Enterprising Notes

Notes 8.5.2 Gets Me Out Of The Ditch

2011-01-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

I had a situation last week where I was able to leverage a new feature in Notes 8.5.2 to get a quick and dirty resolution to a problem.

Background: We use Symantec Enterprise Vault at our corporate headquarters to deal with any legal hold issues that arise. Typically this is a protracted thing. We pull a "holdee" mail file into the vault by saving a snapshot and changing the template to Mail Journaling, suck the re-templated mail file into the vault, then journal their mail until the hold is removed.

In this instance, we were brought into the party late for a legal issue which needed immediate attention. Additionally, it was at a satellite office where we don't normally Vault.

Solution: First pass, we had the users folderize the pertinent messages, then printed all the messages to a PDF. Users came and said, "but we need the attachments, too." So, knowing that 8.5.2 had the ability to save to eml files, I opened the mail files in an 8.5.2 client, and copied each user's pertinent messages out to a desktop folder which I then zipped in entirety. Because the eml file had the ability to contain the attachments, they got both message and attachment with each eml file. I did a view print to PDF to act as a table of contents.

Bottom line, this saved me a bunch of time and I was able to provide the needed messages and contents within a couple of hours of receiving notice that they were needed.

Download 8.5.2 --- or not

2010-08-26T06:07:00.000-07:00

When I attempted to download the three installers I need from Passport Advantage today I got a failure message with Download Director -- "Not Found On Server"

Hello?

Another Reason To Love Domino Security

2010-08-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

Today I finished implementation -- on the email side -- of a project which required doing some special things with the Domino Directory. It is not the first time.

Previously, we have had a need to restrict access to "mass mail" groups in the domain. That is, we only wanted specific people to have these groups visible in their mail addressing prompts or in DD views. The reason for this was to prevent any employee from sending a message to the part or all of the user population, before their supervisor could corner them and tell them not to do it again. (Our corporate culture seems to favor taking away the option rather than just telling the employee not to use it.)

The way we have done this (nothing earth-shaking) is to edit the security tab of the Group document properties for the mail group. We uncheck the "All readers and above" property on the "Who can read this document" section. Then grant back those to whom we want to give the ability to address and send mail to that group.

This week a similar situation arose dealing with Person documents rather than Group documents. We established mail accounts for a group of people that we only wanted specific people to send mail to. As far as the rest of the user population is concerned, these accounts don't even exist. Tested and working.

Blogging Brief 4 from LS2010 -- Thursday

2010-01-21T15:48:00.000-08:00

Lotusphere 2010 wrapped up today with several morning sessions, a lively "Ask the Developer" session after a box lunch and the Closing General Session mid-afternoon. I attended a good early session on Roaming improvements that have come with the 8.5.1 experience.

Following that was Julian Robichaux's session about importing, exporting and reporting with Notes as the centerpiece of that process. I skipped Gurupalooza against my better judgment, but in doing so, got to eat lunch with a Lotus developer who had worked on their products basically from the get-go.

I'll have a (hopefully) quiet night at the hotel then fly tomorrow.

I snapped a couple of pix -- "Meet the Developers" and Closing General Session:

Blogging Brief 3a from LS2010 -- Wednesday Night

2010-01-21T15:29:00.000-08:00

Salesplace and IBM sponsored an evening of food and fun at Disney Hollywood Studios. Pictures follow:

Blogging Brief 3 from LS2010 -- Wednesday

2010-01-20T15:04:00.000-08:00

I've had another full day... not over yet, since we are being bussed over to Disney Hollywood Studios this evening for a "we have it all to ourselves" get together at that venue. Looking forward to a great supper and more interesting conversation with other admins.

Today's highlights were the "Great Code Giveaway" session, running a "low maintenance" Domino shop, Domino Server and App Performance Issues and my favorite... "An Oral History of Notes" by Ed Brill with pictures, commercials, videos, and more starting in 1989. Ed had an email from Ray Ozzie commemorating the event. Pictures of that session are below.

Blogging Brief 3 from LS2010 -- Tuesday

2010-01-19T17:04:00.000-08:00

The day started with an early breakfast at 7:00. Stepping out of the Swan to make the walk to the Dolphin, I was greeted by a cool, dense fog. I thought about getting a picture but did not. Volker Weber has a good picture on his blog, although it was a bit denser when I stepped out.

It was another busy day, but I did take a long break at lunch time and enjoyed relaxing and listening to Dierks Bentley on my iPod.

The sessions started with a fast-paced talk on ID Vault and DAOS followed by a very, very good session -- Admin Blast -- by Irishman Paul Mooney. His session was literally wall-to-wall admin tips and worth a mint. Other notable sessions were one by German consultant Daniel Nashed dealing with crash-hang-failure diagnostic tools and techniques then finally, a show-and-tell for Tivoli Directory Integrator by Marie Scott and Thomas Duff.

Taking a leisurely evening off in the room. Here a a couple of pix from the window.

Blogging Brief 2 From LS 2010 - Monday

2010-01-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

The day started early at 7:00 am. I ran into Chris Whisonant in the breakfast area and enjoyed visiting with him.

Preparing for Opening General Session

The OGS started with an awesome drum and violin band -- wish they had played a whole set! As it was, they only play one 5+ minute piece. Ran into Scott with Integrasys and sat with him during the session. This was a true geek-fest the pictures I took don't begin to show the magnitude of the meeting.

Opening General Session

William Shatner gave the keynote address followed by a product by product roadmap for Lotus in the upcoming quarters.

William Shatner

Before lunch attended a session with Bill Buchan re: Worst Practices... a compendium of "shoot the admin" situations their consultancy has seen the past few years.

Had lunch with a number of gentlemen, one of whom is ND admin for a European automotive supplier with 13,000 seats. Many of these Notes shops have an enormous number of users to support. Oh, by the way, the food was just delicious. Every meal has been gourmet fare.

After lunch visited the product showcase, then sessions for Lotus support for mobile apps and internal selling of Lotus in your organization. It has been a long day. Whew!

Blogging Brief 1 from LS2010 -- Sunday

2010-01-17T07:32:00.000-08:00

I'm a first timer at this Lotusphere thing. I arrived Saturday evening at the Swan Resort and have been engaged in several very good sessions through the day. Enjoyed a pleasant chat with IBM'er Emmy Chuck during the lunch buffet.

Took in sessions by Andrew Pedisch and Rob Axelrod on standing up an HTTP server. Then had lunch buffet where, as I mentioned, I met and enjoyed conversing with Emmy Chuck.

After lunch buffet, attended a very brisk and information intesive session featuring Andrew Pollack and Gabriella Davis -- The A-Z Domino Security and finally Darren Duke's session on using Domino policies to manage most client funcions. All very information-rich.

I finished the day off with a "beach party" with lots of good food and conversation. Sat and ate with admins from the Netherlands, UK and Boston (Exchange/Domino admin for publishing giant IDG -- InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, etc.) Pix below:

Update: Notes 8.5.1 Lockups - Fix and Questions

2010-01-11T06:47:00.000-08:00

My previous post about Notes 8.5.1 clients resulted in some good tech tips from other ND administrators. As we had more of a chance to connect the dots, it became apparent that most of the lockups were occuring during a spell check routine. A PMR submitted to IBM/Lotus brought a quick response and advice to use the SPELL_FORCE_LEGACY=1 notes.ini parameter on the client.

