Steve's Lotus Land

The issue:

This is an idea I had, it would be nice if IBM could do add this to their list of enhancements for the next release.  The other day I was updating one of the polices on the server, all of the policies are signed by a specific user because that what is allowed in the ECL etc, etc.  In order to make a change and sign the policy I have to be sure to close out of my Notes client before switching ID's in the Domino Administrator client.  If I don't and I just switch ID's, my client goes all wacky, and when I switch back to my user Sametime wont log in as it has reset the login credentials as well as wiped out the server path in Sametime, it's like I'm a brand new user.  So any time I have to make a change to policy, I have to close out of everything that I'm doing just so I can "Resign" the policy.

My Idea:

On the action menu the option to Resign the policy, could it ask, who do you want to sign this policy as?  Then I could pick the ID file and/or user name that needs to sign the policy, type in that ID's password, and job done.  All the while staying logged into my Lotus Notes and all of the apps I have open within it.  Why does it have to be so cumbersome just to sign a policy?

Please give me your thoughs on this.

This is an issue that has been frustrating me since moving to version 8.  I have a nice corporate intranet page that I set as everyones default home page.  I used to do this by modifying the mail templates Post Open code to refresh the design of their local bookmarks with my modified copy on the server.  The modified bookmarks file had a database or "application" link in the About this Database document.  I then set the bookmark.ntf to launch the first doclink in the "About application".   

This used to work great in versions prior to 8.  During the testing phases of 8 I noticed that if the Bookmarks was opened from the workspace this feature worked as expected.  However, if the Bookmarks was already the default home page, it would not launch the doclink, it would still force the "Basic" welcome screen and then the icon on the workspace for the Application being launched by the doclink would become unuseable.  If I double clicked that app, nothing would happen, it wouldn't launch.  If I tried to right click it and choose removed from workspace, I would get a message that the database is in use.

I even played around with other options for the Launch property too.  There was a new one with 8 for Launch as Composite App.  So, I made my app into a composite app, added it to the bookmarks template, set it launch as a composite app, and guess what, another let down.  It did the same exact thing as launching the first doc link.  It would work fine if opened from the workspace, but if set as the default home page, it would revert back to the "Basic" welcome page and lock out the app that I was trying to launch.

I also noticed that the link for Default Home Page under "Favorite Bookmarks", always opens the default basic Welcome page regarless of what was set, even if it is set manually.

So as a work around I've had to modify the bookmark templates -Welcome- framset to be a frameset that points to the intranet database I have.  This works, however I'd like to know why the functionality built into Lotus Notes does not seem to work as expected?

Also, why isn't there a function to call in Lotus Script that does the same thing as right clicking a bookmark and choosing "Set Bookmark as Default Homepage".  If there was it would solve a lot of issues for me.  Does anyone out there know if this exists or if there is a way to proramatically set the default home page?

It seems that with version 8, Lotus made the last couple of items in the open button list non editable.  See image below, everything below the red line does not show up in the outline "UserBookmarkOrder" like everything else.  Are these items just part of the new eclipse client, can they not be changed?

I've been noticing some unpleasant things with my Domino Server after upgrading to the latest version of Black Berry Enterprise Server.

Issue:  After the latest version was installed the Domino server would hang after a reboot.  It would get stuck at Applying Computer Settings.

Troubleshooting: I noticed that there were three Blackberry services stuck on "starting".  I was able to eventually get logged in via safe mode and set these three services to "Manual".  After a reboot the server did not hang anymore, it logged right in.

Resolution: There are some dependencies that need to be set on the three services that hang.  I did fin a Blackberry knowledge base article on how to do this.  The services are;

BlackBerry Dispatcher

BlackBerry Policy Service

BlackBerry Synchronization Service 

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/dynamickc.do?externalId=KB03806&sliceId=SAL_Public&command=show&forward=nonthreadedKC&kcId=KB03806

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/dynamickc.do?externalId=KB03806&sliceId=SAL_Public&command=show&forward=nonthreadedKC&kcId=KB03806

Additional Notes:  

If the above does not solve the issue then check to see if patch MS06-071 is installed on the server.  This patch can also cause these symptoms.  BlackBerry recomends the following.  Also be sure if you are using 4.16 to install the Maintenance Release 2, the MR2 fixes a lot of problems.

