Landscape Structures Inc. (LSI) of Delano, a manufacturer of playground equipment for schools, parks and daycare centers, broke an administrative logjam when it upgraded to Lotus Domino 4.5 last spring. Using an older version of Notes on a conventional LAN, the company's 250 employees could readily share thousands of documents, but found it easier to print out paper that all too easily went astray.

"The problem was primarily a workflow issue, of getting paper from one place to another," says Michael Mullin, the firm's manager of information technology. "People wouldn't act on it in a timely manner; the paper would get lost in the process."

Domino 4.5, the first Lotus product to integrate Web technology, eliminates the paper. Design proposals, engineering change orders, vacation requests and other documents are e-mailed automatically to the right people, "signed" on-screen and forwarded promptly for further action. Three Domino servers support both native Notes clients and Unix workstations running Netscape Navigator.

This paperless network was slated to expand beyond the company's walls early in 1998, encompassing independent sales agents and customers. Sales reps will be able to submit quote requests and order replacement parts by logging onto the intranet, keying in user IDs and passwords to enter secure areas. An "extranet" scheduled for a summer rollout will allow customers to check on the status of their order by navigating to a private domain of LSI's public web site HTTP://www.playlsi.com.

A set of built-in development tools called Domino Connect, fluent in both proprietary Lotus Script and JavaScript, will simplify the process of creating dynamic web pages and tailoring forms to facilitate smooth communication and workflow. "We will be building applications in conjunction with the Web," Mullin says. "There isn't anything out there exciting right now, but there will be in the future, and Lotus Notes and Domino will be the platform that we use." Other Minnesota companies that have invested in Web-adapted groupware include Netlink International Inc. of St. Paul, Pillsbury Co. and Medtronic Inc. While many firms build their intranets around a single product like Groupwise or Lotus Domino, others such as HealthSystem Minnesota cherry pick from several vendors, seeking to achieve the best of all possible networks.