LAN2LAN Technobabble

The old ideas are the best....

Melissa Snell — Fri, 9 Jul 2010 11:50:48 +0100

Has anyone else seen the new Nikon advertising campaign? "I AM" signs being held up by various groups of people? Then on the final screen "I am" on a YELLOW BACKGROUND. Does that seem a tiny bit familiar to anyone???

Check this out: http://www.iamnikon.co.uk/en_GB_IAM/

Quick Notes 8 Developer Tip - correcting code indentation in Designer 8 LotusScript Editor

Melissa Snell — Mon, 5 Jul 2010 13:42:31 +0100

One of the things that I found initially challenging about the new LotusScript Eclipse editor is that it appeared to drive a coach and horses through my old trick of matching up opening and closing statements by checking the column number of the code. For example if you had a series of nested "ifs" containing a lot of complex, badly commented code you could check which "end if" matched which "if" by positioning your cursor and checking the column number on the lower RHS of the designer client. However the new designer doesn't always line things up correctly, particularly if you are copying and pasting code about.

So I discovered this speed key: CTRL+I (that's a capital 'eye'), which is the speed key for Source -> Correct Indentation.

Now I save the code (just in case!) and then CTRL+A followed by CTRL+I - and voila! My code is then nicely indented.

Would be nice to be able to expand/collapse nested statements though. Perhaps for the future?

Jazzing up view columns on the web using JavaScript

Melissa Snell — Thu, 1 Apr 2010 16:18:31 +0100

Sometimes we want to do things in a view that we know would impact performance or that simply aren't possible. I'll warn you up front that this is going to be "old school" but could still have useful applications in XPages.

The Problem
I was given a web application to work on where the home page was using multiple embedded single category views set to display using Java applet. Needless to say the load time on the page could be described as "poor" if one was feeling kind. I wanted to convert the home page to use an HTML version of the views, but one particular view was interesting in that if a particular document was "overdue", there was a column set to show value as colour that turned the text red. This column calculated whether something was overdue or not by comparing a date field to @today (listed in the top 10 design crimes list in my book). So there was the issue: how can you compare a date to "today" without using @today in the view.

The solution I chose has two main ingredients:

1) A CSS class for "red" text
2) A JavaScript function that compares a date I pass it with "Today" and tells me if its in the past or not

1) The following style was added to the stylesheet referenced by the form that would be displaying the 'view'

.redText {
color:#cc0000;
}

2) The following function was added to the JavaScript library referenced by the form that would be displaying the 'view'

function setRedColor(dtY, dtM, dtD, strStatus) {
// dtY dtM and dtD are passed in as strings. strStatus is the text I want to appear in red
today = new Date() //this is today and the view doesn't know about it!
cDate = new Date(dtY+"/"+dtM+"/"+dtD)//this is the date I passed in
if (cDate document.writeln(""+strStatus+"")
}else{
document.writeln(strStatus)
}

Note that in this example I constructed a JavaScript date object from strings - if you pass in numbers, the initialization of the variable would be more like:
cDate = new Date(dtY,dtM,dtD)

You can use JavaScript function to convert if you prefer using parseInt(string).

So to pull it all together, I have a view column where I have directly coded the HTML for table rows and cells (the table tags and table headings are on the form as passthru HTML and I am using the view as a way to populate the table rows). I am pulling this view column in via an @dblookup because you are limited to the number of HTML embedded views you can display (one basically). In simple terms what the code does is compare StageCompletionDate to "today" in the JavaScript function and returns HTML directly into the table cell in the view text being rendered to the browser. Note that around each of the arguments being passed to the JavaScript function are apostrophes, so what looks like " is in fact " '. I wouldn't use the apostrophes on the date arguments if I wanted to pass them to JavaScript as numbers.

""+FullName+""+
""+
@If(Status !="Completed";"";;@Text(StageCompletionDate;"D0S0")))
+""+
" "+ Status+""+

So there you have it! The date displays in red if the document is over due and with no major cost to the view - all the hard work is done by the browser. I really like this as a neat way you can be creative with Notes!

I've used this technique for other things, such as displaying a client-specific price for a product list. That one is a little more complicated but I can post it if anyone is interested.

Controlling a Lotus Symphony Presentation from your iPhone/iPod Touch

Andy Dennis — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 11:15:44 +0100

With Keynote and Powerpoint you can control your presentations from your iPhone or an iPod Touch, but how do you do this with Lotus Symphony ?

It's pretty simple all you need to do is install the Logitech Touch Mouse application, on your PC (or Mac), install the Logitech Touch Mouse Application from the Apple App Store onto your iPhone or iPod Touch and create a peer to peer (or adhoc) wireless network between your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Desktop.

