Uh Clem's Admin World

My previous post mentioned some issues (read bugs) I encountered with DWA8 Contact List.   Here are the details (btw... I'm using 8.0.2 Domino and mail template):

1) The biggest user complaint is that it does not support selecting a group name to start a group chat.  The "chat" option is greyed out.  Tech Support did say this is a bug and they will get me an SPR.  In the meantime they offered a workaround to open a 1-to-1 chat then invite others.  Yeah....right.
2)  The DWA8 Contact List does not support nested public groups.  Oh you will get the names of the users in the sub-groups, but they won't be in alphabetical order.  It will list the users of the first sub-group first, then the second sub-group, and so on.  This is quite confusing for the user when the list are long.
3) The up/down scroll of the contact list is much slower than DWA7's Contact List.  It will pause for several seconds when retrieving the next part of the list.

I am now 60% complete on my client roll out.  This is a one month project to upgrade all users from their 7.x  Notes & DWA to 8.0.2.  The mix is about 1/3 full client and 2/3 DWA clients with under 1000 users in 16 cities.  I must say my rollout is going quite smoothly (knock on wood).

For the DWA upgrades it is a simple convert task that is scheduled on the server to run overnight.  I feed it a file that has a list of the mail files to be converted.  For the full clients I am using the upgrade by email feature built into the Domino directory.  I simply point them to the upgrade image on their local file server.  

I decided to roll out the 8.0.2 standard client using the notes.ini setting "enable_early_authentication=0" instead of the 8.0.2 CCH1.  There was no way to get users from 7.x to 8.0.2CCH1 in one step.

Issues So Far
The full client has had very few issues.  The biggest issue is slowness on laptops with only 512mb RAM, which we plan to address through various means.  Also when the new mail file design is replicated locally, the user may get some errors if they are accessing their local mail file while the design is replicating.

The DWA issues have been mostly about Sametime IM issues.  This is mainly due to the fact that by default DWA users will get the DWA Contact List which has very few IM features, and some bugs.   Instead I have switched the DWA users to use the Sametime Connect for Browsers, which is more stable and has more features (like group chat).   This setting is in the server config doc under the DWA tab in the "Instant Messaging" and disable "Prefer DWA8 Contact List".

As I roll out the Notes 8.0.2 client to users they are discovering the great feature of the user info pop-up when you hover over a name in the Sametime contact list.   Some are discovering their own info is wrong, so we are getting requests all of a sudden to update user's contact info in the Notes directory.   I did not anticipate this unexpected user need.

Some of the user contact info we updated a day ago, but the new info was not appearing in the ST contact list pop-ups.  A user can right-click on a name and select "Refresh Person Info" to force the update.  But my question is why hasn't the server performed the update after a day?  What is the trigger for the server to refresh all this info on its own?   Is it a ST server restart, or what?

Got an email from IBM Tech Support with a link to their ftp site to download the Notes 8.0.2 client CCH1 hotfix.  This hotfix supposedly fixes the hang on startup and maybe a few other SPR's I blogged about.

Bad news is that you will have to contact tech support to get it.

So my testing of DWA 8.0.2 has gone pretty well, and I'm moving forward with deployment.   I blogged about a bug with nested groups in the Sametime Contact List here.

But I have run into another bug that might be a little more troubling for the user.    Apparently the use of the up/down keys to navigate the inbox do not work if you have both the preview pane open, and logged into Sametime.   THIS one is going to be really annoying to my users.  I didn't think this was a common method for inbox navigation.  I would have guessed that users would use the mouse more.  But I've been given feedback that the up/down keys are used quite a lot.  Go figure.

This bug has been reported as SPR XMXL6XCA5D.   They could not give me a timetable as to when they were going to address this bug.  If you want this fixed sooner rather than later open a PMR with tech support and subscribe to this SPR, and tell them this is impacting your users.   This will give higher weight to the SPR, and maybe they will address it sooner.

Since I never saw any posting of an 8.0.2 "Revised" client they told me about 3 weeks ago I decided to call them.   The latest word is a Cumulative Client Hotfix (CCH1) is scheduled to be released this Friday (10 Oct).  The CCH will be a download that you will install over top the 8.0.2 install.   They were not sure whether it will be posted on the Passport Advantage website, or whether you have to call tech support and request it.

So this means you can not go straight to the hotfix for now.  You will have to install/upgrade to 8.0.2, then apply the hotfix.   I will have to investigate the Smart Upgrade option for this one.

I upgraded a handful of DWA users this week as a pilot for my company-wide upgrade to 8.0.2.   Some of the users complained that the names in their IM contact list were not sorted in some of the groups.  It turns out that those groups happened to be nested groups.  The DWA IM contact list will show the first sub-group sorted, THEN the second sub-group sorted beneith the first.   If there are multiple groups in the top-level group, the name list looks a mess.

Also if the group is nested 3 levels deep the group doesn't even expand in the contact list, and there is no "+" next to the group to expand it.

