Lotus Nut

After the release of Notes and Domino 8.5 Fixpack 1, there has been some concern expressed over customers and partners not being able to see the fixes at the devWorks fixlist site. If you go there currently, you can see the following releases listed:



Notice that there are not any SPR's listed as fixed for 8.0.2 FP1, 8.0.2 FP2, 8.0.2 IFR1, 8.5 FP1, or 8.5 IFR1. But there is a way to see what you need for your upgrade planning. You need to navigate to a somewhat hidden "notices" view at this URL: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/r5fixlist.nsf/Notices?OpenView (and also via the Notes Client here). From here you can see this listing:



Clicking through, you can get the SPR's fixed in 8.5 FP1 here. Actually, this information was relayed to us via a devWorks article that was updated in January. This release notice document for 8.5 FP1 is very helpful to me. I tend to prefer this better than navigating through an old view design and having multiple click-throughs to get to what I need to see. This release notice details all of the SPR's fixed in FP1 and many of them have links to a technote detailing the issue. All in one place! I do hope that the fixes are loaded into the main view so that searching for fixes is a little more managable, but I really like this method.

Another great addition for Notes Client usability is an easier way for users to create hyperlinks! Finally there is a quick way to do this! Previously, you would have to go through several menu levels or remember ALT+C+H+L and then fill in a properties box that may be confusing for the casual user. But in 8.5.1, this should be easier to accomplish.

After selecting the text you would like to use for the link, you can either choose the Create > Hyperlink menu item:

Or you can choose a toolbar option:

This will then bring you the following dialog when you're creating a new memo:

This will be a welcome improvement for Lotus Notes users!!

Disclaimer: Notes 8.5.1 is still in Beta and therefore subject to change between now and its ship date.

There are two quick things I would like to highlight with the Lotus Notes 8.5.1 Client that's currently in beta.

First of all is the ability to resize table columns from the rich text editor. I love using the "Copy Selected as Table" from within views and then pasting the table into a new memo. Then I like to do some formatting - which would always involve resizing the columns. With 8.5.0 and earlier, when I would want to do this I would have to open the Table Properties and then resize each cell width. Lotus Notes 8.5.1 now allows you to just click on the column separator and resize it via dragging. Very cool!!

The second thing is related to view navigation. How many of you have ever had calls from users who say "MY EMAIL HAS DISAPPEARED! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!" Only to find out they just inadvertently pressed the "end" key and it navigated the view all the way to the right past the visible text. With Lotus Notes 8.5.1, the home and end keys (currently) will navigate to the top and bottom of the view (this is to be more consistent with other Windows navigation behavior).

Disclaimer: Notes 8.5.1 is still in Beta and therefore subject to change between now and its ship date.

For those of you who have seen it, yes, I'm a PC. For those of you who haven't - here you go!

Roland Reddekop has posted a great entry titled Mainstreaming Lotus Notes in 2009. It is well worth your read! I will leave you with his two steps that we should leave with and do now!

Strategy A.

Thanks to Alan Lepofsky via twitter, I see that there is now a CCH2 available for Notes 8.0.2. Glad to see that IBM is addressing the (apparently many) issues with the Notes 8.0.2 client in a timely manner.

I'm trying to remember back through the releases since 6.0 and I think I can only remember one or two CCH kits released to address major client issues. But at the same time, there were QMR's released (the 0.x releases) which are now on around a 180 day schedule. So we now are able to get hotfixes in a more timely manner than having to wait 6 months for the next revision.

Also, please note that ND 8.0.2 FP1 should be released in January.

IBM Technote 7014028 has been published with details on Notes 8.0.2 CCH1. Some things to note.

It appears that Smart Upgrade will need to use this string for the target client version "Release 8.0.2 CCH1".

There is also a listing of the SPR's that this CCH1 corrects. I'm also still not thrilled that this has not been released at FixCentral or at Passport Advantage. You still have to call IBM Support and open a PMR to receive this. This fact was also not documented in the Technote. I left feedback on the form stating that IBM should have a section letting customers know how to obtain this hotfix.

At the official IBM Domino Blog, Andrea Waugh-Metzger has asked for feedback on how you use (or don't use) Domino Policies. Here are the questions that you should go answer:

So, policies can really help make your administrative life much, much easier and can help you control a significant portion of your environment.  So let me ask you a couple questions...

1. Do you use policies in your organization today?
2. If so, how do you have them implemented?  Is it by OU?  By groups of users?  Or just one big policy?
3. What do you leverage policies for?
4. What would you like to see done with policies?
5. What questions do you have about policies and/or how they work?

I know that I've seen Domino Policies severely underused by most companies. So, do you use policies?

I've been meaning to post this for a while. I noticed that at around the same time I started seeing the new design for Notes 8.0.2 and 8.5 startup improvements that something very similar also started happening when logging into Gmail. Does it look familiar to you as well? :)

I would like to introduce you all to David Brown (that guy who sits beside me at work!) and his new blog Port 1352.