The Logitech Touch Mouse application turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a wireless trackpad and keyboard for your computer, so you can point, click, scroll and type from afar, in any application, on a Mac or PC. It works via WiFi, so if you either have to connect to an existing WiFi network or set-up your own peer to peer (or adhoc) WiFi.

Once you have done this you can use your iPhone/iPod Touch to control your Lotus Symphony presentation.

As it turns your iPhone / iPod Touch into a trackpad/keyboard, it can control any Windows or Mac application, and the best part about it is its free!

More information on the Logitech Touch Mouse application can be found here

We’ve won the Best in Community Service Award 2010

Andy Dennis — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:48:38 -0400

It's official, LAN2LAN have won the Best in Community Service Award 2010 at Lotusphere. We are all really, really proud with the award for our Congrego Solution

Jasper Warren picked up our Trophy, which can be seen in all its glory below!

LotusKnows Congrego is a great solution. What a great way to start our 2010!

Congratulations to all of the other Lotusphere 2010 award winners and finalists.

All the pictures of the award and some of our friends in the community can be found on our Lotusphere 2010 Flickr Set

Merry Xmas to you all!

Andy Dennis — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:50:43 +0100

Well, its that time of the year, to wish you all and your families a Very Merry Xmas from all of us at LAN2LAN. We hope that all you boys and girls have been very good this year, so that Santa does pay you a visit.

As the end of Xmas Eve arrives you can check out Santa's progress right here with the Norad Santa Tracker..

For a little Festive Fun check out our special Xmas egame and see if you can help Santa win the Winter Olympics..

Microsoft Exchange 2010 Storage vs Lotus Domino 8.5.x

Andy Dennis — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:33:03 +0100

It's being reported that Microsoft are dropping the Single Instance Storage component that was added to Exchange 2005. This feature enabled only a single instance of an attachment to be stored in the mail store. The Microsoft Exchange 2010 server store will allow for the native compression of all attachments.

If you an Exchange Administrator, I'd suggest you keep a close eye on the releases and upgrade notes for Exchange 2010 and particularly the potential increase in disk space for your environment.

Now lets map that across to the space saving features in Lotus Domino 8.5.1. These are DAOS (Domino Attachment and Object Service), LZ1 compression within a database for file attachments, design compression for database design elements and a single copy template to ensure only 1 copy of design elements are stored on your server.

DAOS has been seen to save our clients between 30-60% of disk space by storing a single copy of an attachment that has been distributed to multiple users on a Lotus Domino Server.
LZ1 compresses ensures those single attachments which are not distributed to multiple users are compressed.
Design compression can be used to compress design elements
A Single Copy Template can be used to link all of your mail files to a single template..

With all of these features enabled you can reduce the total amount of storage your Lotus Domino Server utilises.

I know which platform I would choose if my disk space is constrained.. and lets not forget Lotus Domino is not a rip and replace solution..

As always the information in this post is correct at the time of writing.

,

I’ve been virtualized

Peter Smith — Fri, 4 Dec 2009 12:09:48 +0100

To be more exact, I have just become a VMWare Certified Professional (VCP4).

For an out and out Lotus techie this may seem a departure from the Yellow straight and narrow, but it actually plays well into the kind of Domino infrastructure projects we are currently engaged on. Our major theme when working with customers on Domino upgrades to 8/8.5 and now 8.5.1, is to use the process as an opportunity to enhance their environment. This can be done through deploying new features as part of the upgrade, optimising performance, consolidating servers and extending functionality though services such as Traveller, web-enabling apps with Xpages - you all know the rest.

So far, so standard, but we are increasingly integrating options for virtualization into Domino projects as customers are looking to reduce their IT footprint, make their infrastructure more flexible (Agile anyone?), and having an eye to centralised off-site services (enter the Public / Private Cloud discussion).

I'm now one of four VCPs at LAN2LAN, and will work with our Virtualization Practice on Domino related projects. One of the benefits of our multi-tier approach is that we have HP hardware and SAN expertise in house, together with network and Microsoft professionals, allowing us deliver an end to end solution for our customers.

The future is still bright Yellow for me, but perhaps running on Yellow Blades.

Vulnerabilities in the PDF distiller of the BlackBerry Attachment Service for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server

Jaime Alcorn — Wed, 2 Dec 2009 13:11:00 +0100

Just received the following vulnerability notice from RIM:

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=KB19860

Seems there is still a PDF vulnerability around and technote KB19860 details how to deal with it. Security severity rating range from 5.7 to 9.3.

I am planning to upgrade to BES 5.0.1 next week so will just disable the PDF ability on the attachment service till then.

BES Professional & Domino 8.5

Jaime Alcorn — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:53:06 +0100

We have a number of clients still using BES Professional and they want to upgrade to Domino 8.5. BlackBerry Technical Support Services have the following response:

"Thank you for contacting BlackBerry Customer Support. We are pleased to assist you.

