Ever Get a Recurring Nightmare?
 

I don’t. Which, I hope, makes me a normal person (as normal as Canadian can be anyway).  However, I do have a recurring error that creeps up in about 5 to 10% of the upgrades that we’ve done so far [shameless plug time: yes, I'm using the instructions from my own blog post here to upgrade the employees using Smart Upgrade].
  

That error that comes up from time-to-time, like a recurring nightmare, is as follows: ”The file is damaged, obsolete or intended for a different version of Lotus Notes“. This error shows up on the 1st time that the employee starts his shiny new Lotus Notes R8.5.1 FP1 client.
 

Here’s a screen shot of the error (not that it really matters … but I’m a visual learner).
 

I *really really really* wish Lotus would change that error message to say WHICH file is damaged. But that might be too much to ask? Is it?
 

So, in the meantime … here’s something that fixed the problem when it showed up …
 

The Solution
 

Truth be told, this isn’t a “pretty solution”. It’s a bit long and it could probably be shortened up” but I decided to “play safe” by running a bunch of commands on local to be 99.9% sure that the files on the local are clean for the next start up. So … ready? Here we go …
 

01. [Click] on Start → Program Files → Accessories → Command Prompt
02. [Type] C: and press <Enter> on the keyboard.
03. [Type] CD\Notes\Data and [Press] <ENTER> on the keyboard.
04. [Type] ..\nfixup.exe -F
05. [Type] the Lotus Notes password when prompted and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
06. Wait for the fixup task to finish.
07. [Type] ..\nupdall.exe -R
08. [Type] the Lotus Notes password when prompted and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
09. Wait for the updall task to finish.
10. [Type] ..\ncompact.exe -c -i
11. [Type] the Lotus Notes password when prompted and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
12. Wait for the compaction to finish.
13. [Type] DEL CACHE.NDK and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
14. [Type] DEL LOG.NSF and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
15. [Type] DEL PERWEB.NSF and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
16. [Type] DEL DESKTOP8.NDK and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard.
17. [Type] EXIT and [Press] <Enter> on the keyboard to close the Command Prompt window.
18. Start Lotus Notes R8.5.1 and verify if the error is still there. Continue to the next possible solution if the error reappears.
19. Once Lotus Notes is started, go to the Workspace.
20. [Right Click] on the Workspace and in the menu that appears [Click] on Properties.
21. [Click] on the 2nd tab of the In the small Info box that appears.
22. [Click] on the Compact button of the 2nd tab of the small Info Box.
23. Wait for the compaction to finish.
24. [Open] the Personal Address Book of the employee.
25. Close and Re-Open Lotus Notes R8.5.1 and verify if the error is still there. Continue to the next steps if the error reappears.
26. Verify that the Personal Address Book of the employee has the version 8 look & feel.
27. IF it does not have the version 8 look & feel, close the Personal Address Book then continue with these steps.
28. Open the Workspace.
29. [Click] once on the icon for the employee’s Personal Address Book.
30. [Click] on File → Application → Replace Design.
31. In the screen that appears, verify that the title of the box that appear says “Replace Application Design of names.nsf” or “Replace Application Design of contacts.nsf. If not verify your selection in step 29.
32. If you have the right database selected, [Scroll Down] the list of templates and [Click] on “Personal Address book”.
33. [Click] on “Replace”.
34. [Click] on “Yes” when warned about the “design changes”.
35. Monitor the progress in the status bar.
36. When the Replace Design is completed, [Open] the Personal Address Book of the employee.
37. Once again, verify that the Personal Address Book of the employee has the version 8 look & feel (it should be fine now).
38. Close Lotus Notes and Re-Open it to see if the error should be gone.

In the end, if you’ve done all this and the error is still there … you might need to backup and rename the DESKTOP6.NDK to see if that’s the culprit. I had to do that only once and it resolved the error. It created another one however: I had to rebuild the workspace of that particular employee.
  

Conclusion
 

Well, like I wrote, I wish Lotus would change that error message to say which file is damaged … so I might SPR it for a future release.
 

Also, if someone else had documented this somewhere else … sorry, I didn’t do a tourough Google search before writing this post.
 

As usual, thanks for reading!
 

Marc

I Don’t Like Cryptic Error Messages …
 

And my users don’t like them either. Saddly for me, one of my users that has been using Lotus Notes R8.5.1 FP1 for a while now started receiving a weird error each time he would click on a person name in his Sametime Contact list in the side bar panel.
  

An internal error occurred during: “save person job”
 

The Solution?
 

Well, I opened a PMR with Lotus Support and they had never heard that one before which is not a good sign. So, I decided to try something and it worked. My initial idea was to delete the workspace folder … but this solution does not require it.
 

