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Differences between Standard SSL and EV SSL

We were updating SSL certificates on IBM Domino servers and the question came up about the differences between EV SSL and Standard SSL. Outside of one costing more I was not sure what the added benefits were to using a EV SSL certificate.

The reality is that a Standard SSL Certificate and an EV SSL Certificate offer the same technical level of protection in encryption standards.  The EV (or extended validation) Certificates require a different level of authentication. Not for the user, but for the website itself.
EV SSL Certificate
That lead me to figure out how the end user even knows if the certificate is a Standard SSL or EV SSL Certificate. I had no clue so I cannot imagine how an end user knows.   Continue Reading here" Differences between Standard SSL and EV SSL" »
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    On Wednesday, April 25th, 2018   by Chris Miller        

IBM takes public holidays again!!

Back in Jul 2016 I blogged how IBM Domino public holidays in the Domino Directory were all expiring.  Luckily, some IBM awesome people read my blog and commented a new pubnames.ntf is available with updated Holiday document through 2026.
Hi Chris and Everyone,
We have a pubnames.ntf English version with new Holidays in it here: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21989194 packaged along with a couple of policy items needed. Localization is being planned for other languages.

This is awesome news and only takes a few minutes to get your environment updated. Keep in mind they mentioned there are other updates included. As always, use caution and test the new template before just firing it out there.  Or go rogue like me and go for it!

If you do not wish to read the updates here is the direct download link per the technote
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    On Thursday, November 3rd, 2016   by Chris Miller        

IBM does not take public holidays anymore it seems

A reader caught this and sent it over. IBM has once again not not updated the public holiday documents in IBM Domino. Since IBM uses Domino as the back end (and IBM Verse as the overlay) for email, I would imagine they are facing this same issue. Or have stopped taking public holidays
Hey Chris,

Just wanted to share with you my latest frustration with IBM.

You may or may not be aware, that the "Holidays" import that "Lotus" provided 10 years ago, will end at the end of 2016.

Just to make sure I wasn't missing some critical update that included newer "Holiday" documents, I opened a PMR with IBM.

Their response was, "there is an enhancement request open for this".  Their "work around" for this issue, "you can edit the records yourself, to add the additional dates".

An "enhancement request"?  They can't afford to let a data entry person spend a couple of days creating newly updated "Holiday" documents.  It's not like they are busy putting out new versions of Notes and Domino.  (Since it has been almost 3 years since we had a point release, and that point release was mostly for bug fixes and  XPages stuff.)

You know as well as anyone, how much of a battle this is to keep a positive light on Domino.  Constant bashing about it being a dead platform, and antiquated (which is the most ridiculous argument I've ever had to have)... BUT... when IBM doesn't support the simple things, it just makes me think, "IBM really is trying to kill Domino".

OK... venting completed... I feel better now.

Thanks for reading,

There is an APAR for this found right here, and numerous documents and blog posts to create public holidays. I understand the reader frustration that we know this is happening soon with no updates yet.
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    On Thursday, July 14th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

From the Inbox: I think DAOS is screwed up

Q: Chris,
I have been digging through tons of online articles, presentations and forums and we are just having a hard time getting DAOS back to working order.  I think we made some mistakes moving things around, some pruning commands and possibly missing some files. Is it better to start over?
Continue Reading here" From the Inbox: I think DAOS is screwed up" »
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    On Thursday, April 14th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

From the Inbox: XSS and DominoValidateRedirect variable to protect your users

Q: Chris,
We recently had a pen test done on our web servers and it came back with a few issues.  One of the issues is that our Domino server was vulnerable to cross-site redirect hacks. Is this an application code problem or the Domino server? We need to fix this to pass the audit.
Continue Reading here" From the Inbox: XSS and DominoValidateRedirect variable to protect your users" »
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    On Thursday, April 14th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

From the Inbox: File Does Not Exist (CalendarProfile)

Q: Chris,
We have some users that receive the error File Does Not Exist (CalendarProfile) when they start working in the morning. Have you seen this error before? Is there something in policies or a fixpack we need to deploy?
Continue Reading here" From the Inbox: File Does Not Exist (CalendarProfile)" »
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    On Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016   by Chris Miller        

IBM Security Alert of GIF Processing Vulnerability in Domino

IBM has released a Security Alert of GIF Processing Vulnerability in Domino. Here are the particulars and the link to the rest of the article with remediation,
IBM Domino contains two GIF parsing buffer overflow vulnerabilities. A remote attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to execute code or crash the Domino SMTP server.  
This alert also affects most of the versions companies are running that are under support. Here is the most recent list of server versions:

You can read more about the enhancements and the tool on my SocialBizUg article.  Make sure you subscribe to the monthly newsletter (at the bottom) or the RSS feed.
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    On Tuesday, November 10th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

Managing Sender Policy Framework (SPF) Records

One of the things a mail administrator must understand is Sender Policy Framework or SPF records in DNS. With the advancement in spam filtering, the ability to verify a server is authorized to send email on a domain's behalf is critical. So I wrote a brief introductory article on SocialBizUG.
SPF allows the owner of an Internet domain to specify which computers are authorized to send mail with sender addresses in that domain, using Domain Name System (DNS) records. Receivers verifying the SPF information in TXT records may reject messages from unauthorized sources before receiving the body of the message. Thus, the principles of operation are similar to those of DNS-based blackhole lists (DNSBL), except that SPF uses the authority delegation scheme of the Domain Name System

SPF works for any mail system so deploying it is a must as some recipients are now requiring entries or they block your email.  Read more in the article right here or leave your questions below.

 I even have some links in the article to let you validate your new or existing SPF records.
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    On Monday, July 13th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

Managed Replicas and Mail Delivery Time

In a recent SocialBIzUG article I wrote about Managed Replicas and Mail Delivery Time. I had a request to figure out why they had some lag times that were not anticipating
Chris, I saw your video on using Managed replicas for clients.  I currently have Managed replicas set up and 2 server clusters set up. 
What I noticed is since I set this up, the email is taking much longer to be delivered. I am looking at more of a delivery time of 4-5 minutes for messages as opposed to less than 1 minute.  We don't have many users (115) and I have looked at all my settings but have not been able to resolve the issue. I am hoping you might have an idea as to what has caused this issue. 

Take a read at the notes.ini variable and other steps we took over at my monthly newsletter and articles.  Subscribe today if you haven't to both SocialBizUG and my IdoNotes newsletters (on the right sidebar here on my blog)
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    On Wednesday, February 25th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

All-in-one Admin Tool for agent troubleshooting

The All-in-one Admin Tool for agent based troubleshooting and problem solving has been around IBM since version 7. I first wrote about it back in July 2011 but that was removed when SocialBizUG was born and content migrated.  So you needed a refresher as we did having to use this very recently
All-in-one Admin Tool for agent based troubleshooting and problem solving

The tool is quite powerful and offers a wide array of troubleshooting abilities that have saved us some time. Here is a great list of what it offers Continue Reading here" All-in-one Admin Tool for agent troubleshooting" »
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    On Tuesday, December 9th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Private Meeting Information in the RnR Database in IBM Domino

Have you ever had a users private meeting information from their calendar show in the RnR database in IBM Domino? This is normally something most users would not want.  Luckily there is an easy way to prevent it from happening.

  IBM has had a recommendation since 7.0.3 to place a server side notes.ini variable to place a new descriptor in the database so as to not show any potential private data from entries marked Private.The downside to this setting is that older entries already in the database are no affected. 

Check out my SocialBizUg article on this topic for the rest of the story and the variable information.  Also subscribe to the newsletter while you are there.
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    On Thursday, October 30th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Protecting Directories on a Web Server

The Domino web server is still powerful (never mind the current POODLE and SHA-2 talks and fixes) and offers the easily ability to control access via File Protections Documents. Groups and users can be listed allowing or blocking access to files and directories served by the Domino web server.
Web Site File Protection

Since .nsf files already have their own access controls, these File Protections extend to files such as HTML, JPEG, and GIF that you can enforce file protection for that browser users can access. As an additional bonus, you can also set restrictions to web asset directories.

You can read my entire article on protecting directories on a web server over at SocialBizUg as part of my monthly Sys Admin Tips newsletter you should subscribe to.
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    On Tuesday, October 28th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

IBM addresses Poodle and SHA-2 issues in new technotes

IBM has addressed SHA-2 support and the Poodle vulnerability for IBM Domino in new technotes that were released. Here are the links and info.
Technote #1418982 titled Planned SHA-2 deliveries for IBM Domino 9.1
SHA-2 support for Domino 9.x is planned to be delivered over the next several weeks via an Interim Fix.

Technote #1687167 titled How is IBM Domino impacted by the Poodle attack?
IBM intends to release Domino server Interim Fixes over the next several weeks that implement TLS 1.0 with TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV for HTTP to mitigate against POODLE. Implementing TLS 1.0 will allow browsers to still connect to Domino after they have been changed to address the POODLE attack, and Domino will protect against browsers that have been compromised by POODLE. 
IBM will provide Interim Fixes

As you can see IBM will be making interim fixes that will need to be applied to your infrastructure. This includes HTTP traffic for XPages, Traveler, IBM Connections and everything else.  Many bloggers have info on what the impacts are unpatched.
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    On Tuesday, October 21st, 2014   by Chris Miller        

The IBM Desktop Utility for Lotus Notes Clients

Do you still use or have users with the Lotus Notes Workspace? Then the IBM Desktop Utility for Lotus Notes is a cool tool.
IBM Desktop Utility for Lotus Notes

The DSKTOOL.EXE Utility essentially remediates the user's desktop icons in a recertification exercise.
What that means is that you can use the tool to rename the server that an icon points to with a simple script text file.

It is currently supported up to version 8.5.x for Notes Builds 194 and earlier.  Read the rest of the SocialBizUG article I wrote right here.
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    On Thursday, October 2nd, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Does Server_Restricted Do What You Think?

In another SocialBizUg article I had to question how we think about the Server Restricted ability in Domino. It does not always work how we think it should.
Since IBM offers it we definitely want to use server_restricted=x with the appropriate value.  There are four possible values (previous to 8.5.2 FP3 there was only 2):

The problem is that some of the options still have unintended results.  Mainly allowing users access to the server still based on database ACL rights. You can read the whole article on SocialBizUg right here.
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    On Thursday, September 11th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Why Did They Remove Lite Mode from IBM iNotes 9?

Many were surprised to find out that IBM removed iNotes Lite as a menu option in IBM iNotes 9.  Tracking down what changed took a bit. here is what I found.
IBM iNotes 9 Full Mode



I found an IBM document explaining what features were reaching parity between Lite and Full and why they retired it. Once you upgrade all URLs redirect and even adding the Lite Mode to a URL will still go to Full Mode. It just is not there to use

Read the full article in my Sys Admin Tips newsletter right here.

NOTE: Per some people's request, I am asking why did they remove it when the parity is not totally complete. There was a technote recently issued on the topic
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    On Thursday, August 21st, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Contact delegation in Lotus Notes

I received an email asking about contact delegation in Lotus Notes for user to user controls. Unfortunately this is not easily done, even with the integrated contacts in the mailfile.
What you are trying to do is use the mail delegation abilities to manage contacts that are stored in the mail file itself.  While this option does not exist, I might have a suggestion that would work perfectly for you.

You can read the full question and my answer on my Sys Admin Tips monthy newsletter and articles on SocialBuzUg.
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    On Tuesday, August 12th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Can I Throttle and Restrict SMTP Connections in Domino?

While most companies now use a SMTP appliance to scan for viruses and spam, you may still want to throttle connections from individual  internal servers or the appliances to your IBM Domino server.
throttle SMTP connections

This leads to questioning how Domino can throttle SMTP traffic from specific hosts. After some quick verification of what I was almost sure was not fully possible, there is a partial solution I know of.

By default, the Domino SMTP service supports an unlimited number of inbound sessions; that is, as many connections as the server's resources physically permit.

So what can you do? Basically in IBM Domino only restrict total SMTP inbound connections.  Read more right here.

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    On Monday, August 11th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

What is the Repair Calendar Feature?

IBM added a Repair Calendar feature to help repair your Lotus Notes client by automatically detecting duplicate repeating calendar entries. However, most users do not know this has existed since version 8.5.
Repair Calendar feature

Repairing the entries actually save them into a view.  Read more at my article on SocialBizUG
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    On Tuesday, July 29th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Denny’s Inc leaves Lotus Notes citing inefficient and not mobile first

According to numerous press releases, Denny's Inc. has migrated away from Lotus Notes to Google Apps for Business due to being inefficient to manage and not mobile first.
Denny's Inc logo

The press releases all have statements quoted from the CIO names Alex Lewis. I wanted to summarize and talk about a few areas.    Continue Reading here" Denny's Inc leaves Lotus Notes citing inefficient and not mobile first" »
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    On Thursday, July 17th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Uninstalling the Embedded Sametime Client in Lotus Notes

Has your company wanted to remove the IBM Sametime client from the sidebar? It is possible with the following steps for uninstalling the embedded Sametime client in Lotus Notes.
IBM Sametime logo

After some digging around for the best option for existing users, I came across steps to uninstall the Samteime embedded client  for all the client platforms. One thing to highlight (shown below) is that uninstalling the Sametime embedded client still leaves the necessary required components for some of the awareness features to still work.

You can read the entire article in my Sys Admin monthly newsletter right here on SocialBizUg.
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    On Tuesday, July 15th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Directory Access Lists and backup restores in IBM Domino

From a recent article I wrote for SocialBizUg is working with backup restores onto the same Domino server as the live databases. We use Directory Access Lists.
Q: Chris,
We want to be able to put restored databases on the Domino server to be able to have them to recover an accidentally deleted document or sometimes when we have a litigation question. However, we do not want these databases replicating or being accessed by anyone else, while leaving the ACLs exactly as they are for various security reasons. Is there a good way to do this?
Maciej
A: Maciej,
Actually, there is one way you can do this without modifying the ACL and also still placing it on the Domino server. You can look at Directory Access Lists. This allows you to make a directory that has its own security controls to gain access using all the names found in the Domino Directory.
IBM Domino Directory Access List

Continue reading the entire article right here.
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    On Monday, June 2nd, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Authentication Is Not Enabled and SMTP Error 421

A Domino server at a client was showing a SMTP Error 421: SMTP Service Not Available, closing the transmission channel. Here is our steps to troubleshoot and solution.
They also decided to have an intermediate spam filter and then some routing of port forwarding on their internal network. This offered many challenges with allowed hostname and addresses for connectivity.  After getting past that we were still left with the above errors. We found an IBM technote that described the issue and errors but was hard to follow since it contradicted itself.

Read more on the error, steps to troubleshoot and the confusing technote on my Sys Admin Tips newsletter article here.
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    On Tuesday, May 27th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Disable Non-Delivery Reports

A reader was having issues with Non-delivery reports (NDR's) being sent back as their address after a spammer used it. We look at stopping Domino NDR reports from being generates.
IBM Domino configuration document NDR
Continue Reading here" Disable Non-Delivery Reports" »
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    On Monday, May 19th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

IBM Support investigates natural language processing help

IBM Support has issued a request to submit questions you have on Lotus Notes and IBM Domino to help analyze natural language processing assistance to them.
IBM Domio 9 logo

They have provided two links for you to submit questions.  One for IBM Domino and one for IBM Lotus Notes    Continue Reading here" IBM Support investigates natural language processing help" »
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    On Wednesday, May 14th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

I Only Want Email on My iPhone from Traveler When I Say So

Do you have IBM Lotus Traveler users that do not want constant push of their email to their iOS devices? How do you set this to manual?
IBM Lotus Traveler logo

Continue Reading here" I Only Want Email on My iPhone from Traveler When I Say So" »
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    On Monday, April 28th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

All I Want Is the Old Client Theme for My Users

As you upgrade users to IBM Lotus Notes 9 Social Edition they will see the new default theme. For some users this seems to freak them out and they want the Lotus Notes 8.x theme back. Here is my article on how.
Windows and Themes in Lotus Notes 9




Continue Reading here" All I Want Is the Old Client Theme for My Users" »
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    On Thursday, April 24th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Troubleshoot inaccurate freetime in IBM Domino

Calendar issues and freetime are always a challenge to troubleshoot in Lotus Notes and Domino.  In this article on SocialBizUG I run through some steps we use each time.
The first thing we noticed in the calendar preferences dialog was that the user had no time range listed but everyday selected as available.  We thought that was strange and had the user put some times in the fields.  We then ran the commands I discuss below and saw that the user was only available each day starting at 7am but ending at 10am. Everything after 10am was blocked. 

I go on from there with the steps to help troubleshoot and solve most issues.  Continue reading Troubleshoot inaccurate freetime in IBM Domino on SocialBizUG.as part of my monthly Sys Admin Tips newsletter.
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    On Thursday, April 3rd, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Beta testing ConsoleEZ from Ytria - review coming

Ytria had a beta for ConsoleEZ that is ending this weekend and I had not spent enough time testing it  I am quite pleased with some of the features so far.
Ytria ConsoleEZ interface

The above multiple server console window is just one view of what it is capable of. From there you can do even more
Continue Reading here" Beta testing ConsoleEZ from Ytria - review coming" »
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    On Friday, March 28th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Installing IBM Domino language packs

I wrote about installing IBM Domino language packs over on SocialBizUG and just got another email asking about it. So here is the excerpt and link to the longer answer for those dealing with language packs and Domino.
A Domino Language pack is the translated version of the standard English version of the Domino templates. It includes the translated versions of standard Domino system templates, such as the Discussion and Mail templates, as well as certain binary files required by the server.

While the operating system provides the local language functions for the keyboard, the Domino language pack translates the templates to the local language.

You can read the whole article right here in my monthly Sys Admin Tips newsletter.
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    On Monday, March 3rd, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Sending Meeting Invites to the Entire Company at Once

I received an email on someone asking about sending a meeting invite to the entire company via IBM Lotus Notes. If you are doing something like this I presume you wouldn't want responses back.
Event Announcement via Lotus Notes

Broadcast announcements are the solution to this problem as long as you have the required groups you can send to defined in your directory.
Read more on this via my article on SocialBizUg (yo)

Go join my IdoNotes Network Facebook page, Instagram or YouTube channels, I am trying to grow those too :-)
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    On Tuesday, December 17th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Security Bulletin: Java Applets and JavaScript Inside HTML Emails

IBM has made a security announcement that  the IBM Notes mail client versions 9.0-8.0 are able to receive HTML emails that may include Java applet tags and JavaScript tags that could load scripts from remote locations with no security prompts.
Java Applet user security in IBM Lotus Notes
IBM has released fixes and patches, or remediation steps, to solve the issue.

The fix is included in Interim Fix 1 for Notes 8.5.3 Fix Pack 4* and Interim Fix 1 for Notes 9.0* for Windows with the Mac version coming soon.  For Linux, clients are encouraged to monitor fix availability in 8.5.3 Fix Pack 5 and 9.0.1
You can obtain these fixes from Fix Central 


Read more on SocialBizUG...
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    On Thursday, December 12th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

IBM is transitioning from Prometric to Pearson VUE for testing services

I received the notice twice today that IBM is transitioning from Prometric to Pearson VUE for testing services effective January 2, 2014.
Pearson VUE logo

The IBM Professional Certification Program will transition certification and mastery exam delivery to Pearson VUE (PVUE) on January 2, 2014. There will be no disruption to your ability to take and report your exams. As always our goal is to make this transition as easy as possible for IBM testing candidates, and if you have taken an IBM exam in the past, you will be able to continue using your current Candidate Testing ID. Additionally, Pearson VUE will honor IBM promotion codes and most valid and unexpired IBM vouchers. Please note the certification requirements and testing prices will not change.

With the transition to Pearson VUE the test numbers are changing. Correlation Tables have been created that map the current test numbers to the new test numbers

Read more of the very long FAQ on the certification website announcement

Ok I wanted to highlight this one part of the FAQ
Starting January 13, 2014, most unused Prometric vouchers that have not been redeemed or expired will be valid in the Pearson VUE system.

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    On Tuesday, December 10th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Updatesite.ntf is now open sourced - I disagree with that idea

IBM announced that updatesite.ntf, the site update template provided with the Domino server, has been open sourced and sent to OpenNTF, I think this was a mistake for a key system template.
IBM Lotus Notes Application Install

The updatesite.ntf template is used to deploy plug-ins, composite applications, and XPage extension libraries to the IBM Lotus Notes client. Well in theory it was supposed to, but I have written on that topic before. It was also supposed to be able to update the Notes client at some point, but that will not happen with the way the Standard IBM Lotus Notes client is written. Here is the announcement quote:
With the Apache licensed update site template OpenNTF developers can now put their own extension libraries in update site databases and package them in their project releases

So this is saying you can make the database available but that has always been possible. The database itself already has a native ability to import other updatesite.nsf databases since it inception.

The whole idea of the database was to allow developers of applications to send you their plug-ins in quite a few formats
  • their own updatesite database that gets imported
  • a zip file of their feature to get deployed
  • a local update site
All of these allow developers to send you items to be placed in controlled update sites and also set the URL references inside them to point to their own update site database for added security and deployment controls.

I think any system type database should remain under IBM direct controls and not be open. I also know that this database has not really been updated with enhancements since creation which leads to another whole posting on support for the plug-in model.

What are your thoughts? Should this or all system databases go open source to allow you to tweak IBM Domino server installs?
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    On Monday, December 9th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

IBM taking down most user forums and wikis this weekend for maintenance

IBM has announced that forums, wikis and apps on www-10.lotus.com, www-12.lotus.com and infolib.lotus.com will be down the afternoon of Friday November 22 2013 to morning of Monday November 25 2013.
IBM Notes 9 icon


all other wikis, forums and other applications hosted on www-10.lotus.com, www-12.lotus.com, and infolib.lotus.com are expected to be unavailable from 4:00 PM EST (9:00 PM GMT) Friday, November 22nd, 2013 to 9:00 AM EST (2:00 PM GMT) Monday, November 25th, 2013 due to maintenance work at our facility. This outage does not apply to IBM SmartCloud for Social Business itself.

Just an FYI for everyone that may be looking to read, catch up or post this wekeend.

Go join my IdoNotes Network Facebook page or YouTube channels, I am trying to grow those too :-)
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    On Friday, November 22nd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

IBM announces Domino Web Administrator is deprecated

IBM has announced, via a security bulletin, that the Domino Web Administrator (webadmin.nsf) is now deprecated due to a cross-site scripting vulnerability. IBM suggest you only utilize the Domino Administrator client for all your needs in Domino versions 8.5.x and 9.x
IBM Domino 9 logo



You can read more in my article on SocialBizUG (yo) right here. It has the technote link and some more information on the Security Bulletin.

For those that do not know.. (yes via Wikipedia)
Deprecation is a status applied to a computer software feature, characteristic, or practice indicating it should be avoided, typically because of it being superseded. The term is also sometimes used for a feature, design, or practice that is permitted but no longer recommended


Note (Nov 14 2013): Installing a fresh Domino 9.0.1 server still creates the webadmin database

and go join my IdoNotes Network Facebook page or YouTube channels, I am trying to grow those too :-)
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    On Tuesday, November 12th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Try delegating a meeting back to the chairperson in Lotus Notes

For fun I was attempting to get out of a meeting via IBM Lotus Notes by delegating it back to the chairperson.  The following error popped up which led to some questions I have.
Lotus Notes error delegating meeting invitation


While slightly accurate, it really does not simple say that the user you are attempting to delegate to is the chairperson.  You also get this notice for anyone that is on the invite list.

But what if I really wanted to delegate my attendance and information to someone already attending? This is not possible in any form. This leads me to think of how meetings and information needed for them maybe shared among team members wanting to send it with someone else already coming.

I would hope for an alert that says "This person you are attempting to delegate to is already attending, Are you sure?"  Then it would notify taht user of the delegation to send the information.

Does that make sense to anyone else?
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    On Wednesday, August 28th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Lotus Quickr Certifications to be Withdrawn Sep 30 2013

IBM has announced that the Lotus Quickr Certifications will be withdrawn on Sep 30 2013. This is pretty much a hint as to how Lotus Quickr is being merged into newer and other IBM products in the future.
Lotus Quickr logo

The following exams are being retired:
  • LOT-950: Administering IBM Lotus Quickr 8.1 Services for IBM Lotus Domino
  • LOT-982: Administering IBM Lotus Quickr 8.1 Services for IBM WebSphere Portal
Once those exams are retired they will simultaneously retire the following two exams:
  • IBM Certified System Administrator - Lotus Quickr 8.1 for IBM Lotus Domino
  • IBM Certified System Administrator - Lotus Quickr 8.1 for IBM WebSphere Portal
So prepare to update to some newer ones to remain certified and keep your business partner points.

Join in the discussion about IBM certification I have going from the posting IBM retiring the IBM Certified Advanced Security Professional? I say No please!
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    On Monday, August 19th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Notes client and Symantec issue and workaround

The IBM Notes client and Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) have been battling each other lately with crashes for the notes2 process. The NLNVP.dll file seems to be the culprit. Symantec places the following line in the notes.ini file of your client:
EXTMGR_ADDINS=NLNVP.DLL

EXTMGR_ADDINS=NLNVP.DLL error


With this line SEP is enabled for the Lotus Notes Email Auto-Protect and seems to cause severe issues on some client machines. If the line is removed and the Lotus Notes client restarted everything is fine. However SEP keeps putting it back into the notes.ini

Forums report everything from changing the version of the installed SEP folder to removing the endpoint protection part entirely that looks at Notes in real time scanning. Both of those go around the conflict but seemed to work.
Continue Reading here" Notes client and Symantec issue and workaround" »
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    On Monday, July 8th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

IBM retiring the IBM Certified Advanced Security Professional? I say No please!

IBM announced the retirement of anyone certified as an IBM Certified Advanced Security Professional without having an updated exam ready to replace it, This will happen in the next 90 days according to a recent notice.
IBM Certified Advanced Security Professional


While we could have a debate on certification in general, the IBM Certified Advanced Security Professional is an achievement not many obtained since it was first made available in 2006.  The exam itself was different than the other IBM Lotus certifications.  It consisted of scenario based questions. This made you work harder to uncover and think about the answer.  You also got twice the amount of time to take the exam with twice as many questions.
This role recognizes the more advanced level of skills required by someone in a security role and covers the following areas as they relate to security in Notes Domino 8: installation, configuration, mail, management, and maintenance.

Some of our top administrators in the world even talked about the difficulty such as Paul Mooney. Blog posts announced the awesome achievement like Vlad Tatarincevs and it showed in LinkedIn Profiles and SlideShare,  Even I posted my second one for Domino 8.

So what do you think about them retiring an exam that has no future plan yet showed a high level of advanced IBM Domino security knowledge? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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    On Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Setting auto-status change preferences in Sametime via policy

Have you wanted to set your Sametime Connect client, embedded or stand-alone, auto-status change preferences via a policy? Well you can not. This is a shortcoming in Sametime policies.

For Sametime Connect clients you can use the Sametime policies to set and enforce a few preferences.  In the embedded Sametime client inside of IBM Notes you also rely heavily on the Notes client preferences dialog.

Image:Setting auto-status change preferences in Sametime via policy

While I can manually go in and set these on my IBM Notes client, there is no Desktop policy setting nor Sametime policy that allows me to control this. IBM documentation covers the variables and attribute for auto-status change preferences but that is all behind the scenes. The location os such preferences are also notes in the IBM Sametime wiki, but again no easy way to manage and manipulate.

In talking with some awesome Sametime partners looking for something I missed, I learned just the opposite.  IBM has some preferences that allow users to set their own destiny, but no administrative control or option.

Do you have issues with people appearing online when they are away? Do you wish you could control setting and preferences in IBM Sametime like this?
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    On Friday, June 7th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Instant IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 How-to : Book Review

Instant IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 How-to

I had the opportunity to review Instant IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 How-to from Packt publishing. I was hoping for a linear book with some great tips. This book could then be leveraged to show cool things to the doubters and on-board new users at a faster pace by showing quick tips.

One immediate concern I had was that this book was based on IBM Notes 8.5.3 and was published after IBM Notes 9 was released.  The public beta was out long enough for IBM Notes 9 to be included in this book. It would have been beneficial to showcase some of the new mail features just as a tease of what can be found in IBM Notes 9.

It is a quick 68 pages written by an IBMer and reviewed by IBMers. There were simple, intermediate and advanced type tips scattered throughout the topics. From the preface:
A mini Lotus Notes User Guide, this book covers best practice, hints, tips, and tricks of
Lotus Notes 8.5.3. As a user, you will find this book to be an invaluable reference for the
8.5.3 Lotus Notes client. This book covers the new features in detail so that you will be able
to take advantage of them.

Some of the tips, like adding a feed have been around for years and are not really deployed anywhere in the real world. It starts with customizing the Homepage of the client.  With the new IBM Notes 9 Discover page that would have been helpful.  I did appreciate they mentioned the Workspace.

There was a brief section on saving emails as .eml files.  I definitely would not have included this in the book as saving loose files of messages defeats the purpose of having a mailfile that is searchable, indexed and sorted.  Message recall was also mentioned (many of you know I hate it with a passion) but it failed to mention this feature may not work unless your administrator has configured and allowed it.

Creating replicas was helpful but having user manually edit notes.ini files was not. I would not recommend a user even knowing that file existed. There were some good tips around calendar cleanup, adding more calendars and color coding. I just wished some sections were better grouped together.

Some other reviews have been done, such as the one on Conxsys.  I think we agree there are some valid tips but the flow and content matter wasn't spot on.

Overall, the book had a good goal but missed the mark that would have me put it in the hands of users as a getting started quick guide. Using words like provisioned widgets meant nothing since the user doesn't understand what that is. Another thing because clear when I showed a normal user the guide.  Their statement was "Lotus sure has a lot of menus and preferences".  While this has nothing to do with the book writing, it definitely showed in the step by step portions.

You can get your own copy of Instant IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 How-to right at Amazon

Yes, I was sent a copy from Packt for free to perform the review.  No guarantees are ever given in the type of review.  I just type them out as I go.
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    On Thursday, May 30th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Tracking IBM Lotus technotes, hotfixes and fixpacks

It has always been hard to track the growing list of technotes, fixpacks, hotfixes and SPR's that IBM Lotus collaboration software has.  Over the years I have made my own tools:
Image:Tracking IBM Lotus technotes, hotfixes and fixpacks

So as you see it has evolved over the years as the material to collect grows and the capabilities grow the list of fixes have too.  So I will be adding the Notes/Domino Fix List full RSS feed to some of the above to give you timely information when fixes and being addressed and in what version

Let me know what other tools you need or sources added and I will make sure I get them included to help you find the information quicker.  Ok everything but IBM PartnerWorld.  No one can help you there.
    for this posting

    On Thursday, May 23rd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Qantas now four years into migrating off Lotus Notes - will it ever end?

Qantas logo

Qantas is in another article about migrating off of Lotus Notes. Now into their fourth year it appears to me they didn't understand how deeply integrated Notes was in their environment for daily operations according to a Delimiter article.  While they finished moving email users in 2012, the applications are taking their toll.
The nation’s largest airline Qantas has revealed that it’s still in the process of migrating its corporate email platform off IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino platform and onto Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange system, with the rollout now into its fourth year.

What confused me is how they are splitting all of their users up into different on premises and cloud based offerings.  Not one but now three.
..some of its staff would instead be moved onto Microsoft’s Office 365 package. In the airline’s statement today, it described the Office 365 migration as “a separate but parallel project”.

Qantas’ migration mirrors moves at its low-cost brand Jetstar, which announced in July 2011 that it would keep most of its head office staff on Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange platform, but shift about 2,200 staff onto Google’s Apps alternative

But back to the applications themselves.  Qantas is now trying to consolidate applications down into fewer and possibly make them web enabled from what I took away.

What I want is everyone to go visit and take away from the Delimiter article is the comments section as people start to dispute complexity to move applications from Lotus Notes into other platforms.  One comment even states 85% of the work can be done with a utility, CIMtrek (I wrote about back in Oct 2010), and a couple clicks.  Sure, yes 85%. If you only use a document library.

Join in here or over there, just join in.
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    On Monday, May 20th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

XPages Healthcare application was awesome


I was on the April 2013 monthly IBM Collaboration Solutions community webcast this week and was overly impressed by the XPages application demo from two IamLUG attendees!
Our main speakers were community members Sam Bridegroom and Abby Butts, who explained the various ways that they have developed XPages applications for a non-profit healthcare system in Indiana to: 1) enhance patient care, 2) improve staff communication, and 3) integrate existing disparate systems. Especially impressive was how much money they were able to save the organization by using XPages!

I suggest everyone, even administrators, watch this replay to see how to easily save time, provide mobility and make users happy with an interface.
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    On Thursday, April 25th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Is Email Dead - notes from the panel I moderated at BLUG 2013

Email icon

At BLUG 2013 I was asked to moderate the To email or not to email with panelists Stuart McIntyre, Luis Suarez and Louis Richardson. As we negotiated using collaboration platforms, streams and sharing over email there was terrific conversations from all three (and they stuck to their 1 minute per answer time limit).  The audience was engaged and asked great questions and provided some excellent feedback.

I had printed quite a few infographics for reference points just in case we needed starting points. However, I hardly had time to reference them during the session we had so much to cover.  Here are the links for some of the infographics I was referencing.

A Google search will give you plenty more images and information to participate in the conversation.  Look for the hastag #lawwe to following conversations.
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    On Friday, March 22nd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Lotusphere / IBM Connect 2013 - BP102 Build Your Free Admin Toolkit

They are free, what guarantees?


Welcome to the BP102 presentation material for Lotusphere / IBM Connect 2013 in Orlando, FL.  This is the complete list (and always changing) of the tools presented.  Come back to visit often as I plan on updating it as we go along.
Continue Reading here" Lotusphere / IBM Connect 2013 - BP102 Build Your Free Admin Toolkit" »
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    On Monday, January 28th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

The Top 10 PlanetLotus Community posts for 2012 - IdoNotes Episode 132

PlanetLotus.org logo


Working together with Yancy Lent, the founder of PlanetLotus, we compiled the Top 10 posts for 2012 on PlanetLotus. We owe huge thanks to Yancy for taking the time to dig through these statistics.

I had a chance to sit with Karl-Henry Martinsson and Ulrich Klause live and talk about their Top 10 PlanetLotus posts for 2012 and then we discuss IBM Domino 9 and IBM Connect 2013.

The order below is not exact as some of these shifted since the count was so close. This is quite a list and as you can see the majority are around the new launch of IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition.

