What Is HCL Nomad Web? Notes Apps in Your Browser, No Client Install
Somewhere in your organization is a user who opens one Notes application twice a week. To get them there, someone installed the HCL Notes client on their machine and keeps it updated.
HCL Nomad Web is the way out of that. It runs your existing Notes applications inside a desktop web browser: same apps, same data, same HCL Domino back end, nothing installed on the endpoint.
And it isn't a stripped-down web view. The Notes runtime itself runs in the browser, and it works offline.
Here's what it is, where it runs, what it needs behind it, and the two things people most often get wrong about Nomad Web.
It's Notes runtime, not a web page.
Nomad Web is the Notes runtime compiled to WebAssembly. HCL delivers it to the browser over HTTPS, and it executes locally in the browser's own JavaScript engine. Nothing is rendered on a server and streamed to you.
It still speaks Domino's native protocol, NRPC. A WebAssembly container can only use secure WebSockets. So Nomad Web wraps NRPC inside them and sends it to a Nomad server on port 443 by default. The Nomad server unwraps it and passes ordinary NRPC to Domino on port 1352.
Because Domino sees NRPC either way, clustering and failover behave exactly as they do for any other Notes client. There's nothing special to design for.
It also installs like an app because Nomad Web is a Progressive Web App (PWA). It can get its own operating-system icon and run independently of connectivity, though those features vary by browser. If you hear "browser" and picture a tab, picture an app icon instead.
Not the web access you remember.
Browser access to Domino isn't new. For example, iNotes was built around mail. Getting custom Notes applications into a browser usually meant rework.
Nomad Web takes the opposite approach. It targets the application portfolio you already have, unchanged. Same apps, no rewrite.
Where it runs, and where it doesn't.
This is the most misstated fact about Nomad Web, so let's be precise.
Nomad Web needs:
A supported 64-bit desktop browser: Chrome, Edge, or Firefox.
Stable and extended-support channels including Chrome and Edge Extended Stable and Firefox ESR.
HCL supports only the current version of each, so every new browser release makes the previous one unsupported.
If you've read that it's Chrome-only, you found an old page. Edge and Firefox are on the supported list.
Why Safari is out.
Safari isn't supported and the reason is a browser security decision rather than an HCL gap.
Nomad is multi-threaded and browsers provide threads through a feature called SharedArrayBuffer. Safari disabled SharedArrayBuffer in January 2018 in response to Spectre and Meltdown. It has never been re-enabled.
Mobile browsers are out entirely. That includes mobile browsers sending a desktop User-Agent to look like something else.
Phones and tablets use a different client: the separate HCL Nomad app, from the app stores for iOS, iPadOS, and Android. That's its own story.
It needs a server side, just not necessarily another box.
Here's the other common misconception: Nomad Web needs nothing but a browser.
It needs a server-side Nomad component. That's either a Nomad server on Domino or HCL SafeLinx configured as a Nomad server. There is no configuration where the browser talks to Domino directly. Something has to terminate those secure WebSockets and speak NRPC onward.
A Nomad server on Domino means no separate box. That isn't the same as nothing to run.
The requirements for Nomad Web are as follows:
Nomad server on Domino: Domino 12.0.2 or higher, or 14.0.0 FP2 or higher when Domino's HTTP server is your OpenID Connect (OIDC) provider.
SafeLinx: 1.2.0 FP1 or higher, 1.2.1 or higher for Nomad Federated Login, and 1.3.0 or higher recommended.
A Domino 12.x or 14.x ID vault holding the IDs of everyone who will work through Nomad Web.
The servers holding your applications: Domino 9.0.1, 10.x, 11.x, 12.x, or 14.x.
Keep in mind that HCL is discontinuing support for any Domino version earlier than 12. For further details, we do have a separate article dedicated to this topic (see below).
Sign-in happens in two layers.
"Does it do single sign-on?" deserves a careful answer, because authentication happens at two levels.
The Notes connection authenticates the way Notes always has, with the user's Notes ID password. Separately, the web layer can add Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) or multi-factor authentication. That comes from an optional proxy in front of Nomad server on Domino, or from SafeLinx authentication profiles.
What actually removes the Notes ID password prompt is Nomad Federated Login. It authenticates against a SAML identity provider and needs SafeLinx 1.2.1 or higher.
Who's entitled to it?
HCL's requirements page says only Domino Complete Collaboration (CCB) customers may use Nomad Web. The license documents are broader: Domino Messaging Express and Volt MX Go also list it as an authorized component. Check what your edition authorizes before you plan a rollout around it.
Yes, it works offline.
This is the fact most likely to surprise anyone who assumes "browser" means "online only."
Users create local replicas through Make Available Offline and keep working in them when the connection drops. Once Nomad Web is set up, they can even start it while already offline. When it does require a connection is during first-time setup and starting again after clearing browser data.
Mail can be sent offline too, through a local mail.box. That said, HCL itself recommends HCL Verse for day-to-day mail, calendar, and contacts. Nomad Web's real job is your applications, not mail.
The honest caveat: browser storage is browser storage.
The offline capability is real. The durability is different.
Nomad Web has no access to the operating system's file system. Its local data lives in browser site storage, in the sandboxed Origin Private File System. Clear the browser's storage and those local replicas go with it.
Browsers also evict large site storage on their own. So when a user creates a local replica, Nomad Web asks for Persistent Storage permission to stop that happening.
Two more details worth knowing. Nomad Web can't run in a Firefox Private window at all. In Chrome or Edge Incognito it runs, but its data is deleted when the tab closes.
None of that makes it fragile. It just isn't a Notes replica sitting on a disk, and users who live in large local replicas should know the difference.
Who it's for?
For anyone who needs Notes applications but not the Notes client, Nomad Web is the lowest-friction way to hand those applications over. No install, no client version to chase, same apps.
Which of your users fit that description and which genuinely need the desktop client, is a routing question.
The part you don't have to run.
The piece most organizations don't want to own is the server component. On Prominic-hosted Domino, you don't.
Prominic operates the required Nomad server component as part of managed Domino hosting. You don't stand it up, and you don't maintain it.
Prominic-hosted Domino supports Nomad Web alongside the Notes client as an access surface. So, you can try it against your own applications, in your own environment, before deciding who moves.
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