Domino Interface

I was very honored to have been chosen to speak at Engage 2026 this year.  Thanks Kris and Tom. I had many trials and tribulations preparing for this presentation. The whole demo hinged on many factors and required me to bring my demo setup to Ghent which included having a HCL Domino 12.02 server running on Docker on an old Lenovo mini-PC that I had lying around and connecting it to a Mac Mini 4 that was running an LLM. I got it work just one day before I had to fly to Brussels. Talking about cutting it close. I had to work on the presentation during the flight to Brussels which I completed the day before my session. I had all the equipment in my carry-on luggage so it would be safe. To my horror, I was required to check-in my luggage at the gate. Given how luggage is handled, I was expecting that all my hard work would be for not. But after getting to my hotel, I was relieved to see that everything was still working. I learned a lot and had fun making this demo that includes a sim...

Next week I will be presenting the  Breaking the Monolith: Architecting Microapps on HCL Domino  session at Engage 2026 on April 21th. Microapps are becoming more and more prevalent since the introduction of phone apps.  Now with vibe coding many are creating microapps. They are great for personal productivity, but not so for businesses. Businesses require microapps to be secure and communicate with their other systems. So vibe coding an entire app can be problematic.  In this presentation, I will be combining a mix of vibe coding, no coding, AI and the event bus architecture that was presented last year at the October 2025 openNTF webinar to create a secure microapp architecture on HCL Domino.  Hope to see you there next week.  Abstract While HCL Domino has traditionally been the home of monolithic applications, the modern landscape of low-code, no-code, and AI demands a more modular approach. Monoliths offer simplicity at the start but often result in ...

With all the discussions about AI, automation and what it can do, there seems to be confusion about what is workflow? This has come up a number of times in our discussions with customers. IBM defines it as: "A workflow is a system for managing repetitive processes and tasks which occur in a particular order. They are the mechanism by which people and enterprises accomplish their work, whether manufacturing a product, providing a service, processing information or any other value-generating activity." Basically it is: Automation + Human Element = Workflow AI can assist in improving the effectiveness, but it is the human element that determines whether the workflow best reflects the needs of a business. Here is a brief fun video about workflow in ancient Rome from my colleague Rob Burton.

Join me for the October 2025 OpenNTF Webinar. I will be presenting " Creating a Service Oriented Architecture Platform with Domino." This webinar  will take place on October 16th at 10:00 AM CDT. Abstract Service-oriented architecture (SOA) uses software components called services to create business applications. In many cases, SOA platforms are distributed and utilize message queue or service bus to transfer data and requests between servers that handle different services. This approach allows one to scale up the platform when needed. The architecture of HCL Domino unfortunately was design before the concept of SOA and does not include message queue or service bus within its architecture. Or does it?  In this session, Richard Moy will present how you can utilize what Domino already has and create your own SOA architecture based on Domino. We will also discuss why Domino provides some key advantages over other technologies. To register for this webinar, go to  https://att...

We are pleased to announce that the latest release of iPhora Automate, our no-code user-driven automation platform. This release (2025091002) brings a new iPhora user experience with significant improvements in capabilities and features, along with faster performance. It also provides business users and other citizen developers with more capabilities for designing and automating their processes. Unlike other solutions, iPhora Automate is built from the ground up as a scalable business automation platform.  iPhora Automate applies a layered approach to process automation. For solutions that need the support of application developers, iPhora Automate provides new enhancements to the PhoraScript language and improvements in creating custom web service connectors. There are now more extension points in the architecture, which allow application developers to utilize PhoraScript in forms, ActionStreams and processes to bet...

Many components make up a Web application some of which includes CSS and JavaScript. Both CSS and JavaScript has rapidly evolved over the many years that Domino has been used as a Web Application Server.  Unfortunately, the editors in Domino Designer has not evolved and you can not add and edit JavaScript ES6 code for example. The new Domino 14.5 I have been told allows one to edit ES6 JavaScript as a file resource, but not as a JavaScript script library file. One of the most popular tools for editing CSS and JavaScript is Microsoft VS Code. There are some many extensions that you can download and work with many different programming languages.  One very nice thing about Microsoft VS Code is that it is free and most developers are familiar with VS Code. In addition, it is much nicer of an editor than what is available in the Domino Designer.  There was discussions about VS Code integration with Domino at one of the past CollabSphere a few years ago.  Unfortunately, t...