1. Log off the user from Sametime by [Clicking] on “Available” and then [Clicking] on “Log Off”.
 

2. [Click] on File → Preferences.
 

3. [Click] on the “+” sign in front of the Sametime section.
 

4. [Click] on the “Server Community”.
 

5. [Click] on the “Reset User” button.
 

6. [Click] on “OK” on the confirmation screen.
 

7. You will be re-asked to login to Sametime right away: [Click] on the “Connectivity” button.
 

8. [Click] on the check box “User token based single sign on”.
 

9. [Type] your Sametime server host name in the “Authentication server” field.
 

10. [Click] on the check box “Automatically log in”.
 

11. [Click] on the “Options” tab.
 

12. [Click] on the check box “Use canonical names for status lookup”.
 

13. [Click] on “OK”.
 

14. [Click] on “Login” (even if the fields are blank – don’t worry). That will log you back into Sametime.
 

15. [Click] on “OK” to close the Preferences screen.
 

16. Test the solution.
 
 

Conclusion
 

Well, I’ve seen a lot of weird error messages but this one ranks pretty high up in the list of cryptic ones.
 

I hope this helps someone, somewhere …
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

Ever Get the Same Questions Over and Over?
 

I do. And it’s not because an army of 3 year old kids has invaded my office. Nope, that’s not the case: we are simply in the process of upgrading our users to Lotus Notes R8.5.1 FP1 (later we’ll apply FP2 or FP3 … for now, it’s FP1).
 

So for the past few days, I have been getting the same questions over and over again (despite handing out 2 reference sheets, doing a bit of one-on-one training and sending my users about 12 tips and tricks emails).
 

The nice thing about the upgrade is that most of the questions are not about the “core” email features: that hasn’t changed much and users plainly expect to see a “New”, “Reply”, “Reply to All” and “Forward” button and they know what those buttons do instinctively. In fact, most of the questions I get are about specific features in Lotus Notes or about the new Sametime client in the Sidebar.
 

Because of this, I have decided to share this “Top 10″ list that I’ve sent to our employees with you.
 

Keep a few things in mind however as you read these. First, “YES”, I am fully aware that some of these could be set by policy … but we decided to leave them “as-is” to see if the end users would like those features or not. Secondly, we had customized the R7 mail template to add a mail quota indicator in the bottom left corner so this is why question 03 is there. Also, keep in mind that we have a “Corporate Welcome” page set … so item 04 might sound strange to some folks out there who still rely on the beloved “workspace” day-in and day-out. And finally, I have customized our install package to automatically log people into our Sametime server so this is why question 10 is on that list.
 

Ready? Here we go …
  

01. What’s this “Open” button that I see in the upper right corner and, more importantly, where’s my Bookmark Bar?
 

• The “Open” button is an idea that Lotus is introducing to save some space on small screens. 
• You can get the “Bookmark Bar” back by [Right Clicking] on the “Open” button and [Clicking] ”Dock the Open List”. 
• You can make the icons bigger in the Bookmark Bar by [Right Clicking] on an empty space of the Bookmark Bar and [Clicking] “Use Large Icons”.
   

02. Every time I start Lotus Notes, I see this ”Getting Started Screen”. How do I get rid of it? And where’s the usual Corporate Welcome page?
 

• The “Getting Started” page is simply there to explain some parts of the new interface in Lotus Notes R8.5.1.
• You can close it by [Clicking] on the “X”.
• You can see it again by [Clicking] on the menu Help à Getting Started Page.
• The “Corporate Welcome Page” tab now says “Home” instead of “Corporate Welcome Page”.
   

03. Where’s my Quota information? It used to be in the bottom left of of my inbox? Where is it now?
 

• Lotus has moved the Mail Quota information to the top of the left side of the mail file to make some space for the “Follow-up” and “New Notices” panel.
• The Quota now appears as a green bar (or red bar if you are near your quota) next to your server name on the left top side of your mail file.
• If you put your mouse cursor over the green bar, a pop-up will appear with more information.
• If you are using your mail file on local, there is a little icon of an enveloppe with a green bar next to your name on the left top side of your mail file. You must [Click] that icon to see your quota information.
     

04. My “Unread” email now appear in “Bold Black Text” instead of “Plain Red Text”? Can I change that?
 

• Unread emails can now be either in “Bold black text” or “Plain Red text”.
• You can select your preference by [Clicking] on the menu File → Preferences → Fonts and Color.
• In the “Fonts and Color” screen, you can choose between “Bold black text” or “Plain Red text” in the “Unread mail indication” section.
• In the “Fonts and Color” screen, you can also make the fonts a bit bigger by selecting an option in the “Font size” section.
• [Click] on “Apply” and then [Click] on “OK” if you make changes to either the “Unread mail indication” or “Font size” section.
   

