Mitch Cohen

Speed up your Domino Administrator Client with a notes.ini setting

Mitch Cohen — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:46:00 +0000

Hat Tip to Bob Balaban for pointing this one out to me.

When you load up the Files tab of the Domino Administrator Client it lists all the files in the Data directory, including some of the files under the data\domino directory. In Domino 8.5 and later there are many more files under the data\Domino directory (Dojo) which are included in the scan for Files. You can disable this using a notes.ini parameter

ADMIN_CLIENT_SKIP_DOMINO=1

When set this will prevent the scanning of the data\domino directory when you load the Files tab in the Administrator client and you will be much happier with your load times.

Notes and Domino Wiki: Admin_Client_Skip_Domino

What is in your plugin_customization.ini?

Mitch Cohen — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:52:00 +0000

If you are not familiar with the plugin_customization.ini file you can find in your \framework\RPC directory (if you have a stand alone Sametime client you will also have a plugin_customization.ini).

The plugin_customization.ini is an Eclipse feature and is used to control behavior of various Eclipse based setting for the Notes client as well as widget and plugins options.

Probably the most well known hack to the plugin_customizaton.ini file is adding the line

com.ibm.notes.branding/enable.update.ui=true

This allows plugins to be installed in the client via the File/Application/Install dialog, which is hidden until this is added to the file and the client restarted.

Lately I have been doing some work with Sametime and Connections integration in the Notes client, there are any variety of entries that can be added to plugin_customization.ini to control behavior of various components, for example these entries control Business Card prioritization in 8.5.2. Another example is if you upgrade your embedded Sametime client to Sametime 8.5.1 it installs both the Sametime 8.5.1 chat client, and the the Sametime 8.5.1 Meeting plugin. If you wanted to install, but hide the meeting plugin you could do so by adding com.ibm.rtc.meetings.shelf/hideUI=true to your plugin_customization.ini

The problem is that I can find there is no comprehensive list of supported entries for the plugin_customization.ini, you can find them by product, though where do you look? Some paramters are documented in the Notes & Domino Infocenter, the Sametime parameters are in the Sametime Info Center, the Connections Parameters, other are in the Lotus Connections Info Center, and some are simply undocumented and are discovered through Design Partner forums or by opening PMR.

All I am asking for is a comprehensive list of settings available for the plugin_customization.ini for all the Lotus Products so we can easily see what options are available with hunting them down from various sources.

If you want to know about pushing settings down to your clients Chris Whisonant has a good blog post on it.

Notes 8.5.x Bug when using Lotus Connections & Lotus Protector for Mail Security

Mitch Cohen — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Recently I blogged about Lotus Protector Integration for Notes 8.5.1 + clients, a nice feature though I recently discovered an interesting bug. If you configure your client to integrate with both Lotus Connections and Lotus Protector for Mail Security (LPMS), after successfully configuring LPMS and logging in subsequent attempts to use Protector from the Note client will result in a login failure.

"User failed to login.
The Lotus Protector Server seems to be temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. "

If you attempt to use the Protector Web Interface it will work fine, after restarting the Notes client it might work again on the first try, but then fail again on subsequent attempts.

This has been identified as SPR JADS83UG8V which affects both 8.5.1 and 8.5.2. If you use both both Lotus Connections and Lotus Protector for Mail Security there is a Notes Client Hotfix available though you do need to open a PMR and request it.

Notes 8.5.2 Ships with Embedded Sametime 8.0.2 you can Easily Upgrade to Sametime 8.5.1

Mitch Cohen — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:54:00 +0000

Lotus Notes 8.5.2 ships with the Sametime 8.0.2 embedded client (as have previous releases of Notes 8.5.x) Beginning with Notes 8.5.1 FP2 (FP4 Recommended) and in Notes 8.5.2 you can upgrade the embedded Sametime version to 8.5.1.

To determine which version of Sametime you have embedded in your Notes client click on Help / About IBM Lotus Notes/ Feature Details and you will see the Sametime Version there.

To upgrade the embedded client you need to download the SametimeStandard Client kit, the part number is CZII3ML. When you extract the file you will find a number of installs you are looking for the folder named "sametimeclient.for.notes", under which you will find installs for Windows, Mac, and Linux ( I am performing a Windows install here).

When you run the executable you have the option to unpack the files and delete when done or unpack to a specific location and save for later, if you want to upgrade the Notes 8.5.2 installer to include Sametime 8.5.1 choose the latter option.

You will find the manual install takes a lot of click to accomplish so start by clicking next on this screen

Accept the license agreement and click next (any questions regarding the license agreement you can check with the expert)

The installer will now remind you to make sure your Notes Client is shut down (this will appear regardless of the current state of your Notes Client)

Just for fun click Next one more time to get the install going

Sit back relax and watch the install go by (mine took about 7 minutes to complete)

When it is done click finish to exit the installer.

