Release includes improved collaboration, messaging, and support for Apple mobile devices. 

IBM announced this week that it will release Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.2 for electronic download on August 24, with release of various language editions and related modules later in October. The new release delivers features and enhancements for both end users and developers, the company said.

At a glance, the release provides benefits for users through enhancements to Lotus Notes, Lotus iNotes, and Lotus Notes Traveler, and benefits developers through enhancements to Domino Designer. A short list of upgrades includes the following:

• Allows Lotus Notes to take advantage of improved instant messaging and unified telephony services provided by Lotus Sametime.
• Contains usability and productivity enhancements to the Lotus iNotes mail and calendaring experience.
• Supports the Apple iPad and new features of the iPhone with Lotus Notes Traveler.
• Has new XPage features and extensibility APIs, as well as Lotus Domino Designer enhancements, to provide developers with additional capabilities

Notes and Domino 8.5.2 delivers powerful new features to enhance a messaging and collaboration infrastructure, the company says. The Notes client improves real-time communication by taking advantage of the latest instant messaging and unified telephony services provided by Lotus Sametime 8.5.1. Improved integration with IBM Lotus Quickr means users can more easily store files in Quickr. The Notes client also complies with 2009 Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) requirements. 

Lotus iNotes delivers productivity gains with improved performance when creating mail messages, and the ability to create Lotus Sametime meetings from within calendar invitations, the company said. iNotes Ultra-light adds Android support for Nexus One and support for Apple iPhone 4.0. 

Mobile users will get more device options with the addition of Apple iPad support for Lotus Notes Traveler and added operating system support for Apple iOS 4, Windows Mobile 6.5, and the Lotus Notes Traveler server for Linux. Additional Traveler enhancements improve security support of HTTPS for push notifications and Apple iPhone and iPad security policy enforcement. 

Lotus Domino and Domino Designer 8.5.2 continue to deliver innovations for developers, says IBM. XPages ships the CKEditor for enhanced rich text editing on the Web including in-line images and tables. XPage and Domino Designer extensibility APIs allow developers to add new XPage controls to simplify development and increase the functionality of the collaborative applications they build. Developers can also take advantage of Domino in the cloud through developer and test images on Amazon Web Services. 

Specific updates to Lotus Notes include the following: 

• Improved communication using Lotus Sametime unified telephony services
• Improved instant messaging services using Lotus Sametime
• Compliance with 2009 Federal Desktop Core Configuration requirements
• Improved integration with Lotus Quickr for attachments
• Ability to save email messages to a file
• Additional preference settings for mail and contacts

Updates to Lotus iNotes include the following:

• Improved performance when creating mail messages
• Bi-directional text (BiDi) support for Ultra-light mode
• Ultra-light Android support for Nexus One
• Ultra-light Android support for Apple iPhone 4.0
• Ability to mark message as confidential in Full mode
• Ability to disable new actions in Full mode, when mail file size has exceeded its quota
• Sametime 8.5 meeting room integration to calendar invite

Updates to Lotus Notes Traveler include the following:

• Apple iPad support
• Invitation support for ActiveSync with Apple iPhone, Apple iPhone 3G, Apple iPod Touch
• Apple iPhone security policy enforcement
• HTTPS for push notifications
• Corporate name lookup for Windows Mobile and Nokia clients
• Scheduled sync

• Usability improvements for working sets and XPages
• Enhanced WYSIWYG XPage Editor
• Launch Composite Editor from Designer
• XPage performance improvements
• CKEditor for XPages
• XPages and Designer extensibility APIs
• DXL (Domino XML Language)—improved design element fidelity when exporting and importing.
• IBM JVM V1.6
• Dojo 1.4.1
• Notes UI APIs now support view design elements.

Updates to Lotus Enterprise Integrator include the following:

• 64-bit support for ODBC data sources
• 64-bit support for the file and text connector
• Support for Microsoft® SQL Server 2008
• Support for IBM DB2 9.7

Updates to Lotus Domino include the following:

• FIPS support for AIX
• Domino Configuration Tuner (DCT) rules enhancement
• E-mail interoperability enhancements
• ID vault API extension