19, organizations are having to adapt and pivot away from traditional solutions and are learning to solve issues quickly and do things differently. In a recent webinar, we showed you how HCL Domino Volt can help keep key, mission-critical parts of the business moving, support a remote workforce, and build new processes. And, we showed you how it’s easy for those closest to the business challenge to build these new processes with minimal IT intervention.
We built and demoed a crisis furlough application that helps HR and finance manage the company salary budget and a work–from–home employee survey. In addition, we provided five key lessons learned and the best practices we recommend for building your first Domino Volt workflow-based application. You can watch the replay here.
As usual, those who attended were super active, and a lot of great questions were asked. You can find those questions — and the answers — below.
Now, more than ever, teams need technology that just works. Domino is the proven platform that’s trusted around the globe by thousands of companies to deliver rock-solid apps that run their business. Let us help you get started. Register for a free sandbox account and start creating Domino Volt applications on a web browser – no installation needed!
FURLOUGH APP AND SURVEY DEMO
Q: Can you share the demo app?
A: Yes, we will share the application .volt files in the sandbox.
Q: How long did it take to build these apps?
A: Three weeks for the furlough application (including time spent learning HCL Domino Volt along the way) and one week for the survey application after applying lessons learned from building the first application.
Q: In the demo, a support ticket was opened from the survey if you answered yes to “having connectivity issues.” Could a support BOT session be initiated instead of opening a ticket?
A: Yes. The low-code capabilities in Domino Volt allows you design apps to fit your specific requirements. Providing support capabilities in the form of a BOT and then only opening a ticket if needed sounds like a very effective design!
Q: Can the survey questions be dynamic or customized?
A: Yes. With Domino Volt you can build rules into your application to ask questions based on business logic. This might include asking a set of question only if a user selected a certain option or perhaps based on who they are and what their role in the organization is.
Q: Is it possible to see a dashboard with survey answers?
A: Yes, this is possible. We provided an example in the demo when logging in as the Survey Analyst role. By default, Domino Volt gives you a view into the data you collect and visualizations of that data.
GENERAL DOMINO VOLT FUNCTIONALITY
Q: Does Domino Volt use a relational or NoSQL database?
A: Domino Volt stores and manages all data and applications in its Domino NoSQL database. You can learn more about this in our recent blog post.
Q: Will Domino Volt apps work on any device?
A: Yes. Domino Volt apps are mobile–friendly web apps that work on any laptop, tablet or phone.
Q: Are Domino Volt apps compatible with Nomad for offline use?
A: Apps created with Domino Volt are Domino apps and can be used in HCL Nomad. However, the use of Domino Volt apps in Nomad will be limited and will not include the web experience and client-side logic you defined.
Q: Are there view filter functions like Excel filters?
A: Today you can add filters to a view in a Domino Volt view. Additional filter types are planned for the next Domino Volt release.
Q: Can I integrate JDBC accesses for relational DBs?
A: Today, Domino Volt relies on REST and Web Services for integration. However, we intend to provide native access to relational databases more natively in the future.
Q: How do I sort columns in “views”?
A: The table control allows for clicking on the column header to sort on that column.
Q: It would be nice to have a catalog of useful snippets of code and apps where everyone could contribute.
A: HCL already has a space to share our snippets and it’s the available from the sandbox.
Q: Will make it easier to access data in the Domino directory from Domino Volt for those who do not know REST?
A: Yes. We have made it a priority to improve how you can integrate Domino data and information from the Domino directory into your applications. Expect to see some of these improvements in the next Domino Volt release.
Q: Can I import files from HCL Leap into Domino Volt?
A: You can import files from Leap 9.2 into Domino Volt. However, there are some things that Domino Volt does not yet support yet. For example, anonymous access and dynamic role assignment. Both of which are in our Domino Volt roadmap.
Q: Can you describe what kind of coding makes up a service call?
A: Integrating services into your application requires knowledge of the API you will be accessing as well as basic knowledge of how REST services work. The “coding” part in Domino Volt is a point and click experience to configure how you want the service to work in your app. This involves specifying the URL, any required authentication, and how you want to map inputs from your app to the service and outputs from the service into your app.
Q: Is it possible to do signatures in Domino Volt?