Restart your Notes client and if you check the Sametime version you should now see that it is 8.5.1

As mentioned earlier if you are deploying Notes 8.5.2 you can update the Notes Install to include Sametime 8.5.1 instead of Sametime 8.0.2, you can find more information on that in the Infocenter.

Lotus Connections Communities Fix for Authorization Failures

Mitch Cohen — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:32:32 +0000

In Lotus Connections if you create a Private Community, if you shared the link with a person who was not a member of the Community when they tried to access they would get a very unfriendly error.

A fix was released today with APAR LO53703 to resolve SPR AMYS7STQ6M

When you apply this fix it will not display a friendlier "Access Denied" message when this condition occurs. I will have to test later and see how "Friendly" the new message is.

Domino 8.5.2 iNotes Redirector Setting for Ultra-Light

Mitch Cohen — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:49:00 +0000

I suspect by now you have heard that Notes & Domino 8.5.2 shipped earlier this week. If you use the iNotes redirector make sure yours is up to date. Domino 8.5.2 delivers Ultra-Light support for Android and iPad (in addition to iPhone and iPod). Check out the new default settings.

Traveler for Android is still on target to ship later this year.

The Server Rack (a.ka. The Office Cleanup..... Part 3)

Mitch Cohen — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:16:00 +0000

My home office cleanup effort continues (Part 1, Part 2) today I regained quite a bit of space in my office, though in the process lost the first thing any guest to my office would comment on. Today the Server rack, 3 servers, 2 drive arrays, a couple of backup drives, and other miscellaneous equipment all got picked up for transport to it's new home InfoAge - Science-History Learning Center and Museum in Wall, NJ.

TDI Solution Directory for Lotus Connections 2.5 Fix Pack 2 (2.5.0.2)

Mitch Cohen — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:45:00 +0000

I spent a few minutes today trying to find this, so putting this here as much for myself, as well as anyone else.

If you are upgrading to or installing Lotus Connections 2.5.0.2 you need to replace your existing TDI Solutions Directory with LO52087: TDI UPDATE FOR 2.5.0.2 FIXPACK. The package available from fix central contains

tdisol.zip for Windows, and tdisol.tar for Linux

As best as I can tell this is cumulative and supersedes the two previously released TDI Fixes

You will have to manually bring over any custom scripts you have developed, or any changes you might have made to the existing scripts in to the new solutions directory.

LO52087: TDI UPDATE FOR 2.5.0.2 FIXPACK
Direct Link to Fix Central Download for L052087

Do You Maintain "Test" Accounts on your Social Networks?

Mitch Cohen — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:46:00 +0000

If you have been paying any attention on Twitter the last few days you probably saw a bunch of tweets from Twifficiency that looked like this

Once it started I saw these tweets popping up everywhere, as people ran to find out their score, most people not realizing that they were granting the application access to tweet on their behalf (slightly embarrassing for some, extremely embarrassing if you are a google exec).

This got me thinking, how many of you bother to maintain test accounts? I do maintain test accounts on some networks, Twitter being among them. I use them for a number of reasons for example when I first used Twitterfeed and later moved to dlvr.it to integrate my blog with Twitter, I wanted to make sure I didn't spam the twitter stream, related while I did not fall for Twifficiency yesterday, there is a new Twitter tool practically every day that looks compelling, if it doesn't come from a trusted source, I always have a (protected) twitter account with no followers to try it out on.

You can not necessarily have a "test" account on all sites, for example the Facebook Terms of Use could possibly prevent you from maintaining a fake account

Facebook users provide their real names and information, and we need your help to keep it that way. Here are some commitments you make to us relating to registering and maintaining the security of your account:
1. You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.
2. You will not create more than one personal profile.

I can't find anything similar in the Twitter Terms of Service, in fact it is common practice for people to have multiple Twitter accounts, and accounts not in any persons actual name.

E-mail accounts - they are certainly easy enough to come by these days, I have a couple I consider throwaways, I use them to register for new sites that pop up that I am interested in but don't know and trust. I have seen too many sites do things like e-mail you your password in clear text, or spam your friends, using accounts and passwords that can not be connected back and have no contacts, protect me if the site turns out to be a fraud or just poorly designed.

Finally while we are talking about protecting your online security, how many of you go back and review the services you have granted access to Facebook, Twitter or other accounts? For example readtwit a number of people including myself found the service useful, but it did not last

I wonder how many people still have rights granted to Readtwit in their twitter accounts

How do you protect your online interests and your followers? These are some of the steps I take to protect mine, in addition to strong passwords that are not the same on every network, and certainly not the same password as I use for my e-mail addresses.

Sametime 8.5.1 is Available for Download

Mitch Cohen — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:47:00 +0000

I guess the delay was less then two weeks