05. How can I turn off the “Instant Spell Check” when I’m writing emails? The red squiggly lines everywhere are driving me nuts!
 

• Lotus Notes R8.5.1 has an “instant spell check” feature (like Microsoft Word) when writing new emails, calendar entries or documents in applications.
• It can get confused if you write emails that “mix and match” languages (French and English or Spanish and English in the same email, for example).
• You can turn it off by [Clicking] on the menu File → Preferences → Spell Check and removing the checkmark in the option “Enable Instant Spell Checking”.
• If you removed the checkmark from the option “Enable Instant Spell Checking”, [Click] on “Apply” and then [Click] on “OK” to save the setting.
   

06. I have access to my colleague’s Mail File and/or Calendar. I can’t find the option to open it anymore! Where is it now?
 

• The option to open your colleague’s mail file is in own your mail file, at the bottom left side after your list of folders, after the link to the archive and after the tools section.
• So, basically, open your mail file and, on the left side [Scroll] all the way down past your list of folders, past the link to your archive and past the tools section: you will see the section “Other Mail”.
• You can [Click] on “Other Mail” to see the options to open someone else mail file (you must first have access to that person’s mail file however).
• To open your colleague’s calendar, open your calendar and, on the left side, scroll down past the calendar views and you will see “Show Calendars”.
• For other people’s calendars, you will see a check box next to their name. If you [Click] the check box, it will display (not add) that person’s calendar on top of your own calendar (this can be useful).
• If you want to open the other person’s calendar in a new tab, [Right Click] on their name and [Click] “Open in New Tab”.
   

07. The Sametime client is really nice in R8.5.1! But when someone chats with me, the chat window always appear in front of all my other windows! Can I change that?
 

• Yes, you can change it. [Click] on the menu File → Preferences.
• In the Preferences screen, [Click] on the “+” sign in front of the Sametime category.
• In the “Sametime” category, [Click] on “Notification”.
• On the right side of the panel, [Click] on “One-on-One Chat”. The panel might “move” and you’ll have to scroll left to see the next option.
• Look to see if there’s a check box on the “Bring chat window to front” option. If it’s checked, [Click] on it to remove it.
• [Click] on “Apply” and then [Click] on “OK”.
   

08. The Sametime client also makes sounds now in R8.5.1! When someone starts a chat with me, my computer makes a sound. It annoys my co-workers. How can I turn that off?
 

• [Click] on the menu File → Preferences.
• In the Preferences screen, [Click] on the “+” sign in front of the Sametime category.
• In the “Sametime” category, [Click] on “Notification”.
• On the right side of the panel, [Click] on “One-on-One Chat”. The panel might “move” and you’ll have to scroll left to see the next option.
• Look to see if there is a check box on the “Play a sound” option. If it’s checked, [Click] on it to remove it.
• [Click] on “Apply” and then [Click] on “OK”.
   

09. My Sametime Contact List used to be at the bottom in Lotus Notes R7, can I put it back at the bottom of my screen in Lotus Notes R8.5.1?
 

• Yes, you can put the Sametime Contact list at the bottom of your screen instead of having it embedded into the right side.
• To “detach” the Sametime Contact list, [Right Click] where it says “Sametime Contacts” (i.e. the title bar of the Sametime Contact List) and [Click] on “Open in New Window”.
• The Sametime Contact List will now appear at the bottom of your screen.
• If you close the Sametime Contact List at the bottom of your screen, it will return to the side bar on the right side of your screen.
   

10. Lotus Notes R8.5.1 automatically logs me into Sametime … I don’t want that! Can I change it?
 

• Yes, you can tell Lotus Notes to *not* log you into Sametime when it starts.
• [Click] where it says “Available” at the top of your Sametime Contact list.
• In the menu that appears, [Click] on “Manage Server Community …”
• In the screen that appears, [Click] on “Automatically log in” to remove the checkmark.
• [Click] on “Apply” and then, [Click] on “OK”.
   

That’s it for now … I hope this helps someone, somewhere …
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

I’m Serious: Seamless Mail Upgrade Needs a Progress Bar …
  

Lesson Learned: I just did an upgrade from Release R7 to R8.5.1 of a “remote site”, i.e. a location that goes across the WAN to get to their Notes server … and Seamless Mail Upgrade gave me some trouble when it comes to the “folder upgrade” part.
 

Basically speaking, if you use the “Seamless Mail Upgrade” to upgrade those user’s mail files via policy, they will get prompted to upgrade their folders after they open their mail file for the 1st time. 
 

