Real World Computing

I was originally hoping to produce a single list of all of my (so far) collected resources. Of course, the problem with that is that I have to review the sites to make sure that they're still relevant -- and provide at least some added value.   I've decided, that in the short term, I'll just point out some useful groups of sites. This is the first of a bunch of posts on the topic. This time, I'm covering LinkedIN.  LinkedIN If you're not a member of LinkedIN, it's well worth signing up (it's free anyway). LinkedIN has matured over the years and while people are usually still "too serious" on the site, It's no longer just a place for jobs.  There's some great technical discussions and articles that come up on there. LinkedIN isn't the best resource for connections but it's one of the easiest ones to engage. IBM Messaging & Collaboration Professionals https://www.linkedin.com/groups/37836 This group has 29,000 ...

One of the things that the company I work for (and most others) do on a regular basis is send meeting invites to people at other companies and on various other systems.  Notes meeting handling isn't perfect and we've had trouble with Blackberry and Google calendars in the past, but nothing like the trouble we've had this week. It seems that when we send a meeting invite out and one of our recipients cancels, they take over the meeting as chair and cancel it for the remaining participants too - even if they've already accepted. It's taken us a while to get our head around the problem, particularly as it happened with several different meetings and multiple outside sources.  Naturally, you presume that several systems out there can't be wrong and it must be a problem at our end - even if we haven't changed anything.  Right? Wrong! As it turns out, the recently released Apple iOS 6 has a flaw which trips up Microsoft Exchange systems not configured acco...

Why would you do this? Suppose that you have an externally accessible generic email address for your company; support@mycompany.com or info@mycompany.com. You might expose this to the web and allow people to send messages to you. Setting up an auto-response email will tell the senders that their message reached its destination and that it will be dealt with accordingly.  It's also good practice to include links to FAQs or other useful information. Why 8.5.3 The techniques we'll be using here work in older versions of Notes but some of the options seem to have moved around in 8.5.3.  I figured it was a good time to show you where they've moved to. The Procedure Start Domino Designer and open the Mail file to be modified.  A really quick way to do this is to right-click on the application tab and choose "Open in Designer". In the Left hand panel of designer, expand Code and then double-click Agents.  A new window should appear. Click the action ...

The Server I've upgraded our test server from 8.5.2 to 8.5.3 and it took slightly under 5 minutes. Now that's what I call a good server upgrade (are you listening Microsoft???) Anyway, so far, so good, everything seems to be working but then I haven't done a whole lot of testing yet. The Client My client took 21 minutes to upgrade from 8.5.2 to 8.5.3, which felt like a long time. It also came back a little weird and some views didn't populate immediately. Refreshing them made a big difference. Again, so far, so good (mostly). Unfortunately I lost the ability to click on a URL and have it launch my default browser (Chrome). Instead, it pops up Notepad (weird!!) and a bizarre little message. The filename, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect. I'm on a 64 bit Windows 7 Professional PC and Chrome is located in; "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" I've already checked my HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\http\shell\...

I wasn't happy with the usability of my last post, so I've redone it as a presentation. You can view it fullscreen here; https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dgxzmfwk_82dp8t8gf5 or embedded below.

What's this All About If you have a test environment for your Lotus Notes applications, then chances are that you regularly find yourself copying (not replicating) from Production to test - and probably via a Local connection. If you do this a lot, then chances are that at some point you've forgotten to deselect the default local encryption. This is a great security feature but it's quite embarrassing when you arrive at your test site with a database which won't open. Did you know that you can change the default. It happened sometime in release 8.x but I don't know exactly when. I just know that I changed it a while ago and a few times since I've had developers express surprise because they didn't realize that we now have that feature. Here's How to Turn it Off by Default In your Notes client; Click File then Preferences from the Menu On the left hand side of the preferences screen, expand Replication and Sync . Click on Default . In the middle of the...

We're currently testing Windows 7 - Not because we actually see a business need. It's not about support, applications or even new features. It's simply that it's too hard to buy PCs with Windows XP loaded on them these days. Over the last few months, I've learned one very valuable lesson: There is NO benefit in Windows 7 unless you go 64 bit! Of course, that doesn't mean that there are many 64 bit applications out there to run on it. Why is 64 bit so important for Windows 7? Well, like all new Microsoft Software, it uses a bit more disk space and a bit more memory that its predecessors. Unfortunately, there's a 2GB memory limit in 32 bit windows - and it still applies to Windows 7. That means that now Windows itself takes up more space but your maximum memory remains the same. Even if you have a PC with 4, 6 or 8GB RAM, 32-bit Windows will only use 2 GB. Windows 7 64-Bit is a different story but weirdly, the limits aren't imposed by the bit-space bu...