I believe ini paramaters can be pushed by policy now, but we are already setting some parameters at startup with lines in the Initialize section of the mail template database script. That is the approach I went with to be consistent.

The comments given on my previous post do bring up a question for me. If the java thread dump is employed as a troubleshooting mechanism, how is the dmp file readable? I opened it with wordpad and it was apparently a binary file rather than text, like the nsd dumps are. Any advice?

Notes 8.5.1 Lockups -- Does Anyone Else Have This?

2010-01-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

We recently began rolling out Notes 8.5.1 clients via Upgrade By Mail. About 5% of my upgraded clients are experiencing lockups when sending several times a day resulting in a reboot.

In concert with the rollout, we gave a combination training/sales pitch for every group of upgradees. This problem is souring our sales job. Typical client is this:

Dell D630 with Core Duo 2Ghz or better
2 GB RAM
Ample hard disk
Some are in our main building, others are in a different building on our campus.

Does anyone else experience this and/or have suggestions?

Preparing A Reasoned Defense... Interested In Your Contributions

2009-10-19T06:24:00.000-07:00

Notes Domino is the only email platform we have ever had as a corporation. Therefore, most of the old-timers (read executives and middle managers) are comfortable with it. However, many of the corporate, manufacturing and tech hires in the last few years have come from Exchange shops. A few of them are having hissy-fits about Notes to the point of refusal to cooperate. I see a storm building.

To get ahead of the blow-up, I need to have already prepared a well-reasoned defense, since the final decision makers are old-timers, they need to have a factual basis to make a decision. I welcome your input as I build a defense in these areas and any others you think might be important. Who better to ask than you all who are in the trenches with Domino every day.

I want to be able to present:
Relative strengths/weaknesses of each server platform
Relative Scalability (# of servers per # of users and # of admins per # of users)
Relative strengths/weaknesses of each client
Realistic downtime issues
What ND does that E/O cannot do
What E/O does that ND cannot do
Ability to add customization to the mail experience (we customize the mail template)

I will probably think of some more as I get into it. Suggestions welcome.

One Of Those Weeks

2009-10-08T10:06:00.000-07:00

Someone said there would be weeks like this... I'm spending a little thinking time the last few days re-focusing on what I have to offer my user community as a Domino admin. I think I have had more Notes-hatred from various quarters this week than I have heard expressed in quite some time.

A little background:

For better or worse (I'm sure there are others out there who are much more technically skilled than I am, but I am -- with God's help -- adequate) I am the Domino "know-it-all" in the Corporation. If things are going great -- I get silence. If they are going badly -- I get phone calls, IMs, emails or worse, people hovering around me in my cube. Goes with the territory.

We were running our most politically-visible mail server on Win2003R2 w32 with 7.0.2 for a long time with essentially no hiccups other than what the server's 700 users sporadically considered "slowness". Other than that, it was basically rock-solid. It was also doing duty as a target for process-driven SMTP messages (broadcasts of up to 1000 messages at a shot) and functioning as the LDAP server for copiers and such devices and acting as hub for replication and mail sent between our other eleven sites worldwide. It was a busy box.

Given the budgetary opportunity to upgrade, a couple of months ago, we replaced the server with much beefier hardware, Win2003x64, and Domino 8.5 w32 with HF676 applied. In our thinking, we should really have a rock-solid box now! The reality is that we have not really seen any perfomance improvement, but more important than that, we have had chronic server hangs (better said -- client lockouts) where for periods of 10 seconds to a couple of minutes, clients get "server not responding" messages and we get hostile phone calls. We have a PMR open and in looking at the NSD files, console logs and SEMDEBUG files, IBM says it is not a Domino problem. All I know is that, if I watch the server console scroll and I begin to see "WAITING FOR READ LOCK" semaphore debug messages, I am just about to receive connection errors and phone calls. These are problems we didn't have with the old server.

During those times, connection attempts from Domino spoke servers fail also -- because only port 1352 seems to be affected. During these lockouts, remote control sessions, pings, etc. all remain unaffected.

As if it were "icing" for that unpleasant cake, we have for the first time had a server lockup due to "Insufficient memory - server executive pool is full". An known error in 8.5 which we didn't know about until it happened. We did a notes.ini workaround -- "enable_collection_clean_queue=0" -- until we can uninstall HF676 and install FP1 or wait and install 8.5.1 after it is released next week. Bottom line, there are a lot of folks who expected a more robust server and they are seriously underwhelmed -- and these are the folks that are pro-Domino. I have lots of IT folks and users who are not. Whether it is a Domino problem, a server hardware problem or a network problem, it is "perceived" as a Domino problem until I can prove otherwise.

That brings me back to my opening paragraph. I have been spending some time thinking about what I need to provide to my user community:

:: a robust, rock-solid communication platform
:: instruction on how to get the most out of it
:: applications that they can't get with a different platform

This will be what I go after.

SNTT - Fair Use Prompt

2009-09-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

** Note to those who viewed this post prior to 9/25/09: I neglected to include the code to execute the "No" choice. It has been added at the bottom.

The corporation I work for is fairly obsessive about its use of corporate policies relating to electronic messaging of all types. As part of it's campaign to advertise its concern about fair use, executive management and legal had us implement a "consent" form for Notes mail. When the user's mail file is opened, they are presented with a comply/exit option.

To do this, I added a bit of code to the Initialize section of the mail template Database Script, as follows:

'Start Template Added Security Prompt Text ------------
Dim allowaccess As String
allowaccess = session.GetEnvironmentString( "$allowaccess", True )
Call session.SetEnvironmentVar( "$allowaccess", "0" )

Dim warningtext As String
Dim answer As Integer
warningtext = |This electronic mail (email) system is the property of *** Corporation and should be used for Company business. Its use is subject to the provisions of Information Systems Policy 08-02-01 Communications - Electronic Messaging, which is available on the Corporate Intranet Website. Email, instant messaging and other electronically communicated messages are not private. Messages can be read by third parties and may remain on backup tapes or other archival media after they are deleted from the sender's and recipient's personal mail boxes.

** NOTE **
The Company reserves the right to actively monitor, log and review all network and Internet activity, including email and instant messages, without notice. Consequently, there can be no expectation of privacy by employees in the use of this system. Use of the Company email system signifies that you understand and consent to these conditions.

Click YES to use the system or click NO to exit the system.|

answer = Messagebox (warningtext, MB_YESNO, "*** Information Systems")
If answer = 6 Then
Call session.SetEnvironmentVar( "$allowaccess", "1" )
End If
'End Template Added Security Prompt Text ------------

To make the prompt function I then added this bit code to PostOpen Section:

@If(@Environment("allowaccess") = "0" ; @Command([ExitNotes]) ; @Return(""))

Nothing earth-shattering here. If you have a need to use this type of prompting, we have used it with Notes 6.x, 7.x and 8.x without any issues.

