CrashTestChix

I blogged earlier this week about our implementation of Lotus Notes Traveler.  We sent around an notice today to all faculty/staff regarding the availability of Traveler in the university’s daily electronic newsletter. 

For a Friday, and the last day of exams, we’ve added eight (twelve as of last check) new users.  Or let me rephrase that.  They added themselves, with almost no interaction from the support staff.  Which is just goodness all around wouldn’t you say?!  We’re hoping that the faculty and staff will find this a useful tool over the university’s two week winter break.

Our internal marketing team (thanks to Gary Garbett and Sam Kennedy) also came up with a super graphic for use on the web page which I’d like to share here!   

We've started to deploy the 8.5 FP1 for the Notes client.  Here are a couple of "gotchas" we ran into:

• If the 8.5 FP1 client install fails, a folder called "RCH Backup" is created.  This folder is not deleted in the install failure cleanup process.  Failure to delete this folder will prevent a clean re-install of the 8.5 FP1. 
  


• If you are installing 8.5 FP1 for Notes Standard - confirm that the Notes.ini contains InstallMode=1.  If this setting does not exist in the Notes.ini, the current version is assumed to be Notes Basic for the Fix Pack. 

Check out the new utility available from Lotus Support for repairing repeating calendar events in the Notes 8.5 client.  See technote 1326680

Our users have not encountered issues with repeating events (knock on wood), but in case you have, here's something to help you out!

I haven't posted a blog entry in some time.  As a university, we schedule many technology maintenance projects for the May through August time frame when fewer students and faculty are on campus. On my plate this summer has been the deployment of Google Apps for Education to our incoming freshmen class, the continued roll-out of Notes 8.5 to our faculty and staff, and the upgrade of several servers to Domino 8.5. 

The Google Apps for Education deployment has been an interesting experience needless to say.  Google recommends a six week time period from start to finish.  We were able to deploy two weeks early.  Thanks go to some very able programming staff here who were able to integrate the Google API and Postini directory process with our current LDAP account create process.  We continued to maintain student entries within the Domino Directory so that faculty/staff will be able to email students using Notes.

A important reminder for those who might be reading this - Google Apps for Education - is free to universities.  FREE.  And students, for the most part, LOVE Google.  Or at least Google is that system with which they are most familiar (that is my theory regarding their apparent affection for Google).  We have implemented single sign-on with the SAML API that works with our Central Authentication System or CAS-based system that we use for our portal and other web systems.  It does have a draw back.  If you use SAML, SAML does not provide password authentication to IMAP or POP.  So users must use a separate non-synchronized password for IMAP or POP access.  Google Apps for Premier customers also have access to Postini spam/antivirus reports for analyzing inbound traffic, etc.  Education customers do not receive access to that feature set.  Management of the Google account process is through APIs or the Postini directory synchronization product.  We used Postini to get a large group of users imported, but are considering moving to the Google APIs for more granular control, as we are seeing many false positives with error reports in Postini.  We have also had some issues with creating portlets that would work with our current portal (Oracle) and our future portal (Liferay) as there are limitations with the implementation of 2-legged OAuth vs. 3-legged OAuth.  When Google Support was contacted to discuss this, we received a rather ambiguous response in terms of when the technical issues would be resolved. Of course this is type of response is not unlike other software vendors.

When Google moved from being a beta to non-beta product, we did not receive notification, nor did we receive a system-wide alert about the label architecture changes that took place globally (despite having set up notification options in our Google domain).  With global web changes taking place on 10,000 web accounts, it was a bit disconcerting not to receive some warning.

On the Notes/Domino side of the house, our Notes 8.5 migration continues to roll forward with the primary issue being upgrading workstations that do not have more than 512 Mb of memory.  We have seen overall that the Notes 8.5 standard client requires 1 Gb or more on Windows XP - hands down.  From a user perspective, the users have required minimal training and continue to comment positively on features that they find useful.

I am preparing to upgrade our archive server to Domino 8.5 from Domino 7.0.3 over the next few weeks.  I'm really looking forward to implementing DAOS on this server as it is currently a disk and backup resource hog.  The disk footprint alone is 4 TB.  I have not had an opportunity to run the DAOS estimator, but I'm sure I'll see many GBs of disk savings, and will be sure to post our results.  This server contains data going back to 1991 for some faculty! 

I hope others are enjoying some lazier days this summer! Have fun! :-)

You may be thinking...hmmm..hide a user. Domino administrators at one time or another have wanted to make a few users "disappear into thin air" or at a minimum have wanted to ship them to another planet. But (unfortunately) this is not an article about the intergalactic kidnapping of end users.

I was recently asked to prevent the display of a user's name in the Domino Directory. I thought about this for a bit, and despite the obvious question of "why?" I thought that perhaps with the Security Tab on the Document properties I might be able to pull this off.  But first, I needed to investigate the request further.

1. Should the user's name display in the Notes client type ahead feature?  <No>
2. Should the user's name display in any pull-down listing for the Domino Directory?  <No>
3. Will the user send and receive mail?  <Yes>
4. Will specific staff have access to either (1) the Notes native name or (2) the internet address of the user? <Yes>
5. Will calendaring and scheduling be utilized and if so, how? <The user's administrative assistant will schedule appointments, but busy time will not be available for viewing.>
6. Will the user access mail/calendar via Blackberry/PDA?  <Yes>

So my next step was to create a test account upon which to perform the "scientific" experients of "invisibility."

After creating the test account, I performed the following steps.

