Real World Computing

I've been wanting to to talk about some of the big changes that have been occuring in our organisation in respect to Domino. I previously mentioned how Domino was recognised as a critical part of our business after having been pushed to one side for so long but the other thing that is quite interesting is that within the IT itself, it's undergoing something of a renaissance. You see, we've discovered that we can use Domino to do a lot of the tasks that Office 365 and Azure aren't so good at. We've also discovered that you don't have to be a great domino developer if you have AI by your side.  In this example, one of our departments wanted to be able to pull some reports of shared calendar bookings and attendance for the year in Office 365. You'd think that this would be something that Microsoft would have baked into their product but no, you have to do it all via PowerShell.  Since we have to write a program anyway (can't be encouraging our users to use ...

Image Generated by Imagen in Google Gemini HCL Domino's REST APIs unlock powerful integration capabilities, enabling data exchange with external systems and enhancing business workflows. However, exposing these APIs directly to the internet introduces significant security risks. To mitigate these risks, this blog post explores the concept of 'Defensive API Architecture.'  This approach involves implementing a multi-layered security strategy that isolates your core Domino environment, controls data access, and minimizes the impact of potential attacks. By adopting Defensive API Architecture, you can leverage the benefits of Domino's REST APIs while maintaining the integrity and security of your critical data." Domino REST APIs are Awesome! If you're not already using Domino's REST APIs then you're missing a treat. These APIs represent a major advancement in Domino, reflecting HCL's ongoing innovation. REST APIs in Domino allow you to do lots of thing...

I've been meaning to write this post for at least a year but these days I'm always too busy for blogging. Last year, we embarked on a project in which we wanted to regularly exchange data between Domino and a SQL server database on Azure.  We looked at several third party options before realizing that HCL Domino had what we needed built-in and out of the box - even better, HCL also had a "codeless" solution (Foundry) available to us to do the whole transfer.  This post will most likely be the first part of a series that covers the REST API and a bit of Foundry. I'm no expert on either but there's not a lot of information out there so anything is better than nothing.  Prepping the Environment Before embarking on our API journey, we upgraded our servers to Domino 12.0.2. It's something of a sore point with me that people think that it's fine to leave Domino on much older versions, for example, release 9. It isn't. Old versions of any software have se...

It's been a long while since I've posted on this blog. It's not because there's no domino news. There is heaps of domino news and it's been coming in leaps and bounds. If anything, the lack of posts indicates that life has gotten busier than ever.  Over the weekend, there was a question on Domino on Facebook which I felt needed answering - have I mentioned Domino on Facebook before?  Try some of these groups: HCL Notes Domino Administrators HCL Notes Domino Developers HCL Notes Domino Etc Enthusiasts I'm sure there are plenty of others. Anyway, the question was on exchanging Domino data and I mentioned the REST API. My original intention was to cover it in this post but I've decided to use this post to catch you all up on where we are with Domino first.  Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay Domino Not Notes We don't generally talk about Notes at work. We try not to create new Notes accounts but we still have to because we have one key (wide...

Lotus Notes is old software and I should know, I've been using it for 30 years. It's so old that it pre-dates the internet and it's considered to be one of the first popular "email" platforms. It's still widely in use today but many users simply don't want to talk about it. A Quick Apology I want to begin with a quick apology for the inflammatory title and the use of the word "Lotus". After all, we don't call PowerPoint "Forethought Presenter" anymore do we? There's a very specific audience that I'm talking to with this post and if you're not calling it HCL Domino, then that's you.  Wormhole Image generated by Stable Diffusion AI Are you still on the platform? A lot of people who believe that they migrated off the Notes/Domino platform many years ago are still using the software. It's so capable that it's hard to replace. It's quite often still running major operations from dusty unloved servers in back r...

I don't generally use Macs but other people do. There's a macOS upgrade (Monterey 12.6) in the works and you might find that it's already installed on your system - or that it installs automatically at the next available opportunity. Turns out that this upgrade scuttles Notes 12 (and apparently older versions) in spectacular fashion.  As usual, the good folks at HCL are already on this and have a fix ready.  Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay Fixing the Problem I'm not quite sure when the fix packs are cumulative vs incremental. From memory, the fix packs are cumulative and the interim fixes are not. (please correct me if I'm wrong).  In any case, go to HCL's download site to get them.  In our case, the affected user was running Notes 12.0.0 for Mac so I needed to download 12.0.1 then Fix Pack 1 and then the two interim fixes.  Since Notes was already installed, Installation is pretty quick and there's no post-install configuration to do.  Install Notes...