But the problem is as follows: if you have a user with a ton of folders … it will take forever to upgrade their folders across the WAN (I’ve seen it take 3 hours on 1 particular machine) … and there is NO PROGRESS BAR. Here’s an example of what their screen looks like … interesting isn’t it? Apart from the usual “lightning bolt” in the lower left part of the screen, there is nothing that tells the user what’s going on.
     

What do most users think? They Think It FROZE!
 

Like I said, these were users going across the WAN and their “Seamless Mail folder” upgrade took a while (hours for some). Some of those employees thought that their Lotus Notes client had frozen and rebooted their machine … with the effect that they got re-prompted to upgrade their folders again (because the notes.ini variable “MailUpgradeFolder” is set to the same value as the “Setup” variable in the notes.ini once the Mail Folder upgrade is completed … and since they stopped it, it isn’t set).
  

And What’s The Solution? Communication … and an SPR
 

If you really want to use the Seamless Mail Upgrade, then the only thing you can do for now is to tell your employees that are in remote sites that the Seamless Mail Upgrade might take a while … a long while in fact.
  

If you want to turn it off, you can. But then you will have to do the mail template upgrades yourself at night (or during the day) and I’m pretty sure that you have better things to do than upgrade mail templates at night.
 

And last but not least: the SPR! Shortly after running into this, I opened a ticket with Lotus Support to request an SPR to add a progress bar to the Seamless Mail Template upgrade. The SPR number is RSSA87HKV7 and feel free to open a ticket with Lotus Support to add your name to the list of customers who need the same thing … the more people ask, the more chances of this making it to the next release.
  

Addendum…

It’s been an amazingly busy 2 months for me and I haven’t had the time to blog a lot. I hope that things will quiet down a bit in August so that I can put the finishing touches of the 4th version of the Smart Upgrade guide (I need to add a section about the Widget catalog and the Update Site).
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

Dear Readers …
  

Welcome to the 3rd edition of The New Domino Admin presentation on how to get Smart Upgrade working for you. You may (or may not), have read the 1st version, the 2nd version or even the “how-to-smart-upgrade” guide for the Fix Pack 1 and, if you did read them, thank you for stopping by and reading those long, lengthy, tedious posts.
  

If there’s one thing has never ceased to amaze me about those blog posts, its the number of comments and questions that are added to each post. I humbly thank you again for your nice comments, your questions and I ask you to forgive me if I don’t respond back fast enough. After all, I still need to do my day job. Keep in mind that there are a bunch of people at Lotus Support that are [hopefully very well] paid to answer questions day-in, day-out and that they’d love to hear from you if you have any questions related to Smart Upgrade.
  

So, let’s get this show on the road? What’s new in Version 3 of this presentation you may ask? Simply put: in the now 207 pages long presentation, you will find instructions on how to bundle the R8.5.1 client AND the Fix Pack 3 so that both installations are done one-after-the-other during the upgrade process in one shot instead of upgrading to R851, starting Notes once and then Smart Upgrading to Fix Pack 3.
  

How it’s Done
  

You might have read about how do “daisy-chain” Fix Packs on the blog post mentioned above or even on this nice post by Mr. Serdar Basegmez (thank you for the nice comment btw Mr. Basegmez).
  

However, some people asked me “Is there a way to bundle the R8.5.1 AND the Fix Pack 1 (or 2 or 3) into 1 incredibly large package?”. At first I tried many many things and I couldn’t get it done. However, thanks for a small comment by Mr. John Pagliani of Lotus on my blog where he said he could help me out, I figured that what I was trying wasn’t impossible. And because of his comment (thank you!), I figured the solution to my problem shortly after.
  

The trick is … to use a batch file. But real trick is to have the batch file create an environment variable of the path where the SURunAs files are extracted and simply refer to that variable later when calling the setup.exe for the R8.5.1 installer and then right after when calling the setup for the Fix Pack installer.
  

So, the presentation has been updated to include new sections in which we download and prepare the Fix Pack 3 for packaging and also a new section in which we create the batch file that will do the work for us.
  

So, What Does This Presentation Cover?
  

Basically, this 207 pages presentation improves on the previous versions and covers the following:
  

• Part 1 – Creating the Smart Upgrade Kits and Smart Upgrade Tracking database.
   
• Part 2 – Setting up your computer to create and tune the kit.
   
• Part 3 – Creating the “Kit” and Tuning it with the Install Shield Tuner.
   
• Part 4 – Adding the Fix Pack to the kit.
   
• Part 5 – Creating the Batch File that will do the setup.
   
• Part 6 – Using SURunAsWizard to create a single-file executable.
   
• Part 7 – Uploading the package and updating the policies.
   
• Part 8 – A deployment example.
   