Use RegExp with JavaScript split() by Ulrich Krause
Lotus Notes Client not starting - Loading.. Please wait loop by Paul Farris
How to Create an Auto-Response Mail Message in Lotus Notes by Gavin Bollard
iOS6 oddness and Lotus Traveler by Andy Donaldson
IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition by Karl-Henry Martinsson
IBM Kills Drops and Uses Other Words about Lotus in articles around the web  by Chris Miller
IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition by Volker Weber
How to: Restore the Sametime Emoticon Palette by John James
Customer project: Dojo 1.8 based portal on top of Xpages and Domino 8.5.3 by Mindoo GmbH
Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore  by Gregg Eldred

Do not forget to keep up with all of the Lotusphere Podcasts
    for this posting

    On Thursday, January 17th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Lotusphere Podcasts update and new Notes client widget

With the name changes at Lotusphere blending into IBM Connect, I decided to move Lotusphere Podcasts into IdoNotes podcasts and to launch an IBM Notes client widget.  The website/iTunes and RSS will redirect by this weekend.

Lotusphere Podcasts launched in 2008 and was built to:
Lotusphere Podcasts has brought interviews with the exhibitors, speakers, attendees and more from Lotusphere. We will also have times we are live!

The focus is to bring more video content from Lotsphere to your desk. Not everyone can make the journey to Lotusphere. So we now bring as much as we can to you

You can now find Lotusphere Podcasts as a playlist on YouTube and you can subscribe to that right here.

I also built a widget for your Lotus Notes client (as shown in the image above) that allows you to keep up right in your Notes client!  You can download the widget or drag it right into your Lotus Notes client widget area below.

Pay attention to the Arrows on each side and thumbnails on the bottom that allows you to navigate through the videos.  This will update on the fly as we add them down at Lotusphere/IBM Connect.

LSPwidget.xml

    for this posting

    On Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

IBM Notes 9 and Sametime community icons

http://www.idonotes.com/IdoNotes/IdoNotes.nsf/dx/IdoNotes-Episode-88-sametime-community-icons-free-download.htmAlmost exactly two years ago I published IdoNotes Episode 88 - Sametime Community icons and free download on how to modify and enhance your IBM Sametime Connect commuinty icons. With the introduction of IBM Notes 9 this will become important yet again.
Sametime community icon preferences
Looking at the previous posting for Episode 88 you will what the Sametime default icons used to be. Looking at the image above you will see what the Sametime icons look like now. The new icons are different shapes but are so dim and only grey the green status indicator covers the entire dim graphic.

Here is the video explaining how to add the additional icons and change them for each community. I then show the result of the look in your inbox.


I have given you an entire set of icons for use inside of your Sametime Connect client. There are various colors and even fun shapes. All are properly sized.

Let me know of any problems you have in the comments below. Also what do you think of the new icons?
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    On Tuesday, December 18th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

IBM Notes and Domino 9 launches public beta


IBM raced ahead of schedule to release IBM Notes and Domino 9 into public beta as of today. With the public beta everyone can get their hands on what is to become the must have client and server compared to every previous release. (We always say that though). Look for some of the following features:
Activity streams: allow you to view and take action quickly on content and events
  • Embedded Experiences: allow you to access business critical actions from other applications without leaving your email. This brings collaboration in-context and results in tighter integration across iNotes, Connections, Notes, app dev (XPages), and 3rd-party products and services
  • Contemporary user interface, simpler navigation, easier to locate information both in Notes and iNotes
  • IBM Notes Browser Plug-in: allows rapid delivery of IBM Notes Social Edition applications to the web
  • Incorporation of a social application container, based on the OpenSocial standard, which provides for development of a reusable set of “gadgets” from both IBM and third parties
Lotus Traveler will also get some added support for BlackBerry BES 10, Windows phone 8 and iSeries.
Continue Reading here" IBM Notes and Domino 9 launches public beta" »
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    On Thursday, December 13th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

IBM Kills Drops and Uses Other Words about Lotus in articles around the web

While we have all heavily reported IBM simply removing the Lotus name from what was IBM Lotus Notes and Domino to just IBM Notes and Domino, the press is all over it.  I have been enjoying reading the articles that have recently come out.
  • PCWorld - IBM Kills Lotus Brand, readies Notes/Domino Social Edition (they use the wrong logo in this article)
  • ITBusiness.ca - IBM quietly kills its Lotus brand
  • NetworkWorld - IBM kills Lotus brand, readies beta of Notes/Domino Social Edition
  • eWeek - IBM Drops Lotus Brand, Takes Notes and Domino Forward
  • Techweek Europe - IBM Drops Lotus Brand (IBM is to axe the Lotus brand.....)

Luckily in many of these headline grabbers I found decent quotes from Ed Brill and sometimes just an unnamed IBM executive. With the purchase in 1995 of Lotus for over $3 billion it has had a long foothold in enterprises. I know many outsiders to our blogs always think 1-2-3 when we mention Lotus or shake in fear of their remembrance the client due to bad deployments. Hopefully the name will still sit somewhere in the catalog.
Continue Reading here" IBM Kills Drops and Uses Other Words about Lotus in articles around the web" »
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    On Monday, November 19th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

From Virtualization To Cloud: A Worthwhile Journey by Forrester


Earlier this year Forrester surveyed enterprise IT leaders on their timeline for implementing cloud (public or private) and understanding the difference between their own virtualization internally and things like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) that we at Connectria provide.

Currently, only 8% provide a private cloud for their users with that figure expected to climb in 2015 to 26%. I was not surprised to see that 50% of the respondents state they still run everything on dedicated physical hardware and not virtualization.  Sometimes it is cheaper to use a local machine with internal disk that also eat the overhead of the management software.

You have to outline policy based automation, self service portals, resource tracking and more when thinking of deploying cloud services to internal users.  Besides security concerns there is training and internal ownership politics to consider. In all this was a good short read.

Forrester is letting me pass From Virtualization To Cloud: A Worthwhile Journey this out to my readers free.  Grab your copy here or clicking the cover image above.
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    On Thursday, November 15th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Binary Tree chosen as migration tool to move users from Notes/Domino to Microsoft Office 365


I keep an eye on what goes on with Microsoft Office 365 as many of you should and Binary Tree was just selected as the migration tool to take users away from Lotus IBM Notes and Domino.
Binary Tree, a provider of software solutions for migrating to Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office 365, announced that Microsoft has selected Binary Tree migration and coexistence technology to streamline the migration process for customers moving from Lotus Notes/Domino environments to Microsoft Office 365.

This agreement allows Microsoft to offer Binary Tree technology to streamline the customer's migration coexistence experience.

As Binary Tree was a large vendor at Lotupshere for many years showing coexistence and migration into IBM Notes and Domino, it is interesting to see the flipside take place and have Microsoft themselves choosing the tool.  Congrats to them as a long time business partner to both.
    for this posting

    On Wednesday, November 14th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

IBM Secure Authentication for Mobile Devices

IBM has given another free paper to share with my readers on IBM Secure Authentication for Mobile Devices that revolves around the Tivoli suite of products. You can download the whitepaper here.
IBM Research has developed an innovative security architecture that leverages several Tivoli products including Tivoli Endpoint Manager, Tivoli Identity Manager, Tivoli Directory Server and Tivoli Directory Integrator to provide the validation of a device, device posture and a user's identity prior to authentication to the network.

This solution will be the basis for a 2012 IBM CIO internal offering for managing remote access of Android and iOS devices. This will provide the first ITCS300 compliant access for mobile devices.



You can request and download your free copy of the IBM Secure Authentication for Mobile devices right here . If you are getting into the mobile device management and need to secure access from these devices I would be looking into this right away.
    for this posting

    On Wednesday, November 7th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Reading: Lesson’s From GSA’s Lotus Notes hiccup

In a recent blog posting on IdoNotes I wrote my opinions about the thousands of Lotus Notes applications clouding the GSA Lotus Notes migration.  A new article on GCN by John Breeden II really missed the point of what is going on:
GSA’s problem specifically is with Lotus Notes, which lets users create applications for their own ends. In that sense, Notes was an excellent tool for the distributed computing environment. If users needed to process payroll information every week, they could create a Notes application to help. It needed only to work on a local machine or a few local computers, and life was good.

The GSA is not moving a bunch of desktop created applications to the cloud.  They more than likely did not even support that model.  They are moving tons of workflow, document repository and critical databases to the cloud and finding out that the model there does not meet all the needs as promised.  Then it is taking longer to write new applications at a higher cost than proposed.  John Breeden II even backs this argument in his own article:
 I guess finding out that thousands of Notes applications no longer work can be an expensive revelation.


Read more and add your comments to the article.
    for this posting

    On Monday, October 22nd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Reading: FewClix lands 16k new seats via GBS as IBM builds some of those features into Notes

I have been a supporter of using FewClix for some time as a great way to sort and work with my email.  An article in 4-traders titled GBS Announces 16,000+ Seat Enterprise-wide Deployment of FewClix, at Global Management Consulting Firm announces a deployment of FewClix into a large enterprise.
The firm purchased FewClix for deployment to all 16,000+ employees globally. The firm licensed bothFewClix Unity, which is integrated inside the user's Lotus Notes mail box and FewClix Retro Plus, which enables users to perform simultaneous search across multiple archives.

Interestingly, one of the features coming, that has been publicly blogged, is the sorting of email by date ranges.  FewClix does go way beyond that as you can see from their demos and podcasts I have done with them.

I feel I save time when using FewCLix and current blogs say the same with activity streams and the like.  But can you really quantify how much time a user will save? Does sorting all their mail in numerous ways make them more productive?   According to GBS you can easily track the ROI
says Gary MacDonald, CEO, GBS. "For example, even if we estimate very conservatively that FewClix will help this customer with 16,000+ employees save just 2 minutes per employee per day, the organization will save close to 130,000 hours every year, translating into cost savings of approximately $3.2 million a year and an ROI period of just 14 business days!"


I am curious about your thoughts on this.

More:
Podcast interview with FewClix as IdoNotes Episode 75
Then IdoNotes Episode 121 comparing 8.5.4 and FewClix
Image:IdoNotes Episode 75 - Exclusive with FewClix

    for this posting

    On Wednesday, October 10th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Reading: Thousands of Lotus Notes applications complicates GSA cloud migration

This article from Fierce Government IT still baffles me as the GSA had no available data to back how they would save a single dollar, much rather the projected  $15M over five years to migrate their Lotus Notes in house email to Google Apps..  To confuse the issue even more they are attempting to move apps and finding duplication as well as struggling to keep the workflow.
Each GSA component has developed its own inventory of Lotus Notes applications for decommissioning or migration to the cloud, and the GSA office of the chief information officer didn't perform an analysis on those applications to look for duplication, says the GSA office of inspector general in a report (.pdf) dated Sept. 28.

So these thousands of databases, many containing workflow, are now not important enough to have catalogued, combined or verified to see what functionality is being lost?

They blamed this on their delay in migrating the email system.  The article uses the quote updating but let us be honest and just say migrate. They say in another article linked below they have saved $2M already.  Where?

Read the rest of the story on Fierce GovernmentIT

Also see
GSA Cloud Transition questioned in audit report by Federal Computer
GSA stands by cloud migration numbers by Federal Computer
    for this posting

    On Tuesday, October 9th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

September 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org

This month I talk about the end of another era with the renaming of Lotusphere to IBM Connect. From there I move into:
  • A reader asks about Office 365 comparison to Lotus Notes
  • Poll Results: What is the primary mobile device in use at your organization
  • IBM Connections 4 and immediate fixpacks
  • Finding good resources

Related posts:
I post all the Sys Admin Tips links each and every month

Visit the Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.




Eat.Sleep.Host    It is what we do.

Image:September 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org

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    On Monday, September 24th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Google Apps defeats Lotus and Groupwise in Australia per Delimiter

An article from Delimiter in Australia highlights findings from analyst firm Telsyte that Google Apps has moved to number two behind Outlook/Exchange over Lotus Notes/Domino and Groupwise.
Google’s popular Apps collaboration suite has knocked IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino and Novell’s GroupWise platforms off their perch to become the second most popular office suite in Australian enterprises behind Microsoft Outlook/Exchange, analyst firm Telsyte revealed this week.

According to a statement released by the company, it conducted a survey of more than 330 local chief information officers and senior IT decision-markers on their enterprise software use and intentions.

There are some flaws in what is written as usual.  It compares Lotus as email lumping it in with Outlook, not the full Microsoft suite.  It highlights a ton of the cloud stuff as a key factor, with no mention of IBM SmartCloud for Social Business (or the name is too long to type unlike LotusLive).  They did mention Google Apps and Office365.

They talk greatly about SaaS and how the offerings are better but no real details of what is better for each.

Continue reading more from Delimiter.

Related posts:
    for this posting

    On Monday, September 17th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

IBM retiring numerous technical sales mastery exams on Nov 30 2012

IBM has announced the retirement of numerous technical sales mastery exams to be replaced with new Associate Level certifications.  The following are being retired:
  • 000-M38: IBM Lotus Notes & Domino Technical Sales Mastery Test v2
  • 000-M46: IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory Technical Sales Mastery Test v2
  • 000-M48: IBM Lotus Web Content Management Technical Sales Mastery Test v2
  • 000-M61: IBM Lotus Protector Technical Sales Mastery Test v1
  • 000-M62: IBM Lotus Connections Technical Sales Mastery Test v1
  • 000-M63; IBM Lotus Forms Technical Sales Mastery Test v2
  • 000-M64: IBM Lotus Sametime Technical Sales Mastery Test v1
  • 000-M65: IBM Lotus XPages Technical Sales Mastery Test v1
  • 000-M82: IBM Lotus Quickr Technical Sales Mastery Test v2
  • 000-M83: IBM WebSphere Portal Technical Sales Mastery Test v3

The credit will be active until March 2013, but that seems short as well.
    for this posting

    On Monday, September 17th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

UKLUG 2012 Keynote is available for replay



The UKLUG 2012 keynote address took place September 3, 2012 in Cardiff Wales.  Warren Elsmore opens the event with Uffe Sorensen providing the history of Lotus Notes and Domino.

Catch more information about UKLUG 2012 on the website.

You can also watch the Spark Ideas by the Nerd Girls recorded at UKLUG and all the events on the Spiked Studio YouTube channel and the Spark Ideas playlist

Related Posts:
AusLUG 2012 Keynote with Ed Brill
BLUG 2012 Keynote with Chris Crummey
IamLUG 2011 Keynote with Brian Cheng
Collaboration University 2010 keynote
    for this posting

    On Monday, September 17th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

MigrationWiz now includes cloud based Lotus Notes migration

With all the cloud work I am doing this week, I am consistently running into new cloud solutions. MigrationWiz is a cloud only migration tool that moves users in and out of multiple different mail systems through a web interface.  Lotus Notes is now included with fidelity for messages, folders, contacts and even contact pictures.
MigrationWiz is a complete cloud-based migration solution that helps companies move from existing to new messaging systems seamlessly and affordably. With no hardware or software to install, the patent pending technology is a solution designed to meet the needs of individuals, IT administrators, consultants, system integrators and service providers interested in migrating mailboxes.

Image:MigrationWiz now includes cloud based Lotus Notes migration


They offer a free trial (limited mail is moved but shows fidelity and movement) which can then be converted.  I was also impressed to see an individual package all the way to enterprise.  This means that someone leaving a company could migrate mail on their own. Transfer limits for the two paid programs are 10GB and 50GB mail stores.

I bring this up because MigrationWiz is a two way street allowing movement into Lotus Notes as well as out of.
    for this posting

    On Thursday, September 13th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Lotus Notes got dumped because employees didn’t have smartphones?

In the wake of yesterday's blog posting on Microsoft licensing BinaryTree for Office 365 migrations I was sent a link from a few weeks ago.  Bang & Olufsen were not quiet about their move from Lotus Notes to Office 365.  This ComputerWekly article did bring out a bizarre reason though:
The company had issues with accessibility with its previous system. About 75% of employees work remotely but, Lotus Notes was only accessible to the 150 employees who had company-provided smartphones. The other 1,350 had no access when working remotely.



So the lack of knowledge about:
  • Lotus Traveler
  • BYOD support
  • managed replicas
stop you and somehow force you into migrating to a whole new platform?

Straight from Ole Damsgaard, senior director of IT & shared service centre at Bang & Olufsen he states:
“It was easy to integrate Office 365 into our existing work environment and for our employees to start using it right away because they already know tools like Outlook and other Microsoft products,” he said.

How can it be easy to integrate something that was not in use at your organization? How are employees using Outlook when they use Lotus Notes daily (since you are migrating them)?

It sounds more like IBM lost in trying to sell them on hosted offerings compared to Microsoft. Thoughts?
    for this posting

    On Wednesday, September 12th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Microsoft licenses BinaryTree to move Notes to Office 365

While this is not large amounts of news that Microsoft licensed BinaryTree for migrations from Lotus Notes to Office 365, the quote used in the article from CMS Wire is what caught my eye:
t’s not clear how many users have already made use of BT’s technologies to do this, but Microsoft claims that it is in the millions:
Binary Tree’s software has been used to migrate millions of users from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Office 365 and has proven instrumental in the onboarding process,” Kevin Allison, general manager of Office 365 for Microsoft said.

Millions? Of users? Migrated? Millions?

Microsoft can offer four parts of the BinaryTree software under the license agreement but where the heck did these millions come from?
    for this posting

    On Tuesday, September 11th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

IBM adds more You Pass We pay exams for partners

IBM is suddenly pushing hard back into the certification space, even hinting at relaunching associate certifications.  If you are a business partner or part of Software Value Package, then IBM added a bunch of certifications to the You Pass We Pay. For Collaboration Solutions some of the new ones are:
  • IBM Certified System Administrator - WebSphere Portal 8.0
  • IBM Certified WebSphere Portal 8.0 Migration and Support
  • IBM Certified Solution Developer - WebSphere Portal 8.0
  • IBM SmartCloud for Social Business Technical Sales Mastery Test v3

There were a few more listed.  What are your thoughts on certification value?
    for this posting

    On Monday, September 10th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

August 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup

This month I talk about the end of an era via the closing of the Lotus Notes based Business Partner forum.  A unique database for over 15 years that allowed partners and IBM to interact directly.  From there I move into:
  • IBM X-Push Error in Lotus Traveler
  • Sametime Configuration Validator
  • Updated security certificates for iOS
  • ID recovery failures

Related posts:
I post all the Sys Admin Tips links each and every month

Visit the Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.



Eat.Sleep.Host    It is what we do.


    for this posting

    On Thursday, August 23rd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Where to find Notes 6 & 7 menus that have changed in Notes 8

While this is an older technote from Lotus it came up with a customer the other day that was finally finishing upgrading clients.  As the moved from earlier releases to the 8.5.x codestream they realized that some of the menu items changed.  This includes renaming and moving.  Lotus had published this handly little chart for Where to find Notes 6 & 7 menus that have changed in Notes 8
The location of certain menu options / features in Notes 7 and earlier releases may have changed in Notes 8.x.  This portion of the document is meant to be a used as a quick reference if you are looking for a Notes 6/7 submenu choice under the main Notes menu choices (that is, File , Edit , View, Create, Actions, or Help) that is no longer in the same location and/or is renamed in Notes 8.x.  

Note: In some cases, the functionality behind the menu choice may not be exactly the same as that of previous releases.  

This document:
-  focuses mostly on the menus available from the mail database (mail8.ntf) design but also identifies menu items that are normally grayed out in the mail database but available in other database choices that have changed. In the interest of document size/usability, it does not show menus that remain the same in Notes 8 as in Notes 7.
- points out only those menu choices under the main Notes menus: File, Edit, View, Create, Actions, Help.
-  is not meant to be an all inclusive list of Notes 8 menus; does not include menus for new Notes 8 features/functions
- breaks down view and document level menus.


You can find the entire technote #1246781 right here
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    On Tuesday, August 21st, 2012   by Chris Miller        

A living ICSTT Twitter relationship page

In order to make sense of the conversation and flow for todays #ICSTT Twitter event I used a nifty tool that shows conversation relationships, the tweets and impact on the conversation called TAGSExplorer.  Here is a current map.

Image:A living ICSTT Twitter relationship page

You can zoom in and out, see who responded where and basically dig into the conversation.  This map will continually update for each event automatically, so bookmark the page now!  You can find it here ->>>    http://idonot.es/icsttmap

TAGSExplorer for #ICSTT
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    On Thursday, August 16th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

July 2012 Developer Tips newsletter on LotusUSerGroup

I highlight the Sys Admin Tips each month but overlook mentioning the awesome Developer Tips with Kathy Brown and Tom Duff.  For the July 2012 Developer Tips newsletter they cover:
  • The dogs days of summer
  • Friendly Forms
  • Need some validation
  • Domino was NoSQL before NoSQL was cool
  • WAS it time to start learning WAS?

I suggest you sign up for both Sys Admin Tips and the Developer Tips to keep up with some great content.
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    On Thursday, August 9th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3: Building collaborative applications with XPages

IBM has quite a few online free and self-paced courses.  If you are new to XPages, this IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3: Building collaborative applications with XPages class may be the starter you need.  You will need an IBM ID to register but it offers:
Through hands-on exercises, you will see how server-managed provisioning works, how to develop a series of XPages applications, and how to incorporate sidebar, widgets, and Lotus Notes plug-ins in your deployments.  Some advanced topics and labs are also included in this workshop using Domino 8.5.3 UP1/Extension Library features.


You will also want to check out the following:
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    On Wednesday, August 8th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Sunsetting of the Notes based Business Partner Forum

IBM has made the announcement that the Notes based Business Partner forum is being shut down September 30 2012.  The NSF based forum has been a way for partners to talk, submit bug reports and more for over a decade and IBM has decided to close it due to lack of participation.

Given the steady decrease in use of PartnerForum over the last several years, we believe that its effectiveness in fostering communication and exchange of problem solving ideas has been surpassed by other venues.

Therefore we have decided it is no longer cost effective to maintain this service and we are going to discontinue it effective September 30, 2012. For those who wish to keep a local replica of the database, you should archive before the sunset date.

We thank the still steady contributors for your continued dedication to the platform, and we apologize for the disruption that this decision brings. We recommend the following venues for continuing the dialogue among you and with your IBM colleagues:
  • IBM Smart Business: BP Forum - This is a web accessible public community for IBM Business Partners.
  • Greenhouse ICS community - This is a community for Greenhouse members focused on ICS. It requires membership (no-charge) and it includes more than Business Partners. All Greenhouse members may participate.
  • developerWorks Product Forums - These are particularly useful for deep technical questions. All registered developerWorks members may access. Registration is free
  • I would contend that after some staffing shifts in IBM we saw lack of response and feedback from postings in the forums for IBM.  I will keep my years of replicas close and keep digging for info in there until they serve no use.

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      On Monday, August 6th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    July 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup

    You can read the entire newsletter for the July 2012 Sys Admin Tips to read my editorial on your company training direction  From there we go into articles on:
    • Properly selecting the number of mail.box files
    • More on IBM SmartCloud Archive Essentials
    • Websphere Plug-in key.kdb password Expiring
    • Which message size restriction is best

    Watch the new webcast replay with Gabriella Davis, Paul Mooney and myself from Consultant In Your Pocket covering what's New In Lotus Traveler 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 and High Availability.

    Subscribe to the IdoNotes newsletter on the right to get notified as new registrations open and for some free whitepapers.
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      On Thursday, July 26th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    Notes failed because people steal your ideas. This article says so

    TechNewsWorld published one of the more bizarre articles I have read in a while which included the author's opinion why Lotus Notes has been a failure since it was invented
    The last time we had a major "social networking" type of effort it was with collaboration, and the poster child for the effort was Lotus Notes. It largely failed -- not because the idea wasn't a good one, but because the company fundamentally didn't understand that the market was being made hostile to the concept.

    People were hostile to software that collaborated.  That's why we mainly live in larger groups as people. We hate working with another and talking to each other.
    This continues to get better as it goes along..
    Continue Reading here" Notes failed because people steal your ideas. This article says so" »
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      On Wednesday, July 18th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    Notes2Apps - a true migration to Google?

    I saw some press releases for Notes2Apps from G-workplace, a firm that provides migrations from Lotus Notes to Google.  The Notes2Apps tool is supposed to move data from you applications into Google Docs.  Reading what is performed I would not consider much of this a migration, but more toward archiving.
    • Default templates are already mapped but custom templates are all options.
    • Any Notes view with rows becomes a spreadsheet in Google Docs
    • Notes documents become PDF files
    • Workflow has some limited features in AppScript
    • Content centric docs become HTML files
    • You can move to a Google site (html) or a Shared folder (based on reader/author)
    • Category fields become meta data
    • Doclinks are not converted

    However, Notes documents are a viewer for free form fields and data. Not a single page to be archived.  A view is living data, not a screenshot to be placed into a spreadsheet.  How do you work with the data in PDF or spreadsheet when the fields no longer relate?

    With the removal of doclinks, even the HTML pages they create become standalone with no connectivity between them to show workflow or relationship.

    They also offer Notes Sync Google but that just moves attachments on a Notes document into Google Docs.

    Has anyone tried this yet? Success?  Let us know in the comments
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      On Thursday, July 5th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    June 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org

    You can read the entire newsletter for the June 2012 Sys Admin Tips to read my editorial on your company mobile direction and a quick poll.  From there we go into articles on:
    • Fixing a corrupt ACL
    • IBM SmartCloud Archive Essentials
    • iNotes attachment buffer overflow vulnerability
    • New mail not appearing in folder in local replicas

    Watch the new webcast replay with Gabriella Davis, Paul Mooney and myself from Consultant In Your Pocket covering what's New In Lotus Traveler 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 and High Availability.

    Subscribe to the IdoNotes newsletter on the right to get notified as registration opens and for some free whitepapers.

      for this posting

      On Monday, June 25th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 125 - IBM Connections iOS app review



    I take a walkthrough on the new iOS update for IBM Connections. I liked the speed of interacting with the client.  I do feel there was some UI challenges and I never recall seeing any closed beta testing of features and functions which might have been helpful.  Watch the full review above to experience it for a first time as I do.

    Before I could even get this out via podcast, many had found the YouTube version and made comments. Go catch up over there to read the threads.


    Episode 125 was brought to you by Instant Technologies and Instant IMtegrity Archives.
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      On Wednesday, June 13th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    Webcast Replay for "Collaboration Party of One" with Kathy Brown and jess Stratton


    This is the full replay of the webcast from May 23rd with Jess Stratton and Kathy Brown.
    When your administrator and your developer are one and the same, and they’re both you, things can get confusing. As the administrator, you’ve got a lot of power. Frequently, the role of administrator is to lock things down, keep the server running smoothly and tune performance. As the developer, you want a lot of power. You want unlimited agents to run anytime you want, as frequently as possible, with little to no limitations! So how do you reconcile these opposing needs when you have to play both roles? Jess and Kathy will show you how to use separate IDs, location documents and other fail-safes to make sure your party of one is successful!


    This webcast was brought to you by Instant Technology and their IMtegrity Archives solution.
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      On Thursday, May 31st, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    May 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup

    You can read the entire newsletter for the May 2012 Sys Admin Tips to read my editorial on exceptional web experiences.  From there we go into articles on:
    • GAMLN Questions (read my 10 part series starting here)
    • Groups Are Being Removed When Sending Mail
    • Controlling Automatic Showing of Remote Images
    • Lotus Traveler on the BlackBerry Playbook Update

    Watch the new webcast replay with Kathy Brown and Jess Stratton from Consultant In Your Pocket as we kick off the spring season titled Collaboration Party of One

    Subscribe to the IdoNotes newsletter on the right to get notified as registration opens and for some free whitepapers.
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      On Wednesday, May 30th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    Domino Safe Mode theory

    While working on a multi-server issue and discussing ideas we came up with IBM Lotus Domino running in a Safe Mode.  This would allow Domino to start and have no network connectivity to allow it to process everything it needs without allowing any connections or attempting to connect to anything else.

    What would be needed we wondered? A flag we could enter or a simple ini variable that locks it down would be necessary.  You then place this in the server before restart and remove after you are done troubleshooting or working.

    We are not talking server restricted access for users but some way to work on the server and have all in and out connections.  Like Windows in Safe Mode with no networking.

    We could simply REM out the port settings in the ini I imagine as a possible shortcut but I think this could be a great way to speed some troubleshooting.

    Related Posts
    :
    Go grab the whitepapers I produced on Dynamic Client Configuration troubleshooting and also Search Techniques in Lotus Notes.
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      On Tuesday, May 29th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    IDC reports the future of email is social - sponsored by IBM

    An IDC report came out in February 2012 stating how the future of email is social.  I was interested to see that IBM was the sponsor of the paper.
    This IDC white paper takes a look at the current state of enterprise email and the perceived and real problems that surround its use.  The paper discusses the changing nature of collaboration and work fueled by the social web by examining current email trends and the emergence of new social collaboration tools.  Rather than envision "a world without email," it revels a future where email converges with social tools...

    The paper begins with a situation overview and a team that needs to work on a project before jumping to a section on the history of email and a statistic that email will reach 2.4 billion users by the year 2014.

    The paper covers the standard challenges about the number of emails, mobile access and blurring personal and business use of devices and email. Filtering is given a section on pages 4-5 which I feel is the basis for most of the overload.
    Continue Reading here" IDC reports the future of email is social - sponsored by IBM" »
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      On Thursday, May 24th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    Webcast tomorrow: Kathy Brown and Jess Stratton presenting

    There are still spaces left for this awesome session from Kathy Brown and Jess Stratton was given at Lotusphere 2012 and we are happy to have them present Collaboration, Party of One : When You Are Both the Dev and the Admin to the Consultant In Your Pocket series on May 23rd at 1pm EST.
    When your administrator and your developer are one and the same, and they’re both you, things can get confusing. As the administrator, you’ve got a lot of power. Frequently, the role of administrator is to lock things down, keep the server running smoothly and tune performance. As the developer, you want a lot of power. You want unlimited agents to run anytime you want, as frequently as possible, with little to no limitations! So how do you reconcile these opposing needs when you have to play both roles? Jess and Kathy will show you how to use separate IDs, location documents and other fail-safes to make sure your party of one is successful!


    This webcast is free and you can register today at  http://idonot.es/CIYPSeries4d and look for your confirmation email with your own custom meeting URL
    **Do not forgot to check out their new iPad client for attending the meeting***


    You can watch all the previously recorded webcasts at http://ConsultantInYourPocket.com
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      On Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 124 - IBM PureSystems



    IBM has launched a large initiative called PureSystems which offers built-in expertise, integration by design and simplified experience.
    Expert integrated systems combine the flexibility of general purpose systems, the elasticity of cloud and the simplicity of an appliance tuned to the workload.

    I was able to get access to a demo account, which by all means did not showcase all of the physical capabilities and on demand sclaing.  It was more of a layer inside of the IBM SmartCloud which was disappointing.

    I think some of the message about PureSystems is clear, however much of it is very confusing when you get into PureFlex and PureApplications.
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      On Wednesday, May 16th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    Webcast Invite: Collaboration, Party of One

    This awesome session from Kathy Brown and Jess Stratton was given at Lotusphere 2012 and we are happy to have them present Collaboration, Party of One : When You Are Both the Dev and the Admin to the Consultant In Your Pocket series on May 23rd at 1pm EST.
    When your administrator and your developer are one and the same, and they’re both you, things can get confusing. As the administrator, you’ve got a lot of power. Frequently, the role of administrator is to lock things down, keep the server running smoothly and tune performance. As the developer, you want a lot of power. You want unlimited agents to run anytime you want, as frequently as possible, with little to no limitations! So how do you reconcile these opposing needs when you have to play both roles? Jess and Kathy will show you how to use separate IDs, location documents and other fail-safes to make sure your party of one is successful!


    This webcast is free and you can register today at  http://idonot.es/CIYPSeries4d and look for your confirmation email with your own custom meeting URL
    **Do not forgot to check out their new iPad client for attending the meeting***


    You can watch all the previously recorded webcasts at http://ConsultantInYourPocket.com
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      On Wednesday, May 9th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    April 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup

    You can read the entire newsletter for the April 2012 Sys Admin Tips to read my editorial on social business culture versus technology.  From there we go into articles on:
    • Lotus Technical Search client widget
    • MUMA Tool
    • Stopping blank subject lines
    • Search in the Notes client


    Look for a bunch of new webcasts coming along from Consultant In Your Pocket as we kick off the spring season   Subscribe to the newsletter on the right to get notified as registration opens and for some free whitepapers.
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      On Monday, April 23rd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    AusLUG 2012 Domino Admin to Websphere Admin presentation


    I had the pleasure to present Domino Admin to Websphere Admin at AUSLUG 2012 in Melbourne, Australia. You can also expand these into full screen and vote on individual slides.

    Feel free to browse all my presentations
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, April 4th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    AusLUG 2012 Keynote replay with Ed Brill of IBM



    AusLUG 2012 kicked off in Melbourne, Australia with Mat Newman introducing Ed Brill as the keynote speaker in this video replay.  Ed covered strategy and futures before handing it over to Stuart for live demos and Ted Stanton with more insight.  This keynote runs just at an hour and thirty minutes.

    Visit AusLUG to get more information on sessions and register for their Lotus Connections community.

    Also make sure to watch the keynote from Chris Crummey at BLUG 2012 in Antwerp, Belgium from the week before,  Spiked Studio is happy to have produced both videos for replay.  Make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel to stay up to date on all the videos as they get released.
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      On Wednesday, April 4th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    LotusAppStore launches to sell Lotus apps - my initial review

    I received notice about this new app store for Lotus Notes from PDQ Information Systems that launched and went to take a look called LotusAppStore.  As some of you know we investigated and launched into this some time ago, and well it does not float.  Vendors did not have the capability to sell this way were not willing to do so.  So this came as a surprise.  Here is a screenshot of how LotusAppStore looks today with the first listings their own products (of course)

    Image:LotusAppStore launches to sell Lotus apps - my initial review

    Continue Reading here" LotusAppStore launches to sell Lotus apps - my initial review" »
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      On Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    BLUG 2012 review and pictures

    www.flickr.com
    IdoNotes' BLUG 2012 photoset IdoNotes' BLUG 2012 photoset

    I was happy to once again get accepted to speak at the well run event BLUG in Antwerp, Belgium.  Theo does excellent organization work for attendees, presenters and sponsors.  As you can see from the pictures above, it was an exciting two days.  I was able to record and publish the keynote from Chris Crummey of IBM.  He did a great job showing how he uses tools in his job each day.

    Theo then invited me to moderate a social panel with Luis Suarez, Paul Mooney and Femke Goedhart.  I was able to record and publish this panel as well. This turned into interesting conversation between the panelists and even audience engagement.  The topics were varied and none of them had any idea of the questions I had prepared in advance.  A fast moving hour that begged many to want more time.  I heard one attendee said they could have sat in that session throughout the day!