A couple of weeks ago my Blackberry Bold suffered misfortune during a canoeing event with the Scouts. I had to temporarily revert back to a barely functional pearl. Now however, I've got a replacement Bold and I'm reloading all my "stuff" onto it. I could have simply restored my settings from a backup of my old Blackberry but I figured that I'd rather exclude applications which I haven't used. So I did a manual reinstallation. I thought this might give me a chance to talk about some good blackberry apps. So... what have I got on my blackberry now? The Default Applications It goes without saying that I have mail, calendar, SMS, Messenger (which I never use), MemoPad (which I use heaps) and all of the rest of the default Blackberry apps. Google Applications Google Mobile App ( http://m.google.com/search ) - FREE This is usually the first thing that I put back on the blackberry. It gives you a google search portal but more importantly, it's a great starti...

Note: This isn't my solution, all credit goes to "nickbeee" who posted a couple of lines on the firefox site. I've had to document this for our internal users and figured that other people may benefit from a more detailed explanation. Also: I'm a stickler for long explanations with pictures.... It seems that the new security features in Mozilla Firefox 4 prevent Lotus Notes/Domino Webmail from working. Here's how to get that functionality back. First: The problem that you see looks like this; It states on the webmail screen simply (and cryptically) A problem has occurred which may have caused the current operation to fail. The problem seems to be that firefox has security-blocked your webmail. In order to unblock it, you need the Remote XUL Manager extension. To get it, browse to: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/remote-xul-manager/ and click Add to Firefox. You'll be prompted to install the extension and then you'll be told to restart...

So, once again Microsoft's Patch Tuesday is breaking all records and we're in a quandry. We can either accept the risk of applying 28 untested (by us) patches to fix 49 vulnerabilities or we can accept the security risks of not applying the patches. Both choices are difficult but in the end, I'm always going to accept the "upgrade risk" versus the "security risk". Gone are the old days So, why don't we just delay it a bit and test it all out? In the old days (and certainly in a much larger company) this would have been possible but right now, we only have a small IT department and a constantly shifting Standard Operating Environment (SOE). As I've said before - there is no longer such a thing as a SOE in today's computing environment. We start out with an idea of the software to be loaded and the options and location in which it gets loaded, that's standard. Then, all the applications upgrade themselves at different intervals and sudde...

I've upgraded my client to Notes 8.5.2, sure it took a couple of goes and I ended up having to completely uninstall and reinstall - but I got there. I've since done an upgrade on a different PC (but that one didn't have designer) and I didn't have the same problems - so, maybe it was just a glitch on my PC. So... What's new in IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.2? Well, if you really want to learn the answer to that question, ask IBM . There's something about XPages too I think but the really important bit is ... the icons.. no, really... We've been waiting ages for this. Let's hope it won't be another 18 years before we get 64x64 icons. So... the first thing I did in the 8.5.2 designer was upgrade my Smurf. Yep, the database that I've had as my best friend for the last 15 years of my working life has an excessively blue smurf as its icon. A "choked smurf". I decided to restore him to normal colour - and it's easy. All I did was; Find a new 3...

I've just finished the IBM/Lotus renewal cycle for the year and either IBM has made some changes for the better or I'm losing my grip on my sanity. Whatever the reason, this year the process actually made sense . The Cost and the TCO We're actually quite a small domino shop but our annual renewals would have covered the cost of a 4WD vehicle from a reputable dealer. This is at least in part due to our office technology mentality. We have our main domino server which is capable of running pretty much everything and we have a second server that we use to run one of our more intensive apps (which I'll talk about in another post). On top of all this, we have an offsite business continuity server which we've never actually used "for real" - only in test situations. Domino is too stable for it to be a necessity and it's really only there to guard against ISP or "location" failure. Then we've got a development server and a test server. These a...

Thanks to everyone who responded yesterday. I've considered and tested the responses to find the method which will be simplest for our users. What follows is a set of instructions.... We start our instructions by identifying the file we want to link to. Often for me, this will be a MPEG, AVI or giant PDF (because why else would you link rather than attach?) but in this example, I'm just using a MS Word Document. You can see my path here is: M:\Dept\IT\2010\Development\ExtraNet\Concepts and my file name is Proposed Extranet Login Systems.doc Thus; my entire path and filename would be; M:\Dept\IT\2010\Development\ExtraNet\Concepts\Proposed Extranet Login Systems.doc Already by working the actual filespec out we're stepping slightly beyond the boundaries of the typical user. Next, we type our email and highlight the words we want to link to a file; Then we click the new "LINK" icon in Notes 8.5 This gives us a nice little box in which to type our URL. If this was ...