• Part 9 – Fixing the Mail Template to prevent the error during Seamless Mail Upgrade.
   

One Last Thing … Once again: a few “Thank You”!
  

Always thank those that help you …
  

And if you’ve checked the previous versions of the presentation, you’ll see that I say “thanks” to Andy Donaldson, Michael Willard, Andrew Lapidas, Andy Liew, Jean-Paul Mehanna, John St. Germain, Tony Trout and John Pagliani for their help. Their combined blog posts,  answers to my support tickets, and suggestions are the reason why this presentation exist.
  

So, thanks again to all those who helped me make this happen!
  

Without Further Due … Here’s the 3rd Version of the Presentation
  

Well, simply click on the file below to download it to your computer … and enjoy. Hopefully it will help you and your company deploy Lotus Notes R8.5.1 Fix Pack 3 more quickly and more efficiently).
  

  
Click on the icon above to download the presentation.
  

I hope you enjoy it.
  

What’s Coming Next?
  

In the months to come, I hope to have a bit of spare time to create the 4th version of the presentation in which I intend to cover the following:
  

• Setting Up the Widget Catalog and deploying 1 widget via policy after the upgrade. (not really required but nice to get it over with).
    
• Setting up the Update Site and pushing 1 Sidebar Plug-In to R8.5.1 clients via policy after the upgrade.
    

That’s It, That’s All Folks!
   

Once again, thanks for reading … I hope this helps someone, somewhere …
  

Marc

Friday Started Out As A Quiet Day …
  

Then the phone rang … it was Patrick asking me to remove the cluster between ServerA and ServerB. The reason? We purchased a lot of shiny new video conferencing gear for all our offices and it does all the video in hi def. Unfortunately for us, it doesn’t down-scale nicely and the CEO, CIO, and many other people high-up complained (quite loudly) that they didn’t like the pixelization that happened during their video-conferences with remote offices.
 

After checking with the vendor, their only recommendation was to reduce the amount of traffic between the head office and the data center. The end result of the subsequent investigation of the traffic showed that the constant chatter of the cluster on ServerA and ServerB was taking the majority of the juice on the data line. ServerA is located in the head office and ServerB is located in our data center. The vpn entry points for a lot of our telco equipment and data lines is right in the data center and then goes out to the remote offices.
 

Are you starting to see where this is going? So this is why I got the order to remove the cluster (not just disable it temporarily).
      

The Untold Consequences of Un-Clustering a Cluster During the Day
  

Well, right out of the gate, if you look in the admin guide … the procedure is extremely simple. Too simple. 13 years of doing Domino should have made an alarm ring somewhere in my brain but alas … I plowed ahead. Bad idea.
 

Basically the admin guide says that you just need to open your Admin client, go the Config tab, then go to the Clusters view, select the servers to remove from the clusters and then hit the “Remove from Cluster” button. Simple right?
  

Too bad the Admin guide doesn’t say anything about what happens next and what you should do to fix it.
  

Now, keep in mind that this probably will not happen to your IF you schedule it properly and do the change at night and then reboot the servers before the next business day. But in the event that you are under duress and need to do this during the day, learn from my mistakes and see what’s going to go wrong … and how to fix it.
 

Lesson 1: Freetime Lookups Gone Bad … You Ain’t So Free Anymore
  

Yep, Freetime lookups which were driven by the “clubusy.nsf” within the cluster go “bye-bye” after a few minutes of the cluster stopping. Is the Domino server smart enough to rebuild a “busytime.nsf” right away? Nope. It’s not unless you reboot the server. So, how do you go around it during the daytime?
  

Simple: issue the following commands on *both* servers.
   

• RESTART TASK SCHED
    
• RESTART TASK CALCONN
    
• RESTART TASK RNRMGR
    

While certain tasks restart, you will see that it’s rebuilding the busytime.nsf … which is good … but if you have a gazillion users on your server … the Freetime lookups might be offline for a few minutes … or hours.
  

Also, for good measure, you should also issue those two commands after the dust has settled:
  

• TELL SCHED CHECK
    
• TELL SCHED VALIDATE

Btw, if you don’t do this, your users will receive some strange error messages when trying to check the availability of others like, for example, “Can’t find schedule record for requested user”. 
 

Phew … ok … problem 1 fixed (if you do this during the day). Moving along …
  

Lesson 2: Replication Failures Galore When Using the Cluster Name …
  

Shortly after “un-clustering” your cluster, you’ll see a bunch of error messages on your servers about replication timing out … you might scratch your head a bit because everything is fine with the network.
  

