Lotus Traveler is IBM’s own mobility solution for the Lotus Domino mail platform, enabling bi-directional ‘push’-based synchronisation of mail and PIM folders (calendar, address book, to do’s and journal entries) with Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 devices.

Traveler 8.1 was released alongside Domino 8.0.1 and provided support for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 client devices. The release of version 8.5 extends this support to the Symbian Series 60 platform (including the Nokia E and N series range of handsets) and adds additional functionality in the area of device management.
I wrote an article on the Traveler 8.1 product here: http://blog.brightpointuk.co.uk/lotus-traveler-81

In this article I shall look at the principle features available in this new release. In-depth information can be found on the IBM web site here:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/index.jsp

System Requirements

Traveler 8.5 can only be installed on a server running version 8.5 of the Domino software.
User mailboxes themselves can be stored on a Domino server running version 7.0.2 or later.
Domino 8.5 is only supported on Windows Server 2003 32 or 64-bit.
From a licensing perspective, All Louts Notes users are automatically enabled for Traveler service, they simply need to download and install the client from the Domino server, I will look at this procedure in more detail later.

New Features

• Support for Symbian S60
  
• Device Policy enforcement for Windows Mobile
  • Require a power-on password
  • Require password to be a specific strength
  • Allow users x number of attempts to enter password correctly
  • Require that devices undergo a hard reset should allowed password attempts be exceeded
  • Require that data on external storage cards be encrypted
• Remote device wipe
• Rich text support for emails
• Support for mail encryption and mail signing

Client Installation

As with Traveler 8.1, users can download the Traveler 8.5 client directly from the web browser on their device by browsing to the address of the Domino server. This does require that the server be accessible from the Internet and have HTTP port 80 allowed through to it, but then the server needs to be Internet-facing in any case for client connectivity. A port other than HTTP can be specified if desired.
The web site can be customised to include any other additional software that may be required by users, including VPN client software.
The client installer package reads its configuration from an XML-based ‘bootstrap’ file which allows the administrator to pre-populate the client with required settings including the server address and port number among other variables.

Known limitations

A full list of limitations can be found on the IBM web site. The greatest hits to be aware of are as follows:

Windows Mobile

• Mails deleted on the client do not appear in the deleted items folder on the client.
• Cancelling a draft message will cause all previously saved draft messages to be removed from both the client and the server.
• Messages moved to subfolders of mail folders on the client are not synchronised to the Domino server.
• SIM contacts are not synchronised.
• ROOM and RESOURCE fields in calendar entries are not synchronised.

Symbian Series 60

• S60 3.0 devices do not support subfolders of mail folders. Only 3.1 and 3.2 devices provide support for subfolders.
• SIM contacts are not synchronised.
• ROOM and RESOURCE fields in calendar entries are not synchronised.