Resolution: From BlackBerrys KB, DOC ID KB11013, created on 12-2-2008

1. Uninstall all versions of MSXML, including patches

2. Delete msxml4.dll from C:\WINDOWS\System32

3. Reboot (I set all of the services to manual including Lotus, so the server wouldn't hang)

4. Install MSXML 4.0 SP2 - located in the Tools folder of the extracted install files for BES

5. Reboot

After the final reboot I set all of the services back to Automatic, including domino and then did another reboot.

Issue: When trying to view my Samtime contacts list using Domino Web Access, version 8.0.1, I received an error message Bad HTTP status:404.

Cause: First refer to the IBM tech note, reference number 1317895.  It is a great trouble shooting document and may resolve this issue if something is not configured properly.  However I had everyting configured properly and still got this error message.

Resolution: I had reviewed my change log to see what had changed on the server, the last change was an upgrade to the Blackberry Enterprise Server software.  It looks like BES decided to add the following line to the NOTES.INI, HTTPDisableJVM=1, this does exactly what you might expect, it disabled the built in Domino JVM engine becuase BES wants to use it's own.  This causes an issue for the Sametime functionality built into the DWA8 template because it relies on the Domino JVM to be running for the servlets to properly load.  I was able to use the all sametime functionality except for showing the contact list and anything else that required java, such as spell checker.

Change the HTTPDisableJVM=1 from the NOTES.INI to HTTPDisableJVM=0.  I then had to run a "tell HTTP restart", after that all of the sametime functionality worked, including the show contacts list.

Other Thoughts:

This feature was added to allow HTML formated messages to be sent directly to Blackberry phones.  The setting HTTPDisableJVM=1, according to Blackberry, saves about 40MB of RAM on the server.  If you change it to the "0" value as I did you may see a little bit more memory being chewed up on the server.

If anyone out there is new to Notes 8 and the RSS feature, this might be a helpful tip.  This is of course documented in the Lotus Notes Online help, but who reads those :).  If your Notes server does not allow anonymous connections, you'll need to take advantage of the "Accounts" section in the personal address book.  You can set a user name and password to connect to a secured Notes databases.  This will allow the built in RSS feed reader to connect to your Notes database and grab the RSS content.  On the "Accounts" screen it typically needs the http or https address of where the notes database is located (https://notes.yourcompany.com/DBNAme/ViewthathasRSS), the password should be your internet password.  I think that there is a server policy for this too, incase you need to roll out an account to a large number of users.

I came accross an odd issue the other day with one of our users.  If you open the built-in Sametime client in a new window (undock from the side bar), use the screen capture tool, the File and Edit menu disapears.  Once Sametime is re-docked, use the capture tool again, hmmm the File and Edit menu are there now.  What's up with that?

After rolling out Lotus Notes 8.0.1 to all of our clients we began to get some phone calls from our users about Lotus Notes crashing several times a day.  After many hours of research and trouble shooting, I found that McAfee Antivirus (enterprise version 8.5) installs a scan component as a menu item for Lotus Notes.  I also found an article on McAfee's web site stating that Lotus Notes 8 would not be supported until their next release 8.7.  If you are using McAfee and have rolled out Lotus 8 be sure to uninstall the McAfee components.  I used Add/Remove and selected Change, deselected the Lotus Notes Scanner option, next through the wizzard.  After the uninstall finished, I removed the six McAfee files from the C:\Program Files\lotus\notes directory.  After completing this process, Lotus Notes 8 ran without an issue on every machine.

NCDAEMON.EXE

NCEXTMGR.DLL

NCMENU.DLL

NCSCAN.DLL

NCTRACE.DLL

NCINSTALL.DLL

Locate the Notes.INI in the same directory as above (C:\Program Files\lotus\notes)

Locate the Notes.INI in the same directory as above (C:\Program Files\lotus\notes)

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

** BE VERY CAREFUL ** ONLY REMOVE THE LINES BELOW **

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

Double click the Notes.ini, click on edit, click find, type in AddIn.

this will jump you down to the area where these two lines are located

they are usually together

AddInMenus=NCMenu

EXTMGR_ADDINS=NCExtMgr

Has anyone else noticed the odd printing issue in Lotus Notes 8.0.1? 

Case # 1:

If you open an email (double click, not in preview pane) that has HTML content then try to print it, you get a default windows dialog box, not the typical Lotus Notes print dialog. 

Case # 2:

If you try to print that same message, this time viewed from the preview pane, you'll get the Lotus Notes print dialog. 

I found a preference under the Basic Notes Client Config called "Disable embedded browser for MIME mail".  If you enable this setting then Case # 1 will display the correct print dialog but then the email does not display properly due to the lack of loading the HTML properly.  I've just continued to print from the preview pane.