What’s the problem in this case? Well, I think it’s written somewhere in the Admin guide (or it’s a tip that’s floating around the Yellowsphere) but you can set the “destination server name” field in any Replication Connection documents to the name of the cluster. So your “spoke” servers could replicate with either server of the cluster when replication ran. That was awesome when you *had* a cluster … but now that it doesn’t exist anymore you’ve got replication errors … see where this is going?
  

Yep, the solution to this is to open your Domino Directory and re-check your Connection Documents to make sure that the cluster name is not mentioned anywhere in the “Destination Server Name”. Once you’ve done that … replicate the domino directory to all the spoke servers and issue a good old RESTART TASK REPLICA on each server …
  

And now … the final lesson … the most painful one …
  

Lesson 3: The Support Calls … a.k.a. Your Phone Will Ring Off The Hook and Melt (… if you are Lucky)
  

If you had your cluster around for a while (it had been enabled 3 years ago if my memory serves me right) you’ve become accustomed to the fact that you could check your emails on ServerA or ServerB and it would be exactly the same all the time. 
 

On top of that, the BlackBerry Server would, of course, check your “home” server all the time, but you could use the other server and no matter what you did, your BlackBerry and your Inbox always looked the same.
  

A few hours after you remove the cluster, the phone will start ringing. Trust me: it will.
  

No matter who calls you, the following lines (or a variation) will be said at one point during the conversation:
  

• “I’ve got emails on my BlackBerry that aren’t in my Inbox”.
   
• “Mister X says they’ve emailed me something but I haven’t received it yet … it’s been 30 minutes already”.
   
• “No matter how many times I replicate, there is always a 2 hour delay before I get my emails”.
   
• “When I go into iNotes, my emails aren’t the same as when I go into my Lotus Notes Inbox”.
      

What causes it? Well, most of those calls are because the employee’s mail file doesn’t point to the right “home” server (ServerB instead of ServerA for example). Or it’s because it’s not replicating with the right server (ServerA instead of ServerB).
 

In *all* those cases, it’s because the workspace icon, the bookmark (or whatever) is not pointing to the home server of the user and points to the “old” cluster mate.
  

What about that last line about iNotes? Well, in the case of that user, our iNotes server runs on ServerA and his home server is on ServerB … now that the cluster is removed, the good ol’ replication documents have a schedule of replicating every 30 minutes so there is a delay before his mail file is updated on the iNotes server.
  

Anyhow … what’s the solution to this issue? Well, if you have some sort of Workspace management tool like Desktop Manager from Cooperteam or Marvel Client from Axceler, I’m pretty sure you can fix it “remotely” for your users.
 

In my case unfortunately, it’s a manual process for each call … it’s sad but it’s life.
  

Conclusion
  

Pilots have this saying that goes “Learn from the mistakes of others … you won’t live long enough to try them all” so I hope someone, somewhere will learn from this blog post.
  

And I really hope that by sharing this, I won’t end up on the Worst Practices slides at Lotusphere 2011 …
  

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

The Best Things in Life are Free …
  

And Lotus Traveler is just one of these things! It’s free and it just plain works. Of course, if you want to avoid running into JVM memory issues from time-to-time, you should put the latest and greatest fixes for Traveler on your server (pick them up from Fix Central here).
 

But what happens when you start getting more and more calls from your users who want to activate their shiny new iPhone with your Lotus Traveler server (or their iPad – hey, it works!)?
 

Well, since the best things in life are free, how about downloading my presentation below and giving it to your users? Yep, simply “borrow” this presentation and tell them to follow the steps in it. If you decide to use it on your [unsuspecting] users, simply tell them something along the lines of “here, read this and use this url [put url of your own Traveler server here] on page 17 and use your email address when required [not the one in the presentation]…”.
  

Please keep in mind that I don’t know if anybody else has written such a guide … I just decided to share the one I created for my employees.
 

Also keep in mind that all the urls and email addresses in the presentations that I post on this blog are photoshopped and faked … so don’t try to contact me using the email address in the screenshots in the presentation (leave a comment if you want to get in touch with me).
 

Ok, Moving Along … What Does This Presentation Cover?
  

Well, this 111 pages presentation covers this:
  

Overview of Lotus Traveler
 

Part 1 – How to Activate your iPhone with our Lotus Traveler Server.
 

Part 2 – Accessing your eMails and Calendar on your iPhone.
 

Part 3 – Changing your eMail Settings on your iPhone to keep more (or less) eMails on the device.
 

Part 4 – Security Considerations and Requirements.
 

Part 5 – Keeping your Address book on your iPhone in Sync with your Lotus Notes Address Book.
  

Part 6 – Downloading the “Lotus Notes Traveler Companion” from the App Store to be able to read encrypted emails.
  

Part 7 – How to “Un-Activate” your iPhone from our Lotus Traveler Server.
  

Part 8 – Basic Troubleshooting.
  

