Chris-Linfoot.net

This should look familiar. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of users wanting to use "Reply with History" not unnaturally pick "Reply with History" when presented with this choice and this includes any and all attachments that were sent with the original message.

This is undesirable for a number of reasons:

• It wastes bandwidth and storage
• It creates extra load on server side scanning (anti-virus, attachment policy enforcement)
• ... and probably others

There is the option to omit attachments ("Reply without Attachments(s)"), but its function is not clear (it does not mention history).

Here's how it should look:

Nothing has changed here save for the order in which the second and third choices are presented and the way they are described in the menu.

• "Reply without Attachments(s)" has been renamed "Reply with History" and is now second in the list.
• "Reply with History" has been renamed "Reply with History & Attachment(s)" and is now third.

This seems to be similar to the behaviour of most other email clients (including Outlook if I recall correctly).

Did I read somewhere (Mary Beth?) that IBM plans such a change in Notes 8 (Hannover, Hanover, Hangover, katzenjammer, whatever)?

I hope so.

Update: Volker suggests reply without nonsense. Brilliant. But is a nonsense filter really feasible?

Update 2: Just remembered another reason why replies with attachments are hazardous.

Category: Misc
Technorati: IBM Lotus Notes

1. Graham Tucker24/11/2006 09:53:15
Homepage: http://chairboyrules.blogspot.com/

Chris I quite agree, I tried to actually implement this when we upgrade our custom Mail template to Ver 6.5 and after 2 days was told to change it back, management didn't seem to get the argument about it saving space, but still wouldn't approve our new mail server because the others were getting full!!!

2. Jan-Piet Mens24/11/2006 10:06:25
Homepage: http://blog.fupps.com

I fully agree with you Chris; I've known Lotus Notes since 5.0 and I've always been amazed that a Reply includes attachments. 6.5 got better with the "without attachments", but the default still is "sub-optimal".

3. Nathan T. Freeman24/11/2006 15:01:38
Homepage: http://www.openntf.org/nathan/escape.nsf

Sounds like a good reason to switch to the OpenNTF mail experience template, where in the latest version, you can control this behavior via policies.

4. Stephan H. Wissel24/11/2006 17:11:43
Homepage: http://www.wissel.net/

Seems Joel has something to say about too much choices too: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

Btw. (as said in my comment on vowe): there is actually a use case for "Reply with history": It is very convenient when you intend to update the attachments that have been sent to you: "Joe, see my draft, please add your ideas".
Of course most of the time the feature is rather subject to an abuse case.
stw

5. Wolfgang Fischer24/11/2006 20:58:47

@Jan-Piet
Do you know what will happen if the reply wouldn't include attachments? The management would be very upset and you will be well know over the complete company.

And don't try to talk about server & diskspace .... it' nowasdays so cheap ...everyone knows the streetprice of a huge hdd, but no one the price tag of notes server storage in a clustered environment operated 7 days 24 hours.

I believe that you'll need a chooseable OneClick reply Option and the other option within the sub buttons. maybe sortable by the user, because we trained them for example to not use the reply all & think twice if you really need this "I throw all of my desk to you" email reply.

6. Jan-Piet Mens27/11/2006 08:01:16
Homepage: http://blog.fupps.com

@Wolfgang, you are probably right: never change something that people have got used to The functionality in Notes was broken from the word go. I still think it ought to be fixed once and for all.

Unable to post a comment? Please read this for a possible explanation...