HCL Digital Week – Day 3 – Wednesday and the first day of the HCL Factory Tour. But what can we expect from today’s sessions after the really great announcements from the last 2 days ?

Well, in the keynote – held by Richard Jefts and Chris Healey- we could see how HCL re-engineered their development guidelines for a successful future. And the steps HCL did are very straight forward.

During this Opening Session we could see the 4 most important parts of “Establishing the new culture” for a great performance developing new solutions.

During explaining the single steps Richard mentioned the HCL Client Advocacy Program. HCL is inviting all customers to participate in this program – you only can win !! It´s free and you can create strategic relationship with multiple teams of HCL where your requests are heared.

In the next session Martin Lechleider presented the possibilities with HCL Domino Volt – really impressive what you can do with this Low-Code solution.

Afterwards the sessions splitted and I decided to participate in the session of Barry Rosen where the Roadmap of HCL Domino, HCL Designer and also HCL Notes V12 have been presented. And there are a lot of enhancements planned for the future – I’ll only mention some of them:

• Improved security ( Usage of Let´s Encrypt, 2FA for Web applications )
• A simple backup client for Domino databases included
• Improvements for running HCL Domino in a Docker container
• Enhancements for administering HCL Domino Volt
• Sync of AD passwords into the ID Vault
• “Alternate From” > selection of the mail address used for sending mails
  ‘
  So there are a lot of really helpful and long requested features !

The next session I attended was the Roadmap for the newly announced HCL Volt MX – the new Development Platform. The most important statement was in the very beginning of this session:

“Select the tool you need to use“

This means that you should not mix up HCL Volt MX with HCL Domino Volt because of the completely different approaches:

Based on the current Roadmap for HCL Domino Volt we can expect very great enhancements for this very new Development Platform.

Next overview was given by Martin Lechleider regarding the ongoing development of HCL Domino Volt. Also this very young Low-Code tool is going to receive a lot of enhancements like

• Corporate Themes
• Name picker element
• Application history
• Mapping of internet mail address to roles and notifications
• …

The roadmap is announcing a new release containing the above mentioned extensions in December 2020 and the next one including “View Pages”, “Data Grid” and enhancements in the possibilities for Navigation in March 2021.

Simultaneously with Domino V12 there will be additional add-ons for managing workflows inside HCL Domino Volt with all required parts you need like

• Graphical Workflow Design
• Reminder and due dates
• Views for “My requests” and “Requests I need to approve”
• Approval log
• …

If you want to try HCL Domino Volt feel free and register for your free account: https://www.hcltechsw.com/domino/try-domino

The last session I attented today was the Innovation Cafe for “TOTP 2FA & other Early Access features” hosted by Thomas Hampel.

The great enhancement of the HCL Domino Early Access Program is that all customers with a valid license are valid to participate and can test the new product features. The so called “Code Drops” are deliverd via FlexNet in intervals from 4 to 6 weeks. By now all Code Drops are Docker Containers.

Of course there will be a traditional beta program ( which will start soon for HCL Domino V12 ). For a better understanding see the following image how the development is ongoing:

By now for Domino V12 the following features have been delivered in Code Drops:
> Automated Certificate Management with Let´s Encrypt
>> Free of Charge SSL/TLS certificates
>> No need to create or manage KYR files ( THANK YOU !! )
> 2 Factor Authentication via TOTP
>> The 2FA is included in the Domino code by default
>> Available for accessing Domino by browser ( VoP, apps, .. )
> Domino Directory Template
>> Auto-Population Groups with custom criteria
>> Display Internet Address in Mail-In-DB view
>> Find groups a person is member of

Have a look to the complete overview of the already deliverd and soon coming Code Drop in December 2020:

So be part of the Early Adopters and get all your informations here.

Due to the great and numerous news this is part 2 of my today´s recap starting with the World Premiere of

held by Richard and Andrew. But what is “HCL Volt MX” ??

HCL Volt MX is an Industry-leading low-code platform
for delivering apps across multiple digital touch points
( browsers, mobile phones, smartwatches, .. )
with one platform !

Also the goal of HCL and the planned roadmap of HCL Volt MX has been clearly commented by Richard:

Jason showed what HCL Volt MX can be used for – you can see those slides on the Recap or on the official slides which will be published next week.

But take a look what makes HCL Volt MX so unique for future application development:

Especially the “Foundry” is important for connecting Backend Systems like SAP to your applications developed with HCL Volt MX.

HCL also is offering a free Trial of HCL Volt MX > just order yours here !


After this tremendous introduction of HCL Volt MX Rene Schimmer and Andrew Manby showed the Global Unveiling of HCL Connections 7 !

And it´s more than worth to switch over to this great release of one of the greatest Collaboration Solutions worldwide because of the following ( and of course more of them ) new features coming in HCL Connections 7:

• Easier and faster creation of Communities with the new wizard and with best-practices templates
• Integration in Microsoft Teams ( “Share to Microsoft Teams” )
  • Integration of Files, Wikis, News and Forums as own app
• Full integration of SharePoint Libraries for Round-Trip Editing
• Ability to export a Wiki as PDF without any overloaded informations

HCL Digital Week / Day 2 is offering additional great sessions ( Employee Experiences and the Digital Office and of course the Digital Happy Hour ) but due to private appointsments I was not able to attend those sessions.

So more from the HCL Digital Week 2020 tomorrow ! Just one statement as closure for today:

A very, very great applause to the complete
HCL Digital Solutions Team for sharing today´s informations, developing the future and
listening to your HCL Partners, HCL Ambassadors, Customers and the market !

After a very interesting Day 1 today we received other aspects about the upcoming releases and some brand new announcements. That´s the cause I’m splitting today´s recap in 2 parts.

But in the opening session with Richard Jefts and Wayne Kurtzman – IDC Research Director Social & Collaboration – very interesting informations about “Enabling the Future of Work” have been given. Especially the slide about the difficulties in communication and collaboration was very interesting:

But there have also been changes in the first half of 2020 which have been seen for the next 5 years ! Especially Covid-19 was accelerating this progress. Wayne Kurtzman also showed a slide which is expressing the most important fact about collaboration.

The benefits of collaboration solutions of course can save time ( and hopefully they do ) but there are more impacts:

And a very important information about Collaboration has been the closing information from Richard:

Collaboration technology is not just tech. It support company culture.

In the next session a very expected session about the official announcement of HCL Sametime Premium V11.5 took place. Luis and Ginni presented the new version of HCL Sametime including the ability for Video meetings.

But compared with other solutions you have the following benfits compared with other solutions:

• Your decision if on-premises or cloud-native
• Secured data
• No installation of plugins, clients, .. necessary, but possible
  • Desktop Apps for Windows and Mac
• …

Also the price comparison of HCL Sametime Premium is worth to think about it:

So great enhancements for HCL Sametime –
thanks to Ginni, Luis and the whole Dev Team !!