    Speed sponsoring was hosted by Paul Mooney as he shortened the time as the rounds went on.  The sponsors had good feedback on the interaction with attendees and format.

    The hotel did have it's wifi problems as expected, but nothing that was not easily worked around or dealt with.  Congrats to Theo and his entire team (special thanks to Sesil who suffered through being my room monitor).  You will find my slides for the session at the link on the right.
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      On Monday, April 2nd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    Social panel replay with Paul Mooney, Luis Suarez and Femke Goedhart at BLUG 2012


    An incredible social panel at the Belux Lotus User Group for the second year of BLUG 2012.  I moderate an excellent conversation with Luis Suarez, Paul Mooney and Femke Goedhart around such questions as the first item checked daily, is email social, is there social sharing bullying, social acronyms in business environments and plenty direct from the audience.
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      On Tuesday, March 27th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    BLUG 2012 keynote replay with Chris Crummey of IBM


    Watch Chris Crummey of IBM at the Belux Lotus User Group (BLUG 2012) in Antwerpen as he covers the strategy, futures and enhancements to the IBM Lotus suite of software. He walks us through live demonstrations of his daily life using the technology and case studies on other businesses embracing the new IBM direction.
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      On Saturday, March 24th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 121 - Is it Lotus Notes 8.5.4 or FewClix?


    Lotusphere brought us a bunch of information and anticipation about mail features that will be arriving in Lotus Notes 8.5.4 in terms of sorting and mail management.  I wanted to go back and highlight a partner software called FewClix (Windows only) that does an amazing job of working through your mailfile.

    I first talked to them back in Episode 75.   FewClix is made by Synaptris, which is now a GBS company.  You can get a free trial on the site as I mention in the video above.

    You can also subscribe to the IdoNotes channel on YouTube to keep up to date and like the video while you are there.
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      On Tuesday, February 28th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    February 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup

    You can read the entire newsletter for the February 2012 edition of Sys Admin Tips to read my editorial on names changes again for what was Lotusphere Comes To You.  I then tackle the following:
    • From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Public Name Error in Mailfile
    • Doing the Shindig
    • Quick Tip: Sametime Security Servlet Security Reminder
    • From the IdoNotes Mailbox: The Mail.box is growing!


    Look for a bunch of new webcasts coming along from Consultant In Your Pocket as we kick off the spring season   Subscribe to the newsletter on the right to get notified as registration opens and for some free whitepapers.
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      On Thursday, February 23rd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    Microsoft offers superior web based interface per newspaper

    A long time user of Lotus Notes, the University of Nebraska, made big waves last year when they announced the move away from Lotus Notes for their entire faculty and staff at campuses (students moved long ago).  The article from Daily Nebraskan states they spend $1M USD annually to use the software and will reduce costs by half when they switch to the web based Microsoft Office 365.

    NOTE: The University of Nebraska Medical Center is not migrating to the new system because of concerns about security.

    Interestingly they said their Lotus Notes environment only had 1G of storage per person and the new Microsoft system offers 25.  This is alrgely due to their limitations the university set and had nothing to do with the software as we know.
    Continue Reading here" Microsoft offers superior web based interface per newspaper" »
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      On Thursday, February 16th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    User Blast (BP102) at Lotusphere 2012 from Mat Newman


    Recorded by Sharon Bellamy and posted by Collaboration Matters, here is the full BP 102 session "User Blast" from Mat Newman via his posting at YouTube.

    You can also enjoy the playlist I am putting together for the entire Lotusphere 2012 sessions that appear on YouTube from attendees and speakers.

    Related Posts:
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      On Wednesday, February 15th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    January 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org

    In the January 2012 edition of Sys Admin Tips I cover OpenSocial and Social Business in the editorial section and the following articles:
    • From the Idonotes mailbox: Citrix performance and Notes Standard client
    • OpenSocial as an administrator
    • Lotus Traveler device ids and names of devices
    • From the IdoNotes mailbox: A failed Sametime 8.5.2 IF1 upgrade attempt


    Look for a bunch of new webcasts coming along from Consultant In Your Pocket as we kick off the spring season
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      On Monday, January 30th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    MR, FP, FR, IFR, Hotfix, IF - what do they all mean?

    As a customer and even partner you may struggle with all of the terms that Lotus uses for things outside of the full point version numbering schema.  With some digging I was able to bring together a short list for you to use as reference.

    MR= maintenance release

    This is the building block of the number system.  Where 8.5 would be the base install version, the MR would be the .1 behind it to make 8.5.1.  You get more fixes with a later MR than an earlier MR with FPs applied.

    Extensive testing is done on these and usually we see 1-2 a year.


    Hotfix = it's broken and here is a tiny fix till next FP

    Self explanatory.  These are normally not mass released and you have to call support to get them (even ones that other customers have) so Lotus can keep track of who installed it.  Beware they are not hard core tested and may contain regressions.


    CCH = cumulative client hotfix

    A bundle of hotfixes all wrapped nice and pretty. Extensive regression testing is not done on CCHs but will be done when it moves to FP level.

    Oh you need like four hotfixes together to make that work.  Here is a CCH for you.


    IF = interim fix

    This should sit up near fixpack as it is a temporary fix.  They seem to word it more than a hotfix, but not quite a fixpack. These are publicly available, where hotfixes are not


    FP = fixpack

    This represents fixes applied on top of a specific maintenance release.  They are issued between MRs and are cumulative.  This means installing FP4 would include the same fixes from FP1-3 with new ones to make 4.  A version will be represented as 8.5.1 FP4 for example.

    However, you must uninstall hotfixes before applying fixpacks that contain the hotfixes.

    "By providing a small number of fixes, customers are able to accept fewer code changes with lower risk, allowing them to "patch" an older Maintenance Release until a more extensive upgrade to the current Maintenance Release is possible
    " from IBM.


    FR = Feature Release

    These are normally blended into maintenance releases and now Upgrade Packs (UP).  IBM snuck some into the following IFR, but you will find new features being introduced when they talk of feature releases.


    IFR = Incremental Feature Release

    This is a new naming idea that showed itself in the IBM Sametime 8.5.2 codestream.  While it added quite a few fixes it also added enhancements.  Some of us feel the new features should have made it an actual maintenance release, but IBM stood strong and made up the IFR.


    UP = upgrade pack

    This is quite new to the Domino family.  it is totally optional and adds capabilities to an otherwise stable version.  It has made it first appearance in 8.5.3 to add social capabilities.  I can see IBM doing many more of these since it is not required by anyone.


    The new Notes and Domino Social Edition that is pending release will sit atop of Domino 8.5.4 but is optional and in my opinion will be called an Upgrade Pack.

    Digging around to get this information found one IBM technote with some of the information.
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      On Monday, January 30th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    BP111 slides from Lotusphere 2012 - Deploying Plugins and Widgets: The How-to Guide


    Here is the PDF of the slides I presented at Lotusphere 2012 for my BP111 session on deploying plug-ins and widgets.
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      On Friday, January 27th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 120 - Social Mail and browser embedded client #ls12



    With all of the announcements this week, I have received inquiries about my thoughts and more specifications on the Social Mail and embeddable browser client experiences I got to see launched.  In this episode I express my thoughts until I can fully read all the technical specifications.


    Related posts:
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      On Thursday, January 19th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes gets a massive facelift

    With the new year I had a ton of things I wanted to start streamlining and combining.  One is the look and feel of my main landing pages and then the blogs.   I spent a bunch of time reworking some new themes into Domino to make what you see today.   Take a look around starting at the main homepage and back into the IdoNotes blog.  I checked everything and I am, having one small issue I hope to have fixed by the time you read this!

    Continue Reading here" IdoNotes gets a massive facelift" »
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      On Thursday, January 12th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    Domino Security Vulnerability pre 8.5.2 FP4



    The National Vulnerability Database has issued a release dated Dec 27 2011 for Domino 8 servers prior to applying FP4 for Domino 8.5.2
    Overview

    Unspecified vulnerability in the authentication functionality in the server in IBM Lotus Domino 8.x before 8.5.2 FP4 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon crash) via a crafted Notes RPC packet.

    IBM has answered this with technote #1575247 specifying you should upgrade to Domino 8.5.3 or apply FP4 for 8.5.2.  Previous versions are affected.

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      On Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

    December 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org

    In this Dec 2011 edition I give my annual gift guide in the editorial section and the following:

    * From the Editor: Chris' 1.0000 XMAS
       - Fitbit Ultra
       - Kindle Devices and Kindle Fire
       - Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet
       - Roku XS streaming device
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: iNotes Account Got Hacked
    * I Upgraded the Sametime Proxy and No New Features Work
    * Quick Tip: Remove Unwanted Sametime Connect Status Messages
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Domino Servers On Different Operating Systems


    Do not forget to watch the "What's New in Lotus, Domino, Traveler & IBM XWork Server 8.5.3" webcast that was on October 4th from Consultant In Your Pocket.  
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      On Wednesday, December 21st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Important reminder concerning the IBM Professional CertificationTesting Policy



    If you are planning on taking any certification exams with IBM, they have tightened down on their policies and thoughts about how you should study in recent years.  The above blog title was received as an email.  Here is the email content that was received.  I thought it was valuable enough to share with everyone.

    Image:Important reminder concerning the IBM Professional CertificationTesting Policy

    Please review this important information regarding the IBM Professional Certification Testing Policy.

    In order to ensure the validity and integrity of the IBM Certification Program, testing data and results are randomly audited.

    All test takers are required to agree to a confidentiality statement which specifically prohibits test takers from discussing test content or questions at any time. This includes casual conversation with colleagues, and especially discussing test content with prospective test takers after completing testing. Additionally, IBM Certification tests are the exclusive Intellectual Property of IBM. Per your IBM Business Partner Agreement the IBM Business Partner Code of Conduct sections referring to Intellectual Property and Unauthorized Sources apply to certification testing. When you (or your staff) are preparing for an IBM Certification test it is imperative to use only the links provided on IBM's Web pages for recommended education and sample practice tests. Many of the "sample" or "practice" test vendors make use of unethically acquired testing material.

    IBM has taken, and will continue to take, appropriate actions when testing data indicates that unethical methods were used to prepare for or take an IBM Certification test. Actions may include a temporary or permanent ban from taking additional Certification tests


    For full information you should visit Information on IBM Professional Certification Program and Certification testing policy to get up to date on apporoved study material and sources (IBM)
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      On Thursday, December 15th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 being released - what it offers you



    IBM is increasing it's ability to release updates by open sourcing numerous parts of the code and then rolling them into Update Packs (UP) that are then deployed as shown in the picture below.

    Image:8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 being released - what it offers you

    Much of this is taken from OpenNTF.  This allowed IBM to have code written, tested and modified at a quicker rate using a form of crowdsourcing. This saves them incredible amounts of money and also release cycle time.


    Here is some technical and other information on the release:
    • Customers can access this from Passport Advantage in about a week (Partners from Partnerworld)
    • The Notes client, Domino Designer, Domino & XWork Server are receiving updates
    • This UP does not modify the core Domino code in any way. It just adds a layer
    • The XPages Extension Library is included in this UP - over 100 new tags.
    • Updated Teamroom and Discussion templates including some mobile controls
    • Domino Access Services contain new REST API's
    • XPagesExt.nsf is included as a sample application
    • All client platforms are supported
    • It is not a plugin but a full UP install (picture InstallShield)
    • Upgradable for future releases of UP's

    I did ask about versioning numbers to roll this out to clients via SmartUpgrade but they were not sure yet.  it is not a plug-in that will use a site update push, but more of an actual installer that must be performed.  For the Domino server it just drops new files into the program directory and templates.

    I will have more thoughts on the Upgrade Pack (UP), Incremental Feature Release (IFR) and Incremental Fix (IF) naming in a follow-up posting.
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      On Wednesday, November 30th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    IBM XWork Server Questions and Answers



    I am still fielding (and welcome) questions about the IBM XWork Server.  What can it do? What can't it do? May I cluster? The list goes on.  Well this document should definitely help answer quite a few of those and hopefully spur more.  Use the comments below so we can all share the conversation.

    IBM XWork Server Q&A in pdf


    Connectria offers a full solution around hosting your IBM XWork Server.  Read more right here.


    You may also be interested in the past articles:
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, November 29th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    November 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org



    In this Nov 2011 edition I discuss disaster planning in the editorial section and the following:

    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Update on Words with Buttons Disappearing
    * Sametime Security Vulnerability Announced
    * Quick Tip: Upgrade Domino or Traveler First
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox : Lotus Traveler Issue - Help!

    Do not forget to watch the "What's New in Lotus, Domino, Traveler & IBM XWork Server 8.5.3" webcast that was on October 4th from Consultant In Your Pocket.  
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      On Thursday, November 17th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Shutting down LotusKnows.idonotes.com



    Back in 2009, Lotus launched a huge (semi) marketing campaign called Lotus Knows.  It was meant to bring a new marketing angle and awareness to the Lotus brand.  Well Lotus has been slowly sun setting everything to do with it, so I am closing down the LotusKnows.IdoNotes.com aggregator and will be reviving it as IBMSocialBiz.

    The LotusKnows account on Twitter points everyone across after a long hiatus and the Facebook page is now closed:
    Hello FB Fans, The LotusKnows team wants to thank you for participating in this successful campaign. We'll be sunsetting this FB page at the end of the week - but want to invite you all over to see what's happening with IBM Social Business and collaboration solutions at www.facebook.com/ibmsocialbiz. Give us a "like"! Hope to see you there!!


    So I see some of you still hit the page to glean information, just know that it will be making a turn shortly to help me aggregate and keep up with the new term of the year.
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      On Wednesday, November 16th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    For $7500 you too can be a Redbook Author


    I was intrigued by the offer that came in from IBM to all business partners about Redguide opportunities via the IBM Redbook program.  Apparently you can now write a guide that uses your company solution and have it placed in the free resource site we all love called IBM Redbooks.
    Now, for the first time, your company can leverage the IBM Redbooks brand and audience by creating an IBM Redguide publication featuring your solution and how it solves challenges and provides unique business value.

    They had me at this point thinking this would be great to build one around a solution that wasn't over the top marketing.  An enhanced whitepaper was my thought.  I was confused they were using the IBM Redbooks branding since that resource was always free and immeasurable in most instances into deep technical knowledge.  Partners and consultants spent months on site writing these deep dives all day.

    I then got to the below:

    Image:For $7500 you too can be a Redbook Author

    So for one year and $7500 USD you can push your solution into the search results of IBM Redbooks.  Do you find value in this as a partner or a devalue in IBM Redbooks?
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      On Thursday, November 3rd, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    October 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this October 2011 issue I discuss the XWork Server in the editorial section and then:

    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: The Words On My Buttons Are Gone
    * How To Be NICE
    * Quick Tip: Making Your Searches More Productive
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox

    Do not forget to watch the "What's New in Lotus, Domino, Traveler & IBM XWork Server 8.5.3" webcast that was on October 4th from Consultant In Your Pocket.
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      On Wednesday, October 26th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Ok is it an application or database or now both?


    I had my posting yesterday on the licensing of the IBM Xwork Server in regards to the system databases and found myself trying to explain something else in the document I am writing.  The terminology used by Lotus to define what we have known for years as a database.  Starting in Version 8 the UI changed and what we knew as Notes databases became applications.



    With the release of the IBM XWork Server, we now refer to a collection of databases as applications for licensing requirements.
    Licensees of the Program are authorized to utilize up to a maximum of four (4) Domino applications per installation of the Program, up to a maximum of eight (8) applications. Such applications are authorized to contain up to a maximum of four (4) databases per installation of the Program, up to a maximum of eight (8) databases within each application. This excludes system databases that accompany the Program.


    So an application is a collection of Notes databases.

    Yes I know this is all vernacular, but I want to easily state this to customers per how the server will be licensed and ran.  I know we are caught in a cross between old and new models and I know terminology needs to be updated. I am not sure of what the final wording should be, but either removing databases since it is not used anymore, or a new name for a collection of applications (which is the new name for databases).
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      On Tuesday, October 18th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    IBM Xwork Server - no you cannot replicate admin4 and others


    While reading more and listening to the webcasts given by IBM on the new IBM XWork Server, something was sticking in the back of my mind that was missing.  I couldn't place it till this weekend.  The license agreement has a few restrictions as expected. You cannot partition the code, nor can you replicate or cluster with other non-XWork server.  I fully agree and understand.

    However this is where I caught a small wording issue.
    Replication of the Program is permitted only with Licensees corporate directory and the Program servers.

    I was reading the full IBM License Document for the IBM XWork Server (only for you and customers, not because I do this daily) and caught the above line.  What this means is you cannot also replicate admin4, Domino Domain Monitoring, Directory Assistance or other system databases.

    So things like name changes, collection hierarchies and directory structures will need to be stand-alone inside the XWork environment.

    Does anyone else see an issue with that for renames and other adminp processing?
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      On Monday, October 17th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    "What’s New in 8.5.3 Notes, Domino, Traveler & XWork Server" - REPLAY online




    We are happy to announce that the full recording of the "What's New in 8.5.3 Notes, Domino, Traveler & IBM XWork Server" from Consultant in Your Pocket is online and ready for streaming.

    Look for details surrounding IBM XWork Server, the entitlement for IBM Lotus Connections and mobility discussions around iOS, Android and Symbian.

      for this posting

      On Wednesday, October 5th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    The new IBM XWork Server is fully announced - details


    With an early morning surprise, Ed Brill made the announcement of the IBM XWork Server.
    By license, an IBM XWork Server is an application server only that is licensed on a fixed-term, per-install basis. No PVUs, no CALs (see, I listen!). Just a fixed annual license of approximately US$2,000 per server install. That's it.

    We have been patiently sitting on this news that brings a Domino based server to the masses for a fixed price, with the name Lotus removed.  This allows enterprises, ISV's and partners to bring powerful workflow solutions to enterprises quickly.  I am not sure what it has to do with being a social business as Ed mentions in his posting, but the approach to get more XPages apps in the wild is excellent.

    Connectria will be launching their own offering tomorrow around the hosting and management of IBM XWork Server, making it easy for you to purchase an ISV solution or roll your own XPage based applications to your own users or the world.

    Note that the name Lotus is missing, the logo is now blue and Domino conveniently stacked as the application layer no one needs to see.  Licensing is simplified and Ed describes it quite well.  Just remember this is an annual cost of only $2,000 to run incredible workflow solutions.  There is no inherent email license, yet mail-in databases are part of the application solutions.

    For more information, join the "What's New in 8.5.3 Notes, Domino, Traveler and XWork Server" tomorrow at 10am CST

    Then look for the announcement from Connectria around the hosting and managed offering.

    Eat.Sleep.Host    It is what we do.

    Image:The new IBM XWork Server is fully announced - details

      for this posting

      On Sunday, October 2nd, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    IBM XWork Server news added to Oct 4th webcast


    We are pleased to announce the addition of the announcement of the IBM XWork Server to the What's New in Notes, Domino, Traveler & IBM XWork Server in 8.5.3 webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket.  This webcast will feature a panel of IBM business partners giving their opinions on enhancements, features and more.   Plus tons of news on the IBM XWork Server.

    We have also added Marie Scott from Virginia Commonwealth University to the panel!

    Registration for the webcast is open!     It will be held Oct 4, 2011 at 10am CST.


    You can stream any previous webcast at the Consultant In Your Pocket site.  Recent webcasts include:

    Image:IBM XWork Server news added to Oct 4th webcast
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      On Wednesday, September 28th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    September 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In the September 2011 edition I cover architecture review in the editorial and the following:

    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Single Sign-on and Active Directory
    * What Is the Sametime Proxy?
    * Quick Tip: Searches Against Non-existent Databases Can Cause High CPU
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: A List of Authorized Sametime Users

    *******************************

    Do not forget to sign up today for the "What's New in Notes, Domino & Traveler 8.5.3" webcast on October 4th.

    It will feature Paul Mooney, Marie Scott and other partners and customers
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      On Monday, September 26th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Out of Office for Lotus Notes as an iPhone app


    I was surprised to see this sneak under the radar and not get too much press.  Extracomm, out of Canada, has pushed out an iPhone application that allows you to manage your Lotus Notes Out of Office (OOO) functionality.  From the below diagram courtesy of their site, there is both a client and server piece that runs to interact with OOO

    Image:Out of Office for Lotus Notes as an iPhone app


    It runs as a Domino servlet, so the engine on the server must be enabled and outside of that nothing more needs to be done after the installation except let the users start using it.

    So go see the screenshots, installation steps and more over at Extracomm
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      On Monday, September 19th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    What’s New in Notes, Domino & Traveler 8.5.3 webcast on Oct 4th


    We are pleased to announce the What's New in Notes, Domino & Traveler 8.5.3 webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket.  This webcast will feature a panel of IBM business partners giving their opinions on enhancements, features and more.  


    Registration for the webcast is open!     It will be held Oct 4, 2011 at 10am CST.


    You can stream any previous webcast at the Consultant In Your Pocket site.  Recent webcasts include:

    Image:What’s New in Notes, Domino & Traveler 8.5.3 webcast on Oct 4th
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, September 13th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    August 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In the August 2011 edition I cover some thoughts on all the user groups popping up plus the following:

    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Notes Standard and Published Citrix Apps
    * Domino Web Access and Archives
    * Quick Tip: Mail Quotas and Out of Office
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Sametime Problem After Upgrade to 8.5.2


    ************

    You can head over now to watch the AusLUG 2011 keynote and NerdGirls panel in streaming HD!  

    Edited, produced and brought to you by Spiked Studio Productions.  Your niche podcast network
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, September 7th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Participate in a Lotus User Experience Study


    Lotus is looking for volunteers to submit for a futures usability study.  It runs this and next week.  Details below!

    The Lotus User Experience Research team is conducting user research the week of August 22nd (extending to the week of Aug 29th as needed) and is looking for participants.

    You will be asked to attend a 60-90 minute online session (connection details to follow) where strategic design direction, encompassing multiple IBM products, will be shown and discussed.

    We are looking for a diverse audience to represent a rich set of perspectives.

    NOTE:
    This is not a usability assessment of current products nor a commitment to implement what is shown. This is directional research but your feedback will be used to shape the future direction of the products you use.

    If interested, please tell us a little about yourself and available days and times using the brief survey [https://www-950.ibm.com/survey/oid/wsb.dll/s/ag3e3]. Someone will contact you if there is a day/time match.

    Thank you for your time!

    Regards,

    Brian

    Brian S. Utesch, Ph.D.
    STSM, Lotus User Experience Research (UXR) Lead
    IBM Software Group, WPLC, Lotus User Experience Group
    butesch@us.ibm.com

      for this posting

      On Wednesday, August 24th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    July 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    I forgot to mention that the July 2011 edition had come out covering the IBM Champion program and the following:

    * From the Editor: Chris' 32.5000 SOS
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Performance Problem!
    * IBM Collaboration Solutions
    * Quick Tip: All-in-one Admin Agent Troubleshooting Tool
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Lotus Traveler and Android


    ************

    You can head over now to watch the IamLUG 2011 keynote in streaming HD!  The keynote was amazing, given by Brian Cheng of IBM.

    Edited, produced and brought to you by Spiked Studio Productions.  Your niche podcast network
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, August 10th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Search Android app statisitcs and updates


    Back at the beginning of July, we launched the FREE Android app version of the Lotus Custom Searches.  The response has been great.  The idea was to test having the technical content you need at your fingertips.

    The searches include the following options:
    Lotus Custom Blogger Search -
    The ability to search across over 300 Lotus related blogs, technical resource sites, whitepapers and more

    Sametime search
    -
    The ability to search across blogs and technical sites only related to Sametime

    XPages Search
    -
    The ability to search against only XPages blogs, technical resources and more for quick, filtered XPages information

    You can find the application in the Android Marketplace on your phone and tablets. A YouTube video and screenshots show you more on the application information page.

    So the statistics look like this:
    Platform version LotusCustomSearches



    1 Android 2.2 53.8%
    2 Android 2.3.3 28.2%
    3 Android 2.1 7.7%
    4 Android 3.0 1.3%
    5 Android 2.3 1.3%
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10








    Device LotusCustomSearches



    1 Samsung Galaxy Tab 9.0%
    2 HTC Desire HD 7.7%
    3 Samsung Galaxy S 7.7%
    4 Samsung Galaxy S2 7.7%
    5 Motorola Droid X 5.1%
    6 HTC Desire 5.1%
    7 HTC Evo 4G 3.8%
    8 HTC Wildfire 2.6%
    9 LG Optimus One 2.6%
    10 Motorola Droid 2.6%






    Country LotusCustomSearches



    1 United States 29.5%
    2 Germany 16.7%
    3 India 7.7%
    4 Spain 5.1%
    5 Sweden 3.8%
    6 Malaysia 3.8%
    7 France 3.8%
    8 United Kingdom 3.8%
    9 Austria 2.6%
    10 Switzerland 2.6%




      for this posting

      On Friday, July 29th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Free Android app for custom Lotus searches launched!


    Through the development skills of OzzyDeveloper, I am pleased to announce the launch of the free Lotus Custom Search application for Android.  OzzyDeveloper took the custom searches you find on the right side of my blog and moved them to a mobile web Android application.  We are happy to give you this application for free.  Look for more additions to the application!

    What is included?
    Lotus Custom Blogger Search -
    The ability to search across over 300 Lotus related blogs, technical resource sites, whitepapers and more

    Sametime search -
    The ability to search across blogs and technical sites only related to Sametime

    XPages Search -
    The ability to search against only XPages blogs, technical resources and more for quick, filtered XPages information

    You can find the application in the Android Marketplace on your phone and tablets. A YouTube video and screenshots show you more on the application information page.
    Image:Free Android app for custom Lotus searches launched!

      for this posting

      On Wednesday, July 6th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus reduces the requirements to be Lotus certified


    This snuck under my radar, but one of my team here at Connectria caught it.  Lotus has decided to adjust the requirements DOWN to achieve certification levels.
    The IBM Certification Program for Lotus Software is working on the restructuring of the Lotus Notes Domino 8.5 Certification paths for both Application Developers and System Administrators. After receiving feedback from the certified community, examining the requirements of both job roles and taking into account the monetary cost of taking three exams, the decision was made to reduce the number of core tests from three to two.

    Material will not be removed from the tests, rather it will be divided between two exams instead of three. Given the amount of work this entails, the program will not be altering the certification paths for Lotus Notes Domino 8.

    They have a long listing of scenarios and information on how this affects new test takers.  I imagine this will move forward into the Next releases of Notes.

    Also note that there will no longer by an Associate level for certification. They are sunsetting it.

    Associate level certifications will be withdrawn
    - Currently, passing the first of three core exams results in an associate level certification. Once the restructuring has been complete, the associate level certifications will be sunset. Note that they will still count toward Partnerworld points until the end of the year

    Oh and another thing.  If you have taken the one exam to get certified as Associate, get moving.  You now have 5 months to complete the others get get fully certified.  Or start over I guess.

    Scenario 1: A professional has achieved associated level certification in ND8.5 in either stream (they have passed the first core exam)
    Best Option
    : Take the second and third core test before the end of the year


    Visit our new Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.



    Eat.Sleep.Host    It is what we do.

    Image:Lotus reduces the requirements to be Lotus certified

      for this posting

      On Friday, July 1st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    How Lotus fits into the IBM Social Strategy - finally explained


    The IBM Collaboration Solutions community call was held this morning and a guest speaker was Scott Neuman, Director of Social Business Marketing at IBM.  He ran through a number of high level slides around social strategy and futures.  But I think he made it very clear in the middle.  I will summarize in MY words
    Lotus will be folded into coupled solutions with other IBM software products and services to provide these magical social solutions. Gone will be the days of a laundry list of products you have to wade through.

    So you will see things like Sametime, Connections and maybe Portal as a vertical solution offering to customers for example.

    Learning WAS, Sharepoint or whatever shouldn't matter to the big question.  If there is a software IBM owns then learn it.  Plain and simple.  If there is a bundled solution approach that covers seven products, learn them.

    If social is the keyword of the bi-annual to IBM, then we say ok!  Domino was social, Sametime was social, Connections (for 4 years now) was social.  But now we have the term social applied and we can approach it as new.

    The mass world doesn't know or doesn't like the Lotus name, but love and trust IBM as recognizable.   This was ten years coming when IBM bought Lotus.  No need to ponder it now.


    We didn't sell previous solutions as social, we did it as collaboration. Guess what, collaboration had to be social to work.  We just have a new word.  Move along.


    ********
    This article brought to you by IamLUG - the North American "Lotus" User Group.  Hotel rates expire July 7th!
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, June 28th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    June 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this June 2011 edition I talk about IBM removing the Lotus brand name and the following:

    * From the Editor: Chris' 0.0123122 GIP
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Split Notes Data Over Multiple Volumes
    * Free IBM Connections testing?
    * Quick Tip: Sorry, We Are Unable to Process Your Request At This Time
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Sametime 8.5.2 Deployment Options

    ************

    You can head over now to watch the IamLUG 2011 keynote in streaming HD!  The keynote was amazing, given by Brian Cheng of IBM.

    Edited, produced and brought to you by Spiked Studio Productions.  Your niche podcast network
      for this posting

      On Friday, June 24th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Lotusphere 2011 Online closing - and they listened


    Long ago I made some commentary that Lotus was wrong to close the Lotusphere Online system each year, instead of making it a growing and nurtured community.
    Shouldn't Lotusphere be a growing and nurtured community? Not reborn every 12 months?

    Lotus has made a decision here that could have changed some of the communication landscape between tens of thousands of customers, partners, employees, vendors and press.  A living breathing system that grew over the years and integrated more technology, connecting more people together.

    Lotusphere should be a constant community with security wrapped around the resources by the the year I attend.  I would maintain an account that allowed me to chat, communicate and look up people.  Lotus would integrate new technologies of social networking tools (outside of Lotus Connections as we went along).  I would be able to access past files from all the years of content that was afforded to me for the years I attended.

    Lotusphere should be a Sametime chat community that never closes, now with the zero download client found in Sametime 8.5.  Socialbookmarks should have kept growing.  Throw out Activities since I can only use one such plug-in in my client at work and use it already.  Streamline what communities are there.

    So today we received notice via email that Lotusphere Online will be merged into IBM Greenhouse (I am skipping ahead and dropping the Lotus name).
    We listened to your feedback that you wanted one ongoing community for Social Business and the IBM Collaboration Solutions. Therefore during June, the existing Lotusphere 2011 Online will be closed and combined into our IBM Connections community on Lotus Greenhouse to establish that single, long term community. Before the site is closed, you will receive an invitation to join the established IBM Collaboration Solutions User Experience Community in Lotus Greenhouse.

    The communities will be rebuilt, the presentations moved over and ready for all to access.
    We will be making Lotusphere 2011 presentations available and will use the new community for collaboration before and after our events.


    You will have to go and create a Greenhouse ID if you do not have one.  But it will allow you to also join into a global IBM Sametime community for chat and other services.  So rejoice in the announcement they are closing Lotusphere Online 2011.  I would like to think I was one of the voices they heard
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      On Thursday, June 2nd, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Should Nomad (Notes on a stick) come back as a cloud client?


    An interesting idea popped into my head this weekend as I read a technote that actually mentioned Nomad, or Notes on a USB stick for those unfamiliar with the name.  Nomad was a hot hot topic back in 2006.  It is still frequently used as a search term on my blog.

    With everyone thinking they want to run everything in the cloud, which they do already in many fashions unknown to them, the portability question comes to mind with the idea of a semi-full client on tablets and more mobile devices.  iNotes and even Traveler is just not enough for the business user.  Writing everything to XPages takes time and development costs many companies cannot afford or have the skills to get done.  They may never get them done and/or converted to be honest.  

    IBM now sits at the cross roads of letting those full client customers go eventually as it seems to slowly vanish, or help them move apps to the web by partnering with teams like the recent Transformer 2.0 announcement from GBS.  Ed just announced a XPages Application Server license.  I do not see how it differs from a Domino Utility Server at this time.  I imagine we will hear more on that soon.

    When Ed mentioned the launch this week of Transformer 2.0, he quoted the line that says it:
    modernizes Notes applications into XPages web applications.

    If we move more and more Notes client based applications to web only, do companies need a drive to keep the client?  Then a drive to keep mail on Domino? Then we point the directory to AD so we don't need that either.

    Next step is to somehow surface .nsf files without Domino, via a plug-in for Websphere, after turning database encryption off sounds like a new plan too.  More Notes clients on platforms may just be a help.
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, May 31st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    May 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this May 2011 edition I talk about Lotus' attempt at the Exceptional Web Experience and the following:

    * From the Editor: Chris' -0.0123 SOC  
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Removing Encryption On a Local Database
    * IBM Social Business Toolkit and Wiki
    * Quick Tip: Free Sametime Plug-ins
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Plug-ins and Updatesite

    Make sure you also:

    * Register for IamLUG 2011!  The doors are open for attendees, speakers and sponsors.  The event will be FREE for all attendees and is being help Aug 1-2, 2011.

    * Register for TackItOn again right after IamLUG.  This full day (paid) event brings Matt White for XPages 201 and Paul Mooney for Lotus Traveler

    * Sign up for both the Consultant In Your Pocket and IdoNotes newsletters in the upper right corner of the blog.  Get early notices before the public, webcast information and commentary not found on the blog.  Did I mention the two free whitepapers on DCC and Search in Lotus Notes just for signing up?
      for this posting

      On Thursday, May 26th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Blogger and Technical Search Widget


    While here at UKLUG, I showed the Lotus Blogger and Technical Search widget that I built a while ago during my Securely Deploying Plugins & Widget session.  Many asked where to find the download.

    I placed it in IBM (Lotus) Greenhouse catalog for everyone to have access and place a license file on it.

    Please leave a rating once you understand the power of what it can do and make sure to read the comments about installation if you get an error that happens in non 8.5.2 client versions due to an SPR that occurred.  There is a simple fix in the comments and wiki article.

    Explanation:
    The widget allow you to right-click on any text in any Notes document and search across ONLY Lotus related blogs, technical sites and support.  You can also open the widget directly from the sidebar and input direct search text. It eliminates other results for you to give tuned results.


    If you have sites to be added make sure to let me know.  it currently serves up over 300.  Also, make sure you rate it like you would in any app store or catalog.
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, May 24th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    My article why IBM should retire the Lotus brand


    Yesterday I posted on the announcement made in the UKLUG keynote address by Ted Stanton on the sunsetting of brands (not products) in the IBM naming world.  Earlier in the year I had written an article for publication that I am providing following this news coming true.
    In the first week of February 2011, the annual Lotusphere conference by IBM was held in Orlando, FL. Each year a new theme is launched to drive the flow around the conference as new products are announced and futures discussed. The theme for 2011 from IBM/Lotus was Social Business

    IBM/Lotus entered the realm of social business about two years ago by placing social networking into the enterprise with Lotus Connections. They soon became self proclaimed, and known to some, as an industry leader in this space.  With the recent release of Connections 3.0, they have made a strong statement.