One Teensy-Weensy Little Server Crashing Thing

2009-08-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

Friday morning started well enough. Friday is a short 1/2 day workday for us. As I got settled in, I got an IM from an admin at a site that had moved his Domino installation to new hardware and upgraded to 8.5 last weekend. Everything had been humming all week.

KG's IM said that the server had PANICed and shut down and that in subsequent attempts to start the server it would hang at the copyright notice then error out with a Windows application error.

First, I connected to his server's Lotus drive and looked through the NSD file. It said that nprocmon.exe was the original offender. Funny thing was that after this, no NSD files were created at each startup attempt and each Windows application error referenced nserver.exe as the faulting application.

I remoted to his server desktop and observed the failures for myself. I checked the notes.ini file and decided to comment out all tasks except for the router task to see if it would come up and continue functioning. No joy. I re-installed 8.5 on the very slim chance an executable or dll had gotten hosed. Still no joy. I decided to open and ESR with Lotus, which I did and uploaded the appropriate files with the ESR request.

The first thing Lotus support had me do was to disable the nprocmon.exe task with process_monitor_disabled=1 in the notes.ini file -- that should take care of the original PANIC. I did so, but the server continued to fail on every startup. After several discussions with the Lotus tech punctuated by "on hold" sessions while he discussed with second and third level support, he finally brought my attention to a line in the ini file that, upon investigation, was a referring to a directory link (dirname.dir). I determined that it was obsolete and at the tech's request I renamed it to .OLD and gave the server another launch. Bingo! Back to the Domino I'm used to.

Apparently, this directory link was now a false pointer (no such directory existed on the new server -- in fact, it was no longer needed). That one little unobtrusive 1K file was the showstopper. IBM said they had seen it a few times before and for me, a lesson learned.

The Shoe Goes On The Other Foot: Entourage

2009-05-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

I and several others have written recently about uconntam and how she decided to bail on Lotus Notes for her Mac after trying to use it with eProductivity in ways she was used to.

Today I ran across a review from the other side of the coin. Granted, the writer is an Outlook user, but in this situation, he is bailing on Entourage because -- he is unable to get to work in the way he is accustomed to. The grass isn't necessarily greener.

Side note: the author comments about Gmail...

I know users who redirect their Exchange mail to Gmail. In an unregulated business with minimal IT resources, that seems to work.

Seems to acknowledge the fact that it is not really suited for the corporate (i.e. regulated) environment.

Tam Throws In The Towel (at least for now)

2009-05-23T18:53:00.000-07:00

I have been one of several people who have tried to come to the rescue of Eric Mack's uconntam -- a new eProductivity user who has been trying to get Notes to perform in the ways she is accustomed to with Entourage and Outlook. Sadly, she is giving up the attempt for now, having reached the point of diminishing return on trying to make the client do what she is used to.

I understand her dilemma and don't blame her for "cashing out". She has given it an honest try and has had enough. I hope that, if nothing else, she will be a poster-child for the need to work on an area of Notes that, perhaps, has escaped our attention -- especially those of us that are geared to corporate single-account email.

Comments/Discussion Points:

1. Since Notes has been "an environment" hosting many applications from the get-go, I understand why it has its existing architecture. Good for many things, bad for someone like Tamara. Can we recognize new realities and adapt?

2. I call to mind Microsoft's internet "wake up call" back in the nineties. They had to go through a major re-orientation in their engineering and marketing so that "where the market was heading" (the internet) didn't pass them by. They pulled out the stops when it was apparent that their current concept of the world didn't fit reality any more.

3. Otherwise, do we just say "we don't do it that way here" and let that part of the market walk away?

4. None of this is to, in any way, diss the great gains that have been made in the UI starting in 8.0 -- Mary Beth and the team have done great work and involved many people in the decisions. It only shows that there is more work to be done. I have every hope that NotesDomino advocates inside IBM and out will work together to make that happen.

Tools Used Properly vs. Tools Used Poorly

2009-05-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Pardon the perhaps rambling nature of this post. I am aware that a lot of people are Twitter users. I have never seen the value in it, but I decided last week to give it a try and see what I think. My initial thinking going in was "what's the value of telling people what I'm doing right now, especially if they are not following me?"

I have used it for just shy of a week and began by doing the sporadic what-i'm-doing tweets. Then I decided to try the "following" thing and began following Ed Brill and Eric Mack. Following them led me to others I wanted to try following. It also gave opportunity to attempt, along with others, to help Tam, one of Eric Mack's clients try to get Notes working as a POP client. As it turned out in that case, the TwitterVerse rose to the occasion when a cry for help was sounded. Good value for Twitter shown in that situation.

Today, I ran across an article that plays very strongly into the "value added" test for Twitter -- and for Notes -- and for any platform. Notable quotes:

I recognize that it's becoming fashionable among many to bash Twitter, but for those who have learned how to use Twitter well (as opposed to many who use it poorly), the value of it is quite impressive.

...Mark Cuban actually has made the strongest point, noting that in many ways, Twitter is becoming more useful than Google. This isn't to say that Twitter is "killing" Google (x killing y stories are lame), but that many people are finding information via Twitter now, where they used to find it via Google.

Social media has been a place, for some, where one could say all sorts of vile things about people, products, policies that don't suit them. Others use the tools to promote productive, value-added discussions. The recent discussions about Lotus marketing have generally fallen in the latter category. Several weeks ago, there was a discussion at an off-site blog that was highlighted in the YellowVerse for it's insane Notes-bashing. This falls in the first category. They are, to me, like the back-window stickers I see on trucks that have someone pee-ing on a nameplate of a different brand of vehicle. Juvenile... that's my opinion.

The quotes above are valuable to me in that they communicate:

:: Tools which are good in themselves can be used poorly with poor results
:: There is no need to have a "destroy all competitors" mentality in marketing an excellent product

Additionally, in the case of Eric Mack's uconntam, we have a lot to do to help people see how to use Notes effectively, that will make the difference at the end-user level to make Notes a value-added proposition that would have to be -- to use a tired expression -- "pried out of their cold, dead fingers."

LotusSphere Comes To Little Rock

2009-05-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

Two of my cohorts are beginning the LCTY sessions in Little Rock as I write this. Having had the opportunity for the first time ever this year to attend LS and LCTY, I would dearly love to, but have been prevented by a family illness.

Thanks to IBM for making these resources available. I hope in the future to be able to enjoy them in person, rather than second-hand.

My developerWorks -- a observation

2009-05-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

I have just begun to explore My developerWorks and I don't mean this to be any more than an initial observation. Here goes:

I have read unsubstantiated comments in various blog postings recently about how the WebSphere folks (and perhaps others) at IBM consider the Lotus products to be in the "toy" category, i.e. not industrial strength.

I'm sure there is a very good reason for this (the My developerWorks platform), but my ignorant observation of the MdW site is that it is built on WebSphere. Does this confirm the murmurings? Does this contribute to the lack of cohesion in marketing the Lotus brand?

OK -- I'll 'Fess Up

2009-05-08T14:07:00.000-07:00

Thanks to those who responded to my previous rant
about my developerWorks. Chris Toohey, whom I look up to as a very creative force in the Yellowverse, filled me in on what I had already concluded, but had run out of time to keep trying.

