Lotus made a huge announcement after the last Sys Admin Tips Newsletter was published. They, once again, announced an attempt at Lotus Notes Mail Hosting in the IBM computer cloud. The press releases state that the minimum amount of users is currently 1,000, at the entry-level cost of $10 per user per month. This is quite a high price that does not include licenses or clustering, and is only for Notes clients (not Web clients. This is only the entry level offering, and licenses will be available for purchase at a later date.

Why do I bring this up? There are Lotus Business Partners that have been providing this same service for years with much smaller fanfare, but with an incredible track record of happy customers. I am speaking about numerous partners here, both small and large (disclaimer: I do fit into this category, but hey, this is the editorial section). So what does IBM bring to the table that is any different? IBM's name is the key. We are yet to see the other benefits, but I am highly curious. I would expect this to be linked to Lotus Bluehouse (covered in October 2008 Sys Admin Tips Newsletter), Lotus Foundations, and even at some point Lotus Connections. The announcement already made mention of the new Lotus Protector series for Spam and virus filtering.

Anytime that you look at moving all or portions of your infrastructure to an outside, hosted solution, remember that the solution is now an extension of your network. The same security, policies, and procedures should be allowed and followed. With the sheer size of IBM, I am waiting to see how flexible they are in this solution to meet all the needs for organizations of every size and design. Wrap all of this in their cost model, shake well, and see what tumbles out.

I only wish that the SuperNTF code frenzy could help you with the reader issues I tackle this month. From SSL integration on a tunneled Sametime server, to lost OUs on older versions of Domino that also need the entire Sametime buddylist changes, we have it all.

You can always reach me in my VGS (Virtual Gratification Syndrome) world via Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook, FriendFeed, Tumblr, GTalk, AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, Sametime, Greenhouse, Paxos, BleedYellow, smoke signal, carrier pigeon, my podcasts, or my blog for your questions, comments, and ideas. Notice that voicemail isn't on that list? If those are not enough, I can name another 200 ways.

-- Chris Miller Sys Admin Tips Newsletter
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http://www.IdoNotes.com

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QUESTION: Hi Chris,

I have attended your sessions at Lotusphere, ILUG, and The VIEW, and I am sure you have hundreds of queries in your inbox each day but thought I would try as a last resort.

I work in the finance industry and we have just implemented internal and external ST servers for meeting services. The problem is that our security group wants the external service to run across HTTPS. I have enabled the Domino service for SSL, but I understand that you cannot enable ST to run its meeting services across HTTPS.

Technote

This proves a major problem for us and basically means that we are likely to replace the ST servers with the more expensive hosted service of WebEx. 

I was hoping that you might be able to offer some advice or guidance, or have I hit a dead end?

Yours hopefully,
James

ANSWER: James,

Actually, I have heard this one before, and there is some conflicting information. The first thing to point out is that the technote you specify is for a tunneled Sametime server attempting to use SSL also. This gets quite confusing. Here is another bit from the Sametime Information Center I want you to take a look at; it describes Sametime meetings and SSL in better detail.

The basics start with enabling the Domino server for SSL, but the tunneling is getting in the way. Can you enable the server for SSL without the tunneling on the outside meeting server?

Chris

While I always admit I am not a developer, I do sometimes need a tool or two in a pinch. Scouring the Web for agents, views, and snippets of code is never fun. Twitter and the like have changed that, and now I can blast a request to thousands of people. But Kevin Pettitt of http://www.lotusguru.com fame has stepped up to make one snappy little awesome Swiss Army-style NTF — if I can use that term. Here is an excerpt from the project page on OpenNTF:

"SuperNTF is a Notes Client application framework built from the ground up with the goal of making development best practices easy for even novice Notes developers. The template allows developers to easily take advantage of tricky Notes features such as soft deletions, integrated help, and document locking, as well as advanced customizations like user activity and field change tracking, configuration, error logging, and exporting.

Several other OpenNTF projects and code bin submissions were used in the construction of SuperNTF, making this project a true 'child of OpenNTF.' Some of the code was also taken from or inspired by some of the databases and templates that ship with Notes, including DDM (Domino Domain Monitoring), Notes Help, and Mail."

So I downloaded SuperNTF, read some of the reviews, and generally peeked under the covers. But I can do it no justice! Kevin has kindly shared his slides from ILUG2008 on SlideShare at the this link. Go look at the slides, register at OpenNTF, download this file, and get your code on.

The Web address to take you directly to the project is here.

LOTUS USER GROUP: GOOGLE SEARCH FOR LOTUS NOTES Tired of wasting time searching for content in Lotus Notes? With Google's universal search, you can find all information within your company — including all Lotus Notes/Domino content — through a single search box. Want to learn more? View the recorded presentation from the August LotusUserGroup.org online virtual User Group Meeting on: An overview of universal search A live demo of the Lotus Notes connector Real examples of users who have improved productivity Live Q&A to answer technical questions

The presentation is free to LotusUserGroup.org members. Watch it today!