    However, the stigma of the name Lotus hangs heavy. It carries with it 20 years of weight from Lotus Notes and the nagging thought of the old 1-2-3 anytime you say Lotus.  So how would IBM break away, while moving forward the implementations of such products as Connections, Portal and and freshly remodeled and painted Notes?  Removing the Lotus moniker is a first step in that transition.

    In no way am I hinting or saying that the actual products under the Lotus banner would be retired.  Simply the Lotus portion of the name itself. They have begun this movement years ago by placing IBM at the head of each product name. Many have been cross branded for some time, such as IBM Lotus Sametime.  Removing the Lotus from the middle is not a trivial task. Nor should IBM treat this decision lightly.

    Back at Lotusphere, Social Business was pushed into everyone's minds as soon as the Opening General Session kicked off. while many still sit at companies globally wondering how this affects their email and applications based on Lotus Notes, even the sales reps are being told to push this initiative. The link for Social Business does take you to a Lotus branded URL, but one of the main links announces the IBM Social Collaboration Platform and the just completed IBM Social Business Jam

    This new initiative focuses around social analytics, tracking, enhanced customer and web experiences and platforms to deploy these solutions.  All based on a collection of IBM software properties.  From this alone is makes perfect sense for IBM to bring these all together as one brand face and name, much like Cognos was brought into the IBM banner.

    Since Lotusphere both the products Connections and Sametime have had the Lotus name removed from the product marketing.  While we do still the the name Lotus in the actual installed product in some places, new efforts will not show it when making future announcements and marketing.

    IBM held massive press events last year around Project Northstar.  Their first move of taking software like Websphere Portal and making it the foundation for the IBM Customer Experience Suite.    I blogged extensively on Project Northstar  and during the launch.  While much of the press was there, the splash was not made.

    Where does this leave Lotus in the new IBM picture?  As a name that held strength in the enterprise messaging and application platform space.  As a name that still haunts many people as a horrid experience because they were stuck on older versions or never experienced the full customer experience.  As a name to soon be retired, it's jersey hung in the banners and all the awards placed high on the IBM trophy case as an acquired, assimilated and merged product line in the IBM behemoth.  Goodbye Lotus brand name. Hello IBM collaboration.

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      On Tuesday, May 24th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    IBM retires the Lotus (and other) Brand - official from #UKLUG


    During the keynote today from Ted Stanton (his bio from UKLUG):
    Ted Stanton is a World Wide Executive Consultant for IBM's Software Solutions Group. Ted is committed to maintaining high customer satisfaction while helping customers align software solutions with their strategic business goals. Ted’s strong technical background includes over twenty IBM product certifications allowing him to proactively work across technical teams and line of business to build solutions and articulate the business value, ROI, and transformation required for success

    He confirmed that over the next two years that IBM will be retiring many of it's brand names by the end of 2012.  Products (think Sametime, Connections and more) will not be going away at all. Brands like Lotus, Websphere, Tivoli and DB2 will be folded in.

    We have already seen this with IBM Connections and now IBM Sametime just last week.  Many were questioning and looking for a statement from IBM.  I think we have some answers they were looking for.  This is an overhaul of direction and branding to make IBM seen more as a single package, instead of multiple requirements.  For example installing Lotus Sametime was including Websphere Application Server, DB2 Enterprise and possible Tivoli Directory Integrator.  With the change you will install IBM Sametime that includes an IBM Application Server, IBM Data Enterprise server and IBM Directory Integrator.

    Earlier this year I wrote and article for another online publication which I will post in later today in a follow up article.
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      On Monday, May 23rd, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    DDM & DCT: What a Team! webcast is tomorrow


    Just a reminder that the Consultant In Your Pocket webcast series is in full swing with DDM & DCT: What a Team! tomorrow at 10am CST.
    Have you fully dipped into Domino Domain Monitoring with modular documents, collection hierarchies, event workflow and reducing the noise through filtering?  Have you completed a run of the Domino Configuration Tuner ?  Explore all the DDM options, choices and variables to get the most out of your Domino environment.  Use DCT to find out what areas to improve and what to monitor closely with DDM.  Use some of the new automation in DDM to correct problems before you even know they existed.

    Join this FREE webcast to learn all about these underutilized features that come free with Lotus Domino.

    Then on May 18th come and learn all about What's New in Sametime 8.5.2 with a panel of experts.

    Both webcasts are brought to you by GSX, solutions for diverse messaging environments.
    Image:DDM & DCT: What a Team! webcast is tomorrow


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      On Tuesday, May 10th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Webcast: Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM) & Domino Configuration Tuner (DCT) : What a Team


    Coming on May 11, another free webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket:

    DDM & DCT: What a Team
    Have you fully dipped into Domino Domain Monitoring with modular documents, collection hierarchies, event workflow and reducing the noise through filtering?  Have you completed a run of the Domino Configuration Tuner ?  Explore all the DDM options, choices and variables to get the most out of your Domino environment.  Use DCT to find out what areas to improve and what to monitor closely with DDM.  Use some of the new automation in DDM to correct problems before you even know they existed.

    Join this webcast to learn all about these under utilized features that come free with Lotus Domino.

    ******************************

    Also do not forget to attend the Social Business & Online UX Lab webcast on May 3rd with Mary Beth Raven and Velda Bartek,

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      On Tuesday, April 26th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    April 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this April 2011 edition I talk about Exceptional Web Experience and the following:

    *From the Editor: Chris' 0.50000 XWE
    *From the IdoNotes Mailbox : Is Macintosh Taking Over the Conference Speakers
    *Renames and Domino
    * Quick Tip: Enabling Network Compression and Encryption on Servers
    *From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Port Compression and Encryption

    Make sure you also:

    * Register for IamLUG 2011!  The doors are open for attendees, speakers and sponsors.  The event will be FREE for all attendees and is being help Aug 1-2, 2011.

    * Register for TackItOn again right after IamLUG.  This full day (paid) event brings Matt White for XPages 201 and Paul Mooney for Lotus Traveler

    * Sign up for both the Consultant In Your Pocket and IdoNotes newsletters in the upper right corner of the blog.  Get early notices before the public, webcast information and commentary not found on the blog.  Did I mention the two free whitepapers on DCC and Search in Lotus Notes just for signing up?
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      On Thursday, April 21st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 108 - Paul Mooney on UKLUG, IamLUG, Lotus Traveler and more




    Paul Mooney takes time out of his schedule to talk about:

    You can also watch this video in HD on the IdoNotes YouTube and keep up with all of the Spiked Studio shows.

    Catch the newly launched BlackBerry Today!
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      On Thursday, April 21st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    IBM shutters the Notes Net routing permanently


    This day has been hinted at for a long time.  For business partners and customers that were used to routing native Notes mail to Lotus via the @Notes Net foreign domain, today is the end.

    Everyone was migrated over to new servers for both replication and mail routing.  No more @Notes Net in your email messages to get to other partners, Loti and IBMers.  They have a new domain that will do some of the features still, but not all.

    I just thought I would share as I run an agent to change all the email addresses of IBM'ers I have in my personal address book to have it reflect the new domain.  I am going to give it a try later today to see what functions have been removed and/or continue.

    Long live @IESPC  (whatever that stands for)

    Scratch that...   first test give you..
    User IBM name here (IBM name here@iespc) not listed in Domino Directory


    Long live @Notes Net until kinks are worked out
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      On Monday, April 18th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    BLUG 2011 - Seeing Shapes in the Clouds


    I am happy to share my slides from BLUG 2011 titled Seeing Shapes in the Clouds. This session walks through numerous architecture designs for moving to the cloud and questions to ask your cloud provider.

    Do not forget to watch the numerous replays from the conference on YouTube

    Browse all of my shared presentations
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      On Thursday, March 31st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Domino Application Hosting in the Cloud broken down


    IBM finally announced the new Domino Utility Server for LotusLive.  since I have gotten pings, a customer call and expect more, let me break down what this means for you, our customer, in the simplest terms I know so far.  Let's start with the first part of the announcement:
    Based on the same model as the Domino Utility Server, this new license allows you, as LotusLive Notes subscribers, to use the included Notes client for access to Notes/Domino applications

    You must be a LotusLive Notes subscriber to be eligible for this server license model.  I do not see any minimal user count amount on LotusLive to be eligible, so set a user up over there.
    That means that instead of paying per-user software subscription to continue to use Notes/Domino applications, regardless of client/browser access method, you can now switch to a server-only based licensing model. Instead of paying for everyone in an organization to continue to use those applications, you can pay for anyone in the organization to use those applications.

    So now both Notes client and browser access are allowed,  One cost opens access to everyone in the company
    The Domino Utility Server for LotusLive model is available in the IBM Cloud and Amazon models, in addition to on-premises deployments if you are moving or considering a move to the cloud.  

    If you use LotusLive then you can keep a Domino server in-house or with a partner if you are trying to outsource management, backups, monitoring and more.  All for a fixed Domino server license cost.
    Special pricing is planned so you can trade up from Domino Enterprise Servers, in conjunction with deployments of LotusLive Notes (or LotusLive Notes and LotusLive Engage).

    You can free up Enterprise license cost, per user application costs and more.  You must have a user on LotusLive Notes.
    The Domino Utility Server for LotusLive licensing model may be utilized with other "pay as you go" offerings through IBM Cloud, Amazon EC2, or business partners providing Domino application hosting services

    I have tested the IBM Cloud.  You can watch IdoNotes Episode 105 screencast of my trials here.  Amazon will allow usage based models (good for very small models) in the public or private.

    However, the key is the last part.  We (Connectria) are now able to offer you a Domino application server model that you can easily implement at a fixed license cost.  Internet connection, private connection, backups, networks,  firewalls, monitoring. Just another item to strengthen our position as a Lotus software hosting leader.

    Read more about How to Choose and Migrate to a Cloud Email Provider by Forrester where Connectria is mentioned.

    ********************************************************
    You could also watch a current Consultant In Your Pocket event (free no registration needed but signing up for the newsletter encouraged) on Seeing Shapes in the Cloud.

    Visit  the Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.


    Eat.Sleep.Host    It is what we do.


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      On Tuesday, March 29th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    How to Choose and Migrate to a Cloud EMail Provider by Forrester


    Forrester has launched two recent reports and ReadWriteWeb Enterprise wrote a nice summary including Connectria in the article.  We pride ourselves in over ten years of Lotus Software hybrid or outsourced hosting and remote management.  

    Diversified hosting and telecoms, such as AT&T, Connectria, ....

    Forrester doesn't offer any specific recommendations about any particular company. Instead, it encourages decision makers to consider their organization's needs and existing partnerships. The firm also recommends considering hybrid models.


    You could also watch a current Consultant In Your Pocket event (free no registration needed but signing up for the newsletter encouraged) on Seeing Shapes in the Cloud.


    Visit  the Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.


    Eat.Sleep.Host    It is what we do.

    Image:How to Choose and Migrate to a Cloud EMail Provider by Forrester

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      On Tuesday, March 29th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Secrets to success migrating off Lotus Notes and EscapeNotes


    Once again, salesforce (yes no caps as their logo shows) hit my inbox with a webinar coming April 4th on migrating off of Lotus Notes. As we have seen this before, I took special interest in the speaker and the claims his website made, EscapeNotes.

    Image:Secrets to success migrating off Lotus Notes and EscapeNotes

    So I went on to find the site EscapeNotes.  and see what it was all about and the claims it would make. Here we go:
    • You can migrate off Notes in DAYS
    • An automated tool can do it all

    They have a diagram on "How we do it" found on the EscapeNotes site that actrually shows an area of things that cannot be migrated.  A XNscore is generated (I have no idea what that is and their demos have no audio).  The tool has some pop-ups and then makes a complexity score.  It then generates NotesPedia (the encyclopedia of your Notes infrastructure down to the latest detail.

    It basically BUILDS NOTES DATABASES to show you the information it pulls from ACL's, catalog, access, templates and more. It then hits an Excel spreadsheet.  Why would this not use force.com to hold and make these documents?


    I watched a bunch of the demos and step 3 said no knowledge needed of Notes or coding in Force.com.  If you watch the demo the is a ton of things you need to do and code.

    Moving users forces the Notes workspace icons to launch their web browser to open the application.  So there is no migration in that sense.  Users just click a web link.

    For a product moving you off Notes they sure use the term Notes a lot.
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      On Monday, March 28th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    LotusTechDocs on Twitter updated


    I went in with the suggestions I received and tweaked the LotusTechDocs account on Twitter some more.  Apparently you all are finding it useful.  I bring in a bunch of technical document feeds together from Lotus using Yahoo Pipes.  I label and then output the entire thing as RSS.

    Everything is there: Domino, Sametime, Connections, Quickr, LotusLive, Redpapers and more.

    You can then use your favorite Twitter client to make a column or channel and see them in almost real-time as they are published.   You could also use Wildfire from OpenNTF in your Notes client sidebar.
    Image:LotusTechDocs on Twitter updated

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      On Thursday, March 17th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    March 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this March 2011 issue I talk about Social Business and the following:

    * From the Editor: Chris' 0.04187 SOC
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: External iNotes and Security Roadbocks
    * Enforcing a Consistent Access Control List (ACL)
    * Quick Tip: Where Do Recent Contacts Come From?
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Recent Contacts and Renames


    Make sure you also:
    * Subscribe to get access to over 17 hours of technical content from IdoSphere - the live online event

    * head over to Consultant In Your Pocket and catch upcoming FREE webcasts and full replays of previous webcasts including "What's New in Domino 8.5.2 Administration" and "Seeing Shapes in the Clouds"

    * catch up on the entire Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series here on IdoNotes

    * Sign up for both the Consultant In Your Pocket and IdoNotes newsletters in the upper right corner of the blog.  Get early notices before the public, webcast information and commentary not found on the blog.  Did I mention the two free whitepapers on DCC and Search in Lotus Notes just for signing up?
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      On Thursday, March 17th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    GoogleGroups is becoming a spammer’s paradise



    Recently I have been watching not only my own mail account but the logs of caught spam across a ton of customers.  By domain.  You would not think that GoogleGroups would be getting marked, as people subscribe to them for the most part.  What I am finding is that spammers are now creating GoogleGroups and adding huge lists to them. 

    Enterprises for the most part will trust Google as an authorized sender.  So unless the email contains words or other variables to set off triggers, they are getting through.  User's are then blocking the reply-to address or all of GoogleGroups, depending on how they were trained or what type of spam filter they are using.

    Even the DomainKey and DKIM are matching for hostname lookups since it is Google sending the email.  The funny thing is you may not even use the address being sent to as a Google account, so removing yourself is even harder.

    Most of the senders are technology based companies, so reporting them inside of Google is troublesome to do as well, so you find yourself just marking it as spam and moving along.

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      On Wednesday, March 16th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 106 - IBM Cloud Sales Guide for BP’s



    You can also watch this video in HD on the IdoNotes YouTube Channel.

    I received a link today for a Cloud Sales Guide for IBM Business Partners.  There is nothing NDA in there or even close, only references and areas to get more information.  I did find one portion I wanted to highlight.  That was the lack of Lotus Software across three of the areas.

    Did I mention this was in an exe only?
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      On Tuesday, March 8th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 105 - Provisioning Domino in the IBM Cloud



    You can also watch this video in HD on the IdoNotes YouTube Channel.

    An abbreviated version of the session on IdoSphere on the steps to provision a Domino server on Red Hat Linux in the IBM Cloud environment.
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      On Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus technical documents now on Twitter and full RSS feed



    Just as I wrote this morning about IBM having tons of Twitter accounts, a great resource launched on Twitter and RSS for those administrators and developers in the Lotus software world.  If you need to keep up with news and alerts close to real-time, then this is the solution for you.  It covers all the Lotus products.

    LotusTechDocs on Twitter and the Lotus Support Megafeed via RSS are both available.  Using Yahoo Pipes, the multiple feeds are brought together, each entry labeled and then output into a single stream in real-time.  Included are:
    • Domino 8.5
    • Domino 8
    • Quickr
    • Connections
    • Sametime
    • LotusLive
    • Redbooks
    • Whitepapers
    • Tech articles
    • Tutorials

    Both are identical information (with Twitter a few minutes behind due to pushing).  So you can choose to get your technical updates via Twitter or RSS.  Subscribe today to either resource via Twitter or RSS.
    Image:Lotus technical documents now on Twitter and full RSS feed

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      On Tuesday, March 1st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    February 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on Lotususergroup.org


    In this February 2011 issue I talk about "Social Business" and the following:

    * From the Editor: Chris' 1.88680 VUV
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: EUM UI Job Error
    * New From Lotus in 2011 via Lotusphere
    * Quick Tip: Live Domino Console on Mac Client
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Old Widgets In My Sidebar
     

    Make sure you also:
    * Subscribe to get access to over 17 hours of technical content from IdoSphere - the live online event

    * head over to Consultant In Your Pocket and catch upcoming FREE webcasts and full replays of previous webcasts including "What's New in Domino 8.5.2 Administration" and "Seeing Shapes in the Clouds"

    * catch up on the entire Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series here on IdoNotes

    * Sign up for both the Consultant In Your Pocket and IdoNotes newsletters in the upper right corner of the blog.  Get early notices before the public, webcast information and commentary not found on the blog.  Did I mention the two free whitepapers on DCC and Search in Lotus Notes just for signing up?
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      On Thursday, February 24th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Domino Admin to Was Admin highlighted, thank you #ls11


    I received an email newsletter and in it was the mention of the session I gave at 8:30 in the morning covering Domino Admin to Was Admin.  I recorded the session and have to edit in the slides to have it match up so I can post it.

    A common assessment of the technical sessions indicated there was more content and greater interest in the content than in recent years. One session in particular for administrators well received centered on moving from Domino Administration to WebSphere Administration, which was presented in a one hour session from Chris Miller.


    Much thanks to the newsletter writer and also to Gabriella Davis for all the hard work we did to put this together as a joint session at a previous Lotusphere.
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      On Thursday, February 10th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 95 - Inbox bug on Macintosh client?



    You can also watch this video in HD on YouTube

    I am having this deletion being marked as read only  issue in the 8.5.x Mac client and I finally wanted to ask if anyone else sees this?
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      On Friday, January 21st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    January 2011 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this January 2011 issue I talk about App Stores for Lotus and.the following:

    *From the Editor: Chris' 1.00000 MMD
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Sidebar Web Links Only Open Notes Embedded Browser
    * Lotusphere Resources and Tips
    * Quick Tip: ReCon
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Open Mail Archive on Blackberry



    Make sure you:
    * Register now for the best pricing at IdoSphere - the live online event
    * head over to Consultant In Your Pocket and catch upcoming FREE webcasts and full replays of previous webcasts including "What's New in Domino 8.5.2 Administration" and "Seeing Shapes in the Clouds"
    * catch up on the entire Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series here on IdoNotes
    * Sign up for both the Consultant In Your Pocket and IdoNotes newsletters in the upper right corner of the blog.  Get early notices before the public, webcast information and commentary not found on the blog.  Did I mention the two free whitepapers on DCC and Search in Lotus Notes just for signing up?
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      On Thursday, January 20th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus announces Application-Specific Licensing (ASL) #ls11


    In an email announcement I received today, IBM Lotus is poised to announce and talk about application-specific licensing (ASL):
    IBM Application-Specific Licensing (ASL) provides you with a vehicle to
    deliver your solution bundled with IBM software, under one contract, to
    clients anywhere in the world at a consistent price, and supported
    end-to-end by your organization.


    So for all of the ISV's that are developing applications, remove some of the licensing hassle with ASL for your solution!

    If you need somewhere to deploy these custom applications, and the company does not have Lotus Domino in house, come and talk to use at Connectria.

    Visit our new Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.


    Eat.Sleep.Host    It is what we do.

    Image:Lotus announces Application-Specific Licensing (ASL) #ls11

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      On Wednesday, January 19th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Best & Worst of Lotus 2010 day #2 of 5


    Day #2. A daily posting for a work week of the best and worst of 2010 in the Lotus world from my eyes.

    Best - XPages

    The announcements and growth around XPages has been amazing.  Webcasts, podcasts, tutorials and even seminars to fully packed rooms.  The idea that you can deploy some advanced web features without redesigning the base application makes perfect sense.  For enterprises looking to extend user base or remove the Notes client it makes sense.  For companies looking to implement Domino as a back end solution it makes sense.  For the look and feel of modern applications users want it makes sense.  For Lotus to succeed in keeping and gaining companies that will use Domino as an application server it makes sense.  For Lotus to offer an easy way to make One UI for all of your collaboration infrastructure it makes sense.

    Worst - XPages

    Many are understanding the effort and complexity needed to bring a new interface to all of your applications.   I hesitate to say "up to date" since you are wrapping a web interface on apps that already run great in your Notes client and that doesn't do justice to all the work developers have put in for fifteen years.  The ease of moving tens, hundreds and thousands of applications is based on developers learning new skills and banging away at code that is relatively new.

    Partners are developing products to hopefully streamline and add automation to this new UI layer.  But how many companies are ready to move existing applications to a web interface and deployment model?  Sure, tons want it.  They dream of it.  But getting off the rich client is always a struggle.  You could upgrade all of the clients to support running XPages locally inside of the client, but why then make it web and not leave it native Notes access?  A catch-22 at some companies I talk to.

    BONUS
    : Pre launch of the new XPages search engine is ready (with help from David Leedy)

    ********Related Posts*******
    See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #5 of 5
    See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #4 of 5
    See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #3 of 5
    See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #2 of 5
    See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #1 of 5
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      On Tuesday, January 4th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Seeing Shapes in the Clouds - webcast January 12 2011


    Another free webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket was announced last week titled Seeing Shapes in the Clouds.  It is about cloud architecture in the Lotus world and things you should consider.  Here is the full abstract:
    While investigating numerous cloud solutions, including LotusLive, you need to understand how this fits into your business plans both technically and functionally.  Explore architecture pitfalls from ten years of Lotus software hosting and learn the right questions to ask about data security and retention, geographic location and more.  Understand TCO and ROI while shaping your infrastructure for the cloud.

    Lotus is currently undergoing a major shift to cloud solutions and lines of business need an understanding of the architecture decisions surrounding the multiple directions.  In this session the business cases as well as simplified pictures will be presented.

    Enterprise decisions around implementing Lotus software in the cloud is becoming a hot topic.  This webcast will dive into the following:
    • Defining the difference in hybrid, cloud and on-prem deployments
    • Architecture decisions for cloud deployment
    • Security considerations
    • The right questions to ask the providers
    • Administrative controls
    • Reporting and status

    Registration is open for the event.  

    You can also watch the replays of past webcasts, for free, at Consultant In Your Pocket including the recent What's New In Domino 8.5.2 Administration.


    Recommended Reading

    LotusLive Notes - a better understanding
    LotusLive Hosted Notes - the comparison chart
    LotusLive Notes Cloud Hybrid Modeling
    Can We Audit LotusLive Data Protection Security?

    Podcasts

    IdoNotes Episode 82 - LotusLive and Skype Integration
    IdoNotes Episode 83 - LotusLive and Tungle Integration
    IdoNotes Episode 84 - LotusLive and Vondle Integration
      for this posting

      On Monday, January 3rd, 2011   by Chris Miller        

    Thoughts on "10 ways SharePoint 2010 will impact your Lotus Notes migration"


    I received a link from a customer to this ComputerWorld article with the title 10 ways SharePoint 2010 will impact your Lotus Notes migration.  The first thing the article does is make a very bold statement:
    Over the past five years, many organizations have abandoned their legacy Lotus Notes/Domino environments

    What constitutes legacy?  An application that drives their entire business?  An application that is a workflow built over many years to save huge amounts of costs for the enterprise?

    So why didn't the companies move these applications?
    Their concerns range from the cost of rebuilding applications on SharePoint to uncertainty about whether SharePoint has the capabilities needed

    I beleive they catch the main reason right away.  The article goes on to to start the list of how it is easier, or should be.  Even though they list limitations right away.
    1. Scalability: It’s not unusual for Notes databases in large enterprises to contain tens of thousands of documents. Organizations attempting to move this content to SharePoint 2007 ran into some severe size limitations on SharePoint lists and libraries. With SharePoint 2010, however, the recommended maximums for many criteria have more than doubled

    So right away they admit even with Sharepoint 2010 there is still limitations in large databases.  They even note this about keyword fields into the managed metadata store.  The scaling and ease of migration is not there.

    Office integration, their point #3, is a non-issue.  I think John Head has been preaching this for years in his integration sessions.  This already exists inside the Notes and Domino world

    4. Offline Capabilities: Although many of us count on continuous internet connectivity and bandwidth, many legacy Notes applications depend on the ability to “go offline.”  Notes is famous for its ability to replicate to your laptop whatever data you need to continue working while unplugged.

    They admit Notes is famous for offline capability so Sharepoint tries to cover this with Workspaces.  They taught that it is based on Groove (no defunct in the grand sense) and the same developers that built it for Notes.  Maybe some, but the movement and capabilities have far outgrown what ehy know and can do.

    Sharepoint Online makes it presence known in post #5.  Domino has has hosted offerings for a long time from such partners as Connectria, and now LotusLive.  Nothing new here exept competition they had to offer.  Move along.

    The rest of the points were design capabilities which Notes has been ruling for years in the RAD world.  Point 9 even tries to promote workflow.  Are they serious?  Workflow comparisons?  Lotus Notes stomps all over workflow.

    So it all made sense at the end being written by a Sharepoint migration partner/specialist. that also runs a blog on the topic.
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      On Tuesday, December 28th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Calendar entries conflicting in Notes 8.5 when meetings really don’t?


    This is a bug in the 8.5 codestream that versions 8.5.2 will  fix.

    When a Notes calendar entry is for a short meeting with another meeting just after, they will show as conflicting even though they do not conflict.
    Content


    This issue is fixed in 8.5.2.

    Fix details:  SPR# LROE73PRMG  

      for this posting

      On Monday, December 27th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    December 2010 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this December 2010 issue I talk about Christmas geek gifts and the following:

    IN THIS ISSUE #65
    * From the Editor: Chris' 0.02000 PAB
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Move Registered Community Server in Sametime 8.5
    * Lotus Traveler - the Movement
    * Quick Tip: What 8.5 Version is Needed for Which Feature
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Sametime 8.5.1 and Groups in Domino LDAP


    Make sure you:
    * Register now for the best pricing at IdoSphere - the live online event
    * head over to Consultant In Your Pocket and catch upcoming FREE webcasts and full replays of previous webcasts including "What's New in Domino 8.5.2 Administration
    * catch up on the entire Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series here on IdoNotes
    * Sign up for both the Consultant In Your Pocket and IdoNotes newsletters in the upper right corner of the blog.  Get early notices before the public, webcast information and commentary not found on the blog.  Did I mention the two free whitepapers on DCC and Search in Lotus Notes just for signing up?
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      On Wednesday, December 15th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 87 - Managed Mail replicas in Domino 8.5.2



    Managed mail replicas is a new feature introduced in Domino 8.5.2.  This screencast (you can also watch this on YourTube in HD) is a subset of the larger Consultant In Your Pocket session covering all of the new features.  You can watch the entire video replay of the webcast on "What's new in Domino 8.5.2 Administration" here.

    If you are missing out on seeing these live, and being able to ask live questions, you should immediately subscribe to the mailing list in the upper right corner of this blog and all my sites.  Join all of the lists you wish, but especially Consultant In Your Pocket to keep up!  Some big announcements coming that is sent to the list first.
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      On Wednesday, November 24th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    IBM launches Software Business Partner widget


    IBM launched what they are calling a widget for software business partners.  I thought, a Lotus Notes widget (or call it a plug-in if that is what it is), but was shocked to see it was none of those.  The launch screen looks like the following:



    Scrolling down you find that it is a large (29.6mb) executable file that hooks into the operating system, not the client as I expected.  Interestingly enough, it links to another page with more widget information.  It also has a download, with a screenshot that looks identical, that is only 8.29MB, but still is operating system installed.

    has anyone installed this?  Any value in having it?  Anyone make an actual Notes client widget yet?  If not, let me know and I will see what Ic an do about making one to distribute.  Authentication will be required when using it to the IBM site.
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      On Monday, November 22nd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    November 2010 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this November 2010 issue I talk about widget catalog issues and the following:

    IN THIS ISSUE #64
    * From the Editor: Chris' 0.0191762 CHF
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Duplicate Bookmarks Pushed Via Policies
    * Options for Connecting to IBM Via Sametime
    * Quick Tip: Sametime Client Does Not Have Audio/Video for Some Users
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Notesview Getdocumentbykey Error


    Make sure you:
    * head over to Consultant In Your Pocket and catch upcoming FREE webcasts and full replays of previous webcasts including "What's New in Domino 8.5.2 Administration
    * catch up on the entire Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series here on IdoNotes
    * Sign up for both the Consultant In Your Pocket and IdoNotes newsletters in the upper right corner of the blog.  Get early notices before the public, webcast information and commentary not found on the blog.  Did I mention the two free whitepapers on DCC and Search in Lotus Notes just for signing up?
      for this posting

      On Thursday, November 18th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    What’s New in Domino 8.5.2 Administration - FREE webcast tomorrow!!

    Do not forget that tomorrow is the webcast covering what is new in Domino 8.5.2 administration.  We have quite the large crowd coming.  Make sure you are included to ask your questions live as well.

    It will cover the following:
    • Managed mail replicas
    • Forced client ODS upgrades
    • Domino diagnostic probe
    • Administrative accounts for plug-in deployment
    • Detecting corrupt databases
    • Directory assistance changes
    • Miscellaneous changes included!

    You can register for the Consultant In Your Pocket webcast right here.

    Our sponsor for the webcast is GSX, the developer of an incredible set of monitoring and administration tools.  They have started their own video demos of their products this week as well.
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      On Tuesday, November 16th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    IdoNotes Episode 85 - Mary Beth Raven and her split personalities


    Live from ILUG2010 I sit with Mary Beth Raven, the UX goddess of Lotus, and talk about the new personae, Cogtool usage by the UX team and a bit about the usability lab coming at Lotusphere 2011.

    You can reach Mary Beth at the Notes Design Blog and her account on Twitter.

    **********************
    This podcast is bought to you by Consultant In Your Pocket webcasts.  Join us on Nov 17th at 10 for "What's New in Domino 8.5.2 Administration"
      for this posting

      On Thursday, November 11th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    LIVE: ILUG2010 Keynote and blogging with Kevin Cavanaugh in ONE hour


    NOTE: Due to the high number of geeks, the bandwidth went dry like a midwestern summer drought.  We recorded locally to be edited and uploaded for replay instead.

    Live from Belfast, we will stream (and record) the keynote of ILUG 2010 with Kevin Cavanaugh at 9am GMT (4am EST in the USA) using uStream.

    You can watch now or see the recording posted later.
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, November 10th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    What’s New in Domino 8.5.2 Administration - FREE webcast

    On Wed November 17th, at 10am CST, there will be a webcast covering What's New in Domino 8.5.2 Administration.  After the success of these sessions at DANNOTES in Denmark, it was suggested that is was redone as a Consultant In Your Pocket webcast as well.  It will cover the following:
    • Managed mail replicas
    • Forced client ODS upgrades
    • Domino diagnostic probe
    • Administrative accounts for plug-in deployment
    • Detecting corrupt databases
    • Directory assistance changes
    • Miscellaneous changes included!

    Head over to the free webcast registration page for the event and get your team signed up!  Remember, it is free and only last just over an hour
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      On Monday, November 8th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    How Lotus Greenhouse catalog breaks widget downloads from working




    You can also watch the above video in HD on my IdoNotes YouTube channel right here.   A wiki article has been created as well.

    After submitting my Lotus Blogger Search Widget successfully to the Lotus Greenhouse Catalog last week (original posting), I was happy to see downloads start.  Then the comments of failure began.  Well after some sleuth work and willing testers, I found the cause and solution which I posted there.  I am more than happy to share those comments and thoughts here as well.  Remember it is not a plug-in, a widget.
    In order to successfully download my widget, and future ones successfully, from the Lotus Greenhouse you must do the following crazy steps:

    Open your local names.nsf -> Advanced -> Accounts -> greenhouse.lotus.com entry -> edit -> supply missing credentials -> save and close -> restart Notes -> drag widget again successfully

    Basically the widget can only be accessed via a username/password even for the xml file.  So Greenhouse attempts to create a local account.  The local account it creates on the fly can not get your web credentials to the Greenhouse site.  So the error is generated.

    Apparently Lotus has known about this for at least 8 months since I found a document addressing it from Feb 2010.  No fix, no solution and a bad way to get it.  I will point users to my blog instead for now.

    (Update before this got published)  Lotus has acknowledged this is a Notes regression bug under Spr OAGU88XK87 that worked in Notes 8.5 and broke in 8.5.1 and 8.5.2.  This will make it in 8.5.2 FP1 and 8.5.3 but it is a client fix.  Keep that in mind.

    All of this had nothing to do with the widget itself as it only allows you to select text in any Notes document, right click and do a custom search!
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      On Monday, November 1st, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Blogger and Technical Search widget now in Lotus Greenhouse


    I am happy to announce that the Blogger Search Widget I keep updated for your search needs is now listed in the Lotus Greenhouse solutions catalog!  It passed all the tests and you can easily drag and drop right into your client.

    Head over to the Lotus Greenhouse catalog and grab your widget (it is not a plug-in, a widget).  Please leave any comments and a rating if you so desire.  Let me know of any issues.

    Image:Lotus Blogger and Technical Search widget now in Lotus Greenhouse
      for this posting

      On Thursday, October 28th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Call it a plug-in, not a widget when it’s really a plug-in. Pretty Please?


    We need to have a long talk, mr developer.  Yes we do.  I am getting slightly frustrated at the number of "widgets" being placed into catalogs (OpenNTF, Greenhouse and more) that are shown as widgets.  They make the instructions read to just drag and drop this into your widget box.  Yes for a widget that would be correct.

    The moment that widget tries to prompt me to install plug-in code from a remote site it changes the game.  The security mechanisms are different.  The controls are different.  The policies are different.  The updating architecture is different.

    Go watch this webcast, see what some of the differences are and come back and label all your widgets to the appropriate name.  Yes, you are allowed to deploy plug-ins via a widget.  Fully supported.  But it is not a widget.
    This plug-in XXX is deployed via a widget

    Just say that.  Also make your plug-in downloadable to place into my site updates.  Not yours.  I don't let my users just go anywhere to get code.  That is what policies and proper site update management is for.