I was probably a little hard on IBM... I really am in their camp. But, as with my own workgroup, I don't like for us to look like the Keystone Kops to our customers, and I am not afraid to point out situations where that is happening.

Truth is, there is nothing at the IBM site to state that there are two different "developerWorks" so to speak. Why make things hard for your customers? And why doesn't this HUGE software company consolidate the logins?

That said, thanks IBM for producing My developerWorks. I'll look forward to exploring.

IBM or Keystone Kops?

2009-05-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

I just have to register this rant. I followed Ed Brill's link over to the new My developerWorks site, all ready to sign in. It asks me for My developerWorks ID and Password. I put in the password I use for the Notes.Net Forums.

My ID and password don't work. Invalid username or password. So, I verify they work on the forum. They work here.

The Notes.Net website very CLEARLY says developerWorks in the upper right corner.

Now I go back to the My developerWorks login and try the "Forgot Password" link. It says my user id does not exist.

This is just bufoonerey! Somebody at IBM get a clue! Please!

Rant over.

Tool Making: A SOX Compliance Tool

2009-05-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

Back in the old days of Notes, before there was such a distinction between Notes admins and Notes developers, we frequently had to do both. I think that in most shops today, that is probably still true, due to the economics involved. It's good for admins to have a little experience making and eating "their own dog food". The same is true, in reverse, for developers. They should know the essentials of being an admin.

One of the things I enjoy doing with Notes is making tools that help me do my work faster, more organized, etc. When SOX came to town, with all the attendant standards-management and record-keeping, we quickly seized on Notes to help us with one piece of the pie we have to deal with -- bringing new users into the network.

We created a checklist with buttons which link to the various systems we needed to access for new users -- sort of an "everything at your fingertips" approach for the tech who is doing the admin work for any given new user. Besides documenting the setup, the finished report spits out a password sheet for the user, based on which systems he has been configured for.

From Drop Box

I'm sure this is "old hat" for many, but thought I would share it in case it might stir up ideas in those who aren't doing it but could benefit from it.

Becoming Their Imagination

2009-05-06T08:49:00.000-07:00

I'm not a "sales" type. But... continuing the discussion of grassroots marketing, it seems that as advocates of Notes Domino in whatever venues we operate, we sort of have that role to some degree.

One thing I realized some time ago that bridges the "salesman" role with the technology deployment role is this: Many people have no vision about what a product (such as Notes/Domino) can do for them other than what they have been told or the limited experience they have hands-on. They have limited imaginations. Since we know what it is capable of doing, part of our sales role is to be their imagination for them. To figure out what could be, prove the concept, and get them stirred up about the same thing.

An older blog posting by Bob Balaban which he recently re-posted alludes to this:

...here's the thing: while nobody in her right mind would try to use Exchange for anything other than email, Notes/Domino is a great application platform for ALL kinds of things besides mail. Look at the list of "core strengths" people came up with over on Vowe's blog (take a look at the "core weaknesses" too, very interesting stuff).

Why does this bug me? Aside from the fact that (evidently) relatively few users of the product realize what they could be doing with it, but aren't, it bugs me that the product doesn't seem to get the respect it deserves within IBM either. Sure, if most people pay you for an email system, you're going to focus sales and marketing effort around selling email systems, and you're going to focus a certain amount of development effort on making the product a better email system.

We all need to get our creative hats on and get ahead of the game in our own organizations rather than settling for inside-the-box thinking.

Helping Users Make The Transition TO Notes

2009-05-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

I was prompted by comments that have since been added to Eric Mack's recent post on helping new Notes users -- especially a comment by Mat Newman.

I am posting a PowerPoint presentation we created for one of our major business units last year, many of whom come from jobs where they used Outlook. In light of Mat's comment, I want to make special note of the first few slides where Notes is presented as an environment, like Windows, rather than just a mail/PIM application and also slides 102/103 that try to make sense of global versus PIM preferences.

Comments welcome.

Making Platform Migrations Happy Ones

2009-05-01T08:16:00.000-07:00

Most Lotus folks in the blogosphere are aware of the good conversation that has been happening this week, regarding marketing Lotus products from the grassroots up or from the generals down to the soldiers. See Ed Brill, Nathan Freeman and others.

This major MS to Lotus migration is making headlines right now.

In the giddy moments that we may feel about this "win" -- Eric Mack's perspective is good to look at, because it is unlikely that this migration our direction was a unanimous groundswell from the rank-and-file. There will be a lot of trust-building to be done for those who didn't want to leave MS behind.

Exchange 2010 and Marketing Realities

2009-04-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

I have just started to sift through the industry press about Exchange 2010. A lot of Loti are commenting about it being a "me too" release catching up with Domino on a number of features.

As I posted recently (link corrected), I don't believe we have to have an "utterly destroy the competition" mindset -- where there is only one player left standing in the email and collaboration arena. I believe competition is good. This competition takes place in at least two spheres: technical and marketing.

As I said, I believe competition is good, but in our "whatever it take to win" world, that can have mixed results. Back in the 80s and 90s I admired the M$ growth from a small group of nerds to an enabler of PC technology. That has soured over the years as I began to see the underhanded tactics, both technical and marketing, that M$ has employed to be the "winner take all."

That is a reality of the marketplace and with the advent of Exchange 2010, I can only reiterate what I have thought and said before about the competition between Notes/Domino and Exchange/Outlook. Much ink has been spilled about IBMs marketing of Lotus and its tepid and unfocused actions. That is changing, thankfully.

The fact is that there is a huge mindshare hurdle to overcome. In addition to the marketing uptick, there has to be a full-court press on the part of IBM/Lotus to put a product out there that is stunning in every way... templates up-to-date, web-savvy, you name it. Version 8.X is the good start of an uphill climb.

I have been hooked on Notes for 15 years. I want it to blow the doors off. Can we get firing on all cylinders to that end -- a pursuit of excellence -- without having the same predatory, "destroy them all" mindset as the M$ machine?

Another Take On Multiple Notes Versions per PC

2009-04-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

Like some shops, we are "between" versions. Though we have been "planning" to upgrade to 8.x corporation-wide, we haven't done so yet. One of our larger offices stood up a 64-bit 8.0.2 server a couple of months ago and has been migrating clients from 6.5.5 and 7.0.2 to 8.0.2.

When they began, we (at the corporate HQ) offered the caveat that we would be able to offer only limited support, since were not ready to upgrade yet. That has been no problem so far. I have been using Notes 8.0.2 Basic on an "underpowered" D610 which was retired from service while running 7.0.2 on my D630.

We recently began experimenting with Nomad and have been using it in a call center where users never keep the same PC workstation for any length of time. It was always a support nightmare for us and Nomad has really lightened that burden.

What does that all have to do with my post topic? I had a "eureka" yesterday when I was trying to assist the office with 8.0.2 migration ensuing. I was unable to get 8.0.2 Standard to cooperate with me on the D610. So, I tried running a USB install of 8.0.2 on my D630 since it has a lot more muscle. Part way through that process, I recalled that Basic would run from USB but that Standard would have a tough time with it.

