Real World Computing

Instant IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 How-to Master IBM Lotus Notes with tips, hints, and instructions that will help you increase your productivity by Barry Max Rosen Published by PACKT Publishing Instant IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 How-to is a short book by computer standards.  It's 68 pages and includes a lot of illustrations. This meant that I could literally read it during a one-way trip to work on the bus. For the most part however its short length is good because it manages to introduce many concepts not found in books several times its size and deals with them quickly in a non talky way. It's straight down to business. The book doesn't identify a single audience but rather targets simple, intermediate and advanced users.  This allows you to get a lot of long-term use out of the book but it also means that for "simple users", reading through the book cover-to-cover isn't really an option.  For example, the book jumps straight from a chapter on mail custom...

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'm sure that most Domino admins have been doing these tasks regularly but if you don't have occasion to touch them often, you might this post useful. As I mentioned last week, we've been having issues with the JVE running out of memory on our server. One of the "solutions" (band-aids) was to restart the domino HTTP task. I've been experimenting to see how long I can leave it and the shortest it's been is about 30 hours. It seemed to be a good idea to stop and then restart the domino HTTP service on a timer. In admin-talk, that means a program document. Procedure The steps I'm using here are for Domino 8.5.2 but I don't think they've changed in years. 1. Start Domino Administrator 2. Click on the tab marked Configuration 3. In the left hand navigator,click on Server (and expand it) 4. In the left hand navigator,click on Programs This will take you to a screen where you can expand your servers and see what other regular tasks are scheduled. If...

A couple of weeks ago, we launched a new XPages app. Hopefully the first of many. It was very impressive and we got a lot of hits.... ...until the server crashed. Not a big deal. Our server is set to restart automatically, and it was up and running in no time. Then about 1.5 days later we had another crash. We've decided to tackle this on a few fronts, first of all we're rewriting some parts of the app to be a bit less intense and to take better advantage of the recycler. That's all cutting edge development stuff, so it's really not "me". On the admin side, I wanted to see if we could release resources a bit. I checked the server close to a crash but there's no indication on the Windows 2003 side of things. Of course, the Notes Logs tell a different story. HTTP JVM: CLFAD0211E: Exception thrown. For more detailed information, please consult error-log-0.xml located in e:/Lotus/Domino/data/domino/workspace/logs HTTP JVM: >>>> HTTP JVM: The XP...

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.

Why do one? In today's "green" world, it makes much better sense to send out emails than letters but you still want to personalize them. Sadly, by itself Lotus Notes doesn't support mail merge to email. Of course, we know that outlook does (but then it lets anyone and anything send emails for you - even when you don't want them to). So, how to do it in Notes? OpenNTF The first port of call is OpenNTF ( http://www.openntf.org/ ). This place is full of great things but most of them are really badly documented. Still, these guys give things away for free and they develop in their spare time, so we should be grateful for what we get. There's a great little project there called MailMerge Excel to Notes . Go there, click on releases and download the ZIP file. Getting to the Code The installation is tricky though I've noted that since I asked the author about the install, it's been updated (so maybe these steps are less necessary). Unzip the files to somewher...

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...

In part one of my review, I looked at the opening and closing chapters of this book. They're fairly non-technical and provide a very useful set of guidelines for the development and testing of Lotus Domino applications - and they're just as relevant to XPages development. In part two, I want to look at the middle chapters. These chapters cover CSS and JavaScript as it relates to forms, views and agents. The book talks about some features which are only available in Notes/Domino 8.5 but it never discusses XPages. If you're already a domino developer and you're looking to move into XPages, then this book certainly isn't for you. If however, you've been using Notes and want to quickly port some applications to the web or if you're familiar with classic HTML, CSS and JavaScript but want to get some Domino projects off the ground, then this is the right book. Of course, if you're on a version of notes/domino prior to 8.5 with little prospect of upgrading ...

I'm doing this review in two parts because the opening and closing chapters of this book are vastly different from the rest. I have to admit to wondering, when I was first asked to review this book, exactly what the market was that it's aimed at. After all, aren't all domino developers heading towards XPages now? Could a book on "traditional web programming in domino" still be relevant today? Well, surprisingly it is. The opening chapters deal with issues and requirements that our developers and I still constantly struggle with . They cover version control, issues logs, staging servers, commenting/documentation, standards and the big killer "scope creep". There are sections on using the "champions" in your office to drive projects, maintaining consistent URLs and setting up a developer test environment. These are aspects which affect all domino development regardless of the technology level (XPages, Notes, Pure HTML or JavaScript/CSS). If you r...

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...

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...

Don't worry, I'm not patronizing you (my readers), I just decided to re-document this for one of our internal users and thought you might want to be able to use it in your own user documentation. WHAT IS THIS DOCUMENT ABOUT? Some people who don't get a lot of mail, like to be notified when such an event occurs. Notification can be; via a sound via a pop-up box via the system tray (where the computer clock is) The pop up box looks like this; Other people, who like myself, get too much mail would rather not be notified. The aim of this document is to tell you how (and where) to turn these options on and off. CHANGING YOUR SETTINGS To change your settings from the Notes 8.x client; On the Menu, click File , then Preferences... On the left hand side , click on the little plus sign to the left of Mail to expand the options. Click on the option marked Sending and Receiving . In the middle section, under receiving, you can control your notifications. If you untick the box mark...

A long while ago, November 2009 actually, I posted about an Attachment Problem which was introduced in Lotus Notes 8.5.1. At the time, I pushed IBM for a solution and they eventually produced a half-solution (slightly better but no cigar). Since then we've been living in pain. Recently a commenter named "CIS" left a note on my original post to try putting AttachmentsUseCaption=0 in the notes.ini. It worked **THANKS** - you're my hero of the hour! I decided to describe the problem and solution here in case others were in the same boat. Here's how our attachments used to look prior to using the Lotus Notes 8.5.1 (and higher) clients. At 8.5.1, the text under the attachments disappeared completely. This left me with a screen with two PDF files and no description. Not a good look for our extranet service. We halted our Notes 8.5.1 rollout until IBM provided a fix but when they did, it wasn't a particularly elegant one. Here's how it looked; The attachme...

IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide by Karen Hooper Paperback : 296 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ] Release Date : August 2010 ISBN : 1849680205 ISBN 13 : 978-1-849680-20-2 I've just finished reading Karen Hooper's excellent IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide and it's awesome. In fact, this book is so good that I'd already gone online partway through the third chapter and ordered a print copy for my workplace library. Of course, it helps that PACKT Publishing is having an IBM Month this November. There's a bunch of special offers but the ones to really take note of are; 20% off all Packt IBM print books 25% off if you purchase 3 or more books 30% off all Packt IBM ebooks Back to the Review... So, who is the audience for the book? Well, it's the layperson, the employees who are new to Notes or who need to brush up on their skills. That's not to say that there isn't good material and tips for the techies out there - but that the best value gains will come from the n...

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...

There's now a great new OpenNTF document management plug-in for Notes. I'm interested in seeing if I can move away from MS Office and this little utility seems to me to be the best way to start. It allows you to work on documents in folders while still keeping things available for users who prefer to access folders directly. The only caveat that I've found so far is that it wants everything to be stored in OpenDocument format and will convert the imports accordingly. So... I've just installed this plug-in and in typical "dumb-user" fashion, I had to ask a number of questions of the authors. I thought that to save others a bit of time and to illustrate the whole procedure, I'd make the procedure available here. Even if you're not interested in this particular plug-in, you might be interested in some of the others which are available. (like the awesome FileNavigator project). These steps might just be the ticket to installing them. My instructions w...

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...