    "Deploying Plugins and Widgets for Lotus Notes and Sametime" -  the webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket
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      On Monday, October 25th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Modernize legacy Lotus Notes apps to XPages quickly


    It seems GROUP has finally announced their Evolution Transformer that automagically takes your legacy (ouch) Lotus Notes application and performs a wizard spell of XPages.  Not being a developer I have no idea how hard it is, but looking at databases from the design side recently, with XPages already implemented, it doesn't look easy.

    MAGIC XPAGES CONVERTER

    XPages technology enhances your ability to create world-class
    Notes and Domino applications and leverage your Domino
    investments...
    ... this presentation will introduce you to a new tool that
    lets you modernize your legacy Notes applications by converting
    them to XPages with GROUP’s revolutionary tool, Evolution
    Transformer.

    Join Nathan Freeman, GROUP Frameworks VP Research &
    Development and Jennifer Meade, CTO at GROUP for this brief
    online presentation and learn the ins and outs of this new tool that
    transforms Domino applications with XPages for you:

    * Learn how to rapidly modernize legacy Domino applications at
    ½ the cost of moving to another platform

    * See a demonstration of the Evolution Transformer solution in action


    I am signing up for this demo just to see
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, October 20th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    October 2010 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this October 2010 issue I talk about the event creeping up on us and the following:

    IN THIS ISSUE #63
    * From the Editor: Chris' 1.986790 ALL
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Choosing the Right Blog Solution
    * Lotusphere - How You Can Participate Using Social Media
    * Quick Tip: Right Click on Servers in Domino Administrator
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Widget and Plugin Deployment


    Make sure you:
    * head over to Consultant In Your Pocket and catch upcoming FREE webcasts and full replays of previous webcasts
    * catch up on the entire Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series here on IdoNotes
    * Sign up for both the Consultant In Your Pocket and IdoNotes newsletters in the upper right corner of the blog.  Get early notices before the public, webcast information and commentary not found on the blog.  Did I mention the two free whitepapers on DCC and Search in Lotus Notes?
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, October 20th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    CIMTrek launches product, claims to move your Lotus Notes apps to the cloud


    I admittedly could not find anything more about the migration product from CIMTrek on their barren website.  Just a small product line about how they can seamlessly assess, analyze and migrate your Lotus Notes applications to the cloud.  The quote from the press release:
    “CIMTrek removes that barrier by providing the tools to discovering what applications your organisation has and what can be migrated. Users can then define which apps they want and then in one simple click can migrate all identified applications. At this stage we have focused on IBM Lotus Notes which has over 600,000 users here in the UK alone,” he added. “The beauty of CIMTrek is that it makes no assumptions as to how you do business. We don’t ask that you change your modus operandi. We won’t ask you to buy any software!”

    It might just be me, but have we not heard this before?  They cite lots of stats of why you would move, how many companies have moved, how many will move.. yada yada.  But nothing on how they move you.  No screenshots, demos or documentation.  All the links to videos and more simply point you to buy a book he helped author.

    I couldn't figure out the company name from the founders or anything else until I ran across this:
    The name CIMtrek was inspired by the tag-line ‘Collaborate in Motion’


    From another article or two I found.  It seems he is targeting the UK customers first with the tactic claiming 6,000 UK companies with Notes.  I especially like the squirt comment:
    The CIMtrek application, developed by a team of developers working for Pyke in the UK, will identify business processes and data dependencies in existing Lotus Notes installations. Using a proprietary schema, based on the XML standard, it will then transpose those process flows and dependencies to a hosted platform, such as Amazon, Azure or Google.

    The CIMtrek tool will start by discovering what Notes users are actually using the tool for in the enterprise, then go through an analysis and categorisation phase before enabling migration to another platform. It is able to take the key ingredients of an existing IBM Lotus Notes installation and ‘squirt’ that in an XML-like format to another platform that is hosted.


    Has anyone tried this tool yet?  Discuss..   Nice Wordpress design though.
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      On Thursday, October 14th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Tri-State Lotus User Group live keynote with Alistair Rennie


    Tri-State LUG kicked off in NYC with over 100 attendees from all over the tri state area and a few stragglers, like myself.  Mitch Cohen did a fine job opening the event with excellent organization compatriot Kathleen McGivney.

    Alistair took the stage to cover the following:
    • Canadian Thanksgiving and Columbus Day (yes he started there)
    • Major shifts in collaboration

    Alistair took the approach of where collaboration is headed.  Lotus began with Smarter Planet in 2008 with the theme of making people smarter to be a Smarter Planet. IBM Software has divisions to offer a portfolio aligned to meet any customer need.

    Social is a fundamental process optimization opportunity.  Business went from mainframe --> departmental --> PC --> Internet --> Social.

    Reinventing Relationships, what we saw here with Project Vulcan and here, is the key message he is pushing through now about integration to create an Exceptional Customer Experience (Northstar).  He then lead into the recent customer announcemnts and case studies based on these.

    Mobile had a slide all of it's own with the lead as Traveler as the fastest growing deployed solution.  Mobile is becoming the primary access point for collaborative solutions.
    Editor: I have mentioned this before that any new product always has huge growth after launch with a starting point of zero.  I would love to see market penetration numbers of overall deployed as a solution as a selling point, coupled with the dynamic growth.


    Cloud deployments became the next slide focus highlighting cost, flexibility, extranet collaboration and ending in hybrid. Alistair highlighted the multi-tenant capability of LotusLive Notes (see my editor secion below)
    Editor: I think Lotus realizes that not every application can move to the cloud for some time to come and started promoting the hybrid model.  I do not recall seeing it in the very early launch stages.  The pish was a total cloud solution.

    Alistair mentioned the multi-tenant capability, but no one outside of Lotus is able to access this code, even though it is based on the 8.5.2 codestream.


    A great quote was captured by Victor Toal that Alistair made about Lotus now running services on Domino:
    #tristatelug IbM having to drink their own coolaid (Lotus Live) makes them take customer requirements more serious and implement them


    LotusKnows and market presence was a push by Lotus to answer the request from the dedicated userbase to have more promotion of the platform.

    He then opened the floor to any questions which is a great user group move to keep it informal.
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      On Monday, October 11th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    New whitepaper on Search Techniques in Lotus Notes


    By signing up for any of the IdoNotes or Consultant In Your Pocket newsletters, you now receive two whitepapers.  Introduced this weekend was Search Techniques in Lotus Notes.
    This whitepaper is an excellent resource to distribute to employees, helpdesk and even review for yourself.  it covers tips, tricks and techniques for searching better with the tools Lotus Notes 8.x and higher provides.


    To sign up, simply look in the upper left of any of the IdoNotes family of sites, under the Spiked Studio banner, and you can choose the different newsletters and announcements you wish to receive.  Extra commentary not found here, early bird announcements before the general public knows, discounts with partners and more.

    Make sure to catch all the recent webcast replays as well and check out the upcoming schedule of topics and dates.
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      On Monday, October 4th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    September 2010 Sys Admins Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org


    In this September 2010 issue I talk about the Domino 8.5.2 release with you and the following:

    IN THIS ISSUE #62
    * From the Editor: Chris' 0.79500 HTG
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Changing the Inbox Style for Lotus Protector
    * Multi-threaded Replication and More in Notes 8.5.2
    * Quick Tip: The One Catch We Found in Domino 8.5.2
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Finding Notes Jobs


    Make sure you:
    * head over to Consultant In Your Pocket and catch upcoming FREE webcasts and full replays of previous webcasts
    * catch up on the entire Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series here on IdoNotes
    * share this with all your geek friends across the social networks
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Blogger Search Engine widget updated again for Lotus Notes


    In order to provide to best results, the custom widget for your Lotus Notes client has been updated with more blogs and removing some that went offline.  You simply grab the widget from the public catalog or download from the below linked posts.   You can also expand this even further by grabbing the plug-in Julian, of SNAPPS, created joining his search bar and the widget together.

    If you don't understand what it offers, here is a quick description:
    The custom blogger search is based on the Google CSE and now includes over 350 Lotus related blogs, wikis and technical sites. It only searches these sites for speed and web search efficiency.  You can further trim searches down by the categories that are being built such as Sametime and webcasts.  This allows you to find information quickly you know you read on some blog at some point.  PlanetLotus can handle recent lookups, but going further back in the archives is an issue, mainly if they were around before being added.


    If you have any questions, please leave a comment.


    Related Postings
    Subject
    SNAPPS and IdoNotes launch free search plug-in for Lotus Notes
    New widget : Search across all Lotus blogs with a right click









    If you need help in deploying widgets and plug-ins, watch this webcast on Plug-in and Widget Deployment for Lotus Notes from Consultant In Your Pocket which covers this very topic.
      for this posting

      On Monday, September 20th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Notes client 8.5.2 might be missing mail headers


    This is a technote that rolled out from Lotus while I was at NLLUG.  Something to be aware of so you can head it off at the pass.  Fixes are mentioned in technote #1446238.
    After upgrading the Notes Client to 8.5.2 , certain messages are missing the Message Header.  The Message Header does not appear in the Preview Pane, or in the opened message.

    There are two workarounds for this problem:

    1) Log out of Embedded Sametime client and the Mail headers would reappear.

    2) Replace the Mail template on the Mailfile with the 8.5.2 mail template

    I am not too sure about this first work around.

      for this posting

      On Tuesday, September 14th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Domino 8.5.2 changed the Directory Assistance (DA) template name and added new features


    We often see how templates and databases keep the same name forever.  Such examples are events4.nsf and admin4.nsf.  Previously, Lotus changed a database name from Schema5.nsf to schema.nsf for the LDAP build.  It is rare, never before to my immediate thought, to do a change in a point release.

    For Domino 8.5.2 , Lotus has changed the template name of Directory Assistance from da50.ntf to the new da.ntf with some additional features.
    Changes on the Basics tab (new fields)
    • Windows single sign-on for web clients
    • Kerberos realm

    Changes on the LDAP tab (new fields)
    • There is a new Connection Configuration section containing the already existing fields "Channel encryption" through "Verify server name with remote server's  certificate."
    • LDAP vendor
    • enable name mapping

    There are some more changes that can be found documented.
      for this posting

      On Monday, September 13th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Streaming live Connections 3.0 and then the new Lotus Connectors sessions from NLLUG



    You can catch the live streams from the IamLUG channel on uStream.   Join Suzanne Livingston for Connections 3.0 and then Mary Beth Raven for the Lotus Connectors.
      for this posting

      On Friday, September 10th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Salesforce now claims the sun is setting on Lotus

    Back in July 2010 I received a surprising email from Salesforce (Goodbye Lotus hello cloud direct from Salesforce) telling you to migrate away from Lotus.  A new email has arrived now stating that Lotus is becoming an island and you had better jump ship and run away form your Domino based apps quickly.



    I said it before, if you are a partner that Lotus is launching integration with for things lie LotusLive, you can definitely still market yourself.  But to go so far as to say the software you partner with is becoming extinct is a bit of a stretch.
      for this posting

      On Thursday, September 9th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Consultant In Your Pocket webcasts now via iTunes

    If you miss the live webcasts and don't want to sit at the computer watching and listening to the replays for Consultant In Your Pocket, then subscribe via iTunes.  You will get the update as soon as it is posted.   Then watch it on the road, your iPad and more.  There is always the simple RSS feed as well.

    Upcoming webcasts include:
    Recent replays available include:

    Recent whitepapers released:
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      On Friday, August 27th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Shh, my Lotus Notes 8.5.2 client is sleeping

    You have to admit, it is cute when it sleeps.  Even it gets a rest.

    Image:Shh, my Lotus Notes 8.5.2 client is sleeping

    I just noticed it does this for quite a few tasks as it waits for the progress bar to go through task by task.
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      On Thursday, August 26th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Dynamic Client Configuration (DCC) for Lotus Notes and Domino whitepaper released

    It it great pleasure that I can announce the release of the first in a series of whitepapers from Consultant In Your Pocket/Spiked Studio.  The first white paper focuses on Dynamic Client Configuration (DCC) in the Lotus Notes client and interaction with the Domino server.  The paper simplifies the following areas:
    • History
    • Functionality
    • Troubleshooting

    So how do you get your hands on this right away?  Simple.  
    Subscribe to the IdoNotes newsletter (make sure you select that group as one of your choices) in the upper right corner of this blog. Within 24 hours you get a welcome email with the link to the whitepaper and notices on the upcoming ones as well.
      From then on stay subscribed to keep up to date with the latest commentary only newsletter readers get to see.  Feel free to subscribe to Consultant In Your Pocket, TheSocialNetworker or simply general interest as well.
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, August 25th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Connectria relaunches a unified hosting brand including Lotus products

    I am pleased to announce that we (Connectria) have brought in our subsidiary Managed Hosting division, RedPlaid, to create a unified hosting solution.
    Launched in 2006, REDPLAID Managed Hosting (“REDPLAID”) targeted small to mid-sized organizations that wanted secure and reliable Windows & Linux hosting solutions with a wide range of managed services. REDPLAID leveraged Connectria’s experience in delivering highly reliable and secure solutions that it had built for companies like Deutsche Bank and IBM. These solutions were packaged into standardized offerings that could meet the needs of a wide audience at very attractive prices. Since its inception, REDPLAID’s business grew exponentially, providing a complementary offer to its parent, Connectria, whose focus has been providing complex hosting solutions for large enterprises.

    With the blending of all the services, we now offer under a single umbrella:
    • self managed
    • managed
    • complex
    • cloud


    Visit our new Connectria website today and find out why we offer the best in Lotus Software hosting and management.

    Eat.Sleep.Host    It is what we do.

    Image:Connectria relaunches a unified hosting brand including Lotus products

      for this posting

      On Monday, August 23rd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Domino 8.5.2 with the second most fixes since Domino 7.0.1

    Only Domino 8.0.1 has listed more fixes listed (2156) than Domino 8.5.2 in a release according the to the Notes/Domino Fix List database on Developerworks.  With an impressive 1448 fixes to date in the database, this proves to be an incredible feature and fix release for the Domino codestream.  You can read all the SPR's listed for each version, by category as well in the Notes/Domino Fix List database.

    Notes/Domino Fix List
      for this posting

      On Thursday, August 19th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Notes 8.5.2 and force local ODS upgrade

    How many times during an upgrade of the Lotus Notes client have you wished you could also force the ODS to be upgraded?  Scheduling the compact task as a local program document was a hack I showed some time ago on SnTT.

    But coming in Lotus Notes 8.5.2 (yes the normal wait to see it is there from betas before you get excited) is the ability to have the user's local On Disk Structure (ODS) upgraded.
    For most non-essential databases, the ODS upgrade will take place in a background process and while a database is upgraded, the end user will not be able to use the database.

    For essential databases that are in use at the point that an upgrade is attempted, the ODS upgrade will be done at the next first time open which will typically occur at client restart.


    There is one notes.ini variable to be set
    NSF_UpdateODS=1

    If you do not set the ODS level, Lotus Notes 8.5.2 assumes you meant to go to ODS51.  You can also choose in configuration an older ODS.  Users will be temporarily blocked while the change happens and there is more documented warnings and such that go along with it the user could see while all this takes place.
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      On Wednesday, August 18th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    FREE "Bag O’ Schwag" at upcoming webcasts from Consultant In Your Pocket

    With some awesome upcoming webcasts at Consultant In Your Pocket (for awesome online Lotus related training) and due to the great sponsors, we will be giving away a "Bag of Schwag" to some attendees drawn for each webcast.  Consultant In Your Pocket will begin giving away the "Bag O' Schwag" at the following webcasts** you need to attend:

    Join Kathy Brown as she returns to provide you a fun session "Going Beyond Deploy and Pray"  on August 18th 2010, 10am CST,  covering the following:

    Thanks to Lotus and Domino’s rapid application development platform, many developers find themselves in a deploy-and-pray application release cycle.  That can be fine for simple applications in uncomplicated environments, but what happens when the feature requests get more and more complex?  Come hear about different techniques for managing Lotus and Domino application deployment and how to get beyond deploy-and-pray!

    You can register for Deploy and Pray  immediately right here.


    Join Tom Duff and Marie Scott (Tommy and Marie as they are known now) on Sametime: A Users Perspective taking place August 25 2010 at 10am CST .  With the pending launch of their upcoming book on this very topic, follow along as they take you down the path of what a user sees in your environment and how to better think like them when deploying features and functions.

    You can register for Sametime: A User Perspective right here



    ** Yes, we will be using the webcast attendee names of those that actually attend (not just register) to be fair.  You can always watch the replay online after the event, but then you only get to see virtual "Bag O' Schwag".
      for this posting

      On Monday, August 16th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Notes 8.5.1 spell checker minor bug

    Your users may complain about this issue with the Lotus Notes 8.5.1 spellchecker, as it affects them more. But it will haunt you in the meantime.  It seems the spell check in 8.5.1 has been enhanced (note the ini variable below used to fix this for now) and will not "skip all" for words.

    This becomes more of a nuisance than anything.  As an admin you will need to push out a notes.ini variables out until the patch, then removing the variable again later.  This ini variable takes the client back to 8.5 and prior spell checking.

    To enable the Legacy spell checker, add the notes.ini parameter: SPELL_FORCE_LEGACY=1

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      On Monday, August 9th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Going Beyond Deploy and Pray - Application Release Cycles

    Join Kathy Brown as she returns to provide you a fun session on August 18th 2010, 10am CST,  covering the following:
    Thanks to Lotus and Domino’s rapid application development platform, many developers find themselves in a deploy-and-pray application release cycle.  That can be fine for simple applications in uncomplicated environments, but what happens when the feature requests get more and more complex?  Come hear about different techniques for managing Lotus and Domino application deployment and how to get beyond deploy-and-pray!


    You can register for the event immediately right here.
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      On Tuesday, July 27th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    A FREE day of XPages training ? Yes I say!

    Looking at the IamLUG 2010 agenda, I just came to realize there is an entire free day of XPages training.  A bootcamp, of sorts, to jumpstart your coding goodness.  Have you seen the list and finally convinced yourself to register for the last seats?
    • Ten XPages Design Patterns - Matt White
    • XPages Beyond the Introduction - David Leedy
    • The XPages Revolution - Nathan Freeman and Tim Tripcony
    • Using XML and RDBMS Data Sources in XPages  - Paul Calhoun


    Sean Burgess throws in some jquery for UI enhancements, Developer Tips for Every Developer, TDI, location services and mobilizing applications round out the development track across two days.

    IamLUG is happy to have IBM as the Platinum sponsor for 2010 and offer these XPages training classes for free.
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      On Monday, July 26th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) - part 10

    We left off finishing the advanced configuration document for the Google Apps Migration tool for Lotus Notes (GAMLN).  Besides establishing security for the database, we move on to the actual site configuration.  A single site document is required before any user migration occurs.  You may have multiple site documents later, but a first one is necessary to even do testing.  Pick a name for the site that makes sense and walk with me through the rest of the General settings.
    • A timezone for the site is required.  This gets interesting if you have a centrally located server that handles users from all over as our customer does.  Your choice is the location of the server, the location of the company headquarters or where most of the staff is.
    • The site administrators are normally the Domino administrators handling the migration.
    • The system can read your Domino Directory for the mail server field and begin registering users assigned to that Domino server into Google.  We chose to do a batch and not use this option.  The default was off. If a user is not found in Google it skips that user during migration.
    • However, we did leave the next section enabled.  The migration tool is to do a check to make sure the user being migrated has already been established as an account in Google before migration begins in the GAMLN tool.
    • You can also provision user accounts in the Google domain if you enable the next section. In order to provision you must enable it to check accounts in the Google domain.
    • Establishing the migration start and cutoff times are important.  You want good communication and testing before you roll this out to an entire server.  We would always allow the users to continue migration even after the cutoff date.  That always make me laugh across systems.  As we would not take a user after a certain date?
    • The number of feeder databases and and maximum users per database are highly important to the performance of the tool balanced with the time it will take to move the users to the Google domain with the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes tool.  We covered some basic scenarios in earlier posts on how to configure the feeders.  Marie Scott chimed in with some excellent knowledge on this as well. The maximum feeder databases allowed are 10. The agent runs at 30 minute intervals, so the size of the mailfiles will matter greatly in order to get each one done in 30 minutes.

    We will move through the other site tabs next.

    History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:
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      On Tuesday, July 20th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Google releases new version of Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes tool (GAMLN)

    Google updated the Apps Migration for Lotus Notes tool to version 2.2.1 (GAMLN) in an announcement on their blog last week.  Some new features were also added of note:
    Pre-migration Estimator: It is now possible to gather user statistics prior to migration for selected users.

    Error Threshold Setting:
    In earlier versions of this tool, if any migration errors were encountered the system would keep the user at Active status until the error was resolved, manually flagged as complete, or the administrator moved the user to "Complete" status. It now allows the administrator to set a site level threshold for errors.


    To catch up with the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes series I have in progress, you can read the articles blow in the history of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:
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      On Monday, July 19th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) - part 9

    We left off the Google Apps Migration path from Lotus Notes for the client a while ago entering the Advanced tab information.  Let's quickly walk through some portions and descriptions of these choices.

    Image:Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) - part 9
    • The integrity checker at the top runs the agent to verify there is no save conflicts (and replication in a distributed setup).
    • we left the token refresh to 23 hours which is just below the Google time reset of 24 hours.  After reading their comment about possibly locking out accounts that request new tokens too often, we decided to leave it as far out as we can.
    • Humorously, we always strive to keep individual message sizes shrunk down, this forces the issue with a maximum size of 25MB per message, including attachments.  Any message over the Google max is not migrated.  You can reduce this size down to strip larger attachments and force users to place them in other places.  We found this works well to make users filter and use things like Quickr.
    • The length of Google labels frustrated users with tons of nested folders with long titles.  Google strips them down to the maximum of 40 characters no matter what.  So this is a UI issue in need of training.  You can fix this before migration by having users shrink and change folder name lengths.  But, that in itself will most likely never happen for everyone.
    • Additional mail forms is not an issue for this migration but can be for many.  If you have built or installed third party products that added extra mail forms to your user mailfiles, you can migrate them with specific criteria.  So the good news is some of the basic workflow can be moved that is inside the mailfile but not part of the standard Notes template.  The bad news is the lack of the total workflow that can be moved.
    • We did not need to mess or add custom site level settings at all.

    As the bottom part says, we had no need to change any of the settings.  It would be nice if they hid those unless you clicked some action to prevent mistakes or accidental typing.


    History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:
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      On Monday, July 19th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    BES users and Out Of Office issues and fixes

    It seems that users of Blackberry's really like the Out of Office feature even though the idea of a Blackberry is to be connected out of the office.  Lotus has delivered a nice technote on some of the issues, fixes and patches needed.  From technote #1395880 here are some items are covered:
    What is the first version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) for Lotus Domino that supports the Notes/Domino 8.x Out of Office service?

    Notes/Domino Out of Office service does not synch properly with BlackBerry devices through BES servers.

    An editor level user has enabled their out of office agent from a BlackBerry Smartphone in the Domino environment.  This results the following error:


    Unfortunately these are cropping up more often as we deploy more and more BES servers.  Just passing it along.
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      On Tuesday, July 13th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Good-bye Lotus, hello cloud direct from Salesforce

    This is the exact heading from Salesforce in an email I received.  I thought Salesforce was a partner with Lotus and integrator with such things like LotusLive?  Their advert states:
    Thousands of companies struggle to integrate and administer their Lotus Notes apps every day. Now—faced with a costly forced upgrade—many are moving to the cloud with Force.com

    I, ahem, filled out the form required to access some of the information they provide including two free hours of assessment, an online savings calculator and free online training.

    I went through the calculator for a knowledge base type app in IT Management.  Savings were an amazing 50% + average.  However, I am using a standard template right out of the Lotus install.  No development, no maintenance, no nothing but people entering documents.

    All of them were the same.  For some reason they feel moving it online, spending the time and effort to redo the entire application and migrate tens of thousands of documents was simpler?  Cost effective?  I don't buy any of that nor do I buy the TCO stats on the next tab.


    Image:Good-bye Lotus, hello cloud direct from Salesforce

    So Salesforce is now going directly after Lotus applications and migrating people off of the system.
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      On Tuesday, July 6th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    SNAPPS and IdoNotes launch free search plug-in for Lotus Notes

    I am happy to announce that Julian Robichaux, of SNAPPS, has taken his LDD Search (Lotus Developer Domain or Notes Net as many of us know it) and added my Lotus Blogger Search to create a one stop plug-in shop for searching for all the technical information you need.

    This awesome free plug-in adds a search option to the upper right of your Lotus Notes 8 Standard client as shown below.  It then opens a multi tabbed window so you can see your results for each part of LDD and the custom blogger engine.

    Image:SNAPPS and IdoNotes launch free search plug-in for Lotus Notes

    As long as you have rights in your Lotus Notes client, you simply drag and drop this into your widgets and it does the rest.  Incredible work from Julian and I am happy to have the blogger search included as well to help you find the information you need.
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      On Thursday, June 17th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Domino 8.5.2 server install asks to grab directory assistance database on setup

    The new cd5 build of Lotus Domino 8.5.2 (disclaimer: still in beta) has a few new options.  The one in the screenshot below stuck out since it asks to now get the Directory Assistance database.  You have the option (default is enabled) to get or not get the DA.nsf database from the server specified in the hostname to get the Domino Directory information from.

    Image:Lotus Domino 8.5.2 server install asks to grab directory assistance database on setup
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      On Thursday, June 10th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    New widget : Search across all Lotus blogs with a right click

    Loading


    I am happy to share a new widget for your Lotus Notes client that allows you to highlight any text in any document in Notes and search across over 350 Lotus related blogs and resources.  It uses the same Google Custom Search engine (above and on right of blog) I keep updating.

    Right click to download and save the extension and drag into your widgets

    Q. I see sometimes there are ads, do you get paid when we use this?
    A . No that is Google putting ads in their search as always

    Q. Is my blog listed in the engine?
    A. If you think it isn't just send me an email and I will verify

    Q. How often does it update?
    A. Normal Google updating applies

    Q. Can we get the suggested type-ahead thingy Google has?
    A. Yes, I am adding that in

    Please see the previous postings on the Google Custom Search Engine for Lotus bloggers postings I have done.
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      On Wednesday, June 9th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) - part 8

    Once we worked our ways through ACL issues, database access and roles, we now enter the actual configuration of the central administration database for the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes, or GAMLN.  
    • In order for the global migration to kick off, the status must be enabled.  We decided to leave it disabled until we explored all the settings so we did not have any surprises.
    • The administration server is important as that is where directory registration and maintenance takes place.  As we discussed in an earlier part, we were dedicating a server for this migration task to make sure we did not affect server load as best we could.
    • Google, and myself, recommend you use the Internet Address field to create the user accounts in Google Apps.  Some sites that are larger may have another field they wish to use. But, it pulls this field from the directory in Domino, so make sure it is populated in each person document the way you want their account to be created.  A mistake here will mess up their account in GAMLN.
    • The Google Domain tab is quite simple asking for the new Google domain being utilized and the email address for the Google domain administrator.  You will also enter the password for the administrator account here.  I suggest clicking the verification button before moving on.

    In part 9 we will move on to the Advanced tab of the database before saving the form and then enabling the global migration.  DO not forget to catch up to the series below.  I swear this is better than Lost.

    History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:
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      On Tuesday, June 8th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    GoneGoogle - the Google Apps savings estimator for GAMLN

    In the middle of the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series, I thought you would also take interest in a web application Google has created to try and estimate the savings your company (or school) will save by switching to Google Apps under the name GoneGoogle.  The animated screen asks one simple question, your company size .  From there is has a large amount of assumptions built in while it works it's number magic.

    Now one thing I must admit is the awesome way it allows you to share at the end.  From a PDF, spreadsheet or poster, all the data is there.  There is also a bunch of web content around it, even asking you to place your icon on the map when you migrate.  I think this would be a great implementation to spread the news for LotusKnows as well showing wins in Lotus and where they are located.  No names are used, so confidentiality is kept.

    One downside is when I attempted to adjust some of the settings to run the tool again.  For some strange reason the tool would not allow me to change the unplanned downtime for Lotus Notes to zero.  We just do not have it between general uptime and clustering.  So if they offer 99.95 themselves, why cannot I enter 100%?

    You do get an estimated cost savings dollar amount and hours saved.  You can edit average mailbox sizes, number of people on laptops, group document creation and more. The numbers did not mean much to me at the end, as migration costs and man hours are not included.  However, the idea of providing this type of experience makes smaller companies raise an eyebrow and investigate the solution.

    Something to consider in marketing.

    History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:
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      On Tuesday, June 8th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Who wants free? SecurTrac free till Dec 31 2010 if..

    I am happy to announce that everyone that attends the webinar tomorrow at 10am CST will be able to receive the rest of 2010 free with a full license key from SecurTrac.
    In an attempt to bring our info back to the top of your web page and drive some additional traffic for tomorrow’s session, I was thinking of giving away a “SecurTrac Test Drive Key”.  In essence, everyone who attends the event can request a key for the full suite of SecurTrac to run on a single server until the end of the year including the associated support.  Come Dec 31st, they simply decide if they wish to renew the maintenance or remove the product. 


    In order to get this offer you must register and attend tomorrow's webcast with Bill Malchisky on the eDiscovery Primer for Lotus Admins.
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      On Monday, June 7th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) - part 7

    Part 7 covers roles and ACL rights.  Google automatically assumes and enters a Global administrator setup and assigns it the [SiteAdmin] role.  Global administrators handle the administration database and overall management of all site documents.  Make sure you know who you list in this role.

    Site administrators get configured each time you create a new site.  They are allowed to see all sites, but only edit their own plus related user profiles for that site.  In our circumstance, there will be no one outside of Domino admins touching this, so no decision had to be made of who gets additional rights.

    The documentation also specifies that the administration database for GAMLN get an automatic ACL creation for -Default- set to Manager.  Not the best choice for any environment.  If you will allow users to work in the database and update their own profile during migration, it must be Author with no roles assigned.  We are not allowing users to do this during the Google Apps Migration and will go with the wonderful No Access choice for Lotus Notes.

    The administration database assigns most of the roles for you as you place people in power.  So it makes it simple when you are using a select few people to manage the migration.  There is an owner right but that applies to the person being migrated.

    History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:
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      On Thursday, June 3rd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    My Top 10 Widgets for Lotus Notes (currently)

    Building a listing and selecting Lotus Notes widgets I would use daily has been a trying process.  I have added and deleted widgets to my Lotus Notes client on a regular basis.  The other problem is that some of these actually call plug-ins to be installed but begin as widgets.  These are in no order.  Just a useable top 10.  Some are not even fancy, but provide excellent function.
    1.        Gist - This is what I run daily beside my mailfile to see what information exists for you in the social networks coupled with my personal address book.  From company profile, Twitter information, recent news, Facebook, picture and more, it is dynamically there by sender. (Now deprecated)
    2.        Tungle - If you wish to have a meeting with me, you can schedule online with a simple click.  Tungle reads my local freetime database and combines it with my Google calendars to give a global freetime.  I even place the web widget on my blog and run the Lotus Notes Widget in the client.  Oh, and I just loaded the Blackberry version. (Now deprecated)
    3.        Plantronics - A new part of my Sametime voice (and all VOIP service) arsenal.  It moves call control to the headset for a handsfree answer, hold and switch.  Oh and hang up.
    4.        Recon Sidebar - from Julian Robichaux.  This awesome administrator widget for Lotus Notes allows you to quickly work with remote server consoles.  A must have.
    5.        SideLog - from Jeff Gilfelt.  This allows the administrator to view the latest Domino server log events in reverse chronological order.  Miscellaneous and Mail Routing are easily opened for quick troubleshooting.  Couple that with my own QuickAdmin Smarticon code for administrative tasks and you hardly need the Administrator client open.
    6.        Wildfire - This has hooks to multiple social networks from one interface allowing you to easily update your status.  For those that do not have a flow of status updates or want to do each individually, it is a great solution.
    7.     File Explorer - a sidebar view to explore and drag and drop files into the operating system.  Open, rename and delete as well.
    8.     Widget Library - imagine a slew of widgets in one pack.  From Flickr, Unyte, search ISBN, DeveloperWorks and Redbooks. And More!
    9.     Web Widgets - Widgets pointing to Google, YouTube and a mps3 player.  Embeddable in XPage controls too
    10.   Lotus Learning Widget - a no brainer.  Learn all about Lotus stuff in a widget.  Instant access to videos, tutorials and more.


    Note: Please verify with your administration team your security processes. They may not understand how to deploy widgets.  They can watch the replay of Deploying Plug-ins and Widgets for Lotus Notes and Sametime from Consultant In Your Pocket.

    Related Posts

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      On Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) - part 6

    As we have moved through the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) tool, I have received excellent input form Marie Scott on their trials and knowledge gained as well.  Now that we have the basic architecture decided, the documentation suggests establishing the migration server as a trusted server in the mail server documents (shown below) and signing the templates from Google with a trusted id source such as the server id file.

    Here was a key factor I gleaned from the documentation, mainly since we cluster mailfiles between two data centers for redundancy.  Each time a message is migrated it modifies the Last Modified date.  Doing this to large mailfiles can cause heavy network traffic according to the GAMLN documentation.  They suggest you disable replication for each mailfile as you configure that user for migration.

    The last step today will be to create the actual administration database we discussed earlier.  Google provides a gmail.migration.ntf template with the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes tools.

    History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:
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      On Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Notes 8.5.2 cd5 Client Start with Operating System Option

    The new cd5 build of Lotus Notes 8.5.2 (disclaimer: still in beta) has a few new options, as shown below, to begin some of the Lotus Notes processes with the native operating system.

    Image:Lotus Notes 8.5.2 cd5 Client Start with Operating System Option

    What this means for you, as a user or administrator, is that to give a better usability experience with Lotus Notes client, part of the processes can be configured to launch at operating system time.  The thought being that when the user launches the Notes client they will see a shorter up time.  There is no hard data or number for how much longer it adds to the operating system boot or how much memory it uses in the background.  Also, if it goes away when you close the Lotus Notes client on the desktop or does it stay in the background on the operating system waiting for next launch.
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      On Tuesday, June 1st, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Notes Address Book conversion tools

    I went on a search of different Lotus Notes Address Book convertors with the recent migration to Google Apps for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) we are going through.  They asked about moving straight to Outlook by converting the address book in the Lotus Notes client and leaving mail off as an archive.  Here are some tools I ran across in my searches (not comprehensive I imagine) since there was no one page encompassing them:
    • SysTools software for Lotus Notes - this site has a slew of tools for obtaining converted Address Books.  They had tools for Outlook (and in reverse I might add), Excel and Outlook Express.  Pricing was $250 for a personal license and $500 for a business
    • Notes Address Book - You could but this one (which was SysTools again as far as I could tell) for $99 from this site.  They also had a Lotus Notes to Google Mail Address Book conversion tool for $49.
    • Lotus Notes Address Book to Outlook - besides having a long URL, the Kernel tool supported converting to Outlook and Excel.  It was $79 for a personal license and $99 for a corporate.
    • Quick Recovery - moves all the contacts over when both Lotus Notes and Outlook with an active profile are installed on the machine.  The cost for this one was $99 and $199 for a corporate license.  The listed support for Address Book conversion all the way through Lotus Notes 8.
    • BinaryTree CMT - they are the leader in the migration space of data, including address book data, from in/out of Lotus Notes for many years.
    • Address Majic (via Scott) - this had a huge list of supported address books.  You can get the personal issue for $29.95 and the Plus version for $49.95
    • (I will keep adding tools)

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      On Sunday, May 30th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Wondered about deploying plug-ins and widgets?