Where’s the Presentation?
  

To download the presentation, simply click on the icon below. If you wish to obtain a copy in MS PowerPoint format (so that you can add/remove parts you need to suit your own company’s policies for example), simply drop me a line in the comments section with the best way to contact you.
   

 
Conclusion
  

Well, I hope this helps someone out there. Please keep in mind that I don’t have an iPhone: I just have an iPod Touch so that’s why you don’t see any cell phone carrier name anywhere on my screenshots of the presentation.
 

On my side, now that this presentation is done, I really need to find the time to update my Smart Upgrade presentation to show how to put the FP1 along with the 8.5.1 client into 1 [huge] Smart Upgrade kit document.
  

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

Summary
  

Since Lotus Notes R8.x was introduced people discovered that it was now possible to tweak their mail signature a bit more than before. In the Pre-R8.x days, you could only type text into the Signature section of the Preferences dialogbox … or use a file stored on your hard drive.
  

In R8.x you can now change the font size, the font color, add an image and do a few more things right from the Signature tab of the “More -> Preferences” dialogbox.
  

You can do almost anything … except change the font that’s being used … but you might wonder “is there a work-around?”. And the answer is “Yes there is!”
   

First, The Warning …
  

Whenever I get a call from an employee who asks if it’s possible to change the font of their mail signature to “Comic Sans” (or some other weird and wacky font), I tell them 2 things:
  

(1) “Yes, you can change it. However, keep in mind that only some fonts are common to most computers and some fonts are only on YOUR computer. Stick to “Arial, Comic Sans, Georgia, Tahoma” and a few other fonts if you want your mail signature to look almost exactly the same on all computers” (see site note #1 below).
  
(2) “Now that you have been properly warned, here’s how to change the fonts in your mail signature … well, I’ll just forward you the instructions in an email, it will be simpler”.
   

How To Change The Fonts In Your Mail Signature …
  

Here is the step-by-step method that I send to my employees:
  

Step 1 – Open your Mail File, go to your Inbox and click on the “New” action button to bring up an empty memo.
   

Step 2 – If your current signature is not automatically appended to new memos, place the cursor in the body of the memo and then click on the action button “More -> Insert Signature”. In the dialogbox that appears, simply click on “OK” to insert your signature.
  

Step 3 – Now that you see your signature, format it the way you want it. Select your name with your mouse and change the font of your name (for example). Change the size of your name too if you want to. Also insert “tabs” to properly align phone numbers if you want to (but keep in mind that tabs don’t display well if the recipient uses a web browser to read his emails).
  

Step 4 – Once your mail signature looks the way you want it to appear, use your mouse to select it completely.
  

Step 5 – Now that your mail signature is selected, click on the menu “Edit -> Copy”.
  

Step 6 – Click on the view action “More -> Preferences”.
 

Step 7 – Go to the “Mail -> Signature” tab of the Preference dialogbox and then delete your current mail signature.
  

Step 8 – When ready … press CTRL+V on your keyboard to “paste” your updated signature OR you can also click on the little “T” icon and then on “Paste”.
   

Step 9 – Click on “OK” to save your new mail signature. You will be taken back to the new memo you had just created.
 

Step 10 – Delete everything in that new memo and then click on the “More -> Insert Signature” action button to see your new & updated signature.
  

Step 11 – Repeat Step 3 to 10 until you are happy with the results.
  

Step 12 – Send that email to a few colleagues or friends to ask them to check if it looks good or not.
  

Note #1 : For the list of fonts that are compatible across platforms, I recommend using “browser safe fonts” like those listed here.
  

Note #2: I cannot stress the importance of using plain fonts enough … because that nice (but strange) “Mercurius Script Bold” is only installed on *your* computer and it will only display correctly on *your* computer no matter how hard you try (I had to explain this to someone). Also, for example again, “Script” doesn’t display well in web browsers based on a few tests I did.

Note #3: Now that you know that you can paste pretty much anything in there … you can even paste tables if you want to … go nuts … but test!
  

Note #4: Did I mention testing?
  

Or … Go With A Commercial Product …
  
Keep in mind that there are a few commercial products out there that allow you to set and customize your employee’s mail signature. Right off the top of my head, I can only remember the “Crossware Mail Signature” product from folks at Crossware because I stopped at their booth each and every year for the past few Lotusphere (note: I’m not one of their customers and we do not use their product where I work).
  

Anyway, if you need to “brand” your company and standardize signatures, you really can’t expect *all* your employees to do it consistently so buying a commercial product might be your only option (or coding something yourself that does that).
         