Long story short, I thought "if Nomad is a self-contained Notes client and I can run different versions by swapping USB keys, why couldn't I copy the Nomad installs to different folders on my drive, change the self-contained ini files to point to the new folder locations, and be able to launch different versions at will?" So, that is what I did, and it seems to work OK with one exception, I am still unable to make the Eclipse client launch properly. Working on that... advice appreciated.

Migrations... oh, my -- part 2

2009-04-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

Taking up where I left off... After the weekend and no problems from my newly migrated BESMgmt database, it was time to move forward with installing the BES software on the additional server. I reviewed the installation docs. One can never be over-confident about a BES install, even though things are getting better. I went to the Blackberry downloads page and downloaded both the BES 4.1.6 upgrade and the MR4 patch. I lined up my second SRP key and the 20-seat additional license pack and started in. According to what I had read, I should be able to bring up the second BES without interrupting the first (production) BES.

Right from the get-go I started encountering problems. First, I got an error complaining that no BES was installed on the server, setup terminating. I place a call to RIM. I needed the 4.1.6 FULL installer and was given an ftp address to download it. Now... why was it not on the regular downloads site? Go figure!

Starting again, the full BES installer has a "system pre-req check" before proceeding with the install. This check had two severe problems. First, no Domino version detected. Second, a mismatch in the MDAC install on the server. I place another call to RIM. After discussing environment, they determined that intead of loading Domino 8.0.2 x64, I needed Domino 8.0.2 w32, even though I was running on a supported 64-bit platform. I don't recall any mention about NOT using 64-bit Domino in the pre-reqs.

I hung up and uninstalled Domino 64-bit and came back up witha Domino 32-bit installed within about 10 minutes (the beauty of Domino -- I love it!!) The pre-req checks now recognized the Domino server, but still gave me an error on the MDAC. This prompted a download of the MS Component Checker tool. It determined that the msxml3.dll file was the culprit. Myself and a couple of other admins did some intense research, tried updating the xml and tried to find a version of the xml file for download. The version FOUND on the server was actually newer -- due to a security patch -- than the one the Component Checker was expecting. Based on that, I decided to try to give it a go as it set and hope for the best.

Results: the install continued and ran to completion. After running the Blackberry Configuration tool on the new BES, everything was working as expected up to that point. A minor hiccup appeared the next morning when my boss tried to migrate himself from the old to the new BES and got failures creating a replica of his state database on the new BES. Conclusion, the old BES needed to have create rights and there needed to be replication docs to manage the transfer. After that, the subsequent moves we have done have been as simple as drag and drop -- old BES to new BES.

What remains to be done? The Tomcat Mobile Data Service database must be taken from the old MSDE BES db and brought up on the SQL Server and the MDS service must be installed on the new BES and turned off on the old (it can only run on one BES in the domain). All said and done, it was a good learning experience, even with the hiccups.

Save All Attachments Add-in

2009-04-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

Lifehacker post lauding Outlook Add-in to save and optionally delete all attachments on a message.

Lotus Notes been there and done that. It's old hat and doesn't even need an "Add-in" to get it done!

Migrations... oh, my

2009-04-13T15:18:00.000-07:00

Making changes to a working system are usually a source of nail-biting for me -- Domino upgrades excluded. They rarely take half my lunch break and much more rarely have any significant hiccups. I have had three significant projects pending since late 2008 which were postponed due to health problems in the family.

The first was the addition of a Sametime IM gateway to our messaging environment. With the help of Lotus911 and specifically Chris Whisonant, we got that one knocked out in early January. That project was an addition to our production systems, rather than a change. The following two projects involved migrating existing systems. A couple of weeks back, my very patient managers were prodding me to move ahead.

The next project was migrating our Citrix datastore and licensing server to new hardware, and particularly to SQL2005. The move to SQL went fairly smoothly, though it took longer to repoint the 18 Citrix servers to the new SQL datastore than I had planned. I was able to move the licensing the following day with users logged on and no one was the wiser.

The next, and most "dangerous" -- in my mind -- project was to modify our Blackberry environment. This meant standing up a new Windows 2003R2 64 bit server with SQL2005, then migrating the BESMgmt data from MSDE on our lone, corporate BES to the SQL2005 server, followed by installing BES 4.1.6 on that new server and connecting to the SQL database so that both servers share the same BESMgmt data. Last, migrate 700+ users from the old BES to the new and decommission the old one.

Anytime we talk about changes to our Blackberry environment, we shudder, but RIM has gotten better over the years, in terms of product stability, documentation and tech support. We decided to do this transition in steps. First, migrate the managment database and hold. Then install the new BES software and hold. Finally migrate users.

I did a lot of research online at BlackberryForums and RIM and felt faily comfy with the db migration. However, after preparing the SQL database, backing up the BESMgmt db and importing it into the SQL Server, the Domino server kept showing an error authenticating to the new database every time the BES tried to startup. The admin account on the BES had proper rights to the SQL data so I couldn't figure out why authentication was failing. I quickly had RIM on a webex/phone conference and after some poking around, determined that the BES host server(name) needed to have a proper authentication to the SQL server as well. After fixing that, all was well for that phase of the migration, we let it hum for the weekend.

Next... the BES install.

Twitter or Facebook vs Desktop Email?

2009-04-06T15:27:00.001-07:00

This post at Lifehacker discusses how the declining number of downloads for Thunderbird vs it's web browser cousin Firefox may spell the demise of desktop email as opposed to web-based tools. Naturally, GMail is hyped as a competitor, especially since it has an offline component now. More importantly, Twitter and Facebook are given as alternative methods. Since I am not a subscriber to either, I am clueless as to why this should even be suggested. Comments from those who know better, please?

Exchange 14 - Whispers From The Trenches

2009-03-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

Interested in what might be coming in the next iteration of Exchange server I followed a link
to this TechRepublic article. The blogger makes the statement that he has been an Exchange fan since admin-ing 5.5 server. That's OK. I can live in a world where there is more than one brand of mail server. I often get the idea that M$ can't envision a world like that, but... oh well.

The interesting thing is the comments (right now there are only about seven). It is interesting to note how these folks who apparently make their living supporting M$ products admit how unpleasant that can be.

Would you call them... Hexlets?

2009-02-16T09:38:00.000-08:00

Engadget has a post with picture of a WinMobile 6.5 phone with what would otherwise be called "chiclets" if not for the shape.

Yet More Vindication of Workspace Interface

2009-01-25T16:22:00.000-08:00

A posting on Engadget this weekend shows "The OS your netbook has been screaming for" -- like iPhone and others... Chiclets and Tabs!

Open Source for ND? Refreshing Discussions Ensue

2008-12-21T17:13:00.000-08:00

The recent recommendation by Ian J Free at the HMNL blog to open source Notes Domino has gotten a lot of people talking. Comments have come from enthusiasts in many different situations -- with differing perspectives. They have me re-evaluate some of my own "knee-jerk" opinions.