Building a Web application on HCL Domino can be challenging because there are so many ways of creating a Web application. There is just no design pattern to follow or best practices.  This is good for us who like to experiment, but bad for developers who just want to follow an official approach.  You can use XPages, classic Domino Web with Pages, computing fields and computed text with formula language or you can create apps using REST APIs with LotusScript, Java , DAS (please no) , view read entries or even DRAPI as Paul Withers has demonstrated on his blog,  https://paulswithers.github.io/blog/2024/08/15/xpages-web-1/ However, there is little talked about a very old technique that dates back to the beginnings when Domino became web enabled.  As part of my data visualization session demo at Engage 2025, I used this technique to generate the web pages and dashboards.   This technique allows you to separate the form, data and business logic and creates a sta...

Thank you everyone for attending my Engage 2025 session, Visualizing your Domino Data using Open Source Tools. Though I was up against some formidable sessions, I was surprised to have close to 30 attendees in my session. As promised, here is the PowerPoint presentation and sample databases and code. I would like to thank Kris and Tom for an incredible event and for selecting my session for this year's event. They did a wonderful job in continuing the tradition of making Engage a premium event.   After Engage 2025, I spent a day visiting different sites in The Hague.  The walk to the beach was a bit longer than I was told!  https://phoragroup.com/files/Visualize_Your_Domino_Data_with_Open_Source_Tools.pdf https://phoragroup.com/files/engagedemo.zip

When building a web application, optimizing the loading process is important. Previously, we used Uglify-ES and recently Terser to minify individual JavaScript files to help reduce the packages and load time. With the next release of iPhora Automatic coming very soon, we wanted to significantly reduce the loading time needed and the number of HTTP requests handled by the Domino server. Our struggles for the past few weeks have been figuring out the right JavaScript bundler that works with our Dojo Toolkit-based framework. So why are we still using Dojo Toolkit you might first ask? Many have moved away from Dojo Toolkit, the granddaddy of JavaScript frameworks. Dojo provides us the core widget inheritance framework that is not just used for creating widgets like fields and combo boxes, but is used for building the many different app layers of iPhora not just statically but dynamically in real-time. It allows us to have a secure and fast SPA (single page application) architecture. We d...

If you are attending Engage 2025 and would like to learn more about how to visualize your Domino data, come join my session.   Wednesday, May 21 | 14:30 - 15:15 | 1.4 Breakout 2    De09. Visualize Your Domino Data with Open Source Tools As they say, a picture is a worth a thousand words. In the current data driven environment, having the ability to quickly visualize your Domino data is important. It allows you to discover hidden data patterns and trends that may impact important business decisions. There are a number of open-source visualization tools that one can use to create charts, graphs and plots. In this session, Richard will discuss the different tools that are available and their advantages and disadvantages. Richard will show how to utilize these open-source visualization tools to help you effective visualize your Domino data. To learn more and register for Engage 2025 go to https://engage.ug  Hope to see you there.

As I mentioned in the previous blog post, the use of spreadsheets is the largest and number one method used to create situational apps.  In part 2 of this blog series, we will do a comparison between using spreadsheets versus no-code/low-code tools to create situational apps. Click on the link below to continue reading about this comparison. https://iphora.io/iphora.nsf/blogentry?open=VQ34NT01

As the name implies, situational apps are on-demand apps that are created in response to a specific business situation (or need) that may arise infrequently. In general, the productivity gains attributed to a situational app are limited to only a few occasions a year and to few individuals. Therefore, most corporations are unlikely to devote significant resources to the development of such apps, and typical develop cycles may be so long that the situation itself will have expired before a professionally-developed app is ready. To continue reading more about how important situational apps are go to our iPhora blog at: https://iphora.io/iphora.nsf/blogentry?open=0F71X90S

We all think of online collaboration and business process automation as a modern concept that is only possible with the power of computers and the internet. My partner Robert Burton whom is somewhat of a history buff has an interesting history of business process collaboration that may surprise you. So, for some light and interesting reading open our latest blog post.  https://iphora.io/iphora.nsf/blogentry?open=ZXLW53VT

Now that you have downloaded and installed iPhora Automate - Basic onto your HCL Domino server,  what's next. It is time to create your first workflow app using iPhora Automate - Basic. To help you create your first app, we have created a library of training videos covering the basics of iPhora Automate and how to create an app. Each video takes you through a step-by-step process in building, assembling and deploying an app in iPhora Automate.  Currently, there are 45 videos in this library with dozens of new videos in production that covers both beginner and advanced topics. In addition to these tutorial, we have more training content coming soon that highlights the different types of apps you can create using iPhora Automate. To access these videos go to: https://iphora.io/iphora.nsf/courses And start accelerating your business through automation.