The highest version of Lotus Domino supported with BlackBerry Professional Software version 4.1.4B is 8.0.1. There are currently no plans to provide additional support for Domino 8.5 for use with BlackBerry Professional Software. The highest version of Domino currently supported is 8.5.0, when used in conjunction with BlackBerry Enterprise Server version 5.0"

So, you either need to upgrade or remain as is. Some considerations for an upgrade:

BES Professional was aimed at the small business market and was approved to sit on a production mail server
BES requires a dedicated server so this will cause a few issue with the migration as the Domino server name may change
There are some issues with a migration and upgrade so you may consider setting using a new BES management database and then using the transporter tools to manage user moves
Check your hardware specification against BES 5.0 requirements
Plan your upgrade/migration properly - best spend more time on the planning than the execution - will save lots of time in the long run and minimise the issue you may have

Cloud conversations can have silver linings

Peter Smith — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:05:10 +0100

We recently had a meeting with a customer to talk about the future of their mail systems - half the company are on Domino and the rest on various Exchange systems (not integrated).

"The Cloud" was flagged as an area of interest because fundamentally the business want to shift away from the cost and overhead of maintaining their various distributed thick client mail systems, and free up time and money to focus on real business issues. The key point for me in the conversation was that in contemplating "The Cloud" as a solution, what they were in fact saying was that they had made the mental shift to say that mail can be a commodity that is primarily browser based.

Once we make that leap the world's your oyster. What does it matter which specific vendor / product you end up with, as long as the system provides the functionality and service that the business requires at an acceptable price level?
With the acceptance of "The Cloud" we are able to discuss centralised hosted/managed solutions (private cloud), switching from "everyone has a client" to browser access + web enabled applications whilst still retaining the flexibility of local clients for specific roles.

While some will end up in a LotusLive/Google/Microsoft cloud solution, a lot of organisations will opt for the "private cloud" approach. They will have their systems centralised, managed and effectively outsourced whilst retain a level of control over where their data is held and who/how/when it can be accessed and modified.

So, far from being a "game killer" the Cloud can actually open up new opportunities and provide the catalyst for customers to consider new approaches to traditional solutions. As for our customer, we are looking to work with them on identifying their business requirements first and then help them select the correct solution.

DAOS and clusters in 8.5.1

Peter Smith — Tue, 3 Nov 2009 13:42:08 +0100

I was reading through DAOS information to work out how best to restore Quickr documents (that live in DAOS enabled places) and stumbled across this gem from an IBM Engineering open mic call. The question was around TSM but the answer was really interesing..

"A: Clustermates are independent with DAOS configured per server. One of the benefits of the 8.5.1 release is to have the servers participate in DAOS. You do not need any special software to do a production backup in these circumstances. Back up the .nsf using the normal TSM and then back up the .nlo DAOS files (treating them as flat files).

On 8.5.1, there are some new features that save bandwidth. For example, if two servers are running DAOS and you want to send an attachment from one to another, DAOS first checks to see if the attachment is already there. If so, there is no need to send it twice. If all servers in a cluster have DAOS and a new message comes in that you've already seen, DAOS does a reference count to check."

Not quite a single DAOS store but great that it intelligently checks to see if it exists already.

Lotus Notes 8.51 Auto Capitalise start of sentence, fix teh to the, stop double capitals

Adam Foster — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:29:28 +0100

I have just spotted this new feature on Lotus Notes 8.51 client:
The options are self explanatory.
They are not selected by default which seems silly. The options can probably be set by a policy.

Go into Preferences->Spell Check and then select the options under Instant Corrections.

NB You do not need to restart the Notes Client for these settings to work.

Quickr content on your Blackberry or iPhone

Andy Dennis — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:48:13 +0100

Here at LAN 2 LAN one of our developers has cracked it with a web based application, that allows you to get at your Quickr Content from your handheld device.

Adam Foster (uber developer!) has created a Domino Application which sits on your Lotus Domino Quickr Server and renders the content down to your handheld device, which is either a Blackberry or iPhone.

If your handheld operating system supports the attachment, you can download it and view it on your device.

That means right now

iPhone
iPhone can view PDF, RTF, Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), and most image attachments. The Word and Excel viewers appears to use the same simplified rendering as Mac OS X's TextEdit program, so not all formatting or embedded graphics may be displayed as they would in Word.

Blackberry Bold
Word, Excel and Powerpoint (2003 format) can all be viewed natively on the device. Image file types are supported as well, ie GIF / JPEG .

Now when I'm out on the road, I can read my Word Documents / Powerpoint Presentations / Excel Spreadsheets all from my bold!

