Lotus Dr.

LotusDr is 3 years old

Denny Russell  September 21 2012 05:53:06 AM

So here we are a year later and nothing has really changed with this site.  It's slowly getting less and less posts, but once again, they are commented on more than ever.  I do have a new idea for the site, well, maybe its the original idea for the site.  Bring it back to a help site for the Lotus Notes end-user.  We recently held our first meeting for the Western PA LUG and the topic of an end-user session was discussed.  It got me thinking about the site and what it was supposed to be and what it has become.  So maybe, just maybe this year I'll find the time to focus again.

My main focus still remains on my new site, www.inlinehockeydrills.com.  It's highly rewarding to walk into a rink and have coaches tell me how they've used the site or a particular drill.  The emails I get from coaches around the world is pretty cool too. I didn't realize all the places that inline hockey was played. With Ryan also starting to play ice, who knows what that will bring as he gets more into it.

Best of luck to all my fellow Lotus friends.  Hope to connect with you online and at IBM Connect 2013.

• Comments [1]

Fixed: Office 365 Invitation Issue

Denny Russell  April 9 2012 06:42:53 AM

A few weeks back I blogged about an Office 365 issue where calendar invitations were not coming through as invites but rather as text.  With some guidance from a Response to that article, we were able to solve the issue.  Below are the details of how to fix this issue.

The Scenario
The environment we are in is a co-existence of Office365 users and on-premise Lotus Notes users. The Lotus Notes users from the organization are maintained in the Office365 environment as External Contacts. The problem occurred when users with Office365 mailboxes attempt to send a meeting invitation to the Lotus Notes users, the invites come through as a memo (instead of an invite), in some cases with a blank body and in other cases with the meeting details in the body of the memo.

The Resolution
The resolution required the setting of the UseMapiRichTextFormat property for the contacts in Office365 (the Lotus Users) to Never. The default value for this property is set to Default. There is currently no user interface in Office365 to modify this setting; you have to do it using Remote PowerShell. Launch PowerShell. Listed below are the commands used to open a session and make the appropriate changes.

Open an Office365 session
$LiveCred = Get-Credential
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session
Running the above script will prompt you to login. In order to successfully make the property changes, you will need to login using an account authorized to administer Office365.

Update the UseMapiRichTextFormat property
set-mailcontact "[Alias of Contact]" -UseMapiRichTextFormat Never
where [Alias of Contact] is the alias of the contact whose property needs to be updated. Please don’t use the brackets. So for example, if the contact’s alias is jdoe, the command will look like this:
set-mailcontact "jdoe" -UseMapiRichTextFormat Never

Other scripts that might be helpful
Get a list of Contacts
get-mailcontact
Get a list of all the properties for a specific contact
get-mailcontact "[Alias of Contact]" |fl

• Comments [0]

URL link to a Lotus Notes document not resolving correctly on the iPhone

Denny Russell  March 27 2012 01:02:22 PM

I've run into an odd issue with the iPhone and a link left in an email.    Let me set up the scenario a bit.

A user has an email that has been 'stubbed' by an archiving process.  The body of the message is replaced with a footprint of text so the user can easily get to the archived document.  In a Notes client, a doclink is present and the user can click and open the message.  For web/phone, there is a full url path to the archived message as seen below...
 


If a user clicks this URL link in iNotes, the archived message is opened up and easily read as seen here...




Now below, you will see the same message on the iPhone.  When clicking on the link provided, I do not get the message to open, rather the database itself opens.  Now the user has to navigate to find the message.  Not very efficient.
 


Lotus Notes Client resolves with no issues.
iNotes resolves with no issues.
Android phones resolve with not issues.

iPhone does not work correctly.  Anyone have any ideas on this one??

• Comments [4]

Some Microsoft 365 Invitations arrive in Lotus Notes as text not invitations

Denny Russell  March 20 2012 01:27:22 PM

We've run into an odd issue and I'm looking for help out solving it.  We have users running Lotus Notes 8.5.3 and when an invite comes into their inbox from Office 365, one of 2 things happens.

1.  It works and looks like this...


OR

2.  It comes through as a Memo and text only...


Both Mail files inherit from the same 8.5.3 Mail Template
Both Mail files have 'Keep in senders' format' for the incoming mail preferences in the Person document in the Domino Directory.


What else could I be missing?  Anyone see this or have other ideas?

Thanks in advance.

• Comments [5]

DAOS: What happens when a document is moved from one file to another

Denny Russell  March 9 2012 08:10:31 AM

After many calls from customers, I've been doing some research to see what happens when documents are moved from one .nsf that has DAOS enabled to another .nsf.  While not surprising to me, the results seemed unexpected to some customers so I decided to write about it.  Here is what I found out.

My test went like this.
Step 1.  Send some attachments in emails and verifying that my DAOS folder is growing both at the OS level as well as issuing a Tell DAOSmgr dbsummary command at the console.
Flaw #1 in DAOS:  There is no field that shows what documents in an application (.nsf) contain attachments in DAOS store.  Going into the document properties, I should be able to confirm if an attachment is truly stored in there.

Step #2. I then set up 2 archive tests.  The third party archive that I am using locates documents based on age and places a copy of them to a .nsf database.  In the original email, the header of the message is left behind and the body is replaced by a footprint of text with a doclink pointing to the now archived document in the new location.
 
Test #1:
Archive to the same server.  Documents are archived and then re-check the dbsummary, I see that the count on my original mail file stays the same and now my archive file is added to the list and it contains x number of documents (where x is the number of documents archived that had attachments).