TWO NEW CASE STUDIES

This month, we have two new case studies on companies that have implemented an array of IBM solutions. You can use these case studies, and the past case studies IBM has provided us, to get ideas for your own environment and applications, or to support your company's use of Lotus software products. Case studies are a great tool for "selling" Notes inside your organization (or protecting Notes when someone is trying to sell something else). Below are abstracts of the newest case studies and links to the complete list of all the past case studies.

Sirius Computer Solutions — Sirius Computer Solutions, a nationwide IT solutions provider, improved costs after replacing an existing voice telecom system with a new IP telephony solution from IBM and 3Com Corporation. Solutions implemented include: Lotus Sametime, Lotus Domino, Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, System i, and Linux.

Trovus — To eliminate document management bottlenecks and foster collaboration among staff, Trovus chose IBM Lotus Quickr to supplant email for collaborative document creation and management with version control. Now, staff can co-author proposals faster and more effectively while leveraging input from all team members; clients can be made part of the proposal process while gaining insight into a new way of working; the quality of proposals has improved; co-development with clients increases the likelihood of closing deals; and integration of Lotus Quickr with popular desktop software allows users to continue working with the tools they know. Lotus solutions implemented include: Lotus Quickr.

Check out these case studies, and scores more, at our Case Studies page.

LOGGING AND MONITORING YOUR BLACKBERRY ENTERPRISE SERVER

Don't miss our November Virtual User Group Meeting! As with all our online Virtual User Group Meetings, the November 17 meeting will consist of an online presentation, followed up by a week of online discussion on the topic, and moderated by the presenter.

The presentation will be given by Gabriella Davis, Technical Director for The Turtle Group. Gabriella will start the presentation at 12:00 noon Eastern (GMT -5) on November 17, 2008.

Join us for this online presentation and:

• Understand how to best monitor each BES service
• Discover the meaning of common Domino console commands you are seeing
• Learn how to configure BES logging and enhanced logging for specific services
• Generate revealing statistics and perform insightful log analysis with the BES Resource Kit

Then, follow up the presentation by participating in the online discussion forum that same week, moderated by Gabriella. In the forum you can ask additional questions, provide feedback on the presentation, or share your knowledge and experience on the topic with the rest of the Lotus community.

The presentation if free, but requires pre-registration. Register today!

This Virtual User Group Meeting is made possible by BoxTone and Neverfail.

UPCOMING EVENTS & USER GROUP MEETINGS

Check out the events listings on LotusUserGroup.org's home page for a list of upcoming conferences, seminars, user group meetings, online events, and more.

Some highlights are:

Logging and Monitoring Your BES

Lotusphere 2009

THE VIEW Admin2009

THE VIEW Lotus Developer2009

Check out all the listings!

Unfortunately this is not possible with current security policies. While it would be a nice feature, at this time it remains a feature request for a later version of Domino.

QUESTION: Hi Chris,

I have spoken to you before about our lost OU project, but now we're finally progressing on it. However, we have hit a roadblock.

To refresh your memory, we have a project to move about 500 users from an old, lost OU certifier to a newer (existing) OU.

Because we are essentially renaming users on the old certifier to the new cert OU, our current Sametime 6.5.1 clients do not recognize this change in the Domino directory through AdminP. The result is that users can no longer see users who were renamed to the new OU on their user lists.

Questions:

• Would Sametime 8.0.x solve this issue? I heard the AdminP process can change buddy lists on Sametime 8.0.x servers/clients.



• From what I have learned, we will need to use the Domino directory as the primary directory in Sametime for this to work — is that correct?



• If we choose to use the Domino directory in Sametime 8.0.x, what functions are we giving up?



• Can we build the new Sametime environment using the Domino Directory first, then change to LDAP after all the recerts are completed?

Thanks for your time and advice!

Regards,
Jerry

ANSWER: Wow, Jerry, that is a lot. Let's walk through it, last question first:

If you are going to have to go through the process to fix all of the names in vpuserinfo.nsf anyway, I would change to LDAP as you do the renames. Why go through the headache twice? A normal Domino Directory change to LDAP is painful enough. Just being on Sametime 8.0 can assist in some ways, but you have another issue with losing access to the previous certifier. This changes the game entirely. You have to settle on how you are performing the user OU changes first.

If you leave it at the Domino Directory, you are simply giving up integration across the Lotus extended product line. LDAP is required with Quickr and Lotus Connections for full integration. If you never plan on using these you are not giving up anything.

I would recommend looking at the free tool that Epilio released for user management in buddylists. You can find the BuddyList Control by clicking here.

Chris