Yesterday, I posted about attending a Domino Jam for the first time in six years and my feelings on how HCL has turned the product around. Today I want to touch on the security aspect discussed at the Jam and add my thoughts to the mix.  Secure by Design Immediately following the roadmap presentation, the jam looked at Domino's legacy and where it is today. One of the key takeaways from this was a discussion of the incredible security in Domino. We have seen this in our organization but it was nice to hear HCL and other organizations (via quotes and stories) saying the same thing. There are many good reasons for the high security score but two of the best are  Multi-layered security from the very beginning of the product. Domino being "on-prem" rather than web hosted.  There were a couple of interesting stories and observations, including one about a penetration test on one of the new tools (Volt) where the auditors talked about the many layers of security in the Domino ...

 If you'd told me back in 2018 that I'd be attending a Domino Jam in 2022, I wouldn't have believed you - and yet, that's exactly what happened.  Even more incredibly, I left the jam feeling reinvigorated and excited for the future of this 30+ year old system. I've talked before about how our departure from the platform was fueled by largely emotional reactions to the dated mail UI and a resistance to change for new users unused to anything but Microsoft Outlook. We picked the low hanging fruit (mail migration to outlook) and we also tried converting a more complex system.  See:  New Year, New Directions (January 2017) Our Domino State of Play 2022 (February 2022) Far from abandonment, our strategy for moving to Azure demonstrated the versatility, reliability, security and ROI of domino and resulted in recognition of its value as a platform and an abrupt U-turn in our strategy.  Fresh out of the Sydney Domino Jam, I want to talk about some of the revelations f...

We've just emerged from a week of hell in which Azure and Microsoft have completely lost my trust. It's raised a lot of questions about Azure and Marketplace and came very close to making front-page news.  There are obviously certain details that I can't talk about but I'll say this. The upper echelons at Microsoft were made fully aware of the damage they were causing and the impact that our five day outage was having on several very large players and also on hundreds of individuals. They were completely ineffectual and did nothing to resolve the solution.  Image by dexmac from Pixabay A Word About Billing I don't think I've talked about how bad Microsoft's billing systems are, so it's worth spending a little time here. I've dealt with billing from hundreds of companies over the years but nothing has ever approached the complete obscurity of their billing.  It's not just the big things that are obscure either. Even when you obtain a small pay-as...

I'm not a big fan of HTTPS. Don't get me wrong, I agree with all of the security and comfort that it provides. I just hate the whole renewal process. Domino 12 introduces a new way to do HTTPS and it's apparently much easier going forward.  That's great news. Unfortunately, we hit a couple of snags on the way in, and I wanted to warn everyone about them - especially since the workarounds are so simple.  Domino Needs to Generate the CSR You're probably thinking that that this is pretty obvious but if so, you're not thinking about wildcard certificates. We use a wildcard certificate *.mydomain.com.au - This allows us to use it across multiple systems, including Domino, Azure, some WordPress websites and a Drupal Website. We also use it in conjunction with several hosted services. The wildcard certificate allows us to use the same certificate on different subdomains. For example: www.mydomain.com.au domino.mydomain.com.au azure.mydomain.com.au othersite.mydomain.co...

It's been five years since a decision was made to kill Notes and Domino at our organisation. Like many other organisations, we left for the Azure shores of Microsoft. Several changes of leadership later and Domino is still at the heart of our organisation and we're moving towards tighter integration with it than ever.  It occurred to me that now is as good a time as any to reflect on how our journey went.  The Low Hanging Fruit The low hanging fruit of any domino migration is mail. Email is an easily identifiable application which can generally be swapped out one-for-one. In our case, Notes client (and the lesser used Verse web application) for Outlook and Outlook Web Application (OWA).  We investigated several applications before finding one that worked and converted all of our .NSF mail files into .PSTs, then we imported these into outlook. Along the way, we discovered that Verse didn't safeguard our older mail quite as well as we'd hoped and we discovered that folder...

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked if I could put together a projects dashboard in SharePoint. The projects team just wanted an easy way to list all of their projects in one place with lights indicating the status of major tracking points (Schedule, Budget and Scope).  They also wanted to be able to have links to their status report and project folder.  It seemed like a simple job to in SharePoint Lists -- and it was.  I thought it was good project to demonstrate the power and simplicity of SharePoint lists and how they can make everyday tasks easy without the need for additional software purchasing.  Everyone is a developer. While it's simple; the process is a little long-winded for a blog post, so instead I've created a slideshare.  Enjoy.  How to create a project dashboard using share point lists from Gavin Bollard

I'm a big fan of PowerPoint these days and I use it for a lot of great things, most of which aren't presentations. It's great for drawing small flowcharts, business diagrams and logos. It's also great for recording the screen. Here's a walk through of how to add an image into PowerPoint and then make the background of that image transparent. Get Your Images Go to Google , and do a search for something that sounds interesting. When the search results appear, click on Images . This will restrict the display to just images.  Choose an appropriate image (ideally one without too much background).  The image will appear on the right hand side. Check the size of the image to make sure that it's a good size. images below 700 wide x 500 high will probably not look very good on a large screen - and any images over 2000 wide 1500 might make your presentation a little large/slow.  Right mouse click on the image and choose Copy Image , then switch to PowerPoint and paste the...