1. In the People View in the Domino Director, highlighted the Person Document.
2. Right clicked on the document, and selected Document Properties.
3. On the Security tab, unchecked "All readers and above", and placed a checkmark next to LocalDomainAdmins, LocalDomainServers and our generic admin group account.

I switched to the Notes.id of the test account, and ran through my checklist of user functions.  Created mail, sent mail, created calendar events, did address book lookups, etc.  I then switched to a Notes.id that did not have access to any of the groups included in the Reader List of the "hidden" user's Person document to determine if the user was indeed "invisible."  Again, I ran through my checklist.  I searched for the hidden user using a type ahead -- not found, pull down list - not found, did a search from the search view - not found.  I explicitly typed the internet address in the To: field and was able to send mail; but this was acceptable as certain individuals were to be given the internet address for mail routing. 

What was next?  To actually "hide" the user in question.  If you do need to use this method, be sure that you are included in a group that is listed in the Readers field.  And try this method in test - several times until you feel comfortable with it, before putting it into production.  Because you certainly wouldn't want to hide your manager, or your CEO unless you meant to! 

I wrote yesterday that I hoped that my post would "spark some ideas for your own upgrades and help you maintain momentum." I'm wowed by the attention the post has received by both Ed Brill and others. We are fortunate as an organization to have an extensive talent pool given that we are a university.  However, this work was done by a group of three very talented individuals who work within our technology organization itself.  My point being that such a campaign can be developed with minimal resources, with inhouse talent, and a short timeframe (we had a four week turnaround).

In addition to the postcard campaign, I'd like to share the digital signage that we've displayed on both campuses.  Again, the same team prepared the video/sound. Kudos to "The Incredible Power of the Team."

I've blogged on several occasions about our ongoing Notes 8.5 client upgrade.  As many of the recent discussions have focused on marketing/advertising I thought I would share one small component of how we prepared, notified and hopefully helped our users become more engaged about the Notes 8.5 upgrade.  The target group in this case was all our email users - and these individuals may or may not have been using the Notes client. So part of the message needed to not only address new features - but also include an overall reason for using Notes. Our inhouse marketing group came up with the concept of "the incredible power of one."  I hope that seeing this may spark some ideas for your own upgrades and help you maintain momentum. So far users here continue to be pleased with the Notes 8.5 environment.

Images: © 2009 Virginia Commonwealth University. All rights reserved.

A few of our users have reported that since upgrading to Notes 8.5, they have seen a noticeable CPU spike on their workstations when working with certain documents containing graphics and/or these same documents were slower to open. We reviewed their workstation for the usual suspects, and also recreated perweb.nsf, deleted cache.ndk, etc.  However, the same behavior continued to occur.

We found references to the following parameters with regards to the 8 client as a technote.

browserrenderdisable=1

browserrendernofilter=1

browserrenderprintnotes=1

Once these three parms were added to the notes.ini and the Notes client was restarted, documents opened at "normal" display speeds and CPU spikes disappeared!

As we've upgraded users to the mail8.5.ntf template, occasionally this error message will pop up in the console: 

"Mail convert failed on <dbname>: Design Replacement Error: Attempt to use an invalid slot number."

Running convert -u to specifically upgrade folders does not correct the issue. The database will only open after a fxup has been run. 

A work around we've found is as follows:

1.  Run fixup (or fixup -J if transaction log environment).

2. Open the database and REPLACE the design using the dwa7.ntf template.

3. Manually upgrade the folder design of all folders in the database (use $Inbox as the standard folder design).

4. Once the folder design upgrade has completed, REPLACE the design using the mail85.ntf template.

We've seen this behavior on those databases that are used primarily by IMAP clients (all flavors) and are speculating that something has gone amiss with the folder structure. We have also observed this in databases with large/complex folder structures and those that have been repeatedly upgraded from version to version.  And as always we recommend taking a backup of the database prior to trying out these steps or call Lotus Support for assistance. 

Here are a few tidbits of "wisdom" gleaned from our current Notes 8.5 upgrade:

• databases that have been around migrated from previous versions (prior to 7.0.3), with private folders, or complex folder structures - may take longer on a convert - especially if you are converting the designs up from dwa7.ntf to mail85.ntf versus upgrading from mail8.ntf.  Check your resource utilization while the convert process is running to see if the process is affecting overall server availability.
  
• remember to change the mail85.ntf template to enable the compression features that are available beginning with 8.0.2.
  
• for Notes 8.5 installs on Vista workstations -- make sure that UAC has been turned off.  There are PMRs open for Vista/Notes 8.5 - especially with regards to the 8.5 client NSDing on first start after the client install.  The client will start in safe mode without networking, but with networking it will not load.  Support has relayed that there may be some Windows files at play that are either missing or not at the version expected. 
  
• for those workstations that continue to prompt for a software upgrade or a design refresh after the refresh has been confirmed on the server (smart upgrade tracking database) or in design properties of the database - a  nonsupported workaround to make the messages go away involves editing the notes.ini and removing any of the SmartUpgrade related parms (begin with SU).  As always make a backup of the notes.ini before attempting this.
  
• users do miss the red unread marks, and will find the workaround for editing the jar file - so be prepared for questions or issues if that fails.
  
• if a user is prompted with the message - no matching smart upgrade kit found - most likely the user is attempt to install a client kit versus an all client kit.  a nonsupported work around for this is to change the installtype in the notes.ini from installtype=2 (for all clients) to installtype=6; and then have the user attempt to run the smart upgrade again.
  
• Sametime preferences have changed significantly in the Notes 8.5 client, so review those settings before deploying.

So far training issues have been minimal, but we have not yet upgraded those power calendar users yet, and I expect questions may arise with some of those folks.  All and all the project is moving along!