    Join a webcast next week,  Jun 2nd at 10am CST, that will walk through the components that make up a plug-in and the administrative knowledge you need to deploy them.  Learn about widget catalogs, user rights needed, administrative controls and automatic site updates.  Both Lotus Notes and Sametime will be covered.

    You can learn more and register for the Consultant In Your Pocket even right here.

    The event is sponsored by Plantronics with a special offer during your registration process.

    Image:Wondered about deploying plug-ins and widgets?
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      On Thursday, May 27th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    eDiscovery Primer for Domino Admins webcast - moved to Jun 8th

    Due to a schedule conflict for multiple parties involved, we moved the date to June 8th.  If you have already registered, no fear!  Your registration moved over.  However, if you have not registered for this free webcast event, see below!

    The need for Lotus admins to assist across intra-company teams while ensuring regulatory compliance is increasing. Whether your firm received a disclosure motion from district attorney, is being sued, or is concerned about either internal litigation or future actions, register for this session. Will your company be ready? Are your response measures taking too long? Will you be able to meet your goals? Join Bill as he provides a brief foray into the area of compliance and data management while providing tips to enhance your implementations. If you've never thought about this topic, or are having internal discussions, tune-in for some exciting and important information.


    Another webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket was just announced, and it is happening Jun 8th!  Head over and register for this free webcast

    I am attending this one for sure, being presented by William Malchisky and sponsored by SecureTrac.
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      On Tuesday, May 25th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) - part 1

    Last week I did the intro, explaining the immediate request we got to perform testing in a Google Apps migration of their small Domino domain.  We have now fired up a duplicate of the existing Domino server to perform the testing, making it look just like their data.

    So we have the specs lined out for all of you..
    • Existing server is Domino 8.0.2 on Windows 2003
    • Google Apps Premier Edition is ready
    • Microsoft Core XML services v6

    It states that it supports Notes mail and attachments, so even with the trusted ID we needed to make sure that all the mailfiles and contents were unencrypted.  I imagine we will encounter something along the way.

    One thing right away that will take getting used to is that Notes folders become labels inside of Gmail.  If for some strange reason you have not seen this yet, it is a simple sorting mechanism and nothing more.  Users will find this to big a rather large adjustment, mainly if they have built a sophisticated nesting structure of labels.

    Luckily the users really do not utilize follow-up flags yet in Notes, as those become stars in Gmail.

    One thing I am interested to see is how Notes document, view and database links are translated as it promises.

    History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:
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      On Tuesday, May 25th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    How I stopped all comment spam in DominoBlog - Disqus

    Back in February 2010, I made the change to turn off the native commenting system inside of DominoBlog.  While it was doing a great job of catching like 9% of everything, it was still dropping hundreds if not thousands of spam comments into the database itself.  So I made a decision to investigate alternatives.

    In my other blogs, I was already utilizing Disqus with great success.  I soon realized it also gave me a slew of other benefits that were easily implemented:
    • ability to comment registered (native, Facebook, Twitter, OpenID and more)
    • ability to allow video comments
    • ability to bring in tweets and pingbacks
    • ability to allow such things as video comments
    • ability to have users tweet their comments or share on Facebook brining more traffic back to the posting

    You can subscribe to each comment section by email and the trackback URL is listed for each.  Sorting of the comments is allowed by newest, most liked and more.  This gives readers the ability to mark comments that are important, give answers or make good points.

    So now I have a central management for all the blogs, no spam and a larger community built around it. You can get scripts, plug-ins for such things as Wordpress and other blog system to make implementaiton a breeze.  Now,  I am hoping for a migration tool to finish moving all past comments into Disqus as well.  They support Wordpress import, so I need to get all past DominoBlog comments intot that format and we am set.
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      On Monday, May 24th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) intro

    After Marie Scott posted about the tool Google launched, we had a smaller customer see the same news and ask about the possibility of migrating.  This included fidelity, costs and more.  I will have a series on this as it gets tested and rolls out.  

    I will be blogging it in parts to help breakdown each section.  Humorously, I am attending a meeting with both Google and Microsoft (Live@edu) next week at a local school district to gain an understanding of that architecture and integration.

    I wanted to highlight one part before we move into the series:
    These instructions are designed to work with the most common Lotus Notes scenarios. Any changes to Lotus Notes configuration should be made at the discretion of your Lotus Notes administrator. Google does not provide technical support for configuring mail servers or other third-party products. In the event of a Lotus Notes issue, you should consult your Lotus Notes administrator


    History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:
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      On Friday, May 21st, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    The eDiscovery Primer for Lotus Domino Admins

    Another webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket was just announced, and it is happening May 26th!  Head over and register for this free webcast

    I am attending this one, being presented by William Malchisky and sponsored by SecureTrac.
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      On Thursday, May 20th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Announcing the Lotus Custom Blogger Search Engine

    Loading


    I had this in the works for some time, but the list was not fully up to date.  It is now updated with all the Lotus blogs I could find.  I built a Google Custom Search Engine to weed out sites that try to use keywords to draw some of the search focus away.  This way we can quickly sort through all of the blogger and technical Lotus content with a narrow focus of a half a thousand sites.

    You will always find this engine in the search section on the right side of my IdoNotes blog homepage. I went ahead an embedded it in this posting as well for you to start using and sharing.  If you or any site is missing, the index is building still.  If by Monday you do not show, ping or email me and I can quickly verify with some filtering.
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      On Friday, April 23rd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Gist plugin for Lotus Notes successful - thoughts before screencast

    I have been a user of Gist for some time.  Here is a screencast of their web feature and interface before we talk Lotus.  Disclosure:
    I have no other disclosure to make around that.  I am not an advisor to them, not a stakeholder or have not been paid.

    Now that we have that out of the way.  Gist gets contact meta management!  This is something the Notes Personal Address Book (PNAB or names.nsf) should have been doing long ago.  Even the new OpenNTF initiative doesn't address some of this (yet as I have read their futures before writing this).  Gist understands how important linking together all your contact information is with the public side, corporate information and more.

    There are still some small UI pieces to work out, but that all comes in time for a product that was in the social world and has created one mean plug-in for Lotus.

    Many of you will not be able to simply drag-and-drop the plug-in.  Administrative controls shouldn't allow this.  Gist will have to come up with deployment variations to account for everyone that has proper security here.  But that is for another talk.
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      On Thursday, April 15th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Notes plug-in provisioning in Windows 7 just isn’t working

    I have been patient with trying this across multiple plug-in providers.  Not a single one is installing following these steps:
    • Have Notes 8..5.x on your desktop
    • Open widget panel
    • Drop in a widget and it works without issue
    • Drop in a widget that then calls a plug-in to be provisioned from a remote or local site
    • The plug-in will get to the prompt to show the vendor and version, I say go for it
    • The provisioning begins and the following non-descript, nothing online except Eclipse coding, PIA error

    CWPPR0032E: The Requested provisioning operation(s) failed


    Yes, I have tried multiple ways, even locally.  Multiple plug-ins and see the same errors across many of them.  Try the same exact plug-in from the same exact source and location on Windows XP/Vista there is no problem.

     Now I am not sitting here blaming Notes or Windows since I don't know which one is doing it.  But the one that is will be reprimanded accordingly
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      On Thursday, April 8th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Webinar - Comparing LotusLive, Domino Hosting, Disaster Recovery and More

    Why pay for all that expensive travel cost?  Join us for another quality webinar next week on April 15 2010.   Soon, the subscription webcast series will open with deep technical content, so pay close attention for discounts and early registration as full series subscribers will be limited.

    Are you having difficulty understanding all the differences in LotusLive iNotes, Notes, Notes Web and other packages?  How does integration work with my current environment?  How does LotusLive compare to Domino hosting as we know it?

    Can I use these systems for disaster recovery?  Can I integrate my directory?  Can you make this simpler for me to grasp?

    Join us to walk through all of these questions to provide some simple explanations and how this is beginning to fit together.  Find out what parts could fit your current infrastructure and what portions are new.


    Registration is now open for this new webinar in the ConsultantInYourPocket series.
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      On Wednesday, April 7th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Public widgets for the Notes clients - take one leave one

    I read an interesting topic in a forum about the growth of a public widget catalog.  Gabriella and I put that together some time ago (on the same server you get the annual Lotusphere database from Link),  The idea was to have the general public create and take away useful widgets for the Lotus Notes client.  It did well for a while as we showed it at conferences and blogged about it some. Then it lapsed in new activity.  Activity=access and updates
    • Are there no enterprises or developers creating cool widgets that can be shared?
    • Is anyone using them at all outside of demo and fun (and outside of IBM) ?
    • Can we build a public catalog that allows us drag and drop into our clients?
    • Is security a huge concern?
    • Are most of you even allowed to drag and drop widgets into your sidebar?
    • Have you even enabled this feature yet?

    Carl has even made it easier by pointing the domain NotesWidgets to the same database at Turtle, which makes it easy to hit this database via Notes publicly or the web.  Could we begin a movement where everyone adds maybe one widget to the catalog and hopefully finds one worth taking for use?

    Does IBM see value in adding this to the OpenNTF movement as a whole.  I know certain widgets make it along in the site there, but there has to be huge amounts of widgets being developed or available that no one ever sees.


    ## Notes Connectivity ###
    In order to make a Notes connection to the server, create a connection document to tranquility/turtlepublic and use download.turlteweb.com as the destination address
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      On Monday, April 5th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    FREE Webcast - Understanding LDAP in Domino

    Why pay for all that expensive travel cost?  Join us for another quality webinar online in just a couple week..  We are happy to bring you the next webcast (another free one) in the series.  Soon, the subscription webcast series will open with deep technical content, so pay close attention for discounts and early registration as full series subscribers will be limited.

    The next date is set for the ConsultantInYourPocket webcasts!  Series 1 launched with a hour of Troubleshooting SMTP in Domino occurring on March 24.  Below is the second event.

    You can now register immediately for Understanding LDAP in Domino for March 31 2010. Registration is open and here is what to expect:
    Many enterprises overlook Domino as the key LDAP directory source.  Lotus Domino is a scalable LDAP directory source supporting clustering, aggregated and federated directory services.  Explore network and topology design tips that help to guide your decisions in architecture, management, and security. Take away  best practices on building an aggregated directory infrastructure with Directory Assistance or as a federated source. Walk away with an understanding of how to service all of the Lotus collaboration software securely and easily.


    Make sure you get on over and register right away before the rest of the series 1 and new Series 2 opens up.  If you want pre-registration news, join the IdoNotes newsletter in the upper right of the blog!
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      On Wednesday, March 17th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    FREE webcast: Troubleshooting SMTP in Domino

    The first date is set for the ConsultantInYourPocket webcasts!  Series 1 launches with a hour of troubleshooting SMTP in your Domino environment on March 24 2010.  Registration is open and is filling fast already.
    How often do you get stuck trying to find the best way to uncover ways to troubleshoot SMTP mail in your Lotus Domino Environment?  Dive into real-world examples and optimal settings for internal, external, and multi-domain SMTP configurations, anti-relay settings, extended SMTP settings, and more.  Explore the numerous notes.ini variables and see which ones to utilize for your current SMTP issues. Then explore effective solutions for many errors, such as refusal/error by receiving server, route not found, and RFC error codes.

    Make sure you get on over and register right away before the rest of the series 1 and new Series 2 opens up.  If you want pre-registration news, join the IdoNotes newsletter in the upper right of the blog!
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      On Tuesday, March 9th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Choosing a Domino based wiki template

    Not only for internal usage, but for some outside publishing that some of us are doing, a wiki was needed.  We are trying to stick with Domino as the platform of choice, while comparing it to one or two others that can sit on various platforms and are paid and free.  We narrowed the list down fairly quick and began looking at the following choices:

    As I type of the rest of this, I will be publishing it in the next newsletter.  Subscribe to the IdoNotes newsletter in the upper right corner of the blog to see what we chose and why.
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      On Monday, February 22nd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Microsoft Outlook Social Connector takes on Lotus widgets and plug-ins

    Lotus introduced the LinkedIn widget, that I gave my opinion on back in July 2009.  It was not any type of connector, but a simple web interface that sat in the Notes 8 sidebar.  They soon did the same with TripIt for the same result.  I, admittedly, was disappointed in the integration I had hoped would appear.  I am actually able to use the TripIt app on my Blackberry to sync to my calendar which then goes into Notes.  It should not have taken that much work.  Tungle is exposing this now in their integration.  This week some more news hit the web.  Here comes Microsoft. A screenshot for your viewing pleasure first:

    Image:Microsoft Outlook Social Connector takes on Lotus widgets and plug-ins

    Before you jump on the Lotus Connections bandwagon commenting, we are talking about bringing in social contacts seamlessly to provide an integrated experience.  Shortly, there will be hooks from the announced partnerships with Facebook, and (ugh) MySpace with the connector.  LinkedIn did a great welcome blog posting for getting set up.  

    Lotus Connections bridges integration inside the firewall with profiles from the Connections system.  The benefit given from the OSC is when we start exposing the social data that people are sharing and placing on the web into our history of email, CRM and local contact data.  Tungle (listen to podcast Episode 71) now opens your calendar information from Lotus and Gist (Iisten to podcast Episode 72) is attempting to work with contacts.  

    The question we need to ask: Is Lotus moving fast enough to keep up with the social changes needed for the sites not deploying Connections at this time?  Is the majority of Notes users a large enough demand to have them create this type of integration or are the social vendors not working hard enough to write against the Lotus infrastructure?
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      On Wednesday, February 17th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    The Widget/Plug-in sidebar needs some UI help

    I have jokingly said this day would come, but now it has.  With all of the vendors, partners and just fun people making useful sidebar plug-ins and widgets, it is becoming too crowded.  Collapsing the area down now brings a row (not easily sortable) that includes a drop-down arrow (not sortable) to select from.

    Image:The Widget/Plug-in sidebar needs some UI help

    This screenshot is the minimalist one.  If I open a ton of widgets, then I have these things everywhere.  I cannot sort alphabetically, most used, recently used, or anything else.  I need a way to manage the sidebar area more effectively as the client continues to grow with features.

    With the Notes client Eclipse portion simply being a frame around Notes basic, the drive to force as much into the frame as possible is the only action.  Without delving into Vulcan in this posting, a change will be needed to get the most use out of the panels themselves and make functioning with numerous ones open as well as finding ones easier.

    Is anyone else seeing this yet?
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      On Friday, January 29th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Large File Uploads in Quickr

    QUESTION: Hi Chris,

    We have been having issues with our new Quickr environment when trying to upload big presentation files. I have looked at the settings and cannot figure out why large files fail to upload. Any suggestions where to look for how we messed up?

    (name withheld)

    ANSWER: You ask a great question that many people face with the growing deployment of Lotus Quickr on Domino! Quickr has a few places to investigate when trying upload large files. The first place to begin is the notes.ini file. A strange place to start, I know. You need to establish whether two variables are present and set correctly. Also, make sure they do not exist higher in the notes.ini with lower values.

    The two variables:

     ·        QuickPlaceLargeFileRequestOnFile=1

    ·QuickPlaceLargeRequestDirectory=[exactly where you want the working directory]

    The second variable must be writable and accessible all the time for this to work. Usually, picking a large temp area outside of where you might place transaction logs and the operating system is a good choice.

    Next, you must set the maximum attachment size in both Quickr and Domino. If one is lower than the other, the lower one is obeyed. Quickr is in the Site Administration → Other Options via the Web interface. Domino is in the server document on the Internet Protocols-HTTP tab. The Maximum Size of Requested Content must be established to meet your needs. One last location is the Maximum Post data size limit on the Domino Web Engine tab.

    I would suggest making all of these the same size limits to ease administration and troubleshooting at later times.

    Chris Miller

    This article originally appeared on SocialBizUG

      for this posting

      On Tuesday, January 19th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

    Our largest DAOS savings to date !!

    After discussion with the client, they finally moved to new hardware, upgraded to Domino 8.5.1 and enabled DAOS.  We are happy to report that their mail server achieved us the largest gain yet in disk savings as shown in the images below.  Total saved was 53%.

    Image:Our largest DAOS savings to date !!

    So there you have it.  ~600GB saved on a single mail server with the large files going down ~70%.  Oh and our backup system sent us a holiday card after this.
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      On Tuesday, December 15th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Postini launches Private Outbound DNS support for Domino 8.5

    Since this works back to Domino 6, I was interested to see what Postini was offering with the Private Outbound DNS.
    Change DNS Settings in Domino. IBM Lotus Domino server will use the DNS server listed in notes.ini to send mail. The Domino server will contact the Private DNS Server and route mail to Outbound Services. Since this method affects only IBM Lotus Domino, and requires no changes to the underlying operating system, this is the recommended method to use Private Outbound DNS.


    So digging in, you set a reinjection using the Domino server configuration document for your servers that route mail in any way.  You need to register your IP address with the Postini side before setting up the Private Outbound DNS, which cannot use DNS names.  Only IP addresses are allowed.

    You are then basically changing the notes.ini for the server to set the DNS servers that the server will use.  Domino will obey the notes.ini DNS server setting before the OS specified one.

    Why would you do this?  If you want all mail filtered, protected, scanned and controlled this is an excellent option.  However it is a major change to your infrastructure and also native NRPC routing.  I would be careful before implementing this with any provider, not just Postini
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      On Tuesday, November 17th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Google sent me a letter - migrate from Lotus

    I received this tiny bit of mail today from the postal service.  Now that fast approaches direct marketing doesn't it?  

    Image:Google sent me a letter - migrate from Lotus

    The inside was even more interesting.  The first thing you get when you open it is a flap that reads:
    Replicating yet again made me go to Google


    From there the inside goes into cost figures, administration and how intuitive it is.
    For $50 a year, each user gets 25GB inboxes, built-in disaster recovery, and integrated anti-spam/anti-virus protection.  Google Apps Premier Edition is an email, calendaring, IM, online document sharing, and Web publishing suite..

      for this posting

      On Friday, November 13th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    DAOS Estimator 1.5 for #tristatelug

    As Paul Mooney does his song and dance on DAOS (yes he does ding, but not dance very well), he mentioned the new estimator version 1.5 that was released.  Due to lack of Internet where he was standing, 20 feet away, I am blogging it for you.

    Dan Silva did a fantastic drive explaining it, so I would visit his posting while it downloads.
    I had been testing this new version internally during it's "beta" and all I can say is that it improves VASTLY the performance.  I had run this one a very large mail server, with around 3,500 mail files (~900GB of data).


    You can download the new version right here
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      On Monday, November 9th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    A swirlie from my 8.5.1 task bar

    I was loading back some widgets and plug-ins and was prompted to restart.  I ignored this of course, since I had more to load first.  While opening something from the taskbar, I noticed movement from the corner of my eye.  Down in the dock, Notes was changing it's icon, and not for a new message

    Image:A swirlie from my 8.5.1 task bar

    The arrows at first looked to say it was replicating.  But when hovering over it it, I was prompted to click to see the status.  Of course, I did.  Out slid the Eclipse Update window reminding me to restart.  A the little things
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      On Wednesday, October 14th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Google launches migration tool FROM Lotus Notes

    I know our fellow blogger Marie Scott has talked about her recent woes going on at VCU.  We have even now seen a recent press release stating how all 32,000 students have been moved to Google mail, with 6GB quotas, instant messaging and calendaring over the week of Sep 7th.
    The launch of myVCUmail has now come and gone, and VCU Technology Services has converted more than 32,000 students' Lotus Notes e-mail accounts to new Gmail accounts.

    During the week of Sept. 7, existing students were transferred into what Technology Services has dubbed "myVCUmail." Those new to VCU had their accounts set up over the summer.


    Now in saying that, the article mentioned a migration tool.  I went poking around and sure enough, there is a webpage and PDF file on the migration tool.  I found it interesting what they say they support:
    • Unread/Read marks will be migrated
    • Folders and flags will be migrated
    • Calendars including repeating appointments are migrated
    • Free/busytime integration during the migration
    • Automatic sending of notifications
    • Migrating encrypted mailboxes (which means sending the user a message to unencrypt)
    • Moving multiple users at once (maximum 10)

    The application runs as a Notes database on the Domino server and controls are done from there, any version 6.0.2 and later.

    So what does this all mean?  Google is taking a direct attack mode at moving users from Notes before you can get them upgraded to the newest versions.  They offer space in the cloud with larger quotas, apps and gears.  It makes a strong argument if they can find a way to provide directory services on top of that for integration into the other Lotus products.  With this missing, there is a huge hole in their plan and integration.  I do know using the Sametime Gateway they could easily work instant messaging in and use smarthost routing for mail flow.

    Who has comments on the tool and idea of their march down towards Lotus?
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      On Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Knows or LotusKnows, all in real-time



    You can find this also on the aggregator page as one of the sections.  Either way it is how I am keeping up on the pulse from all around.  It seems that a core group of people is inputting ideas and voting.  How do we get more people involved in the process with only 2 days left?
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      On Thursday, August 20th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Knows, shouldn’t you?



    Simple enough for anyone to understand and be curious about.  My single entry into the jam.

    I am keeping up with the rest, and there is a ton of it out there, at the aggregator.  Bless FriendFeed for real-time reporting
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      On Wednesday, August 19th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    the LotusKnows news aggregator launches

    With all of the blogs, tweets and feeds coming out about LotusKnows, I went ahead and created an aggregator as shown in this screenshot.  All of the feeds are RSS except for FriendFeed which is real-time and updates as new posts come along.

    Image:the LotusKnows news aggregator launches

    You can view the site right here at http://LotusKnows.IdoNotes.com
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      On Wednesday, August 19th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Sorting through huge amounts of email, this site says use Outlook wisely. LotusKnows better


    Sorting through huge amounts of e-mails - Animated Explanations

    Let's see a LotusKnows animation on this topic, even thought they use Outlook in it and say email is not right for urgency, to-do's and discussions.
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      On Monday, August 17th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus announced a LinkedIn widget - my thoughts and a dialog box you need to be aware of

    I received a PR email from Lotus announcing widgets for both LinkedIn and TripIt.  I was happy to see they made it out of internal IBM testing and to the public.

    So the LinkedIn widget is for Lotus Notes 8.01 and higher and sits in the sidebar.  Here is what it does:
    • It sits in the sidebar
    • It does not match up to your current contacts
    • It does not show in business cards for Sametime
    • It does not give all the function of LinkedIn, just some updates
    • It shows my profile picture, my title and the number of connections I have
    • It does allow me to click anyone's name and see their profile and I can drag the link to their profile into an email
    • It does not allow me to email that person or match that to my NAB

    So in saying all of this I was hoping for some tight integration to really bridge the gap between the public social networks and my contacts.  This is still missing from my personal address book and Connections.  But before I rant there, when installing the widget it does take a HTTPs connections, so you users will get a cross certificate prompt.  Something to be aware of before you force this out via the Widget catalog in your environment.
    Image:Lotus announced a LinkedIn widget - my thoughts and a dialog box you need to be aware of
      for this posting

      On Thursday, July 16th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    How my pants got wet and it turned into a Lotus Foundations sale

    As I sat on the flight, the guy next to me states he own his own distribution company when he introduced himself.  We didn't talk much more until he managed to spill an entire glass of water on my lap, with ice.  Well from there anyone would fall into natural discussion.  One because he was apologizing over and over.  Two, because it is polite to make sure I am not going to find some way to retaliate when I get my drink.

    He opened his Macbook Pro and I was happy to see Lotus Notes open.  So as I padded my ass with towels from the flight attendants we struck up the old "when are you going to upgrade" discussion.  He quickly answered he knew there was a new version, since all software seems to never stop putting out new features.  I was happy to show him 8.5 and all the changes. We did a quick walkthrough (offline of course) and was was shocked to know why anyone would want instant messaging in there.

    To make it short, he was unsure why anyone would want half of it.  After listening to what he really did, it was clear.  He was old school business.  He preferred face to face meetings.  He preferred the phone as a last result and the impersonalization of email was a sin.  Why instant message when he could go meet them or call.  His email was just product information and other silliness.  He didn't use the calendar.  His welcome page was mail and a sole database.

    Here the conversation turned back to me.  He was a cold hard salesman.  A business owner since the 70's.  He had seen it all and sold disposable cups to manufacturers of drinking glasses.  He was in the Air Force.  he had hear every and given every pitch known to man to make a deal close.  What was I going to come back with in disconnected mode?  Simple.  I fired up designer (in VMWare duh since no Mac version), duplicated his V3 looking database and created a view widget first.  I checked my Day at a glance, showed where the latest status from my contacts were, via Epilio's free Jessie plug-in and showed where awareness would be in my mailfile.

    The sales pitch was a nothing.  Small business? All of this?  I walked him through an upgrade coupled with Lotus Foundations Branch Office.  They had a small server, some file and print and no VPN or anything else.  All connected via a business DSL line.  His final words after eating his biscuit smothered in grape jelly?  When can we have a face to face meeting?  I will be going by after I get back in town and he is done fishing in Alaska for vacation.
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      On Monday, June 15th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Ed asked for thoughts on Message Recall in 8, I personally dislike it

    Ed made a posting earlier asking about input on all aspects of message recall.
    So, seems like a good discussion topic.  Are you using or planning to use mail recall?  Why or why not?  What resources have you found to help you make these decisions?

    I personally (read this as a company we will sit down and plan it out with you and implement it very willingly) dislike it.  Message recall defeats the purpose of me sending you email in the first place.  I want you to have the message, that is why I send it.  I don't keep it (as in saved mail either) because it was my gift to you.  If I wanted it I would not have sent it in the first place.  If I want it back I will ask you to send it back and I hope you don't keep a copy of it in your sent when you do.

    It is funny to me how we treat email differently than regular mail or voicemail in that sense.  Once you drop regular mail into one of the US postal boxes, you cannot go and get it back.  There is no recall.  It actually is against the law.  Email seems to be the only place we feel it is ok to retrieve something that was given to the other person.  How many of you are able to get back a sent voice mail message?  What makes email different that that?  

    So now you say well they sent it by accident.  Yes, that is why it is called an accident.  It happens.  Quick fingers, fast typing and not verifying right before hitting send.  Happens all the time.  Forgot to add the attachment?  Send it right behind.  Like forgetting to put the check in the bill you are mailing off.  You send another envelope.  Digital or not.  Forget to leave some detail on the voicemail?  Call again.  Works like magic.

    This is yet to be asked by customers to be turned on when we upgrade to Domino 8, but most (over 90%) want this turned off since it is on by default.   I am yet to hear this used as a comparison issue either when talking Outlook with anyone.  There is really no challenge in implementation, it is more around the fact that there is no guarantee a message is really recalled due to the number and types of devices, replicating and archiving going on.  It is a convenience feature sure, just not required.
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      On Monday, June 8th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    3 strikes and you are out with Notes toolbar icons

    Interesting turn of events.  We had used some custom toolbar icons for some time.  Well after some recent upgrading it seems that those icons are no longer in the client so you get a nice yellow X.  (screenshot)  

    Image:3 strikes and you are out with Notes toolbar icons

    If you forgot to set the pop-up help in those icons you deployed (optional, not required) you have no idea which icon does what anymore.
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, May 20th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Error installing from OpenNTF widget

    So I was browsing the new OpenNTF site and seeing what they had available and saw the ability to now drag and drop widgets right into your sidebar.  It looked like it was cranking away successfully but a little window eventually came up.

    Image:Error installing from OpenNTF widget

    So I tried another, same issue.  I am not sure if somehow it is me (which I don't have issues from other catalogs or via email).

    Anyone else?  I heard of people getting crashes too.
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, May 19th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Notes Domino Security Certificate call (my transcript live)

    If you have no idea what this is about go read my posting right here, this is big for users people
    • Starting on Tuesday the 19th 2009, web browser users who access various applets hitting a Domino/Sametime/Quickr server may receive a message that the certificate associated with the applet has expired
    • This doesn't affect functionality, just the warning error unless the user trusts IBM
    • The certificate was unable to be renewed until they got close to the expiration.  They were limited in time to renew earlier.  Then there was testing to do and prep for posting
    • -----> Open Q&A begins here by pressing *1 and recording your name<--------------
    • Shawn asks - due to time sensitivity there is not much testing time on the new fixes.  Answer: you can test it via java/applet API's to see how it is signed and when it will expire.  Since this is a browser that is impacted you can actually on a test machine try it but setting your clock into the future.
    • Irv asks - on a test server he has overwritten the files.  In the java section of the browser will that date be automatically updated on the next connect?  Will the people with the older expired certificate get the update automatically or will they have to delete and reinstall soemthing?  Answer from Scott Vrusho: The technote will be updated to clarify the this.  The user will be prompted to accept the new certificate in the browser just as they were 3 years ago
    • Ray asks - the remediation effort is just a file swap?  Answer - yes
    • Steve asks -  the new applets on Sametime will force the user to be accepted on a prompt if they previously trusted IBM?  Answer from Scott - yes even if the user trusted IBM previously they will be prompted
    • Rob asks - will this affect BES?  Answer from Scott - nope
    • Scott asks - I just shut down HTTP on the Domino server and it would not allow me to replace some jar files due to them being locked  Answer from Scott - in testing they could just shut down HTTP but you might have to shut the Domino server down
    • Steve asks - they are using the Sametime Limited client, is there anything to do?  Answer - there shouldn't be since this is meetings and HTTP , not chat
    • Tim asks - they are using 7.0.3 with Sametime integrated but they use webmail.  Will they get the prompt to accept certificates?  Answer from Scott - DWA and iNotes shouldn't.  all other stock templates have applets
    • John asks - why the NCSO jar file (sorry missed some of it)  Answer they will update the technote to see why that NCSO file is included
    • ?? asks - On sametime server there is both Domino and Sametime fixes to be applied? they did a test and moved server to later date to see behavior and is that it? Are instant meeting users affected?  Answer - yes to all parts
    • Mark asks - on the technote for Sametime it states version 7 and above yet they run 6.5.1.  Is it the same of a different patch?  Answer - that version is EOL so there is no signed applets for that version.  So get to upgrading or you will get prompts
    • ?? asks - Domino and Sametime with EMS in front.  Do these jars impact/work with the FIPS encryption?  In preliminary testing they did not get into meetings with the new jars.  Are they compatible?  Could they grab the certs and move them into the jar files  Answer - they are not sure and will research.  A FIPS version was not ready
    • Tino asks - specific question for version 7.5 of Sametime and they do not see a fix for that version.  Answer - they were suggested to move to 7.5.1 and the CF1 and CF2.  While it may not be possible, it would be encouraged.  Yet this didnt answer the question.
    • Mike asks - they have 6.5.6 servers with iNotes 6 template.  Is it affected? They loaded a test on a Domino 8,.5 server with the patch.  They had no change for the trust question.   Answer from Scott - they are not affected.  DWA/iNotes is not impacted and no applets on any version
    • Wayne asks - Quickr on Domino, no Sametime.  They use ActiveX verus java for drag and drop is there any concern?  Answer from Jennifer - no concern in either case
    • Lisa asks - running Domino 7.0.3 server with mixed R6 clients and R7 clients on both versions of iNotes/DWA templates. Sametime Connect for browsers are in use, are they affected?  Answer from Scott - iNotes/DWA no impact. Sametime Connect is affected and is in the patches
    • Alan asks - are the expirations time zone related? What about chat functionality through DWA?  Answer from Scott - they aren't totally sure but there is an hour associated with the expiration that will adjust based on timezone.  Yes the chat for stlinks files used in DWA for awareness are affected and should be checked to see if they are unsigned or signed.
    • Ian asks - are there any updates for jar files in the client distribution?  Answer from Scott  - this is fairly niche case where you run and develop web apps to preview in web browser.  The applets would show then with the prompt.  They are not advertising for normal use case to update the client yet it could affect those "rare" instances.  Fixes will be in the later normal later release and fixes for clients.  The 8.0.2 FP2 and 8.5 FP1 will have these updates.  Later when these expire in 2012 this wont cause the same issue due to timestamping in signing so no future prompts they are rolling into future products
    • Lisa asks - Domino 7.0.3 in house and they had to bring the server down to replace the one program file directory file.  She got a prompt for an applet to choose to always run for it not to come up anymore.  Is that normal? Answer from Scott - he questioned which one to see if it was a normal prompt or about the date.  It was about accepting to run the software entirely.
    • Jeff asks - they have Quickplace 7, is there an order to apply with Quickr/Sametime/Domino. Answer - there is no order and no Quickplace patch unless you have Sametime integration with Quickplace.  They will update technotes more on how to verify dates.
    • Mark asks - on all the products they have applied the fix and the user gets prompted, will they also get prompted when they hit Sametime for a meeting the first time or will one acceptance work across? What about our Sametime 6.5.1 servers?  Answer from Scott - one acceptance will take care of all of it.  There is nothing to do for Sametime 6.5.1 servers since there is no patch for them.  Those users will get the security  warning.
    • Rich asks - for Quickplace 6.5.1 there was a patch listed but what about domino? What about the downloadable gold code that is out there now, will these be updated or will I apply fixpacks? Answer from Scott - there is a Domino 6.5.x patch for all versions.  You have to download fixpacks, they will not upload fixed gold code.
    • ?? asks - they have a lot of products running on Domino with multiple patches.  Portal is the front end..  they exported the SSO key and will this affect it.  Answer from Scott - any application relying on the Domino applets will be corrected when replacing the applets. These are just applet certificates, no application or SSO certificates.  No issue there.
    • Tim asks - Their Domino has legacy web apps (over 100)on a 5.0.11 server.  Any recourse?  Answer from Scott - no.
    • Bob asks - They tried pushing the clock forward but cant recreate the popup.  Answer - going into Java settings in the browser to remove the IBM trust will then show the popup again.
    • me - are the files the same for Domino 8.0 and Domino 8,5.  Sizes and everything else matches  Answer from Scott - they should be as they built the Domino 8.5 o n the same codset and no other changes were really made.
    • Andy asks - Domino 7.0.3 with DWA 6.5.3 template.  Answer - no problem

    I had to drop off the call at this point, so I missed a handful.  The call went almost 30 minutes late.
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, May 13th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus says you have 1 week from today till you expire. Are you ready?