IBM tech support referred me to technote 1223002 which says DWA 6.5 doesn't support nested groups, but they said it is still not fixed.

So for now my only option is to tell my users to use the sub-groups explicitly.

Does your company allow employee photos in their corporate directory?  If so, how do you get it past your human resources department?  My HR department feels it would be too risky.  They think it would open us up to law suit if an internal candidate claimed they did not get a job based on their published photo.

Also, does anyone have any input on how prevalent this practice is?

I completed my last mail server upgrade just now.  Yes, I am brave enough to do it on a Friday!  So all mail servers are now Domino 8.0.2.  I still have my ST, QP, and BES servers to do, but the hard part is over.

Next week I start piloting the client upgrades and the DWA (iNotes) upgrades.  Fortunately 75% of my users are DWA users only.

I'm still waiting for the 8.0.2 "revised" client to be released that fixes the bugs I mentioned here.

This morning I sent an IM announcement to my users from my 8.0.2 integrated ST client.  Ever since then all my chat windows start off with the text of the announcement I sent, regardless of whether I initiate the chat or someone else does.   It also shows in the chat logs.  

I had to close Notes and restart to get it to clear out.  Anyone seen this behavior?

I opened a PMR this morning about some Notes 8.0.2 client issues I've been having.   Some of my test installs are hanging after login.   Most of my test installs were getting multiple Sametime interfaces.  I blogged about both of these.

IBM tells me they are aware of these problems and they are planning to release a CCH (Cummulative Client Hotfix) hopefully later this week.  They told me it will show up in Passport Advantage under something like "8.0.2 Revised".

They also gave me a work around for the hanging issue.  They told me to try the notes.ini parameter enable_early_authentication=0.   I'm off to test this now.  I'll let you know how it works.

Here are some of the SPR's they are targeting for this CCH:
KUMA7FWPXR -  Prompt to log into basic client on clean install.
TMDS7HWT9G -  Getting multiple Sametime login interfaces.
LKIM7JCMB6 - Client hanging after login.

Is this reminiscent of the 5.0.3 release? 

Sometimes when I have 5 or 6 emails in a row in my inbox, and I want to delete them, I just hit the delete key in rapid fire succession to delete those emails.  This use to work fine in 7.x, but now it seems the 8.x client can't keep up with the deletes.  It ends up deleting about 4 of the 6.

Yeah, yeah, I know I can "click - shift click" to select those messages then delete, but sometimes it's just faster to rapid fire the delete key.

Anyone else experience this?

The first production server upgrade is always the scariest.  You are told that the directory and other system databases are backward compatible, but for some reason you are never quite sure.

I upgraded my first production Domino server this week from 7.0.3 to 8.0.2.  I must say it went amazingly smooth.  I followed the recommendations in technote 1303385.  However I did take one other precautionary step.  I disabled the replication of the directory (names.nsf) to the other 7.x servers.  Once I got the first server (the admin server of course) up to 8.0.2 I then opened up replication of the directory to the 7.x servers one at a time.  I would let it replicate, then perform an updall on names.nsf on the 7.x server.   I waited an hour between each 7.x server and gradually let the 8.0.2 names.nsf out to each of the other 7.x servers.

This went smoothly on all the 7.x servers including a Sametime server, Quickr server, and BES server.  The only minor glitch was the typeahead in email addressing was a little confused on user machines for a little while, but it straightened itself out.   I'm not quite sure why this happened since I updated the view indexes right after replication.

Once again I give the upgrade process of a major release of Domino an "A".  It amazes me every time how smooth these upgrades go.

I hope to continue to blog my progress as I role out 8.0.2 to the rest of my servers and then to my users.  Stay tuned.  Feel free to contact me directly if you are getting ready to go to 8.x and need a little input from someone who has been there.

I loaded 8.0.2 on my laptop yesterday.  The upgrade went smoothly although I'm still amazed it takes 10 minutes and the progress bar goes across like 50 times.

I'm having a small issue with the integrated Sametime.  I'm noticing that the floating ST buddy list window (as in the R7 client) keeps loading.  The integrated version also is connecting.

I'm getting the following error in the status bar:

You cannot use IBM Workplace instant messaging because Notes is already logged on to the IBM Lotus Sametime server.

What?  "IBM Workplace instant messaging"??  Hey IBM,  I think you need to scrub your error messages a little better.

Anyway,  my upgrade was from 8.0.1, but I also noticed the old, floating buddy list window is still popping up on upgrades from 7.0.3.

I have my first Domino 8 server upgrade (from 7.0.3) scheduled for next week.   I have been planning to use 8.0.1, but now I hear that 8.0.2 might be out in the next couple of days.  I am considering just using 8.0.2, but one of my co-workers asked me if I'm crazy.

In the past I have waited at least 30 days after a point release to put it in production.   So why has my thinking changed?  Have I been lulled into a false sense of security with ND point releases?  The last point release that I remember being a disaster was 5.0.3, which has been, like, 7 years.

How fast are you planning to put 8.0.2 into production?