Test #2:
Archive to a different server - DAOS enabled. Documents are archived and then re-check the dbsummary, I see that the count on my original mail file stays the same and now my archive file is added to the list and it contains x number of documents (where x is the number of documents archived that had attachments).
Flaw #2 in DAOS: DAOS is not shared across servers, so in a large environment, the same attachment will be stored multiple times across the network.

Test #3:
Archive to a different server - DAOS not enabled. This one has different results and what I would expect based on the articles and my limited knowledge of DAOS.  Because DAOS is a store per server AND my new server is NOT running DAOS, the attachments are stored in the actual mail file.  I proved they were in the actual mail file on the new server by shutting down the other server so that the original server and it's DAOS store would not be available.  I was still able to open the attachment.
Flaw #3 in DAOS:  See flaw #1 above.

Notes:  The following must be true if you want the newly created file to also place the Attachment in DAOS.
1.  You have enabled DAOS to run See Quick Start Guide.

2. Your template or database that you are moving documents to has the DAOS flag enabled


3. You have the .ini parameter set
Create_R85_Databases=1

Hopefully you find this useful.  I would love to hear additional thoughts on this as well.

• Comments [4]

Recent Contacts setting in Lotus Notes 8.5.3 is better

Denny Russell  January 4 2012 11:03:28 AM

When building out my new laptop, I installed Lotus Notes 8.5.3.  As I was setting all my preferences, I stumbled across a section titled 'Choose how names are added to Recent Contacts' and it has a much improved set of features.  


While it offers a lot of choices, I still don't see exactly the one I want.  Here is what I am looking for;
A combination of 'Only sender's name from emails I receive' and 'Only names from emails I send'.  The third radio button, 'Only the "To" recipient names from emails I send & receive' seems close but it has it's own issues.  What are they you ask?  I commonly find that someone I know sends me an email with 20 other people in the 'To' field.  I don't want those 20 other people added.  A lot of times, I don't know them nor do I care to send them a message.

Having a check-box instead of a radio button would solve my needs.  I could then pick the 2nd and 4th items and be on my way.  This is definitely an improvement from where 'Recent Contacts' started, but could use a few final tweaks.

• Comments [4]

Folder References property does not remain when creating a new replica

Denny Russell  December 9 2011 01:21:03 PM

 We've encountered an oddity and was hoping someone out there may have some insight on how to fix this.

We set Folder References on a database using the following code...
Option Public
Option Declare
Sub Initialize
       
        Dim CurrentDB As NotesDatabase
        Dim Session As New NotesSession
       
        Set CurrentDB = Session.CurrentDatabase
       
        CurrentDB.FolderReferencesEnabled = True
       
End Sub

And then verified that the property is set on the database...


Now, if we make a replica of that database, this value is no longer set.


So the question arises, "is there a way to get this value to carry over to any replica created?"

• Comments [0]

Are you aware of this LinkedIn Privacy Setting??

Denny Russell  November 21 2011 07:56:27 AM

Stumbled across this little gem and thought it was worth noting.  By default, there is a setting, 'LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising' that is selected by default.  To find this:
1.  Click on your Name in the upper right corner and then choose 'Settings'
2.  Go to the Account in the bottom left
3.  Choose 'Manage Social Advertising'
4   You will find this field to update.

• Comments [3]

LotusDr.com is 2 years old

Denny Russell  September 21 2011 07:40:45 AM

Another year has passed and this site is still going.  Looking back, I've only had 16 posts this past year, but they were some of my most commented posts. Maybe less is really more.

If you read last year's 1 year anniversary post, you saw that I've taken on a new site and have focused my efforts on helping out Inline Hockey Coaches around the world. It's been a fun project and it's going strong. Much like going to Lotusphere and meeting a lot of you, my hockey site allowed me to meet up with coaches from around the country as we traveled to tournaments.  It's pretty cool to see this site grow and be a resource for so many out there.  Getting 'Thank you' emails from coaches in Macedonia, Spain and other countries has been a reminder of why I continue to build the site.

I'll continue to write here but find myself less and less interested in what's going on in the Lotus Notes and Domino world and more focused on web development and social media. I may start to document all the cool new HMTL and CSS that I have been using in my job and some side projects I'm working on.  

Who knows what the year will bring, but I wish the best to all my readers and fellow Bloggers.

• Comments [0]

Allow agents executed using server command "tell amgr run" to be seen...

Denny Russell  June 23 2011 07:02:24 AM

In working with our customers, many have requested the ability to see what an agent is doing when they use the 'Run Now' option.  The 'Run Now' option in our products simply uses the 'Tell AMGR RUN' command at the console to start an agent.  Unlike a scheduled LotusScript agent, once you issue this command, you have no control. This is nothing new, as it's been on IdeaJam for a while now.

Let me show you what I mean. (if you understand the issue and just want the information on the enhancement request, skip to the bottom.)

1. I started an agent with the Tell amgr Run command....


2. I issued the Tell amgr status command...

NOTE: It does not think my agent is running.
NOTE2: I understand this to be the way it is designed based on this Technote...
Title: How to run multiple agents in the same database using a Program document
Doc #: 1279832
URL: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21279832
NOTE 3: This Technote does not mention 8.5x

3. I tried to stop the agent with a "Tell amgr cancel"

NOTE: It does not know my agent is running. Again, it's expected.

4. I shut down the agent manager using "Tell amgr quit"

NOTE: Now here's the catch. When shutting down amgr, it knows that my agent was running and completes.
So why does #2 & 3 not know my agent exists, yet #4 does?  If they know it's running to shut it down, they have to be able to report on #2 & 3.

So here is the good news, in working with IBM they understand the issue and more importantly, the need.  They have created an enhancement request, SPR #JGIR73JSXW.

As many of you know, the way to get an SPR through is to get more weight behind it.  So please, if you have the need for this, add your name to the enhancement request.

• Comments [4]