    Unless you haven't been reading along in emails and living under administration rocks, you have till May 18th 2009 to replace the following:

    The certificate for some Java applets in Lotus Domino 6.5.x, Domino 7.0.x, Domino 8.0.x, and Domino 8.5 have an expiration date of May 18, 2009. Starting May 19th, Web users will see a dialog with a message similar to one of the following when loading a Web page that contains a Java applet from the Domino server:

    "The digital signature was generated with a trusted certificate but has expired or is not yet valid."
    "The security certificate has expired or is not yet valid."


    As this was just not enough, do not forget about the Sametime expirations the exact same day also:


    The Lotus Sametime Meeting Server applets are signed with a VeriSign certificate that is valid between May 15, 2006 and May 18, 2009. To prevent users who load any of the Sametime applets such as the Meeting Room Client or Directory applet from seeing a warning message as of May 19th


    Want technotes?  Oh we have them..  Domino and Sametime

    Now don't think I waited till the last minute to tell you.  Lotus held off to get the digital signatures right.
      for this posting

      On Monday, May 11th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    I didn’t know Notes had handlbars

    Image:I didn’t know Notes had handlbars
    (simple screenshot)

    This shows fixed in 7.0.3 however and just caught me in 8.5
    Client UI RDER6AHPV4 SPR# RDER6AHPV4 - Fixed a client hang with 'In order to do multiple transactions simultaneously, you cannot use the same DB handle'.

      for this posting

      On Thursday, May 7th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Hi, I am Notes and I have no association

    The following image appeared on a client that was recently upgraded, uninstalled and reinstalled.  All worked well previously so we knew this was odd.  (see image below)

    Image:Hi, I am Notes and I have no association

    Now then, this is NOT a Lotus Notes error.  It is operating system related.  We went in and found that the .nsf file types were not associated properly.  Once that was taken care of the error came back.  So thanks to some good searching, we found a blog post from Ray Davies (hey Ray and thanks for making this quick) that addressed this very issue with excellent screen shots and a step by step tutorial.

    I wonder if a Technote might be in order?
      for this posting

      On Friday, April 3rd, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Sys Admin Tips for March 2009

    Hot off the presses the March 2009 edition is right here.  In this issue:

    IN THIS ISSUE
    * From the Editor: Chris's 0.714760 DOP
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Error with DAOS and Writing to a File
    * My Domino Service Disappeared When Upgrading
    * Quick Tip: Talk to Russ
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Connect Your Sametime Gateway to IBM
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, April 1st, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Domino policy management needs to grow up

    UPDATE: This is a discussion Gabriella started and we agreed on and I took an interest on making a diagram to make it clear

    While working with a large policy deployment I finally reached the breaking point in trying to unravel large spaghetti policy topologies.  There is no simple viewer for a user and the synopsis tool makes the work just as hard.  Since the data is stored in the Domino directory for what policy is assigned to the user as well as what information is stored in what policy, extracting the data should be simple for a viewer approach.  Here is what we have now compared to a mockup of what we should have.  Keep in mind that the first image does not exist, it only represents what you have to do to even map policies in the first place.  The second image is a simplified approach of what we should get back when selecting a user and requesting for active policy settings.

    Image:Domino policy management needs to grow up
    With this approach, we know what should be applied to users.  It is a starting point to seeing how the client should be behaving based on the deployed policy set.  Unfortunately, we cannot even get that far most of the time, even with the hidden ($Policies) view in the local names.nsf on the client.  Thoughts?
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, March 31st, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    What Dell doens’t know about Domino hurts you

    Andy, Paul  and I never make this stuff up, we live it.
      for this posting

      On Thursday, March 26th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 Certified Instructo ?

    I think Quickr got here and stole the "R" from my new certificate..  (image)

    Image:IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 Certified Instructo  ?
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      On Monday, March 9th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    6.5.x gets life support for another year?

    IBM has announced that 6.5.x will now get another year older.  It was to expire in April 2009, but it seems not enough companies can get upgraded.  So they have now moved the end date to April 2010.  So feel free to delay those upgrades another year!

     That is all, move along
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      On Thursday, March 5th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    DAOS savings statistics across tons of managed/hosted customers

    Ed made a blog posting on savings everyone is seeing with the DAOS estimator.  While he said he would link to others, I am shooting you quite a few across multiple size companies and server configurations.  Each one is per a single server in their environment.
    USERBASE
    OS
    DISK SAVINGS
    PERCENT
    252
    Win32
    278 GB
    46.2 %
    110
    Win32
    23.4 GB
    19.8%
    ~25
    Win32
    32.8 GB
    33.2%
    26
    Win32
    Error on database
    N/A
    1138 (most forward mail out)
    Win32
    2.4 GB
    14.4%
    113   (all BES users, really)
    Win32
    24.1 GB
    30.0%
    ~700 on Application server
    Win32
    17.7 GB
    73.4%
    ~700 on mail server
    Win32
    147.9 GB
    43.2%
    1558 with small quotas
    Win32
    7.8 GB
    15.0%
    ***more coming in slowly and will update, the bigger ones are taking longer of course

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      On Monday, March 2nd, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    SNTT - all Planetlotus feeds as OPML

    DOWNLOAD THE FILE HERE

    In an effort to provide a service to the Lotus community, I have all the PlanetLotus feeds in OPML format attached to this document above

    What does this mean to you?  Well if you want to pre-populate the RSS database in Notes you can.  If you wish to connect to me on Google Reader and share feeds (as I discussed why here), then please do.  It is how I get and share most of my feed info outside of Twitter.

    No this is not a dig at PlanetLotus, Yancy did incredible work here, I still pop in.  But I can clear hundreds of feeds a day from all over the web faster with the keyboard in Google Reader (or use Feedly if you like nice UI to Google Reader).

    Warren Elsmore brought up a good point, the OPML is small and fast loading, the feeds will take time to populate per your connection/reader.   "not my problem" was my response :-)

    UPDATE: Google Reader can auto-translate any feed on the fly so you always see it in English!  That alone is a darn reason people. Just change the feed preference after uploading.






    Paul Mooney was kind enough how to pre-populate the (yes sucky but it is there) RSS reader in Notes just recently in his 5 year old blog.

    If you need help in learning what OPML is or how to bring it into your readers let me know!
      for this posting

      On Thursday, February 19th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Sys Admin Tips for February 2009

    Hot off the presses the February edition is right here.  In this issue:

    * From the Editor: CHRIS' 0.136943 NOK
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Where is the IM Usage Template?
    * Sametime Gateway Sizing
    * Quick Tip: Startup Folder in the Notes Client
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: What Do I Get With Each Sametime Version?
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, February 17th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Sys Admin Tips for January 2009 - came out during Lotusphere rush

    The January edition came out right before everyone headed down and got lost in the mix.  You can read it online here if not subscribed to the monthly email.
      for this posting

      On Friday, January 23rd, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    iNotes in 8.5, who made this icon?

    Image:iNotes in 8.5, who made this icon?

    It might just be me but I like new icons, except when they are fuzzy
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      On Wednesday, January 7th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Password reset in 8.5

    Don't like talking to your users and want them to reset passwords?  We like self service

    Image:Password reset in 8.5
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, January 7th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Don’t forget to go get your 8.5 server fixes too

    While in a small conversation this morning, it was brought up that there were fixes available for 8.5 already on Fix Central.  I was stunned, could it be true?  Yep!  There is an Adminp rename and delete issue that needs an IF fix for all platforms it appears

    Image:Don’t forget to go get your 8.5 server fixes too
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, January 6th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

    Network World on hosted Notes: License not Included

    The new Network World magazine just landed on my desk today (digitally and in print) and has an article by John Fontana as usual on Lotus technologies.  The article is on the announcement of hosted Lotus Notes by IBM.  But one thing stood out that suddenly adds a new wrinkle to the announcement (the Cavanaugh is Kevin, vice president of messaging and collaboration software for IBM):
    IBM will have two models, the first catering to users who already have Notes and Domino licenses, Cavanaugh says.  In that model, IBM will sell Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging and let users apply their licenses to the service.  In the second model, "if you don't have the licenses,  we will sell you those and the services," he says.

    So at a starting point, from the article, of $10 per user/month for 1,000 users starting point, I am seeing $10,000/month for hosted Lotus Notes with no licenses provided.  I suddenly feel better.

    Give me a ring or email to talk about pricing and scalability options.
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, November 5th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Unpublished/unfinished Notes feature?

    I have a blog reader that needs help, what developer wants to chime in for him?

    Hi Chris,

    Did you ever come across what appears to be an undocumented and unfinished Notes feature that has to do with assigning expiry date to messages as you drag them into folders? This is in Notes 8 template. The form is called "(Folder Expiration Settings)" and the agents are called "(Change Custom Expiration)" and "(Change Expiration On Folder Documents)". There is also a dedicated script library for this. I'm looking for more info on this but I can't find anything anywhere. This looks like a very nice feature, something we definitely need in our environment.

    Regards,

    Bodek

      for this posting

      On Monday, October 27th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    IBM Certified Advanced Security Professional - ND8 (sharing following Mr Mooney)

    Since Paul posted his (congrats to him!), yes it is a tough exam

    Image:IBM Certified Advanced Security Professional - ND8 (sharing following Mr Mooney)
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Syncing your Notes Contacts to Lotus Bluehouse

    This has a good side and bad side (as usual with me to point out).  First, here are the steps required to allow you to sync your Notes contacts up to Lotus Bluehouse:
    I want to install sync for Lotus Notes 8. What do I do?

    Perform the following instructions on the workstation where you have Lotus Notes installed.

       1. Using a text editor, open the following file: [Notes Install Directory]\framework\rcp\plugin_customization.ini The [Notes Install Directory] is usually C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes
       2. Perform one of the following steps:
              * If the following line is not present, then add it to the end of the file: com.ibm.notes.branding/enable.update.ui=true
              * If the line is present, make sure that the value is equal to true.
       3. Save the file and close your text editor.
       4. Stop and restart Lotus Notes, if it is running.

    Next, go Lotus Notes and perform the following instructions.

       1. Select File > Application > Install. The Features Update box displays.
       2. Select Search for new features to install, and then click Next. The Application Location box displays.
       3. Click the Add Remote Location... button, and then add the following:
              * Name: Bluehouse Updates
              * URL: http://bluehouse.lotus.com/install/notes_plugin_install/site.xml
       4. Click OK to continue. Bluehouse Updates displays in the list of locations.
       5. Click Finish and a new window displays.
       6. Select the check box for Bluehouse Updates, and click Next.
       7. To continue, you must accept the license agreement, and click Next.
       8. Click Finish. If a window displays about trusted signers, you must select Install this plug-in and OK to continue.
       9. Select Yes when a message to restart Lotus Notes displays.

    The good news is now I can move my address book up to the Saas solution to do more online work with customers and partners.  They also offer this for Outlook and an imported CSV file.  Big steps to move you to Saas

    The bad news, no user should have the instructions to unlock the ability for them to do an Eclipse update.  The idea is to centrally control this ability.  The instructions should be for administrators to create a widget to include this update and push it to the right users.  Lotus needs to address that issue.  It is fine for beta users, bit not for production environments.  How about a simple account in your personal address book that I provide credentials to Bluehouse to push contacts up?
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      On Wednesday, October 8th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Anyone want to guess why all these 8.0.2 issues are appearing?

    Between blog postings, Tweets on Twitter and postings in the general Notes 8 forum on Notes.net, there seems to be some inconsistencies.  I personally have not seen all these yet, but it raises an eyebrow

    From Notes.net:
    Date Topic Author
    3 8.0.2 - Sending new email Leonard W Gray
    5 8.0.2 LN Client hangs Lucia LE FLEM
    3 Sys Tray icon in 8.0.2, pops up then disappears really fast Mark T Hughes
    11 Notes 8.0.2 - Instant Messaging Login Issues Roland Reddekop
    6 Lotus Notes 8.0.2 Client - Issues/Feedback joe wichowski


    Summize search on Twitter can be found here where you get a mix of praise and problems.  Some say integration, some say startup issues, some say upgrade issues.

    Image:Anyone want to guess why all these 8.0.2 issues are appearing?
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      On Friday, August 29th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Domino 8.5 new server commands, let’s peek

    So as I dig in more and more I have been finding more and more stuff.  There are some more server commands that give a bunch more information for administrators"
    New and enhanced server commands include:
    • Show Stat Mail - View new messaging statistics in the server console window when you enter this command.
    • DAOS Prune - Forces objects in the Domino Attachment and Object Service (DAOS) repository that are currently awaiting deletion to be deleted immediately, overriding any specified setting for deferred deletion.
    • Show Tasks - The Show Tasks server command now includes task status from additional mail router threads, and generates detail regarding router activity.
    • Show Server and Show Directory - These commands now report whether the Domino Attachment and Object Service (DAOS) is enabled, and provide a list of which databases are included in DAOS, with details for each.
    Show Stat Mail is a great tool that is expanded to show you 154 stats (sample):

    Continue Reading here" Domino 8.5 new server commands, let's peek" »

      for this posting

      On Thursday, August 28th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Domino 8.5 and dynamic groups!

    Woo hoo, yet another awesome change for 8.5 to make administrative overhead even less.
    • The auto-populated groups feature uses pre-defined criteria to automatically determine and update group membership.  Use the auto-populated groups feature to apply policies to users and groups based on their home servers
    I know admins get tired of maintaining groups over and over.  Having them self populate based on my own criteria will save loads of time and frustration as groups can change constantly. Oh did I mention that this affects policies in a great way:
    Dynamic policy assignment is a new option for assigning explicit policies that allows administrators to assign policy settings to individual users and groups simply by specifying the appropriate user or group name in a policy document.  As the organization changes, only the Group document needs to be updated.  For example, if a user changes jobs or organizations, you do not need to determine which policies need updating; the updated group information is applied the next time the effective policy is calculated for any users in that group.

      for this posting

      On Wednesday, August 27th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Technotes for 8.0.2 - yes they are here already

    I thought about typing but making a grid is so much easier.  Some are carryovers meaning they were not fixed in 8.0.2
     Number   Document Title
    Status
    Updated
      Product
    1316646 Upgrade Central: Planning your upgrade to Lotus Notes / Domino 8.0.2
    Published
    08/25/2008
    Lotus Domino Server 8.0.2 ; Lotus Notes 8.0.2 ; Lotus Domino Web Access 8.0.2
    7012642 Domino 8.0.2 - Detailed system requirements
    Published
    08/22/2008
    Lotus Domino Server 8.0.2
    7013242 Detailed system requirements - Domino Web Access 8.0.2
    Published
    08/14/2008
    Lotus Domino Web Access 8.0.2
    7012644 Lotus Notes 8.0.2 - Detailed system requirements
    Published
    08/14/2008
    Lotus Notes 8.0.2
    1315578 Server hang during MIME to CD conversion of a message that has a BinHex encoded file attachment
    Published
    08/08/2008
    Lotus Domino Server 8.0.2, 8.0.1, 8.0
    1313800 Duplicate icons appear when upgrading from Notes 8.0.x to Notes 8.0.2
    Published
    07/23/2008
    Lotus Notes 8.0.2
    1313805 Icons are lost after recreating the admin workspace on Microsoft Windows Vista
    Published
    07/23/2008
    Lotus Notes 8.5, 8.0.2
    1308097 Silent Notes multi-user install or upgrade command line statement
    Published
    07/09/2008
    Lotus Notes 8.0.2
    1306547 Cannot create documents in Lotus Symphony in Lotus Notes Client from desktop shortcut
    Published
    07/05/2008
    Lotus Notes 8.0.2, 8.0.1, 8.0
    1306536 Single Logon in Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook 8.0.2
    Published
    06/06/2008
    Lotus Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook 8.0.2
    1303396 Changes to Domino LDAP attributes officeStreetAddress and homeStreetAddress
    Published
    06/05/2008
    Lotus Domino Server 8.5, 8.0.2

      for this posting

      On Tuesday, August 26th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Notes 8.5 Basic removes the Admin and Designer ability, you must use Standard

    I was rummaging around some more doing the slidedeck I said I would create on Friday and uncovered this.  While maybe not a secret, there are many that are unaware this is coming:
    The Notes basic configuration Allclient install kit is no longer available, however the Notes-only basic configuration install kit remains available.  Customers looking to install or upgrade to the Domino Designer 8.5 or Domino Administrator 8.5 clients must use the Notes standard configuration Allclient install kit. This is applicable to the Windows client platform as there is no Notes basic configuration install kit for the Mac OS or Linux platforms.

      for this posting

      On Monday, August 25th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    The Notes and Domino 8.5 Business Cases - some asked about it

    On PlanetLotus I saw the posting by Scott Cochrane on the business case for the Domino 8.5 upgrade.  I have been pointing a few out this week but let's do a general rundown in random order (each business will need to prioritize):
    • DAOS - disk savings, for free.  Change ODS (no issue there), transaction logs (plan), enable and go. Instant savings, reduced backups.  Not just for email files
    • ID Vault - better archiving and storage, highly secure, for your id files.  we wanted easier and better id recovery mechanisms and they are delivering.
    • Compressing images pasted into documents, across all database types.  More disk savings
    • Roaming users for the Standard client
    • Widgets and live text for your Mac and Linux users is finally here
    • Nomad support is back
    • iCal feed support
    • Send contact as Vcard
    • Better failover support (still wondering what here)
    • Drag and drop into Sametime, even personal groups
    • Auto populating groups - wow what an admin timesaver
    • True dynamic policies
    • Notes shared logon instead of the old Notes Single Login.  No password sync,

    So I have a better idea, I am building a slide deck around this and will push it via SlideShare for everyone.
      for this posting

      On Friday, August 22nd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Notes 8.5 client new feature is saving even more space!

    Apparently, turned on by default, is the automatic compression of images pasted into documents, as shown in this screenshot:

    Image:Notes 8.5 client new feature is saving even more space!

    I went digging around and found this in the New Features area:
    Automatically compress images pasted into documents.  Note that bitmap (.bmp) images that are imported into a Notes document are compressed; bitmap images that are pasted into a Notes document are converted to .gif or .jpg format.  Choose "File -> Preferences -> Basic Notes Client Configuration", and then choose the appropriate setting under 'Additional options' (the setting is selected by default).

      for this posting

      On Thursday, August 21st, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Domino 8.5 is doing the disk space savings dance here

    We had been doing it in testing mode but went a little larger scale with the new DAOS (Domino Attachment Object Service).  It works, right out of the box folks.
    • Set up transaction logging
    • make the ODS in 8.5 format (50)
    • click a few flags
    • start firing off the attachments

    The benefits of usage and savings were staggering in the on disk sizes.  Savings were in the 40-50% range right now.  Here is the good news many people are missing.  It is not shared mail in any way.  it uses new NLO (Notes Large Object) file types and the darn thing works across ANY freaking database that shares the attachment and is enabled for DAOS.

    DId I say any database?  Yes, discussions, and soon I would think Quickr.
      for this posting

      On Wednesday, August 20th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Notes 8.5 stole my mouse, have you seen it?

    This has been seen and reported through the version, and was listed to be fixed in 8.0.2.  However, in my 8.5 Standard client I am getting constant mouse freezes and loss of it even showing.  Clean machine, clean install of 8.5 with the latest mouse drivers.  But I am not alone per some emails I have gotten.

    When I run in Basic mode, I never see the issue, only in Standard.  Anyone else have the issue?  I have to restart my machine to get the mouse back.
      for this posting

      On Tuesday, August 19th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Notes 8.5 enhances forced plug-in installation

    Sametime has had this since 7.5, but Lotus was always missing it.  Well here it comes in 8.5

    Image:Notes 8.5 enhances forced plug-in installation

    Pushing down plug-ins that the user must restart and take advantage of is a welcome item.  The user never sees the option to ignore the update.
      for this posting

      On Monday, August 18th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Notes 8.5 brings yet another happy user change (building on yesterday)

    I went to add my signature to an email (which I don't do for every message) and received a pop-up that I needed to update and resave my preferences due to some changes.  Hot damn when I saw these changes appear:

    Image:Notes 8.5 brings yet another happy user change (building on yesterday)
      for this posting

      On Friday, August 15th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Notes 8.5 is the default everything !

    I happily found this on the setup splash screen. Forget just email, Notes wants email, calendaring and contacts.

    Image:Notes 8.5 is the default everything !
      for this posting

      On Thursday, August 14th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    July 2008 Sys Admin Tips Newsletter is out

    Topics for this month's newsletter include:
    IN THIS ISSUE
    * From the Editor: Chris' 0.021135 CAD
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Sametime Issue for the Blackberry
    * Overcoming Issues Using Lotus Sametime with an IP Sprayer
    * Quick Tip: Lotus Notes Traveler 8.0.1 Releases HotFixes
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Placing a Pilot Domino 8 Server in the Same Domino Domain

    Leandro from IBM Brazil also emailed me already and pointed out that the tip for piloting omitted (maybe during editing, who knows) that you should create non replica template copies or set the replication for that server to not include any .ntf files.
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      On Thursday, July 31st, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus to target 6 million Microsoft Exchange users

    Haven't seen this announcement?  Of course you have.  Lotus says it everyday in an attempt to get customers to migrate over to Domino.  The same tools that are in place to migrate you in are the same to migrate you out.  Why would Microsoft make the same statement that started getting talked about last week?  Well to stir the pot and prep more announcements on future releases, mainly in the collaboration software space.

    Does Lotus always know who uses Notes for mail/messaging or just applications?  Possibly by the license type.  Many people just buy the package that includes both, but they may use something else for email.  We run into if often.

    So the fight becomes what does my friend/neighbor/competition run.  If everyone moves to some new piece of software, look at BleedYellow and PlanetLotus for perfect examples, then many more follow.  While this is Lotus specific for an example, the point is proven that we listen to those we think know the most or give the best argument.  Microsoft sales employees are trained to tell you the best story possible.  Do you know how often we have to deal with this scenario based on the number of customers we host and often represent in meetings?  Far too many from both directions.  90% of the time the company has already made their mind up on what tey want to use for collaboration and email in the SMB space.  The fight is over how much from there.  Give me the best deal, not who can archive better and has chat.

    If we drill down to basics, the training of the Microsoft employees is generally how to battle against the competition.  That is always hot for them.  The training of the Lotus sales is the software of the moment.  If we bring them in to talk email to keep an account, the pitch Portal and Connections.  If we bring them in for licensing talks, they pitch Portal and Connections.  What is hot for the moment to them.

    So what do we do?  Sit and watch the 2 go back and forth over how many seats were sold, how many are installed and who is the case study.  Then we go back to our dark holes of an office and play with it ourselves.  Call our grandpa, flip a coin, spin a dial or get out the darts.  Either way it is the cost factor once we decide both are just close enough to make either software work.
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      On Monday, July 28th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Warning and request to these awesome Notes 8 sidebar app developers

    I have seen some excellent sidebar applications for Notes 8 being generated recently, all with the developers starting their own update sites.  Before I list them, here is the issue and warning:
    I need you to create these in one of two ways:
    1. as a downloadable feature in a zip file
    2. or in a siteupdate database I can import.

    One of the below sites I visited today gives specific instructions on how to change the client to allow remote site updates.  Unfortunately, policies will revert and disable this for all the users.  By providing me with one of the 2 options above, I can guarantee my users will get the plug-in and I can control distribution, security and resigning.  I also do not allow them to go to outside update sites from those that I specifically list in my configurations.  I really want them to use your apps, but it has to be controlled on this end.  If you need help in building a site, let me know.  I can easily assist.

    Some cool ones:
    • SideLog by Jeff Gilfelt - awesome tool for working with the Notes log files
    • Formul8 also by Jeff  - a developer tool to write formulas
    • SecretAgent  again by Jeff - see all the agents in a database
    • TwitNotes by Mikkel - unfortunately I think it is broke for 8.5


    Update: John Head in the comments mentions the widget.  Unfortunately that is now a requirement for your site to work, Lotus broke plug-in control and I won't allow foreign widgets that pull sites either and no one else should.  Good comment John.
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      On Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Creating multiple Notes 8 shortcuts

    One of the many things we realize as administrators, is that normal users do not have the same machine resources that we have on our machines we use daily.  So how do we get around users that want Notes 8 but can't run the full Standard version?  Load the Standard client onto the machine and create alternate shortcuts.  We show a myriad of ways to solve issues in the ND 8 Upgrade Seminar.

    Simply modify the desktop icon and add the "-sa" parameter after the notes.exe.  This will open Notes in the "Basic" mode

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      On Wednesday, June 25th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    ND8 Upgrade Seminar summary for San Francisco

    After completing yet another city for the ND8 Upgrade Seminar, I am always surprised by the upgrade plans of the crowd and where they sit today.  This was no different.
    • Everyone was at least in the 6.x realm for current versions.
    • A small percentage (like 10) had installed the Notes 8 client on their desktops
    • Most did not have enough memory on all machines so they will roll out as the basic version
    • Server upgrade plans varied from a few weeks to sometime next year, yes as in 2009
    • Sametime at one company was discouraged as a nuisance of sorts and was not allowed
    • Everyone was happy to see the gutter return to the inbox in 8.5
    • Platforms are always a discussion for the server
    • A couple sites had no firm date for the upgrades at all
    • No one had logged into im.bleedyellow.com
    • Everyone liked the free tools we give away

    I could go on, but with all the excitement in the core Lotus blog community, we lose focus often.  We play with the latest and greatest while many larger shops are stuck with whatever gets decided by management.  We should sit back and realize there are over 100 million users, most of whom never even go to PlanetLotus.org to get the latest and greatest.
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      On Monday, June 23rd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    IBM has a POT (Proof of Technology) seminar on Domino 8

    Apparently this is coming through or can be available to many cities.  St Louis will be having one this week.  It covers multiple days and has some hands-on.  Now I directly asked if this was technical enough to be construed as an actual upgrade seminar.  The answer:
    There are hands on labs, but I don't know that I would call it extremely deep tech.  It's about 50/50 presentations and labs.  Notes Client features as well as Domino enhancements will be covered


    So you have yet another chance in North America if you need the ND8 Upgrade Seminar for the deep tech stuff.  We have San Fran right now actually, but Toronto in July is still open.

    Here is the flyer from the IBM offered event:

    Image:IBM has a POT (Proof of Technology) seminar on Domino 8
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      On Monday, June 16th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    The one item that convinced my users to go to Notes 8.5 Beta 1

    Convincing the hard to convince to upgrade to a new beta is always fun here.  Amazingly one little simple thing sold them.
    • No it was not the alternate way the client starts showing a progress bar
    • No it was not the new UI in the mail template only identifying unread mail better
    • No it was not updated integrated Sametime client
    • the list continues...

    So what brought them to upgrade so darn fast from 8.0?  An old feature resurfacing...  the ability to not use Windows style selection in the inbox and go back to Notes Style selection.  Yeah, checkmarks.  You would think they never select multiple files in Windows

    Image:The one itme that convinced my users to go to Notes 8.5 Beta 1
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      On Thursday, June 12th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    All is well, upgrade away and put that Domino 8 directory template on 6.5.4 servers

    Seems there was a misreading of the technotes surrounding the upgrade that was presented to the customer.  It should read that you should not run older directory templates on Domino 8, not the Domino 8 directory template on older servers as reported.

    Makes perfect sense of course, but the miscommunication caused quite the stir.
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      On Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus says don’t upgrade from 6.5.4.to 8 ??

    After numerous cities with the ND8 Upgrade Seminar, where we show how to do numerous things, including upgrading your Domino Directory, in a supported fashion, before the domain is totally finished.  Well one of our wise attendees was following the directions as they have done before, and received some disturbing news from Lotus support:
    Having a R8 directory on a 6.5.4 server is not supported.  Problems that can occur are corruption, data loss and performance issues.

    What data loss? What performance? What corruption?  We can find no technote, article, posting or nothing that resembles this statement from Lotus Support.

    I am upgrading servers and domains like crazy and have not seen a hint of this issue anywhere.  Anyone?
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      On Monday, June 2nd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    May Sys Admin Tips Newsletter is out..

    I know I prompt you a reminder each month, but until they get RSS feeds in play, here is the link.  This month I cover:

    IN THIS ISSUE
    * From the Editor: Chris' 0.0101527 GBP (ouch)
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Two Questions on Sametime in the Notes 8 Standard Client
    * Lotus Notes and the Eclipse Update Site for Provisioning
    * Quick Tip: Finding the Hidden Menus in Notes 8
    * From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Where Are the Detailed System Requirements for 8.0.1?
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      On Friday, May 30th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Why the current Eclipse Update Sites in Domino sucks

    Easy, it doesn't work and is configured in the wrong place (NOTE: the actual template used rocks, hands down.  The process is broken).  I was prompted to write this after the article on DominoBlog.com came out touting the feature.

    EDITOR NOTE (May 21 1pm): Everyone understand, the Eclipse Update Site template is one of the better things Lotus has created and shipped that outshines other site update tools.  I love the template and the guy that write it (hey to TG on amazing work as usual).  I am only talking about the process by which the client uses this template.


    Instead of using policies in Notes 8 to force clients to see an update site, they chose server configuration documents.  Let me break down what is bad about that in a moment.  Currently, most every admin will want to make sure the ability for clients to install their own stuff is turned off.  Ok, that works.  However, you must then place an update site link in the server configuration doc that the user never seems to see.  Why the heck didn't you use policies?  The server configuration document has the global setting for both Smart Upgrade and then Provisioning, but the Desktop settings policy only has Smart Upgrade as shown here:

    Image:Why the current Eclipse Update Sites in Domino sucks

    So what is expected is that each user will hit the server and see the server configuration document.  This in turn will somehow get them the provisioning database or site.xml from there.  Well this opens another can of worms.  We teach and implement multiple places to reduce the extreme number of server configuration documents and to simplify.  But if I want users on different home servers to hit alternate update sites only, then I have to go back and create multiple server configuration documents.  Conflicts terribly.  The site update database was built with replication in mind.  I can create it once, push it out all over and have users hit sites local to their area for performance.  With a policy I would be all set.

    The real kicker here is that the client never seems to see this new setting and never gets the provision on a consistent basis.  I have had one or two magically work, and others never work.  All at the same server with the same version of client.  Riddle me that Batman, both why it sometimes works and why it isn't in any policy setting to do controlled/distributed provisioning.
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      On Wednesday, May 21st, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Whoa - ODS 48 broke some items on the convert up

    Last week at the Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar in London (recap here), we had an attendee report that some items broke on the upgrade in ODS.  I simply stated that in all our testing, we had not seen any incident yet.  Well he was doing something we never tried.  I didn't post this until I could play around and test

    They were converting desktops up to Notes 8.0.1 and running the convert locally after placing the proper notes.ini line in to allow the R8 databases
    Create_R8_Databases=1

    I know I had done this on many servers, and even a bunch of test and now production clients.  Well here is where he threw the monkey wrench in.  His users still have some of their personal databases on ODS 20.  Yeah, 20.  When doing items like the personal NAB, it seemed some policies broke and on local mailfiles, they had issues with the out of office.

    I just ran it here one, after much effort to get back to 20 and I'll be darned.  Boom.

    UPDATE: apparently this is affecting Quickr per this blogger, but I have to test this..
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      On Monday, May 19th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    ND8 Upgrade Seminar in London recap

    One more city down for the Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar, with 2 North American cities left to go (San Francisco and Toronto).  Once again I was not disappointed in what the attendees had to say and provide for feedback.
    • 100% were on 6.5.x and higher (ok outside of one desolate R5 server)
    • 85% used Sametime already and really needed to understand what the new integration offered.  They liked it but had rightful concerns over missing functionality and the locking of the chat as Notes did other things
    • The limited number of users you can get on Citrix with the Standard client sucks and they let me know
    • Widgets need tons of business value demos to sell them to the executives
    • Productivity Tools were the doorstop of the sessions with people stepping right on by
    • Lotus Connections made no sense to 90% of them at first.  Later, about 50% I think really got it (while they all then understood it).  But managing all that additional hardware was brought up
    • Lotus Foundations is a cool product if you don't already have a Domino domain, which they all did of course
    • Integration of Sametime is awesome if it was available while doing something else in Notes 8.  Otherwise they want the standalone version (mentioned again)
    • Integration of Activities is confusing to many as to why choose that or Quickr or why at all.  This got answered
    • The Sametime Gateway is of interest to them but MS connectivity is still a demand in Europe
    • Coffee breaks are not often enough, mainly after huge lunches
    • Attendees love free tools that we give away
    • Expanded policy control for desktops and security will be implemented right away
    • People are tired of Smart Upgrade and want full provisioning,   Oh yeah, and provisioning that actually works, which is broke right now
    • I know the list went on by I will update after I sleep and fly....

    I broke their hearts when I taught all about site updates to only let them down with it isn't working.  On the good side, I think many are excited about the upgrade.  I was surprised at the length of time a lot will be taking to get upgraded in full.  We are talking well into next year.

    Food this week was excellent, and I caught the play Billy Elliot (review here).  Dinner the first night was Kare Kare, an excellent Indian place.  Next up was a chain before the play for speed reasons and finally Amaya.  Outside of that it was all conference food for me :-)
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      On Thursday, May 15th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Notes 8.0.1 Standard on Citrix - can you count to 4 users only?

    So the internal NOC team here uses Neoware thin clients to connect to the Citrix 4.5 server.  Today the Windows guys decide to upgrade to 8.0.1 Standard and find that each user was, as expected, using lots of memory around 400MB each.  With the machine it runs on being a dual processor with 3.5 GB of RAM, they had higher expectations.  So after everyone came on day shift and logged in as usual, the machine started grinding.

    Unfortunately, they want all the bells and whistles, but back to basic mode they have to do.
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      On Thursday, May 8th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Visually trending talk of Lotus Notes on Twitter

    I ran across a tool called Twist which gives a graph of how many times words or phrases are used in Twitter.  For fun, I did Lotus Notes versus Microsoft Exchange (using just Exchange gave every instance and was to much).

    Image:Visually trending talk of Lotus Notes on Twitter

    The downside was that many of the Lotus Notes postings were negative.  How about some more positive tweets?
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      On Thursday, April 24th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Do your users understand a stoplight signal?

    If they happen to be able to know what to do when they see green, yellow and red, then this should be simple.  From the words of one of our customers
    Lotus could not have made seeing quota limits any easier and for training users on new features in 8.0.1 as we deploy


    Image:Do your users understand a stoplight signal?
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      On Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Taking S/MIME out to pasture

    I sent a Twitter yesterday on how I was overlooking the obvious in setting up some secure mail between two sites.  They wanted to use S/MIME.  Did both run Notes? No.  That would have been easy with sharing of public keys and letting them encrypt until they couldn't breathe.  This was a Notes to another email package.  So the theory was creating X.509 certificates, passing them out like Halloween candy treats and hoping everyone nibbled.

