Mail "slide in a summary" pop-up feature in Lotus Notes 8.5.3 - was this ever tested at IBM?


Several times I have wondered, does IBM really have a team of testers in connection with Lotus Notes development?

..or are things just tested á la "this seems to work OK, ..next" ?



I have come to the conclusion the later is sometimes the case.
If you have used the new "slide in a summary" pop-up feature in Lotus Notes 8.5.3, which shows a window when new mails have arrived, you may know what I mean



By analyzing the behavior of the pop-up it seems to pop-up when a new mail has arrived to the database, however the content of the pop-up is another story .
The content seems if based on a combination of a random selection of unread documents from the inbox, mostly new ones and are often the same mails repeated.

The junior developer, who coded this ...send a few mails to himself, saw a pop-up window, smiled and said "this seems to be working all right.. "

NO, it does not work all right !

Testing is not about simulating a simple "normal" scenario only, It is about getting out in abnormal weird scenarios too.

Hints to IBM:
  • Mail rules may actually move a document to a folder, so it is actually never shown in the Inbox? OK?
It is not uncommon to use mail rules, the pop-up window was clearly NOT tested with a combination of mail rules.
  • Only show me the "new" mails in the pop-up list ONCE!, my users are freaking out and are really annoyed, ..ONCE !
Was this feature tested on real users?
Clearly not, users like subtle, discrete hints of a new mail has arrived ....ONCE!

The principles are actually rather simple:
  • Compare date/time when the pop-up was last run with creation date for documents from a date/time sorted list of all documents (not only inbox) in the mail database
  • Show only incoming mails and unread


  • Posted on 04/13/2012 11:39:28 AM CEDT