A: This capability can be added with a JavaScript library. You can find an example in the Domino Volt forum.
Q: Will Domino Volt guarantee compatibility of existing apps in new releases like Domino?
A: It is our intent to provide full support for the apps you have created with each new release of the software. Upgrading to the next release should never break anything you have deployed.
Q: Is there a technical session available to learn more?
A: Please keep an eye out for the HCL Digital Solutions Academy. We will be launching this soon to help educate developers on how to build applications.
DOMINO VOLT ROADMAP
Q: When will Domino Volt support anonymous access?
A: The intent is for the next release of Domino Volt to support building apps for anonymous access.
Q: Is there a plan for an HCL library or catalog where partners and companies can list or advertise their Domino Volt-based applications?
A: Yes, we do plan to provide a vehicle for business partners and customers to make applications and code available. Details to come at a later date.
Q: Is there a plan to enable users to use Domino Volt-based apps offline?
A: Yes. A mobile client with offline support is in our roadmap.
Q: Are there any plans to support dynamic role assignment? We need to have the approvers or reviewer determined based on who create the request.
Yes, we intend to add dynamic role assignment to the next Domino Volt release.
Q: Domino Volt uses Dojo internally. Is there a timeline on using more recent version of Dojo?
A: HCL will update the core technologies in Domino Volt — including JavaScript libraries — as we see that they are able to provide additional value to our customers. There is no set timeline planned for this.
Q: What is the mobile roadmap for Domino Volt?
Plans include support for mobile capabilities like the camera, GPS, QR and Barcode readers, and touch gestures as well as being able to use apps offline and sync when connected.
Q: Will Domino Volt be available on IBM iSeries?
A: We are evaluating additional platform support beyond Windows and Linux.
Q: When will we be able to create custom views like in Domino?
A: Improving Domino Volt’s view capabilities is one of our priorities. You can expect to see improvement in this area in upcoming releases.
DOMINO VOLT LICENSING AND INSTALLATION
Q: Can I license Domino Volt for a subset of my users?
A: HCL Domino Volt is licensed via Domino CCB licensing which is per user licensing. Like mail, we believe Domino Volt is for everyone in your organization.
Q: What infrastructure and software is needed to use Domino Volt?
A: HCL Domino v11.0.1 and HCL Domino Volt running on Windows or Linux are all that is needed.
Disclaimer – HCL’s statements regarding its plans, directions, and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice at HCL’s sole discretion. Information regarding potential future products is intended to outline our general product direction and it should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision. The information mentioned regarding potential future products is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality. Information about potential future products may not be incorporated into any contract. The development, release, and timing of any future features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion. Performance is based on measurements and projections using standard HCL benchmarks in a controlled environment. The actual throughput or performance that any user will experience will vary depending upon many factors, including considerations such as the amount of multi programming in the user’s job stream, the I/O configuration, the storage configuration, and the workload processed. Therefore, no assurance can be given that an individual user will achieve results similar to those stated here.
I was wondering how do we handle the following use case in Volt
(a) I have a form that has some elements (for collecting some information from users)
(b) I have an element on the form that is actually e mail addresses of users from domino directory (or if thats an issue right now) in that case from some other domino nsf accessed via REST which resolves to e Mail address (domino or non domino)
(c) Once I deploy the volt app… the form goes to all the users in that email field
(d) Users are able to respond exactly once
(e) It would be great if a frequency could be set wherein the form goes to the same users every week on monday or say 1st of every month
Is it possible to build something like this in Volt. I have dabbled a bit with the volt but could not figure out how this works out. My apologies for this short cut method to know the stuff without exploring volt in details….
Hi Rajneesh – I like the use case. It sounds like a good approach to automating a month project update process.
The next release will make this easier to do. We will be adding new service capability that will let you easily retrieve email names from Domino. This will help you build your distribution list. Another feature we are adding is dynamic role assignment. This will let you dynamically assign those that you retrieve to a role which you can use to specify who to send an email notification to with a link to the form for response. You can add logic control that they only reply once.
The piece which is missing is to have this set to a schedule so in you example – the 1st of every month. This type of scheduled workflow is something that we are looking at for a future release.