    Then it hit me.  Why are we going through so much work here?  So we got a common and known Internet certificate for both servers, made sure that the other side could understand it and forced all communication via TLS from SMTP to SMTP.  Their whole point was encrypting data between the Internet flow, not necessarily once it was received since multiple people may need access to the data.

    We set Domino 8 to force the TLS conversation and stop if it could not make one.  We made sure the other server understood to start a TLS conversation when asked and off we went.  Secure Internet mail flow between disparate sites at will.
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      On Friday, April 18th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    The attendee love/hate of ND8 - Copenhagen

    Surprise, disappointment, amazement, laughter.  We got every reaction possible.  Andy and myself fended off countless questions from a fully packed house.  The extra seats we planned open were taken by some last minute drop-ins that registered.  So what did we learn this city?
    • 95% of the attendees use Sametime
    • 100% were at 6.5.x or higher and wanting to go to Domino 8.0.1
    • Not having Citrix support already for the Standard client made more than one of them very disappointed
    • Widget policies were a selling point
    • Lotus Connections, Lotus Protector and mainly Productivity Tools were not anything they cared about.  Did I mention Productivity Tools?
    • Companies in size from 250 users to 40,000 all really use Domino
    • Some admins are lucky when they get to go to Brazil for 9 days to install one Domino server
    • Lotus Foundations is a cool product if you don't already have a Domino domain, which they all did of course
    • Integration of Sametime is awesome
    • Integration of Activities is confusing
    • The Sametime Gateway is of interest to them
    • Coffee breaks are not often enough, mainly after huge lunches
    • Attendees love free tools that we give away
    • Expanded policy control for desktops and security will be implemented right away
    • People are tired of Smart Upgrade and want full provisioning

    I am sure there is a few other I will add in.  To summarize, the love Domino 8 and wish there was few more things that had made it into the product at the same time.  Social networking over here is not popular, while internal chat is.   They always have very specific and unique questions that we love getting answers to for them.  So excuse me while I collapse, eat a final dinner here and then head home tomorrow .  Check my "Where am I headed" tab to see the cities I have booked up.
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      On Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Remove your DNS Blacklists? One spam provider says so

    Our customers have forwarded a blog posting from Mayflower Software that suggests you remove DNS blacklists and then let their software handle everything for spam.  While there is one valid point, adding an immeasurable load to your Domino server is not something I suggest.  many of the comments on the blog post reflect that fact as well.
    I hate to discourage the use of any technique that can stop spam, but I think DNS blacklists should no longer be used by Lotus Domino (IBM Domino) email administrators.

    So then jump down to the comments and see what others have to say:
    Blacklist can produce false positives but really have positive impact on load. Especially when our SMTP server have limited bandwidth and ratio rejected/accepted messages is high as on our server (we have over 90% rejected connections). Then disabling DNS blacklist does mean that our load on line will be 10 times bigger which is of course unacceptable.


    So to our customers that saw this, I write my opinion here.  While someone may be blocked accidentally for whatever reason, there is the phone.  The load that could come from this on your server is not worth letting a Domino based spam solution solve.
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      On Friday, March 28th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Sharepoint is the new Lotus Notes - CMS Watch reports

    I was forwarded this article, which I am not buying, and you can't even see the whole report without purchase.

    BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 27, 2008--Microsoft Office
    SharePoint Server 2007 is repeating history as it mimics the allure
    and pitfalls of Lotus Notes, according to research released today by
    CMS Watch, an independent analyst firm that evaluates content
    technologies.

    Why are they comparing this just to Lotus Notes?  How does Notes compare to Sharepoint ?  What happened to Quickr?  We don't compare Quickr to Exchange

    I say go out and read the rest of the summary.
     
    The Report is available for purchase online from CMS Watch at
    http://www.cmswatch.com
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      On Thursday, March 27th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    NotesPing as a server setup tool?

    Another interesting bout with unknown causes of server setup failures on an additional Domino server.  We were setting up a hosted server, that was to get the necessary data through a private connection with an address supplied by the IT team at said company.  We could hit that IP address over port 1352 successfully, so all was good there.  However, the server setup would always stop at 20%, which normally means that it cannot connect.  Yet even a simple telnet showed that it connected fine.  So as we were about to cheat and have them zip and send names.nsf and some other stuff to set the server up locally and then let replication take over, NotesPing was quickly tossed on the server to some interesting results.:
    Determining path to server XXX.XX.XX.94
    Available Ports:  TCPIP
    Checking normal priority connection documents only...
    Allowing wild card connection documents...
    Enabling name service requests and probes...
    Checking for XXX.XX.XX..94 on TCPIP using address 'XXX.XX>XX.94'
      Connected to the wrong server SaidServer2/SaidDomain using address XXX.XX.XX.94
      Connected to the wrong server SaidServer2/SaidDomain using address XXX.XX.XX.94
      Unable to connect to XXX.XX.XX.94 on TCPIP (Connection denied. The server you connected to has a different name from the one requested.)
    Checking low and normal priority connection documents...
    No default passthru server defined

    So NotesPing showed us that the server they gave us as an IP address and name, was not the right one for one of the two variables for the setup.  Correcting either the IP address for the SaidServer or the server name for the IP address solved the issue.
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      On Monday, March 24th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Domino 7.x and higher HTTP server bug we found today

    Due to a very bad UPS device, thrown circuits for protection and gremlins, we had a hard crash on some servers this morning.  So here is what we found out.

    All the Domino servers restarted successfully as a core, but any server that had HTTP in the servertasks= line would not fire up the task after the hard shutdown.  We had to manually go in and start it to clear the alert.  This was on all the servers 7.x and higher (sorry no older ones to test on)

    hmmmmm
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      On Wednesday, March 12th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    SysTools offering away from Lotus migration tools and local access protection - anyone tried them?

    You can read the press release right here.

    I am curious about some of their statements that they make
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      On Wednesday, March 12th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    February started a 3 part Sys Admin newsletter series on monitoring

    I just presume most of you see, read or subscribe to the LotusUserGroup.org Sys Admin newsletter.  But as I sat here writing the March edition, I realized you may not.  So get over and catch up darnit.   There was a Blackberry series last year and right now is the middle of a monitoring series.

    What are you waiting for?
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      On Friday, March 7th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Interesting pop-up during 8.0.1 install

    Image:Interesting pop-up during 8.0.1 install

    Interesting since it was a workstation...  with an upgrade happening  ..from Notes 8.0
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      On Monday, February 25th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Public Widget catalog is live - plus more news on it !!!

    Well this turned out to be a posting that generated a slew of pings, Skype hits, a phone call and then some more Skype calls.  We should all thank Gabriella as she upgraded a server and got the catalog alive even with a firewall failure.

    So navigate a connection document to the following: (note some of you have this already due to the Lotusphere Sessions database)
    Tranquility/TurtlePublic
    lotusphere.turtleweb.com   or download.turtleweb.com

    You will find the database on the root.  We started playing around by adding a couple, even with about 20 I have now.  But let's get to building and please fill out as much info as you can.

    NEWS: I don't know how much I am supposed to say now but the widget catalog is about to grow in other ways.  Picture not just widgets, but plug-ins also.  Take all that and wrap it with some things you saw announced at Lotusphere, replicate it to numerous mirrors, shake well and give a slamming UI to it for web as well as Notes access.  Bam!  You have a super-duper public catalog.  All without the headache of IBM legal seeing over everything in their current on-line catalogs.  Which isn't bad, it just means we can grow this fast!
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      On Thursday, February 21st, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Public Widget Catalog - Announcement

    Working with the wonderful Gabriella at Turtle Partnership, we decided to publish the widget catalog since everyone seems excited.  It is public access so everyone can go crazy to get widgets.  We will work on a way to add them in there shortly.  Just email them over for now.

    The connection record you need is for download.turtleweb.com which contains the Widget Catalog shortly.  This will be a great way to start sharing all the great widgets we find and create.

    Chris & Gab
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      On Thursday, February 21st, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Why users won’t work when using 8.0.1

    From Twitter to weather to LiveTV gadgets from Google, we are dead...

    Image:Why users won’t work when using 8.0.1
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      On Wednesday, February 20th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Upgrading to Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1 document

    If you follow my Lotus Support Mega RSS Feed that I created for all of you (including widgets) then you would have caught this.  If not...  here

    IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1 (including Lotus Domino Web Access and Lotus Notes Traveler) are now available to address issues and provide new features. The following document contains important resources to assist you with your upgrade to Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1.

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      On Tuesday, February 19th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    A Lotus Support Mega Feed widget and Google Gadget for you..

    I created a Google gadget of this also but I am piping my LotusChannels Jaiku feed into Dapper to make some widgets and gadgets. Then we can toss this into the Notes 8.0.1 widget sidebar and viola!
    Note that you select which technote you want and click the twisty to have it slide open to see more of the entry

     Add to your site powered by Dapper 

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      On Tuesday, February 5th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus changes the client error screen (screenshot as seen at Lotusphere 2008)

    Image:Lotus changes the client error screen (screenshot as seen at Lotusphere 2008)

    Hmm, I am not sure what the user would do with a search of the technotes, unless it is your internal helpdesk it searches first.  If this is configurable then I am incredibly excited.

      I like Paul Mooney's work on this one to customize the error messages across the client.  I will find the link to his blog posting on performing this awesome gask for users.
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      On Thursday, January 24th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

    22 Ready to Use Components for Lotus Notes 8 composite apps, say it isn’t so!

    I received an enlightening email from Susan Bulloch with a link to the LDD Sandbox posting showing not only 22 ready to use components, but also some hints at what partners have up their sleeve. Check out GrapeCity for their WebCharts3d dashboard component.
    Webcharts
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      On Tuesday, November 13th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    A hidden Gmail gem to pass along to use in Notes RSS streams.

    I picked this up from the following blogger John Resig..
    Gmail has a hidden feature: Atom feeds for Labels! The technique is simple:
    1.        Setup a filter to catch all email from a specific mailing list.
    2.        Apply a label to all of that mail (e.g. 'list').
    3.        Access the Atom feed via this URL: https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/list/ (changing 'list' to be the name of the label.

    So if you take this and then flip it to Domino, you could create a rule to tag or sort your mail-in databases and then push this out to the feed readers with the RSS capabilities of Domino.  This would solve an alert issue for numerous people that share part in a mail-in database.  Everyone could read the stream based on what category they handle from a single course that is tagged/foldered/categorized properly like you can do already with my blog.  Go to the archives tab above and look at the different pre-categorized feeds you can get form one single database.

    Same idea, just move it to other data stores in your Domino architecture.
      for this posting

      On Monday, November 12th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Overview from the ND8 Upgrade Seminar in Las Vegas

    So all 3 days are completed here in Vegas.  We have already done Philly and Chicago is only 2 weeks out.  I missed almost all of day 1 flying in, but I was here for days 2 and 3 to talk to attendees around presenting.  I gleaned the following facts:
    • About 95% of the attendees did not want to have a session on the Productivity Tools.  Many said 10 slides glazing over the topic would be enough as they are so entrenched in MS licensing there was not a recent chance.  plus, they were not the ones that would even make that decision
    • About 85% of the attendees here already had Sametime running and were eager to see more info on what was coming in integration and implementation
    • About 20% had any interest in Lotus Connections.  70% had no clue what it really did and the remaining knew already they did not want it.
    • About 15% of the attendees here had over 20k users installed.  Many with large DWA implementations in place
    • About 80% really wanted to get more info on Quickr
    • About 95% loved all the ways that the products were starting to integrate tighter.  For example, all the hooks with Lotus Connections and Quickr into Notes 8 and Sametime and Sametime into Notes 8.  It is all making a cohesive direction from Lotus

    One last stat came to mind:
    • About 99% of the people in Las Vegas will wear absolutely anything on Halloween to win $1500 at the Voodoo club contest.  Even 50 stories above the strip, most clothing is optional.

      for this posting

      On Thursday, November 1st, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    the LATimes reports that Comcasts admits to ’software glitch" blocking Lotus Notes

    You can read the article from yesterday right here, but the main quote:
    Comcast officials say the Lotus Notes problems were caused by a software glitch, adding that the company does not block customers from using file-sharing applications. It does, however, manage its network so that a few subscribers using bandwidth-hogging programs don't slow everyone else's Web surfing.

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      On Wednesday, October 24th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Live from the Lotus Collaboration Summit - St Louis

    This event was well run and on-time the entire day so far.  An interesting group after lunch that did on the spot comedy routines.  But as for content, it is what was expected.  Over 100 registered to attend, I would say around 80 arrived. Many were IBM employees however, here to learn more.  The sessions covered all the important parts of Lotus Connections, Notes and Domino 8, Quickr and Sametime.  A surprise session (since the agenda website always said TBD up to yesterday) was Antony providing a competitive landscape session.

    Was there things missed?  In my opinion, a few here and there.  Not enough demos and too many slides for the technical session on Lotus Notes/Domino 8 deployment.  Otherwise, well balanced for 45 minute slots with two rooms running at once.
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      On Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    As we prepare to his DST again, I sat in the open mic call this morning. A simple request to Lotus..

    I previously did posts and podcasts on this topic (I even took a humorous slant after upgrading countless servers).
    • Listen to Episode 28 with Scott of Lotus that not only got downloaded an amazing number of times, but had tons of info.
    • Listen to Episode 27 with Andy and Rob of Technotics as we talk all about DST impact

    But I noticed one thing from listening to the callers this morning.  A lot of people have been doing upgrades, changes and deploying applications since the last DST time change.  Yet everyone has the same question.  What version has what fix and if I upgrade is it done?

    So Lotus, we need a simple scenario listing in a whitepaper or technote that shows the outcome of where they are now and what steps are needed.  Such as:
    •  you already patched for spring and have not changed the server code
    • you patched for spring and have now upgraded to X.xx version
    • you just installed version 7.0.2, is there any patches I need or is it included?
    • you were in a version 6.5.x and patched in spring, we then upgraded to 6.5.6.  Do I have to repatch?
    • Other countries are now going into time changes, so if I have international servers/users I now need to patch those? (like Australia and Brazil)

      for this posting

      On Thursday, October 18th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    IBM executive interview in the Philippines, someone may want to talk to him

    I saw the link pop in my newsreader and jumped over.  Humorously there is a lot reporting wrong in the article that interviews Michael Karasick, director Lotus Software Development for China Development Laboratory in Beijing, China.  Some of my favorite quotes:
    IBM still believes that enterprise customers use e-mail as its main application for collaboration.

    I am not quite sure about this
    Push e-mail service will become available soon, the executive said.

    Asked how it works, Karasick said IBM was working with partners but declined to give details. The new version also revives a web access client.

    "We haven't quite figured out how to make Notes available on a mobile device. We have no timeline," he said, when asked to provide more details about the push mail feature in Lotus Notes.

    "But we will support mobile devices natively and through collaboration with vendors," he said.

    He apparently has not seen Traveler or the anticipated timeline.

    One application called Lotus SameTime version 8 is also offered on the Mac, PC and Linux platforms.

    I know for sure this one is not available yet.  He is a little ahead of the timeline here.

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      On Wednesday, October 17th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    When postings conflict..

    I just got the recent DominoPower newsletter in my inbox.  The top article is why the author still recommends  Lotus Notes  over Exchange.  The ND8 Upgrade Seminar has an ad at the bottom that appeared on one of the pages even.  But this ad really caught my eye:
    GSS Notes to Outlook migration
    Global System Services announced its latest email migration tool, NSF2PST. The NSF2PST tool enables large-scale conversion of Lotus Notes email files ("NSF" files) to the popular Microsoft Outlook Personal Store ("PST") format. NSF2PST can be used for email migrations as well as for data recovery and computer forensics


    The author of the article and the company pushing this migration tool away from Lotus Notes is exactly the same!!   In the same issue.  Maybe it is just me today..
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      On Monday, October 15th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    From the ND8 Upgrade Seminar - grabbing the Lotus Connections plug-ins for provisioning

    Here is the link to the catalog I promised.  If you scroll down on the right to the 'Popular" section you will see the Lotus and Sametime plug-ins for Connections.  Have at it!  From there is you need help in adding the plug-in, you can find the online info center right here.
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      On Saturday, October 13th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    A blog sitemap for composite applications in Notes 8

    While we were here at the Notes and Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar, I needed a place to send the users to get as much information on deploying composite applications (aka shelf-apps, plugins, whatever) into the Notes 8 client.  Well low and behold a decent one existed..

    Here is the page...
    This web log is a joint effort by the key technical architects and user experience professionals to open a direct line of communication with developers about the capabilities of user facing composite applications.


    I also had the link up on how to move a Sametime plug-in to Notes 8 client.  Here was that link.
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      On Friday, October 12th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    The debate on message recall while we are here at the Notes and Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar - Philly

    While Andy blogs the pictures and what happens while he is not onstage presenting, we had a good conversation yesterday on message recall features in Domino 8 I wanted to recap from when I was presenting.  We learned some time ago that message recall would be on by default when you either install or upgrade the server to Domino 8.  Here came the comments.

    The issue is that if you wish to have it on in the server configuration document, policies must then be used to turn it off.  Instead of enabling it further for certain users, which one would expect.  When I relayed info from the podcast that Susan and I did weeks ago about how the Domino 7 server will send the recall requests to the Internet by default and you can even recall mail sent in the past before the upgrade, eyes went wide.  The final straw was that no indication is left in the recipient mailfile that a message was even there.

    This discussion and slide review covered about 30-40 minutes of the session itself.  Without giving away all the parts, just because it is a new feature doesn't mean it should be on was the general consensus.  Some said they would have it enabled after some time, but having it on when you install/upgrade was the wrong choice.
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      On Thursday, October 11th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    On my way to Helsinki, Finland..

    A last minute trip to Europe for some Sametime and Sametime Gateway work means watching people at the airports using Notes and so far one Notes 8 user.  I asked if he liked it and he replied:
    It is not sanctioned by my company yet, but I wanted to get the cool new stuff


      Can't blame him can we?
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      On Sunday, September 30th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus attempts "Lotus Notes" on demand again

    We have seen the failed attempts for BumbleBee and even a follow-up Sametime meeting option.  Well today I read the press release from the Collaboration Summit and enjoyed the part on the Productivity Tools Symphony.  Even with the nice icons and the word free

    Then came the part that really caught my eye:
    Applications on Demand for Lotus Notes - making Lotus Notes 8 as a service enterprise level application hosting.

    Available now, IBM's Application on Demand service provides customers with the benefits of the Lotus suite without having to invest in computing assets or skills.  This new offering provides Lotus collaboration customers with a hosted and managed environment for their mail and collaborative applications, helping improve the performance of their messaging environments while enhancing efficiencies and productivity.....  (yada yada here).  Applications on Demand for Lotus Notes currently support Lotus Sametime and Lotus Quickr, and will be extended to other Lotus collaboration products over time.


    There is a slew of issues with this:
    • One of which is the direct competition with the few business partners that offer this service on the Lotus arena
    • Secondly is the whole architecture on how they intend to do this by license costs.  Where partners would pass license costs along in this type of model, Lotus seems to be undercutting that also since they of course have no license costs in essence.
    • Third, how do you fit into the giant certification tree and also with the need for multiple client access.  The previous attempt in R5 for the ASP model, was not successful.  Where has the back-end Domino code changed to allow the proper provisioning and billing controls?  Does everyone get their own root level certifier?
    • How are they going to offer multi-tenant Sametime services?
    • Wow, this might just be a web access type offering with the new DWA faster (DWA-r) coming in that same press release

    I need to read more on how this will be bundled but I did not see that information released yet.
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      On Tuesday, September 18th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Interesting Notes 8 ACL issue we encountered

    Sean Burgess and I are working on a top secret project together, ok that is strong but it will be fun, and we created a new Domino blank database.  I created it with a Notes 8 Standard client on a Domino 8 server.  He accessed the server with a Notes 8 Designer client.  Now the weird part.

    I couldn't remember, and didn't bother checking, what hierarchical name he used in his id so I simply entered Sean Burgess as unspecified into the ACL.  He could not get in the database.  I changed it to type person and added his O certifier and he got in fine.  Wondering what gives here as this might have other implications for us in multi-tenant cross-certified environments.
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      On Friday, September 14th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Guest Blogger - GSX talks about Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM) and GSX Monitor

    Hello all-
    Iread with much interest all comments about DDM, in response to my (previously published) article.  I can only say that I fully agree with all these comments and I hope that this post will make things even clearer.

    DDM is for sure an improvement and IBM kept improving the monitoring of Domino since version 4.  Some DDM features are very useful and a few of them cannot be provided by any other product, including ours.

    My article is actually not only regarding the benefits of DDM, Admins can judge by themselves about its value.  What I can hardly understand is the marketing made by IBM around DDM.  Was there so little to say about new features in Notes 7 that IBM chose to present DDM as a revolutionery product ?  I do not question the value of DDM but all Admins having worked with Notes since R4 know that DDM is mainly a revamp of existing features.
    I'm also surprised by IBM's plans of releasing a major release yearly.  In my opinion, a major release must provide significant enhancements and new features.  Fixing such deadlines leads to a very strange situation where 4 different versions of  Notes are maintained, including the version 6.5 which nobody knows whether it can be considered as a major version or not.

    The ones having discussed with me know that I'm a strong advocate of Notes for many years. However, I agree with Philip's comment about IBM competing with it's partners and I'll add that I'm puzzled by the lack of long term strategy in this company.   I'd prefer that IBM spends its energy fighting with its competitors, not its partners.  OK, I'll stop now before IBM people get mad at me once again.

    Back to DDM, I don't like the design of this product:
    1)  It bypasses some standard Notes concepts, which is unacceptable to me:
    - automated replication
    - relies on Notes when it's supposed to monitor it
    2) almost all information is not real time (unacceptable for a monitoring product)
    3) it's mainly server based with all related drawbacks:
    - resources taken from servers and possible crashes
    - problems with heterogeneous environments (versions of monitoring code and servers)
    4) real useful features are in my opinion reserved to skilled users

    Comparing to Monitor:
    1) Monitor doesn't have any of the drawbacks listed above
    2) Monitor provides major additional features and supports other platforms (clusters, Sametime, BlackBerry, etc ... and soon Exchange)

    In conclusion, I agree with someone's comment that DDM can be useful as a entry level monitoring tool but falls short for monitoring large (or critical) environments.  As far as being a revolution in the Notes world ... let's be serious a minute, it's not.  The real revolution happened about 20 years ago when the concepts of replication, UNID, certificates and views were put together to create Notes.

    BTW - nice to see that quite a few people also use our products :-)

    Kind regards
    Philippe

    Philippe Schlier
    CITS - EMEAI
    E-mail : pschlier@gsx.net
    __________________________
    GSX Groupware Solutions

    Web site : http://www.gsx.net

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      On Tuesday, September 4th, 2007   by Philippe Schlier        

    Welcome to new hardware and Domino 8 on the blog server all!

    Yes I did it during the day.  Yes I did it in a hurry.  No I did not want to worry about the old server and disk space anymore so the opportunity was there with some freetime maneuvering of other items to make it all happen.  I tried to reach as many as I could at the last minute but figured they knew what was coming since I had the machine sitting in a rack ready for weeks now.

    Full text indexes will take a few to rebuild as I did not move those to save time.  So let's see how it settles in tonight after everything gets caught up.

    Chris
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      On Monday, August 27th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    I loaded the Notes 8 full client and got the following..

    This was after doing the suggested Ctrl-Shift-L to see shortcuts

    Image:I loaded the Notes 8 full client and got the following..

    All was better after a restart however and it now works fine
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      On Monday, August 20th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    LotusUserGroup has an online meeting Sep 5th on "Justifying the ND8 Upgrade"

    The next Virtual User Group Meeting features an online presentation on Justifying ND8 Within the Organization on Sep 5 from 12-1pm EST (GMT -5).  The presentation is free to LotusUserGroup.org members, but pre-registration is required.  Register at http://www.LotusUserGroup.org/vug

    As usual, there will be a moderated forum that week where you can ask questions, suggest topics for the online event and get any other info.    Then on that Wednesday join the virtual meeting.

    Click to see more on the content!


    Continue Reading here" LotusUserGroup has an online meeting Sep 5th on "Justifying the ND8 Upgrade"" »

      for this posting

      On Tuesday, August 14th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Please join in the conversation on LinkedIn -What is the Future of Lotus Notes (some ex-Loti are answering)

    I was sent this link today by a former Loti which made it all the more fun.  It was interesting to scroll down towards the now bottom and see Jim Bernardo, former Lotus Warroom Manager I worked with quite a few times, himself doing some slamming of Lotus in there.  Well then he is at Microsoft the past 7 years in various forms of product management and technical evangelist.

    Here are some excerpts and random answers to get you moving over there to post your thoughts:
    My impression is that companies are slowly but definitely leaving Lotus Notes. (I think Gartner said more or less the same in one of their reports).


    Then:
    The main problem with Notes (and I'm talking e-mail here) is that it is an incredibly ugly and counterintuitive client on top of an excellent, scalable, enterprise-grade server that runs on just about any OS.


    From Jim himself:
    I spent 10 years at Lotus, pre- and post-IBM...the vast majority of the people who had the gray matter around Lotus Notes...the people who built that product...left. They left not because they didn't want to work at IBM, but because IBM didn't want to continue Notes. All the hype notwithstanding, Notes 8 is not your grandfather's Notes, and moreover, is not becoming more "open". It's an Eclipse plug-in that runs atop Lotus Expeditor, the technology formerly known as the IBM Workplace Managed Client. That's either good or bad, depending on your perspective, but it's done absolutely nothing to make Notes more "open". Look where IBM spends their money...is the Notes PKI the default PKI for WebSphere and the rest of the IBM Software platform? Is the NSF the new database for IBM software? Or have they even tried to model the NSF in DB2? Is the Domino Directory IBM's strategic directory product?

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      On Friday, August 10th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Lotus Notes searches higher than Microsoft Exchange searches according to Google Trends (image inside)

    So I was playing around with Trends for a customer and thought this image said some nice things. People are looking for more info on the term "Lotus Notes" than "Microsoft Exchange". Does this mean the Notes 8 market is heating up?

    News volumes are fairly consistent on both sides though.
    Ignore the 'F' flag as that is when McAfee got all the email stuck n Lotus Notes apparently.

    Just looking at the United States for the year 2007 shows the same result

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      On Monday, July 30th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Domino 8 and key rollover, don’t do it just yet

    CA key rollover not recommended in large organizations In Domino 8, administrators can assign a new set of public and private keys to a Domino certificate authority (CA), which are used to certify the keys of OUs, users and servers in that organization. The process of assigning new keys is known as key roll over, and is documented in the Domino Administration Help topic "Certificate authority key rollover."
    The CA key rollover feature has not been tested in Domino customer deployments, so its use is currently not recommended in these environments. Organizations that want to become familiar with the feature are encouraged to use the feature to roll over the keys of a test CA, and then test users in their environment.

    We are testing this on a test domain and found some oddities in who got updates and who did not, plus the variance in Lotus Notes client versions plays into it.

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      On Friday, July 6th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    I am liking the new user choice for taking databases offline

    File - Make Available Offline  is the menu item that tells the user they can take the data with them (local replica).  Then they get a simplified UI with defaults already set that looks like this:

    Image:I am liking the new user choice for taking databases offline

    The best part is that if the database already has a local replica then the menu option is grayed out.  Cool!   Seems to be a very simple way for users to create local replicas of databases.. errrr..  applications
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      On Monday, June 18th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Notes 8 beta 3 integration with Sametime 7.5.1 oddity

    So I loaded up the new beta 3 code and was happy to see everything it offered so far.  First weird thing (outside of the mail template that I am paying with and making sure I am updated right first) is that Sametime 7.5.1 can get installed and even places an icon in the system tray.

    However, there is no click or double-click on this icon.  Only right-click that has status changes and the ability to log off.  If this will not offer the normal client functionality, then I say remove it.  More confusing that I cannot double-click and have it open my contact window or pop it open in the client.
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      On Friday, May 25th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    As I mentioned Fri, new Connectria hosted bloggers to announce

    I went ahead and started the process of adding memory and shortly some new processors and diskspace to the blogger server.  We are growing at a nice clip, not too much at once.
    • Stuart McIntyre will be moving over the QuickrBlog, LotusConnectionsBlog and CollaborationMatters
    • Richard Thomsen started up the midwestik.com blog (I need to get him not to forward and to point it to the server I see). He talks about kayaks and Domino.  Interesting combo.
    • BucktheBug.net is also live from Michael.  While I can't read a thing in it, Babelfish might be a good idea here
    • Carl TYler moved over iminstant.com a while ago

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      On Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Wakoopa reports something interesting about Notes 8 beta 2 Standard

    For those not familiar, Wakoopa shows what software you are running in a social networking way where you can have groups of people or just browse.  It suggests what software you might like to run based on what others that share some of the same with you also run.

    Saying all that, I noticed that Notes 8 does not show as Notes 8 at all (older versions show correctly however).  Here is a screenshot.  It seems that it reports itself as IBM Developer Kit for Windows, Java 2, 0.0.0
    Image:Wakoopa reports something interesting about Notes 8 beta 2 Standard
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      On Thursday, May 17th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Reminder, we are recording IdoNotes Episode 33 live at 2pm EST today, and you can participate!

    You have a couple choices.  You can simply listen in to the stream at http://www.talkshoe.com ( you are able to see all the live shows at that time) or join in interactively.  Interactively will allow you to listen live, chat and toss out things during the show and then with you dialed in over the phone or using IP (like Skype) you will just click to ask a question and I will start taking them in order.

    Setting up an account to log in and participate is free and after doing it a few times now pretty cool.  So head on over today, here is the info once again.

    You have been invited by Chris Miller to join in a live TalkShoe phone conversation and chat. Recorded audio is also available for listening afterwards.
    Listen to or Join the Talkcast: IdoNotes Live
    http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/tscmd/tc/31241

    (join within 15 minutes of start time or anytime after)


    Talkcast information:
    • Talkcast Name: IdoNotes Live
    • Host: IdoNotes - IdoNotes@netscape.net
    • Next episode: IdoNotes Episode 33, Tue, May 15, 2007 02:00 PM EDT
      We talk with Harry Peebles of Lotus about Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM) in Domino 8. Learn about the new features and enhancements of this integral administrative tool. As a bonus, you get to ask questions at the end!
    • Phone number: (724) 444-7444
    • Talkcast ID: 31241
    • PIN: The phone number or 10-digit PIN you signed up with

      for this posting

      On Tuesday, May 15th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Announcement: IdoNotes Episode 33 will be podcasted live for you to ask questions - interview with Lotus on DDM in Domino 8 on May 15th 2pm EST

    Join me and Harry Peebles of Lotus, as we talk live about Domino Domain Monitoring inside of Domino 8.  Learn about the new enhancements, changes and features.  Then save your questions for a live Q&A at the end that will be part of the recorded podcast.

    You have been invited by Chris Miller to join in a live TalkShoe phone conversation and chat. Recorded audio is also available for listening.
    Listen to or Join the Talkcast: IdoNotes Live
    http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/tscmd/tc/31241

    (join within 15 minutes of start time or anytime after)


    Talkcast information:
    • Talkcast Name: IdoNotes Live
    • Host: IdoNotes - IdoNotes@netscape.net
    • Next episode: IdoNotes Episode 33, Tue, May 15, 2007 02:00 PM EDT
      We talk with Harry Peebles of Lotus about Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM) in Domino 8. Learn about the new features and enhancements of this integral administrative tool. As a bonus, you get to ask questions at the end!
    • Phone number: (724) 444-7444
    • Talkcast ID: 31241
    • PIN: The phone number or 10-digit PIN you signed up with
    • Other future episodes: Future episodes not scheduled

      for this posting

      On Thursday, May 10th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Collaboration History menu item in Notes 8 client

    I was playing around with message recall (another blog topic) and came across the link for Activities you and the person are involved in and also Collaboration History.  This was a quick and cool way to see all mail that a particular email address (or Notes person) is part of.  Here is an image of an Internet person:

    Image:Collaboration History menu item in Notes 8 client

    I went ahead and did this to a Notes person name and got calendar entries, emails between us and even ones we were both copied on.  Now that is making workflow easier in my eyes.
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      On Friday, April 20th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Update on the Blackberry and Domino 8 posting I made

    An excerpt from the pdf found
    QUOTE FROM THE PDF

    BlackBerry servers may crash unexpectedly when the server Name and Address Book (NAB) is upgraded to the new Notes/Domino 8 design or when users switch to the mail8 template. On your server console, you may see an error similar to the following:
    Process E:\domino\nBES.EXE (4172/0x104C) has terminated abnormally
    In addition, NSD may or may not activate. In either case, the BES task is not functioning, and BlackBerry users will be unable to receive mail.
    Workaround Administrators should upgrade to the latest BES release that has Domino 8 support.


    It's page 18 and 19.


    Read the pdf right here

      for this posting

      On Monday, April 9th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Blackberry and Domino 8 beta issues

    If you are running Blackberry server version 4.0.x or something below 4.1.3 (so far in our testing) and then load the Notes 8 client or server and change your mail template you make the BES server go boom over and over and over.  We had a mail template modified to Domino 8 and then the BES 4.1.0 server hit it and it crashed continuously for some time until we found it.  Our internal server is 4.1.3 and we have had no issues with the Domino 8 templates.

    However!  RIM states no support of Domino 8 in any fashion at this time so run at your own risk
      for this posting

      On Friday, April 6th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Rumors of delayed Vista support for Lotus Notes 7 and older, yet technotes say otherwise

    I have not checked into the validity of this statement in the article, but found it in conflict with a statement from Lotus under technote #1252343 for version 7.0.2.
    IBM has also just said that they have placed Vista certification efforts for its current Lotus Notes products on the back burner as they are working hard on ensuring that the Lotus Notes 8 Suite is fully compatible with Windows Vista.


    The technote says Lotus does support Vista in 7.0.2 and future 7.0.3 and 8.0 will be fully tested. (no this does not include 64-bit versions of Vista though)
      for this posting

      On Monday, March 26th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

    Having just said I liked the icons, now it seems we have a DST bug in the Notes 8 beta

    I was using the nice slide out calendar "Day At-A-Glance" part of the Standard client.  Now the usual day view was great but the Summary list gave an issue.  All was an hour off as shown in this image.  Plus no icons like the other view.
    Image:Having just said I liked the icons, now it seems we have a DST bug in the Notes 8 beta
    Hmmm, something is amiss here
      for this posting

      On Thursday, March 22nd, 2007   by Chris Miller