When completed, reports are then placed in the folders you created when running the Documentor. There are then five formats in which the data is available. It presents full and short documentation in Microsoft Word as well as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). The HTML feature was a nice touch for the enterprises that don't run Microsoft Word or have an outdated version. There's also a .CSV (Comma Separated Value) output that you can open in numerous applications.

The reports contain some graphical symbols and icons to help point out and highlight certain areas of interest. An added bonus found in the HTML output reports (as shown in Figure B) is Visio diagrams of Domino connections, replication topologies, and mail routing connections. Of course you need Visio installed to view these, but it's a nice touch.

FIGURE B


Visio diagrams are a nice bonus. Roll over picture for a larger image.

I found that Ecora went into great detail to generate these reports. There's actually more information than most administrators would want to see. There's enough information to keep those who are in large environments requesting the reports busy for days.

I did find it cumbersome to connect to multiple domains or sites when utilizing numerous location documents. You have to close Documentor, switch to the necessary location in Notes, and then re-launch Documentor for it to see the new location.

Some companies may find that with a little development effort they can extract the necessary information on their own, or they might end up spending more time deleting extra information that's not necessary to them. About 20% of the pages from the report I ran I could have done without. Instead of Ecora showing the same tip or idea over and over under subsections, they could show it once and streamline the size of the reporting. The test report on a small single server gave a 38-page report in the long Word format.

A wish list for Ecora would be a progress bar to let you know how far along it is. The documentation for the product even states it may take a couple minutes or several hours. I was a little anxious when running the last test on a larger site because it was taking so long, but the product was stable each time it ran and finally completed some time later.

Ecora lists the pricing for Documentor for Lotus Domino starting at $295 per server up to nine servers and has a sliding scale from there. The documentation that's generated covers the cost of the product itself, when compared to the hours it would take a person to manually do this. Ecora will let you run a report one time against one server for free in their demo, which is a great way to test, as well as to get those nasty managers to stop bugging you about some documentation.

Chris Miller is a PCLP (Principal Certified Lotus Professional) in R4 and R5 and the Director of Domino Technologies for Connectria in St Louis, MO. You can email him at cmiller@connectria.com.