It has also been noted that IBM/Lotus has about zero presence in the consumer market. Steve McDonagh's comments on his own blog as well as in the discussion at Ferdy Christant's blog about a home users' Notes client made me stop and think. Henning Heinz added to the discussion that few SMBs would implement Notes Domino without an IT partner involved. Both these ideas made me consider "what would happen if...?" Could an SMB stand up a Domino server and configure the clients without help? Could a home user configure a Notes client -- to the point of connecting to a POP mail server and doing mail transactions -- in the "easy" manner they are accustomed to for other wizard driven installs? Yet, people use their Outlook Express, presumably, without much outside help.

There needs to be an incentive for partners to be involved with the product. Obviously, Microsoft -- as some commented -- "spoils" developers and partners. After the consumer "pre-sell", the developers and partners rely on the inevitable, "what can I do next" to be their entry point in the market gravy train.

White House Email Vulnerable to Cybertheft

2008-11-07T07:07:00.000-08:00

This article in the Financial Times says that the WH email system has been penetrated on multiple occasions by Chinese hackers and that some mail messages have been compromised.

I ask this question innocently (not as a flame): If they had not migrated to Exchange from Notes, would this have happened? If they were able to get past all other network security, would Domino security have been a last line of defense?

An "oops" moment and the robust Notes object store

2008-09-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

Things have been a little hectic recently dealing with users who were displaced from our Houston office by Hurrican Ike. Yesterday I had an incident that reminded me of how much I appreciate the nsf architecture of Notes.

I was asked to take a look at a caller's mail file because the frame with the menu outline in it was blank. The user could see the mail in his inbox but had no obvious way to open any of his folders. I knew a design refresh (actually a design replace in this case) would take care of it.

While I was initiating the design replace, another admin hollered at me for help on another issue. In the moment of confusion, the template pointer was sitting on the Application Library template and I clicked OK instead of navigating to the mail template and using it. Arrgggh. However, I am familiar enough with Notes to know that I could just follow up with another design replace -- with the correct template -- and put it back in order. That did it easily enough. The only negative outcome was that messages that had been associated with the ($Inbox) folder no longer showed in the Inbox view, since Application Library has no Inbox design element and the subsequent design replace back to the mail template create a new Inbox. A minor issue for the user, in this case.

So, what about the architecture was I reminded of. Some of the things I like are:

The object store contains all the design elements and data in one place
Data is independent of the presentation elements (forms, views, etc)
The same associated data can be presented differently by different forms (and views)
Templates act as a "grid" of presentation and activity elements placed above the data

And in this case:

My user's mail store, when having a totally "foreign" design forced over it, remembered which data was "Memo", which was "Appointment" -- in other words, the mistaken design replace was not a disaster -- it was easy to recover from.

Preparing for Ike with Domino

2008-09-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

As the lead Domino admin for a multinational oil and gas company, we got stung pretty hard in 2005 when Katrina took down our New Orleans area presence for almost a year. That experience made us believers in disaster preparation and we have invested heavily in time, dollars and procedures to insure that we even if we have a disaster of that magnitude (and Ike could be an even greater magnitude), we proactively alleviate the impact to our messaging infrastructure.

As I write this, Ike is a little over an hour from landfall and our Houston facilities are still operating, though they have been evacuated. Last week, we had a "practice run" when Gustav made evacuation of our south and southeast Louisiana personnel a necessity. That practice run verified our DR procedures for Notes/Domino and gave us a few additional ideas for making it better.

Basically, here is what we have done on the Notes/Domino front:

Stood up a backup mail server for Gulf facilities at our inland home office
Stood up a backup mail server at Houston for our inland home office
Created replicas of Notes applications and mail files for each source site on the backup server
Started scheduled replication from source servers to backup servers
Instituted creation of replicas as part of the Notes user registration process
Done periodic directory comparisons with Alan Lepofsky's tool for verification

Next, on d-day we changed the mail server in each affected user's person document (for mass changes you can us a script) and created location documents and connection documents on the users' laptops by sending them a mail message with buttons for running those document creation scripts. This worked well for our Lousiana users last week. We will probably get a repeat performance later tonight as Ike makes landfall at Houston.

Enforcing user compliance with corporate policy - Part 1

2008-08-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

Several times in the last couple of years, I have been tasked to modify our mail templates to assist enforcement of corporate acceptable use and privacy policies.

The first bout I had with this issue began in mid-2005, when the legal department began pressing for as bullet-proof a method of appending legal disclaimers to email messages as we could muster up. Now, disclaimering had been introduced in R6 but it only applied to outbound webmail messages (if I recall correctly). What legal wanted was a legal disclaimer, not only for those DWA messages, but for every email message sent -- between internal Notes client users, from Notes client users to internet recipients and from Blackberry to both internal and external users. They did not want to have a "defeatable" method, like putting the text in the user's email signature.

It took several weeks of experimentation, getting suggestions from the community at notes.net and researching the web. When I presented the requirements (such as Notes user to Notes user disclaimers) I initially got some responses from the community like, "Why don't you just tell them the policy and discipline them if they break it?" I understand, but our executive and legal folks don't or won't operate that way -- and they tend to be "don't give me excuses, give me results." What we came up with not only met the criteria set by legal and executive management, but it has been in use now for three years and seems to have satisfied the need.

I will note that better methods of disclaimering were introduced with Domino 7, but our current method is working and though at some point I will try to see if it can fully substitute for what we are doing, it isn't a pressing issue because we have a working product.

The starting point:

Servers:
Domino 6.5.X Mail Servers internally
Domino 6.5.4 SMTP gateway to the internet
Domino 6.0.2CF1 Server running BES (Blackberry) 2.2

Clients:
Notes 6.5.x w/Domino Web Access 6 template
Web Browser running DWA6
Blackberry Handheld

Objective:
1. All messages sent within the Domino domain from any client to any client must have disclaimer appended
2. All messages sent outside the Domino domain to the internet must have disclaimer appended
3. All messages received from the internet then replied to or forwarded must have disclaimer appended
4. No duplications -- any message created, replied to or forwarded must have disclaimer appended only once.
Downstream devices or processes must be able to detect previous disclaimer appendage in message content and withhold appendage if done previously.

Here's what we came up with:

After much experimentation and frustration, I ended up using a "flag" field "HasDisclaimer" on most of the documents to control whether disclaimer text got appended or not.

Mailbox template (mail.box) on SMTP gateway servers:

1. Added hidden text field HasDisclaimer (tests for message from Notes Client)
2. Added disclaimer text after Body field (for Blackberry Disclaimer)
3. Set disclaimer text to hide when HasDisclaimer = "1" (Hides if not Blackberry)

Domino Web Access Template
1. Copied Memo form to new Forward form
2. Copied Reply form to new Reply ND form (Reply No Disclaimer -- alias Reply)
3. Copied Reply With History form to new Reply With History ND form (alias Reply)
4. Modified Memo and Reply With History and Reply With History ND Forms
5. Added hidden text field HasDisclaimer (with default of HasDisclaimer Set to "1" when disclaimered)
6. Added code to QuerySend event:

Sub Querysend(Source As Notesuidocument, Continue As Variant)
REM Start - added following lines for DISCLAIMER
Call Source.Refresh( 1 )
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim Duplicate, Subject, TestFor, BdyText As Variant
Duplicate=False
TestFor=False
TestFor=Source.FieldGetText("HasDisclaimer")
If Instr(TestFor,"1") >0 Then Duplicate=True
If Not Duplicate Then
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body","-- ")
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body","This e-mail and all attachments is confidential and may contain legally privileged information ")
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body","more legal blurb")
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
End If
Call Source.FieldSetText("HasDisclaimer","1")
REM End - added following lines for DISCLAIMER
End Sub