This actually applies to all Standard versions of Notes and, really, any other Eclipse-based app that has tons of files installed.

Get Defraggler. Now.

Then use it to defrag your Notes folder. After uninstalling an 8.5 Beta and installing 8.0.2 Gold, there were over 2,000 fragmented files in my Notes path! If you want to scrounge every bit of performance out of Notes, you should defrag the folder. Sure, Notes 8.0.2 will load faster without doing this, but fragmentation is a performance killer - especially on slower laptop drives. Defraggler, and some other tools I'm sure, provide the ability to do this. You can defrag single or multiple files (ahem, VM images) or highlight the path the file is in and defrag all files in that path. This gives you a rather quick defrag without having to wait for the entire drive to be defragged.

Someone sent me an email earlier today with an interesting question. Consider that you want to rollout Lotus Notes 8 Standard but only use the Basic configuration (let's consider that the computers only have 512MB RAM, but a memory upgrade will be deployed later). When doing this with Notes as the default mail application, the Standard configuration will be launched. How can you change this?

1. Open the registry editor.
2. Navigate to hkey_local_machine > software > clients > mail > lotus notes > protocols > mailto > shell > open > command
3. The (Default) value is C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\notes.exe -defini %1
4. Right-click (Default) and choose "Modify"
5. Change the value to C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\notes.exe -sa -defini %1
6. Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools > Internet Options > Programs
7. Change the mail application to Outlook Express and click Apply
   
8. Change the mail application back to Lotus Notes and click OK
9. Click a mailto: link on a webpage and this will launch the Basic Configuration of Lotus Notes!

Note: I should have looked at the devWorks posting that the person sent me along with the email because the solution was (partly) posted there as a response. Over there the solution does not detail what you change the registry value to - just that you change it.

Also, as another addendum to the solution posted at devWorks, this will work with IE and Firefox (I presume it will also work with Opera or whatever else you may use...)

I've always had "issues" figuring out where to get and install the compat-libstdc package for Ubuntu that's needed to install Lotus Notes with the graphical interface.

So, I've created a deb package (using alien) that can be easily used to install this. Here are the steps:

1. Get the deb package from here
2. If your browser doesn't prompt you to install it, then save it and then run sudo dpkg -i compat-libstdc++-33_3.2.3-62_i386.deb
3. Run sudo ./setup.sh from the extracted Notes install files and you should get the graphical installer

I've heard that there may be an issue installing the deb package. It worked dandily for me - let me know if there is an issue...

I received a copy of the book  Lotus Notes Domino 8: Upgrader's Guide just before Lotusphere. It is published by Packt Publishing and was authored by a team of 7 people who work at ISSL (IBM Software Services for Lotus). As the title states, this book is for anyone wanting to upgrade to ND8. As 8.0.1 is coming out this week, many shops will be anxious to upgrade at this time. This book will be very beneficial for you.

There are 10 chapters and an appendix:

1. A Short History of Notes and Domino
2. Overview of New Lotus Notes 8 Client Features
3. Lotus Notes 8 and SOA
4. Productivity Tools
5. Lotus Domino 8 Server Features
6. Deployment Enhancements in Notes/Domino 8
7. Upgrading to Notes/Domino 8
8. Coexistence between Notes/Domino Releases
9. What's New in Notes/Domino 8 Development
10. Integration with Other Lotus/IBM Products
    Appendix: Third-Party Products

It's always great to brush up on the history of the platform. Looking back where it's been and then going into chapter 2 on the new Notes 8 client is a great way to start a book like this. Chapter 3 describes how to use Composite Applications to integrate with your infrastructure and is followed by a chapter on the Productivity Tools. As an administrator, I really found chapter 5 to be helpful. As readers of my blog will know, there are tons of new features with Domino 8 and this chapter does a good job at covering those. Some methods for performing upgrades are laid out in Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 is also extremely valuable. Not only does it review the technical aspects of the upgrade, but there is a great section on the planning that should be done prior to any upgrades. Many of the practices listed here should be put in place for shops of all sizes. And in the instances where an entire infrastructure cannot be upgraded at once, Chapter 8 provides some information on running multiple versions (for instance, remember that if you go from 6.x to 8 that you'll need to do the rooms and resources upgrades that were necessary with the 7 upgrade!). Chapter 9 covers many of the new features with development - composite apps, DB/2, formula/LotusScript additions, etc... And we see in chapter 10 many tips on installing and integrating with other Lotus products (Sametime, WPS, Quickr, Connections, etc...). Then there is an appendix with some third party products that may be beneficial in your environment not only for upgrading but for other things such as reporting.

I highly recommend this book for those of you who may be looking for a place to find the information you need to press on with an upgrade to Notes and Domino 8!