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 ...

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

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...

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...

Our presentation for CollabSphere 2022. Learn how to quickly add workflow automation into Notes/Nomad applications using No-code tools that can utilize cloud-based services.

The iPhora Journey - Part I  - Reimagining Domino We have been working with Notes and Domino since 1995, back when it was still called Lotus Notes. The name "Domino" did not come into the picture until a few years later when the Notes server was renamed. Our company, ReCor, provided computer-based training Notes and Domino, and our course offerings included training for application development, administration, and end-users. After the early 2000's, demand for new installations of Notes and Domino began to decline, along with the demand for training.  At this point we decided to start a new company, one that focused on IT Support and application development, but with an emphasis on Domino. This is how Phora Group began. Our initial problem was that all of our customer contacts were for training, and while the ReCor customer base was extensive and included many very large companies, those customers were already supported by either internal staff, IBM, or IBM Business Partne...