As Lotusphere 2010 quickly approaches, people are in a scramble to register early to save money, book hotels to make sure they are close to the action, and maybe even update certification. Saving money is easy. Become a LotusUserGroup.org member and get a cheaper rate offer that lasts longer than the one on Lotusphere.com itself — an extra $100 off just for signing up for this newsletter and LotusUserGroup, for free. Finding a hotel is an entirely different matter. It is a dance between the online system offered for the conference and your own hunting online through Disney for the best deal.

Certification is something Lotus has taken interest in and even made a contest out of. You can see all the details here on the Lotusphere blog. Yet I have a small issue with the way this is being offered. While I made some comments on the posting itself, I imagined my faithful readers would want to read a bit more.

To me, certification should not in any way be a contest to see who got their certification when. Nor is it a race to see who has the most certifications or the most recent. It is a personal decision to express your skills and knowledge in anything you do that offers a certification service. It takes effort outside of your daily job to study, practice, and understand even the complexities your own company does not have in its environment. People constantly comment how exams cover areas they never see in their daily job. The test is supposed to be encompassing of the entire software, not just what you might see daily.

The blog posting announces how Lotus will recognize “Top Achievers.” Those who pass the Domino 8.5 certification exam between October 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009 with a score of 95% or higher will receive a congratulatory email from the IBM Lotus Certification Program Manager. The email will also request permission to publish the Top Achiever’s name on the Lotus Top Achievers Recognition site on ibm.com. My opinion is that this should be open to everyone certified in Domino 8.5 until Lotusphere. Are those getting certified during these three months more notable than the people who were able to do it right away when 8.5 was released? What about the person who just started studying and wasn’t able to get it done before December 31? I think my overall opinion is that certification should not be a contest. It is a way to show expertise through knowledge or skill and to be recognized by others. This is something that should be mopped up quickly by those that created the recognition.

While you study vigorously for your certification exam so you can see your name on the magic Web site just in the nick of time, take the time to read this issue and hear all about the possibility of transaction logging in the Notes client, winning the fight to go to Lotusphere, Google and hostname-change antics, and signing plug-ins for deployment.

You can always reach me in my VGS (Virtual Gratification Syndrome) world via Twitter, FriendFeed (now bought by Facebook), Pownce, Facebook, Diigo, 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
IdoNotes on Twitter
IdoNotes@IdoNotes.com
www.idonotes.com

QUESTION: Chris!

I just came across some notes that I took while sitting in one of your lectures last year. You had mentioned that you had transactional logging running on your laptop. I took the notes because I wanted to ask you how to do it. Did you just copy the translog entries into a notes.ini and change the location to something that works on your PC? I don't want to screw up my machine if I can avoid it and plagiarizing what you did is easier than trying it myself.

Lemme know,

Victor

ANSWER: Victor, I had to go back to 2005 for the actual listing, but here it is!

Transaction logging in the client? You bet!

Translog_AutoFixup=1
Translog_UseAll=0
Translog_Style=0
Translog_Performance=1
Translog_Status=1
Translog_MaxSize=500
Translog_Path=f:\translog\

Chris

You ask each year around this time, hoping to push your bosses over the edge to send you to Lotusphere. You use the lure of the early discount pricing. You send them numerous blog postings and announcements on all the technical information being shared there. You leave hints on their desks, email, phone messages, and even IM clients. Yet you still have to make a business case to them that feels more like a firing squad than an appeal to attend the largest conference on the software that runs your enterprise.

Our own contributor to the weekly newsletter, Warren Elsmore, actually created a document a few years ago that stands true today. While you will need to update pricing, discounts dates, and the other information that changes over time, the basics of what Lotusphere can offer stands the same. You can grab the document for editing right here!

One of the key items to note is the direct access to the actual writers of the Lotus code and top business partners who can answer pretty much any question you have regarding deployment, errors, and planning. Highlight the labs, Gurupalooza and Ask the Developers. Make the effort to get your tired butt up for the early morning Birds-of-a-Feather discussions, where people with your exact questions and problems get together in roundtable format.

Warren does a nice job of dedicating an entire section to the retraining and presentations you offer to give when you return. I have seen many companies require this of the employee they send to Lotusphere. Once there, you are expected to gain some valuable knowledge to share with the team or management. Many of the presentations will be online and ready for you to download in pdf format. Some presenters will also have optional attachments for white papers or sample databases with code. If there isn't, do not be afraid to email the presenter for further information. Speakers are there to teach and share knowledge. Utilize them! I love getting follow-up emails after any seminar or conference. It lets me know people want to see my content or maybe I didn't explain something enough.

If you are in the position to fight for a place at Lotusphere, make sure you have what you need to make the argument. This pdf is a great start. Oh, and make sure you change the version numbers also, unless you are really just migrating to Domino 7.

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I get many emails regarding this common problem I see in the forums. When working with the Sametime Gateway, connection to Google is often lost or interrupted. The majority of the time Google has changed a hostname and your company is only allowing connections to specific hosts.

Lotus does a good job of notifying you when they find out, so watch the technotes carefully. The most recent technote (#1408448) not only shows the hostname changes to talkz.1.google.com but also recommends applying the latest patch of HF3 to the Sametime Gateway 8.0.2 version.

QUESTION: Hi Chris,

I have attended your session on Plug-in deployment in Admin2009 conference.

Our client wants to deploy a plug-in that contains the JAR files that are not signed. We added the widget that refers the update site in the desktop policy and added that policy for test users. When the test user connects to the server, they are getting a window that says this plug-in is not signed do you want to install or not.

We heard that if we sign the JAR files we do not get that window. Is that true? If so would like to know how to sign the JAR files.

I would request you to let us know how does domino recognizes that signed authorities, do we need to include or change any file on user's machine? Which CA (certification authority) we need to use to sign the JAR files?

Also, want to know how to troubleshoot if a user says that they did not get the Plug-in deployed to their machines even though it's been set in the policy and their person document.

I apologize if I'm asking anything immaturely in this concept. I'm a developer and have very minimum knowledge in using CA.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Sri

ANSWER: Sri,

Thanks for being at one of my sessions! There is an excellent article I hunted down for you in the online InfoCenter for the Domino Administrator in 8.x titled "Signing custom or third-party features and plug-ins for install and update." It covers this in-depth and walks through all the required portions. Here is an excerpt followed by a link right to the article:

"Administrative trust defaults can be pushed to clients using Domino policy settings in the 'Administrative trust defaults' section on the security policy document's Keys and Certificates tab. Use this policy option to specify your specific administrative trust defaults for use during either Notes install or upgrade or client plug-in deployment to an existing Notes installation."

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