I still wish for a widely-deployed replacement for Notes/Domino.

Sure, I can build CRUDish apps with Django, but there are simple use-cases that take me a week with Django, that would have been a day with Notes. It's crazy that things are slower for me 20 years later. I'm pretty sure I'm not dumber now.

Does Filemaker Pro solve that problem?

I have never used it, but it's no longer available as of last month:

http://www.filemaker.com/products/filemaker-pro/

"FileMaker Pro is no longer available. It has been replaced by FileMaker Pro Advanced which includes more features to help you develop and deploy custom apps faster and more efficiently."

IIRC, File Maker Pro Advanced is basically FileMaker Pro with additional features enabled. You would be able to use that in its place, but it might have a higher price tag.

What aspects of Lotus Notes seemed like a good idea? Genuine question. I remember being horrified by almost everything about Lotus Notes. Sametime was great, though.

I'll bite...

1 - Document Store (iirc, CouchDB was inspired by Notes/Domino)

2 - Replication - even past the 90s, it was one of the best tools for disconnected users

3 - Low barrier to application creation (it was about as easy as building something in Filemaker Pro)

4 - Easy publication of applications to the web (this was BEFORE 2000, so kind of a big deal back then)

5 - Administration of servers was pretty easy

6 - LotusScript (similar to vba) let you go much further than the prebuilt formula language (if you were willing to learn it)

Keep in mind, these benefits were available pre-2000, and in that time many were strong competitive advantages.

Replication was huge, we didn't even have an internet connection when I setup a application replicating between three suppliers and a bank.

Yeah, when I first started to use Notes, using modems over POTS lines to call HQ was still a thing, so that replication was a big deal.

Hell, I don't even think all laptops had ethernet ports back then either. In a lot of cases, you had to buy PCMCIA cards for that.

I realized how great Sametime was after I was forced to move to Skype for Business. The meeting functionality wasn't great but there were other great features. I sorely miss the button that allowed you to drag a rectangle on your screen and it would automatically send the resulting screen capture as a message. Not as an attachment that you had to open up, an actual image in the chat. Why can't skype figure that out!?