We are pleased to announce the release of iPhora Automate - Basic, the freemium edition of our Domino-based automation platform.  This limited edition allows you to create and deploy up to 10 workflow apps each can have unlimited flows for up to 10 workflow participants.  Unlike some public cloud-based solutions, your flows never expire. A valid HCL Domino license for the number of users is required.  We recommend that you install it on a HCL Domino server running 12.02 FP4 or higher for Windows, Linux or IBMi. Go to https://iphora.io to download your copy of iPhora Automate - Basic. Instructions for installing iPhora Automate - Basic can be found here: https://iphora.io/iphora.nsf/documents To learn how to create your own workflow apps go to the iPhora Learning content: https://iphora.io/iphora.nsf/courses

Welcome to the final post of "The iPhora Journey". Our goal as we started this journey was to take the HCL Domino platform that we loved for more than 25 years and redefining a web application running on Domino.  iPhora was created originally to allow us to provide a flexible platform for building secure web-based applications for our customers as part of our consulting services. However, it has now evolved into a platform that customers and partners can build their own solutions with the emphasis on user-driven workflow applications and process automation. As an integrated application platform, you can build web applications in a variety of different ways with HCL Domino. In designing iPhora, we looked at the architecture of other platforms, identified their key features and determine how it could be implemented within the capabilities and limitations of HCL Domino and utilized its flexible architecture to the fullest. We went through many iterations and versions always with...

This post was to be the final post of our "The iPhora Journey" series and summarize our entire journey and what we created.  However, as I was preparing the final post I realize there was one item that I hadn't discussed. That is the experience of purchasing a product and installing it onto a Domino server. So, Part 14 will be the final post of this series. Whether you are purchasing a product that you really want or paying bills online, purchasing services or products online has become the norm.  For a new product launch we wanted this easy-to-buy and deploy experience. Depending on the version of our product, different features are enabled. If a customer wants to upgrade the product to a more advanced version, the experience should be as easy as signing up for the upgrade, paying and the new features should available in the customer's installation. This is expected for most public cloud-based solutions. However, not so easy for private cloud/on-premises solutions. N...

Public vs Private In the digital automation market, which includes workflow and business process automation, there are literally dozens of no-code or low-code platforms available as public cloud solutions. They range from products like Zapier to Tray.io. In general, they all provide easy-to-use interfaces for assembling cloud services together in order to automate processes. Some are geared towards individual users and some towards enterprise businesses. However, aside from the ones intended for individuals or very small businesses, they may require some significant setup, configuration, and administration. Public cloud-based solutions have a number of advantages for process automation. You can sign up and get access to these services within minutes and have a new process up and running in a relatively short time. However, the majority of these solutions operate by routing your data (and the subsequent responses) through a series of different cloud services. Not only is your process de...

The world of data processing is far different than it was 10 years ago.  More and more of it is being done externally by highly specialized service providers. This enables companies to utilize the best available services -- without having to reinvent the wheel -- and incorporate those services into their core business processes. The resulting approach is also more agile, enabling companies to respond quickly to ever-changing business needs. You can think of your business users as your subject matter experts. They are the ones who have first hand, daily experience with your data and processes. In a perfect world, they are the people who would be designing your processes, and in today's environment, that means taking full advantage of external services. Your IT administrators are the gatekeepers. They are charged with protecting your business from threats and maintaining the security of your data. The last thing they want to see are your business users exposing the company's data...

In the last post, we discussed the use of flow-based programming for creating user interfaces. In this post, we introduce the ActionStream, which is the the foundational flow-based component in iPhora. A workflow process consists of series of nodes that are connected together. iPhora AppBuilder supports many different types of nodes, including task nodes, notification nodes, and branching nodes, as well as a wide range of action nodes. A sequence of actions that are connected together is referred to as a flow. During our 20+ years of experience in automating processes, we encountered many situations where the same repetitive flow occurred within different processes.  Therefore, it would be beneficial if it were possible to reuse the same flow in multiple processes and applications. This led directly to the development of the ActionStream, which is a reusable sequence of action nodes, in other words a reusable flow. Originally, ActionStreams were just a way to quickly implement cust...