Reply Form

Added hidden text field HasDisclaimer with default value of HasDisclaimer (For consistency)
Added code to QuerySend event:

Sub Querysend(Source As Notesuidocument, Continue As Variant)
REM Start - added following lines for DISCLAIMER
Call Source.Refresh( 1 )
Dim session As New NotesSession
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body","-- ")
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body","This e-mail and all attachments is confidential and may contain legally privileged information ")
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body","more legal blurb")
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
Call Source.FieldAppendText ("Body",Chr(10))
Call Source.FieldSetText("HasDisclaimer","1")
REM End - added following lines for DISCLAIMER
End Sub

Modified Shared Action Cod

Note:
All the modifications below test for (1) h_CurrentSkinType - this field is present on any message sent from iNotes and received in a Notes client - eliminating duplications of disclaimer on messaged from iNotes and (2) HasDisclaimer = "1" to test if the message has already been disclaimered by a Notes client. Depending on the results, the action chooses a form which either adds disclaimer or does not.

Reply\Reply With History
REM {Notes Style Reply with Full History};
REM {@Command([Compose];"":"";"Reply with history")};
Formchoice := @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "Reply With History ND" ; "Reply with history");
@Command([Compose];"":"";Formchoice)

Reply\Reply Without Attachments
REM {Notes Style Reply with History};
REM {@Command([ComposeWithReference];"":"";"Reply"; 23)};
Formchoice := @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "ReplyND" ; "Reply");
@Command([ComposeWithReference];"":""; Formchoice; 23)

Reply\Reply With Internet Style History
REM {Internet Style Reply with History};
REM {@Command([ComposeWithReference]; "" : ""; "Reply"; 11)};
Formchoice := @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "ReplyND" ; "Reply");
@Command([ComposeWithReference]; "" : "" ; Formchoice ; 11)

Reply To All\Reply With History
REM {Notes Style Reply to All with Full History};
@If(@Text(@Right(@NoteID; "NT")) != "00000000";@Environment("MailStEd";"9");"");
REM {@Command([Compose];"":"";"Reply With History")};
Formchoice := @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "Reply With History ND" ; "Reply With History");
@Command([Compose];"":"";Formchoice)

Reply To All\Reply Without Attachments
REM {Notes Style Reply to All with History};
@If(@Text(@Right(@NoteID; "NT")) != "00000000";@Environment("MailStEd";"9");"");
REM {@Command([ComposeWithReference];"":"";"Reply"; 23)};
Formchoice := @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "ReplyND" ; "Reply");
@Command([ComposeWithReference];"":""; Formchoice ; 23)

Reply To All\Reply With Internet Style History
REM {Internet Style Reply to All With History};
@If(@Text(@Right(@NoteID; "NT")) != "00000000";@Environment("MailStEd";"9");"");
REM {@Command([ComposeWithReference];"":"";"Reply"; 11)};
Formchoice := @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "ReplyND" ; "Reply");
@Command([ComposeWithReference]; "" : "" ; Formchoice ; 11)

In order for the changes to "take" when triggered from the pull down menus in the ($Inbox) folder, I had to open the $Inbox design, open and close the shared action(s) and save the $Inbox when exiting.

Forward (Code change added 7/19/2006):
REM {R6 Style Full Forward};
@If(@UserName = @GetProfileField( "CalendarProfile"; "Owner");
@Command([ComposeWithReference]; "" ; @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "Forward" ; "Memo"); 1 + 2 + 32 + 64);
@Command([ComposeWithReference]; @MailDbName ; @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "Forward" ; "Memo"); 1 + 2 + 32 + 64))

Forward R7 (Code change added 7/19/2006):
REM {R6 Style Full Forward};
REM {R7 Calendar Managers to be prompted for where to save};
getUserAccess:=@TextToNumber(@UserAccess(@DbName));
@If(@UserName = @GetProfileField( "CalendarProfile"; "Owner");
@Command([ComposeWithReference]; "" ; @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "Forward" ; "Memo"); 1 + 2 + 32 + 64);
getUserAccess >=3;@Command([ComposeWithReference]; "" ; @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "Forward" ; "Memo"); 1 + 2 + 32 + 64);
@Command([ComposeWithReference]; @MailDbName ; @If(@IsAvailable(h_CurrentSkinType) HasDisclaimer = "1" ; "Forward" ; "Memo"); 1 + 2 + 32 + 64))

Reply form does not inherit any text from message being replied to. Hence, treat it as undisclaimered, no test needed. Just add the MOC disclaimer and set the flag to already disclaimered. Mailserver Configuration Document > Domino Web Access Tab Added disclaimer text in Disclaimer Text field Web client needs this for disclaimer to work.

Modified Configuration Document > DWA Disclaimer field (for webmail)

What this gets us:

Disclaimer on messages sent:

Notes to Notes
Notes to Internet
Notes to Blackberry
iNotes to Notes
iNotes to Internet
iNotes to Blackberry
Blackberry to Internet

No disclaimer on: Blackberry to Notes

Rethinking personal address book sharing

2008-08-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

Periodically, I have a request from a manager to share his or her personal address book with one or more assistants so that they can maintain contacts for the manager. My usual course of action is to create a replica of the manager's PAB on the Domino server, grant the subordinates editor access to do their maintenance on the server replica, distribute a link to the subordinates and have the manager keep it in sync with the local original replica.

What I would propose it this: since the DWA template (which we use a modified version of) contains the contact list in a hidden view, make the view visible, modify the mail file preferences to grant access to the contacts list in the same way that access is granted to others for calendar and to-do viewing or editing, make the action syncing the mail file and PAB a scheduled or event-driven action, or better yet, move the Contacts completely out of the PAB and make what is now the PAB a configuration database, i.e. Accounts, Locations, Connections.

Sametime, organization and administration

2008-08-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

For the past six months, we have been slowly moving toward implementing Sametime in our Domino environment. To some degree, there has been a "management of expectations" issue at work, since one of the things we had initially hoped to do with Sametime was use the gateway functions to connect our traders to AOL and Yahoo IM -- since those networks are used by the various trading groups they deal with daily. For a long time, we ignorantly assumed that the gateways involved setting up a Sametime server and adding some plug-ins. Ooof! Way more complicated than that. But that is a story for another day.

One thing that becomes painfully apparent with Sametime (we installed 7.5.1) is that it shares a family characteristic with its brother Domino. Configuration stuff is scattered all over the place. The Sametime configuration settings can be found scattered areound in several nsf files. To some degree, this is is similar to the Domino settings that are "now where was that... in the server doc or the configuration doc?" and the Notes client where some settings are found in the client preferences, some in the mail preferences and some... well... Now, I know that in regard to the Notes client, it is important to remember that the client is an "environment" in which many different application run. Therefore environment settings should be separate from application settings. However, it is worth considering how application settings -- like mail or calendar access and delegation, signature, etc. might be seamlessly "docked" in the client preferences. This may be true in Notes 8 but I'm unaware of it.