Yesterday I found myself explaining to a new but technical user that Notes/Domino is, like Blackberry. An amazingly powerful and capable piece of software capable of everything that the competition is capable of - plus a whole lot more. ....and hampered by what is still one of the worst user interfaces in the world. Sorry Notes UI team - I know you're doing your best. The same goes for the blackberry team. I know that they're doing their best too. It's just that the user interfaces have so far yet to go. So, this morning, the same user asks me how to send a link to a file on our common drives without sending the attachment everywhere. He's already cleverly tried attaching the .LNK file, but our policies don't allow that as it's considered to be an executable file. I said to him that I didn't actually know. 18+ years of using the product and I still really don't know how to do this. I know several workarounds but I don't know of any one all-enc...

In certain computing circles, "clustering" is a dirty word. I've heard of situations where, far from providing business continuity peace of mind, it creates more work and greater risk than it would if it were not involved. This is not the case with Domino clustering. Done properly, it is extremely reliable Our Problem Recently, our cluster seems to have "picked up a slight flutter". Actually, I think that perhaps the rules behind it may have changed sometime around our 8.0 or 8.5 migration. So, first I want to cover off basically what our cluster looks like; Ok, this is quite a simplistic view and there are servers missing. I'm concentrating on the problem area only. We have an onsite and offsite clustered Lotus Domino server, both running Lotus Domino 8.5 HF 1021. We'll call them "Onsite" and "Offsite" for ease of reference. The servers are quite a distance apart because we're clustering for business continuity purposes. The th...

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1: The Upgrader's Guide by Tim Speed, Barry Rosen, Joseph Anderson, Dick McCarrick, Bennie Gibson, Brad Schauf and David Byrd Published by PACKT Publishing. This book clocks in at about 336 pages which is nowhere near enough to be a complete administrator's guide to the gigantic field that IBM Lotus Notes and Domino has become. Fortunately, it identifies its market well and restricts itself firmly to its stated objectives. The book aims to introduce Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 to people who are already familiar with earlier versions of Notes/Domino. It's not a dummies guide and it's not an administrators handbook. It's purely and simply an upgrader's guide. As someone who never actually bothers to read the "what's new" section of the help files which ship with IBM products, and who instead relies solely on the blogging community (and Lotus-Comes-To-You) to highlight the main interest points, this was always going ...

I was only recently lamenting the lack of Notes 8 books in Australia, when I got sent this one to review. It looks interesting and it certainly will fill a gap. I'll bring you a detailed review when I've had a proper read. In the meantime, if you're interested, jump right in and get it - it seems very comprehensive. IBM Notes and Domino 8.5.1 by Barry Rosen , Bennie Gibson , Brad Schauf , David Byrd , Dick McCarrick , Joseph Anderson , Tim Speed Chapter 8: What's new in Notes/Domino 8.5 Development is available for download for free (in PDF format). It's a good place to start. Click here for further information;

I've been chasing a simple attachment issue in Lotus Notes 8.5.1 with IBM support for a while now but we're not really getting "engagement" yet. I thought I'd document it and see if we're the only ones with this problem. The Problem What we've discovered is that if we attach a file using a Lotus Notes 8.5.1 client, everything behaves as per normal in the Notes client but if we use a web browser to look at the NotesDocument, the file name disappears. It's best illustrated. On the left, you can see how the attachment renders in the Notes client using a standard discussion database. On the right, you can see how it renders in the web browser. There is no filename. It's not white-on-white, it's simply not there. Our Parameters It only happens when we use Lotus Notes 8.5.1 clients, but it's not a problem with 8.5 I've only tested the problem on Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 It happens on lots of computers, regardless of brand, conf...

I don't want to come over sounding "all negative", after all my last few posts were (justifiable) rants about installation issues but there IS something wrong with IBM's definition of FREE. It's not the product. Both Lotus Notes and Symphony are great full-featured products. The problem is the fact that IBM is obviously very uncomfortable with giving things away for nothing. I'm reminded of the sort of routine you see all the time on sitcoms, where one person gives another a gift but refuses to let go. There's that awkward silence and then, after what seems an eternity, the gift-giver finally let's go. Compare this to the Google approach of showering you with gifts when you walk in the door. I'm not suggesting that IBM should be like Google. Much as I admire Google, I can't help but think that their business model is ultimately flawed. Eventually, the rain of free goodies will have to stop if they want to turn a profit. So, where and how co...