In Other News …
   

I’ve been amazingly busy since the beginning of May … but I’m currently working on version 3 of the Smart Upgrade guide in which I will explain how to create a package that includes R8.5.1 and the Fix Pack of your choice in 1 large self-contained executable file. Stay tuned for that new version in the coming weeks.
  

Conclusion …
 

Hopefully, Lotus will modify the “Preference” dialogbox in a future release to allow end users to pick and choose the fonts they want to use in their mail signature … we can hope right? Until then … have fun copy-pasting!
   

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

There are Some Rules in the Universe that you Cannot Break…
    

Like the speed of light for example (for now anyway) and the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow (see here).
  

For entirely different reasons however, the creators of the Yellowverse have imposed upon us, the little creatures inhabiting this world, different kinds of limits. Like, for example, the 32k limit on text field.
   

Sometimes, creative developers have found work around or coded around that issue … but there are other times where it just plain hurts and you can’t do nothin’ about it.
   

Point in Case: Hitting The Limit Of 32k When Adding Mail Rules To A Server Configuration Document
   

When adding 1 new mail rule to your server configuration document, you get this nasty error (click on the image below to see a bigger version):
 
   

 
So, what can you do when this happens? Not much really. You can try a few things however to make some room:
   

• Review all the mail rules in your server configuration document. Remove all those that aren’t needed anymore.
• Review and check if you could combine some rules together.
• Review and check if can make any rules “smaller”, for example if you had a rule that said “journal when sender is jsmith@whatever.com” you can change it to just “journal when sender is jsmith”.
• If you can, journal everything that is sent and received on your server (it might make the size of your mail journal file increase incredibly fast however).
     

But There Might Be a Glimmer of Hope
  

I opened a ticket with Lotus Support and the support rep created SPR #KGEW84SR3T to add “when Sender or Any Recipient Contains” as an option when creating mail rules.
   

So, if you are like me and you’ve hit the limit, I recommend that you also open a PMR with Lotus Support to ask them to change the way Mail Rules are saved along with Server Configuration Documents.
  

Thanks for reading!
   

Marc

The Devil Is In The Details (a.k.a. Sometimes Users Love Something Because of 1 Tiny Feature) …
   

As you know, the Lotus Notes R8.x Eclipse based UI is a departure from our beloved version 4,5,6 and 7 clients. And, just like everyting in life, some people don’t like when things change.
  

So, for some of my users here, Lotus Notes R8.5.1 is the best thing since sliced bread and for others … well it’s the worst thing we’ve ever installed on their computer. You just can’t please everyone unfortunatly.
     

However, in order to help out my users learn about the new features in R8.5.1, I send a weekly “Tips & Tricks” email each Wednesday with 1 particular tip that might help them out. And yesterday’s tip was smash hit.
  

Wanna know what it is? It’s the simplest thing … and here it is:
      

How to Quickly Schedule a Meeting From Your Sametime Contact List
 

There are many ways to schedule a meeting in Lotus Notes R8.5.1. You can do it from your inbox “New” button, you can do it from your Calendar “New” button and you can double-click anywhere on your calendar to bring up a new appointment just to name a few.
  

But since we are all hooked (and dependant) on Sametime, there is an even quicker way to schedule a meeting with someone right from the comfort of your Sametime Contact list. How quickly? Well, try this: 
   

Step 1: Open your Sametime Contact List and find the collegue that you want to schedule a meeting with.
  
Step 2: Right click on that collegue’s name and then click on the “Find Available Time” option.
  
Step 3: The system will try to find a 1 hour time-slot that fits in both of your schedules and display it on your screen.
  
Step 4: Click on “Create Meeting”.
  
Step 5: When the new meeting invitation appear, give the meeting a Subject and enter a description (if needed).
 
Step 6: Click on “Save & Send Invitations”.
  
Step 7: Enjoy (and don’t forget to show up to the meeting!).
  

Simple isn’t it?
 

Bonus Tip: How to Quickly Schedule a Meeting From Your Sametime Contact List With Many People
   

You’ve used the tip above to schedule a meeting with 1 employee … but how can you schedule a meeting with more than one person from your Sametime Contact list?
  

Well, it’s quite simple too: press and hold the “CTRL” key on your keyboard as you select the people and then, once you have all the folks you want, right-click on one of them and click “Find Available Time”. Presto … easy isn’t it?
   
Really Amazingly Busy People … 
  

It’s possible that, one day, you’ll try to use this tip with someone who’s super busy. The system will try really hard to find a time for your meeting but if it can’t find any available time within the next 7 days, the usual “Find Available Time” screen will come up but it will have this particular warning at the top:
  

Parting Words
 

Well, I pretty sure that someone else had blogged about this somewhere else … and if that’s the case, I’m sorry that I’m repeating something that’s already been said.
  

Thanks for reading!
  

Marc