What to do about it? An experiment...

I have begun working on a "Sametime management application" where I can have one-click access to various log data, configuration views and forms, etc. I will post my progress as it materializes.

Oops, forgot that one little detail

2008-08-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

Our UK headquarters emailed me early in the week to verify the (relatively few) steps to move their Domino server to new hardware. As with most, if not all, Domino server ugrades or migrations, it is a fairly easy -- usually slam dunk -- process with copying of data (mail files, etc.) taking the most time. Other than the file copies, most of these types of updates are a 10-15 minute process. You could do it at lunch with time to spare.

I received an email on my Blackberry from the UK network manager early Saturday morning -- the morning after the server upgrade -- saying that everything seemed to be working just great except that no internet mail was coming from our internet mail gateway server. Since I manage that server, I got out my laptop and hopped on the corporate VPN to have a look.

I started up a remote control session with the gateway server. I verified that there was pending mail for the UK office and when I tried to route it, always got a console message that "the remote server is no longer responding" -- this in spite of the following:

- I could do a trace from the Domino console on the gateway server and get a connection just like normal

- I could connect to the UK mail server using my Notes Administrator client and also could open databases on that server with Notes

- I could open up a command window on the gateway server and telnet to port 25 on the UK mail server with the result of getting an SMTP connection message from the server

By this time, I decided to shower, have breakfast with my wife and drive to the office for any further investigation. I was thankful that it was Saturday, so it was not as urgent as it might have been on a weekday.

Mail was attempting to route via SMTP, which is the default for inbound mail coming through the internet mail gateway. I commented out the entries in the gateway server hosts file that pertained to the UK server, with no observable change. I added a connection document for gateway to UK mail routing and that brought no joy. Then I found that when I edited the UK server's server doc in the Domino Directory on the gateway server -- turning off the SMTP listener switch -- mail began routing via Notes as soon as the server document was saved. Turning the SMTP listener setting back on returned it to failure mode. Bear in mind that the SMTP listener was actually still running on the UK server since I had not replicated the change back to it. Only the gateway server was affected and the effect was that the gateway server was switched from looking for an SMTP listener at the UK and knew to route it via NRPC.

The UK manager also verified that his newer version of MacAffee had any SMTP screening turned off and that the firewall ports were all correct. Again, no joy.

I communicated my findings with the UK network manager and related at my "baffledness" over why it was behaving this way. I knew from what I was observing that if the listener was turned off, there would be no problem with mail flow. The dilemma I had was that the UK has several business-critical SMTP-mail generating applications that feed into the UK mail server. If the listener was turned off, this would be broken. Finally, after working on the issue for six hours, I asked him if it was possible to point those processes at an off-site SMTP server so that mail could be routing to him via NRPC and system generated SMTP messages could have another avenue for routing besides their normal path though the UK mail server. He responded that it would be OK until we got it figured out during the week. I assumed I needed to get some of our network/WAN guys involved in figuring out from the packet level why we were getting the routing failure.

When I got home from the office, I was reminded that I had done my telnets to port 25 using the server IP address -- not DNS name. I shot an email to the UK manager and asked him if there might be a problem with the windows name on the box or if there might be a DNS problem. I then proceeded to eat lunch and go to my yardwork, now about four hours behind schedule. After I had worked outside for a couple of hours, I checked my Blackberry again and found that, indeed, after swapping the hardware, they had failed to match the DNS names with the correct IP addresses after making the swap. Making that correction was the missing key to the whole problem. Having discovered that, everything was put back to it's previous state -- SMTP listener turned on, business servers repointed to the UK mail server. All was joy!

Thank God for the reminder that a little thing like DNS could turn this simple swap into a show-stopper!

Starting somewhere

2008-07-27T22:31:00.000-07:00

A while back, there was a flurry of "how I got started with Notes" blog posting. I did post a short summary on someone's blog comments -- I can't remember which blog. To get the ball rolling on my own Notes/Domino blog, I'll start there. It's as good a place as any.

My interest in information technology goes back to the early '80s when I was working at a small building materials/home center chain in southwest Indiana. The owners began to roll in a minicomputer with terminals on every desk in accounting, sales, etc. Even though the process of computerizing was tedious and the results were sometimes spotty because of inconsistent data entry practices, I could definitely see the business value. I have primarily been interested in computing from "getting the job done" data management perspective, and much less so from a gamer's persective. "Tools not toys" pretty much sums up my take on most things in life.

I went from user, in that workplace, to seller at a ComputerLand store, to manager at a small automotive industry supplier for Big 3 assembly plants. It was there, in the early '90s that I read frequently in Infoworld about this thing called Notes that the 1-2-3 spreadsheet people marketed. Notes was somewhat of a pie-in-the-sky proposition for me, because in those times, there was no mention of SMBs like us, only major corporations with deep pockets.

In the mid '90s I moved my family south and got a contract tech support job with a Fortune 500 chemical company. To my delight, Notes 3 was a mainstay in their IT environment. I immediately took to learning as much as my position would allow. It was pretty tightly controlled from the corporate headquarters and I was very low down on the food chain. Nevertheless, after dissecting some of our own corporate apps and starting to work on my own, I became even more sold on Notes as an appdev platform.

Early on, Lotus began migrating customers from cc:Mail to Notes for email. We did the migration. I have used Notes mail ever since.

In the late '90s I again switched jobs and went to work at another Fortune 500 Notes shop. Again, in this job, even though I was not in the corporate division that managed messaging platforms, I was able to use Notes to develop apps that were a big help to the business area I was working in. A couple of years later, I moved into the workgroup that was responsible for messaging and after a time, became sort-of the main Notes admin. My boss has a long history with Notes, as well. He has the additional perspective of having managed an Exchange shop before he was here -- and is still a Notes fan. Imagine that.

Today I'm doing the same thing. Finding business value in Notes/Domino. we are preparing to add LN Instant Messaging to the mix. Working with Sametime adds more complication to the picture. A number of new positions have been filled with MS-enamored developers and techs. Some of them can't understand why we don't switch to Exchange/Outlook. In addition, many new hires in the user population come from Outlook shops and bring some biases with them. We continue to circle the wagons. More than that, I want to be able to prove that there is plenty of business value left in the Notes/Domino brand.

Am I a Notes bigot? No, there was a time when I thought MS could do no wrong. As I watched their strategy to get NT into Novell shops, to get Office onto desktops, etc. the bloom fell off the rose. Having worked in manufacturing, I am all about reliability. I have seen dependable Novell servers moved out and replaced by multiplied numbers of Windows servers, with frequent reboots, etc. I have suffered through supporting Office. I remember them building code in the OS to break competitors' products. I have watched them push half-baked, unreliable products out the door and expect the consumer to consider it acceptable. I have been angered by the anything-to-win morality of MS sales. It's a shame. conversely, there are things about Notes/Domino that bug me -- things that I think should have been fixed several versions ago. However, I like easy upgrades, reliable operation, and backward compatibility.

It is my aim to share some of my day-to-day projects, problems, fixes, and such in this blog space. Please check back as things progress.