Kudos goes out to Adam for this. Well done Adam!

Now this application is not even a beta, and it is functional rather than pretty .. I've included some obligatory screen shots from my Blackberry Bold.
As these screen shots have been taken from our production Quickr server, I've had to black out some of the content.

Login Screen

Place Catalog After Login (ooh I'm a Super User :-) ! )

Select the ultrademo place

Select the Library and then click on the Document Link

The Document Properties are displayed. Click on the Attachment Link

And.. hey presto ! a Powerpoint presentation served from Quickr on my Blackberry Bold !

If you would like to know more about this application, please don't hesitate to contact us here at LAN2LAN.

Lotus Domino Quickr allow a subroom to have multiple parents

Adam Foster — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:33:24 +0100

We were tweaking a presentation for our Disaster / Incident solution Congrego and the salesman asked me to move 2 of the sub rooms to be under another sub room.
Instead of deleting the sub rooms and recreating them and adding the themes and data, I copied the connection document from the original parent's System/Subrooms view into the new parent Place's System/Subrooms view.
Hey presto suddenly the sub rooms were accessible from two different Lotus Quickr parent places.
When you "Go up" from the sub room it goes back to the original Quickr parent place, but this can be changed by setting the h_AreaParent field in the h_RoomSettings document in the System/Settings view of the sub room.

NB The places were all in the same directory.
Potential future issues, on cascading the membership, but I will keep an eye on this.
This would also work to change the parent of a sub room.
I might make a Lotus Quickr tool to do this from a web page.

Lotus Notes 8.51 Designer - Right Click "Open Declaration" functionality

Adam Foster — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:56:42 +0100

Lotus Notes 8.51 free designer is more Eclipse like.

It has a right click menu item "Open Declaration".

Left click or focus on a function name, then this nifty right click functionality zooms you to where the function or constant or subroutine is defined.
Nice.

Would be nicer if you could open it in a new window...
In fact you cannot open a design element in another new window, which is a bit annoying, unless I am missing something...?

BES and Lotus Domino 8.5.1 (Blackberry Administration)

Andy Dennis — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:09:46 +0100

Is Lotus Domino 8.5.1 a supported platform for the BES 4.0/4.1/5.0 Server?

Checking our internal support Matrix yields the following results:

4.0 = no
4.1 = no
5.0 = no although it will be in future updates to BES5.0 and 4.1.6 onwards (release dates to be confirmed)

Lotus Domino 8.5.0 base IS supported for BES 5.0.0..

So, you shouldn't upgrade your BES Server to Lotus Domino 8.5.1. yet !!!

Windows 7 and Lotus Notes 8.5.1

Andy Dennis — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:01:29 +0100

After 2 years of Vista, I've taken the plunge and upgraded my trusty Lenovo X61s to Windows 7 Enterprise Edition and I'm pleasantly surprised ! Out of the box, the majority of drivers are supported and so far, all I've installed is the ThinkVantage Power Manager and the Fingerprint Reader drivers.

All of my day-to-day software like office, firefox, google chrome all work without any issue and, its a lot quicker that Vista.

So, it starts up quickly, auto-resumes like my Mac, automatically connects with my AD credentials to our internal Trapeze wireless networks , has fingerprint recognition protection on the laptop on startup and for authenticating to our Active Directory Domain and runs Lotus Notes 8.5.1 without any issue!!

Standard Techie Disclaimer: Lotus Notes 8.5.1 is not officially supported on Windows 7 . Try it at your own peril .. :-)

Lotus Notes 8.5.1 and Windows XP Support

Andy Dennis — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:42:41 +0100

Now that Lotus Notes 8.5.1 had been released, administrators everywhere are looking to upgrade their clients but there appears to be some confusion on which service pack is the minimum requirement for Windows XP.

The Announcement Letter for Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 states you need Windows XP Service Pack 3 but this is not strictly true. According to the following technote Windows XP Service Pack 2 is the minimum system requirement ..

Of course LAN 2 LAN always recommend that you have the latest service packs and security fixes on your workstations .. ;-)

Quickr 8.2 Supported on 8.5.1

Peter Smith — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:40:15 +0100

IBM aren't hanging around in getting 8.5.1 into the marketplace. They have already announced that Quickr 8.2 is now supported on 8.5.1.

Whew! Seeing as I was going to do a sample upgrade anyway at least I can rest assured it is supported. Saying that, can't find (yet) documentation about using 8.5.1 SPNEGO with Quickr - an item high on my to do list.

In the Domino Admin guide it talks about using Internet Sites for handling users who cannot participate in Windows Integrated Sign-On, which is a bit tricky considering the lack of support for Internet Sites in Sametime and Quickr.

Rest assured brave readers (or at least brave web crawlers), when I crack it I will post the info here.