LotusUserGroup.org Group Blog

How much Governance is "just enough" for Lotus Notes?

Lisa Badcock — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Hello

This is a question I would like to pose to the user group is possible.

Both Notes and corporate IT have evolved rapidly over the past two decades. Notes has become a full-fledged, and dare we say, industrial strength development platform. IT has evolved from back-office automation and desktop productivity to the superhighway of business processes. And with IT maturity has come increased responsibility to align IT with corporate objectives and to ensure corporate security, system reliability, and regulatory compliance. Now many organizations find themselves at a crossroads: bring Notes development into the IT fold, governed by the same policies and practices as other development platforms, or abandon Notes and face the costs and pain of excising and replacing potentially hundreds of Notes applications operating in every corner of the company.

Your opinions and views on this would be very welcomed.

Many thanks

Lisa

SuperNTF - calling for beta testers

Jess Stratton — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500

If you've needed an excuse to check out the weekly Topic Forums here at LotusUserGroup.org, Kevin Pettitt of LotusGuru.com has given you a good one.

He's placed a download link to the latest version of his SuperNTF template and has asked for beta testers.

--> Get the beta of SuperNTF from the LUG Topic Forums!

(From OpenNTF) - SuperNTF is a Notes Client framework to make development easy for novice developers. It contains modules for tasks such as configuring the Help file for a database, exporting, soft deletions, user activity, and more.

Lotus product Wiki's and a (finally) download repository

Jess Stratton — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500

There is a silence in the air... apparently last week was brought to us by the letter I - (iPhone, ILUG). The dust is settling. Twitter is relaxing. Everyone take a deep breath.

Now! Onto the fun stuff. Ed Brill is happy to announce eight new Lotus product Wiki's:

Here's a link to the IBM Lotus Wiki list of the eight, so you can bookmark it directly.

On another new note, Yancy Lent has decided that our community has too many downloads - and has done something about it. He's created a "Downloads" page on Planet Lotus to directly link to downloads on other sites (think tucows, or downloads.com).

Check the downloads page for direct links (tucows-style) to sidebar widgets, product trials, conference session slides and corresponding material, templates, etc. I'd love to see direct links to the top downloads from OpenNTF.org, such as Blogsphere, Ext.nd, or whichever seem to be the most searched for there.

I'd also love to see direct links to all the end-user related applications on OpenNTF. I know I have a few up there. Lots of conversation lately has been how to drive end-user traffic to the Lotus community; this could be a great start.

On a side note, Yancy has also illustrated how it's a great idea to go over your web site's stats and search terms to give your users what they are looking for. According to him, over the past 30 days, the phrase "download" is the most searched-for term on PlanetLotus.org. My guess is that term skyrockets a few weeks after each conference.

Now. Time to dust off my presentations and downloads and get them up there. I have to find them first. To quote Ben Poole, who introduced me to this great phrase, "Gah!"

$$Return Open in New Window

Stephen D Gainer — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Hello all,

I have a $$Return field on a form that redirects user's to different web sites, depending on their choices. This works just fine. My question is, is it possible to have the URL's open in a new window? Currently, they just open in the current window and I would like my page to stay open in their browser when they go to a different URL.

My code looks like this:

I have a field called "FieldRedirect" that is hidden. Depending on what the user clicks on, I use JavaScript to change the value of this field to 1, 2, 3, etc. Then in my $$Return field, I have this:

redirect := @GetField("FieldRedirect");

@If(redirect="1"; "[http://www.someurl1.com]";redirect="2"; "[http://www.someurl2.com]"........etc.

Again, this works just fine, I would just like the url's to open in a new window. Does anyone have any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Stephen

Notes Developer needed for contract work

Jackie Vollmer — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

We are a manufacturing company located in Batavia, NY, which is between Buffalo, NY and Rochester, NY. We are looking for a contract Notes Developer. I have been developing myself for about 3 years, but we would like some additional help as I am the only Admin/Developer on staff. We are looking for one who has experience in converting client apps to web apps, ODBC to our legacy AS400, and general notes experience. This person would work side-by-side with me 4 days a week, in-house, for approximately 6-8 months. This person would have more experience than I and teach me everything they know about development. Interested applicants can reach me at jvollmer@graham-mfg.com or via phone at 585-343-2216 x 410 to set up an interview.

IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5 Public Beta Now Available

Jess Stratton — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I go to sleep on Thursday and all is well.... and then on Friday IBMLOTUSNOTES8.5BETAISAVAILABLEOMG!!?!

In what is I think the most streamlined place to announce it ever, IBM has released in directly in the Public Beta forums on LDD. Because it's a forum, we get a great easy to read thread containing:

1. A link to the download;
2. A brief list of "what's new";
3. Where to find documentation.

Apparently some users have been having trouble with the download, if you are among them, the general consensus seems to be to just keep trying and eventually you will get through.

If you are among the early downloaders/adopters, please let us know your first impressions, thoughts, etc.

Go get it! --> IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 Public Beta

Jess

It's 3AM. Do you know where your hard disk space is?

Jess Stratton — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I had fun the other day. I happened to notice a few FT Indexes on databases that had swelled to 1.5-2Gigs per database. The databases themselves were only about 80-200M, yet they all had attachments. These attachments were in certain fields in certain documents, and upon asking, the database users never needed to search on them, only on the actual database fields.

I asked the Windows server admin to print out a list of the entire "Data" directory, so I could see the entire list of directories that ended in '.ft', and how big they all were. It turns out the old Domino administrator had just turned on all the settings when creating FT indexes for the databases that needed them.

This is a common and easy mistake to make, but a costly one. And it's sneaky! It's hard to imagine at the time what a huge impact ONE little checkbox setting can make.

One day later, I had all the databases that did not require indexed attachments under control, and back down to a respectable size.

Another easy mistake to make also cost us quite a bit of disk space. The administrator had also later disabled the Domain Indexer task on the server document as it was unnecessary and unused. However, you also have to go in and delete "ftdomain.di" from the Data directory. There was 14G of unused index sitting there for years, getting backed up every night.

When all was said and done, after one day, we had reclaimed 40-50G on the servers. It was like CHRISTMAS, I swear. It's the little things in life that make you happy. Keeping servers lean, mean, and orderly is one of them.

Get rid of those CD to MIME Conversion entries in Log.nsf

Jess Stratton — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

This is an oldie, yet continues to plague log files of the world over! I figured I'd spread the love as I see it regularly on Domino servers (much to the annoyance of their administrators!)

Begin CD to MIME Conversion (Process: Router <message number>

As if it wan't bad enough that the log file told us when it BEGAN, it then had to create a whole seperate entry to tell us when it ended. Sigh.

These notifications can be removed by the following Notes.ini parameter:

Converter_Log_Level=10

The router must be restarted for this parameter to take affect. For more information, read the IBM Technote, How to disable logging when a message is converted.

Ah. The log looks so much better now.

Today's scheduled webcast

Ruth Inman — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I managed to miss the "rescheduled webcast" today, as I had another appt. Any idea if that one will be done Again?? This one was originally from Apr 14 I believe...

By the way, how do you upload an image?

Exclusive Interview — New Lotus GM Bob Picciano reaches out to Lotus community

Jess Stratton — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500

From the Content Spotlight on the home page of LotusUserGroup.org:

New IBM Lotus General Manager, Bob Picciano, spent some time with Debbie Lynd of LotusUserGroup.org in his first interview to the Lotus community. Listen to this podcast to find out how Bob’s 21 years with IBM has prepared him for the challenge at Lotus. Get insight into Bob’s take of the Lotus brand and what’s in store to continue the sales growth and keep IBM Lotus on top of the collaboration market. Hear about Bob’s passion for the customer, plans for marketing outreach, and how Lotus will continue to offer greater business value than the competition. Plus, find out why "yellow is the new green", and a lot more. Spend a few minutes and listen to this engaging interview packed with insight from the new man at the helm of the IBM Lotus Brand. You’ll be glad that you did.

Go get it! --> Exclusive Interview — New Lotus GM Bob Picciano reaches out to Lotus community