Once again, I have to ask if I’ve gone mad (and once again answer = probably)
 

I’ve decided to share this blog post with you today because I’m seeing a very strange behaviour in regards to Smart Upgrade and the number that I’ve specified in the “Limit concurrent downloads” in the server configuration document.
 

The behaviour that I see is that when people press the “Don’t Update Now” button when prompted … the “cancelled” upgrade appears to counts toward the number set in the “Limit concurrent downloads”.
 

Here’s What I See …
 

Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words and … well, maybe a graph will help people understand what I’m seeing.
 

The graph below basically shows the current number that I’ve set in the “Limit concurrent downloads” (30) in the server configuration document vs. the people who upgraded, the number of failed upgrade and the number of people who clicked on “Don’t Update Now”.
 

So, What’s The Problem?
 

At this point, you have the right to ask “so, what’s the big deal?” It’s quite simple…
 

Since I’m deploying Lotus Notes R8.5.1 in a fairly large office (300+ employees), IF the first 30 people that log into Lotus Notes in the morning get prompted to upgrade and click on “Don’t Update Now” … then nobody else gets prompted to upgrade!
 

As you can see in the graph above, as time goes by … lots of people click on “Don’t Update Now” … which limits the number of other employees who get prompted to upgrade.
 

In other words: if  my 30 “workaholic early birds” get into the office at 7 AM and click on ”Don’t Update Now” then the rest of the employees don’t get prompted to upgrade when they log in at 8 AM, 9 AM or 10 AM (or whenever they drag themselves into the office).
 

It’s currently affecting me because I’m getting support calls from people who read my weekly tips-and-tricks emails that I sent to the company and *who want to upgrade desperately* (to use all the new features that I discuss) but who never get prompted.
 

And each time that this happens, I check in the Smart Upgrade Tracking Results database and I see that 30 people clicked on the “Don’t Upgrade Now” button at the start of the work day. I usually end up telling them “Click on the File → Tools → Notes Smart Upgrade menu to get the prompt to upgrade…” and they’re usually quite happy after that … but this “feature” is annoying me.
 

A PMR A Day Keeps The Doctor Away … Not In This Case …
 

I did what I always do when something puzzles me: I opened a PMR. Unfortunately for me, I’m got nowhere with the PMR that I opened so … I’m blogging about this to ask …
 

Has anybody else seen this behaviour? Please leave a comment if you did … (it will help me tell Lotus that I’m not alone and I’ll feel a tiny bit less crazy).
 

Conclusion
 

Smart Upgrade is amazing … once you figure out how to configure it properly. It does have it’s intricacies and I think that this problem is just one of those that I accidentally stumbled upon…
 

Anyhow … as usual … Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

Death By PowerPoint Anyone?
 

If you answered “yes” then you’re in luck because you *might just want* to download the 137 pages presentation below!
 

Why would you want to do that? Well, because those are the slides from the “Show’n'Tell” presentation that I have been giving to the employees who have been upgraded to Lotus Notes R8.5.1 recently.
 

I actually don’t “punish” the employees with this slide deck: I do a live demo and I cover everything that’s in the slides below. However, each and everytime, there is always someone in the class that asks “do I have to write all this down?” and I’m always happy to answer “No, I’ll send you a link to the database where I stored the slides”.
 

So, yes,  you can “borrow my slides”! I really don’t mind: the more training everybody gets on R8.5.1, the better!
 

But, seriously, at this point you are probably wondering what this presentation covers …
 

What Does This Presentation Cover?
  

Simply put, during my 1.5 hour presentation, I cover the following topics:
 

Overview & Introduction
 

Part 01: The Bookmark Bar.
 

Part 02: The “Unified Preferences.
 

Part 03: The “Tabs” at the top.
 

Part 04: Toolbars.
 

Part 05: The “Universal Search” feature.
 

Part 06: The Sametime client.
 

Part 07: The Feeds panel.
 

Part 08: The Day-At-A-Glance panel.
 

Part 09: The Mail File changes.
 

Part 10: The Calendar changes.
 

Questions and Answers
 

Usually, I am able to cover all those topics in 1 hour and half but, sometimes, I get a lot of questions during the presentation and I’ve had a few sessions go up to 2 hours.
 

So, Where’s the Presentation?
 

If you think this might be useful to you, here’s the presentation … simply click on the icon below to download it.
 

If you would like to get a copy of those slides in PowerPoint format, simply drop me a line in the comments and I’ll mail it to you along with all the images so that you can modify it to suit your needs.
 

Conclusion …
 

Truth be told, I wanted to use a Rapid eLearning system, like Articulate, to build an on-line training course for our employees.
 

Unfortunately for me (and our employees) my request to purchase Articulate was denied because unbeknownst to me, we have purchased a similar product from another vendor but their server won’t be online until January of 2011.
 

Anyhow, thanks for reading!
 

Marc
 

PS: Don’t forget to check out and “borrow” my presentation (see here) on how to use Lotus Traveler if you need it.

If You Have Any Users With 1 Inch Thick Glasses …
 

You might want to continue reading… because a few days ago, I was called in to help an employee (who had been recently upgraded) with a strange predicament.
 

Basically speaking, after his Lotus Notes R8.5.1 upgrade, his fonts in Lotus Notes were so incredibily HUGE that I could probably have read his emails from across the room.
 

Why did this happen? I wasn’t sure and the answer surprised me … Let’s see what was going on …
 

Lesson 1: Lotus Notes R8.5.1 Now “Obeys” the Windows Fonts Size Settings
 

It appears to me that Lotus has made an incredible effort to make the Lotus Notes R8.5.1 client much better for people with vision related troubles. For example, if you set your Windows Fonts settings to use “Large Fonts”, or “Extra Large Fonts” then the Lotus Notes R8.5.1 client will kindly “adapt” itself and display everything using a bit (or a lot) bigger font.
 

And because of this, I tip my hat to thee oh Lords of the Yellowverse for being so kind toward people with vision troubles. As jet fighters say “loose the sight, loose the fight” but in reality, if you’re loosing your eyesight, you’re loosing a lot more than just a fight!
 

So it’s a really nice touch because the R7 client completly ignored those settings (like a total douche— if you ask me).
 

With this said, his Lotus Notes client displayed fonts a bit bigger but that wasn’t the real reason why his fonts were amazingly HUGE.
 

Lesson 2: Lotus Notes R8.5.1 Now Has a Font Size Option!
 

If you have explored a bit the File → Preferences menu, you might have seen that there is now a “Font size” selection box under “Fonts and Colors”.
 

With the help of this option, you can make the fonts even larger. However, it was not the case for that particular employee since his font size option was set to “Normal” like in the example above.
 

Once again, I feel obliged to tip my hat to the Lords of the Yellowverse for adding this option. I am not 100% sure why I would use it since the client now obeys the Windows Font Size selection but there must be someone out there who needs it (or who does not want to increase his Windows Font size but who really does want to only increase his Lotus Notes Font Size).
 

So, what was really going on?
 

The Culprit: An Old Notes.Ini Setting …
 

It suddently dawned on me that I had helped configure the Lotus Notes version 6 or 7 of that particular employee about 5 years ago (maybe more). And back then, the only way to get Lotus Notes to increase the font size it was using was to tweak the notes.ini file.
 

So, I opened his notes.ini and found this line which I promtly removed:
 

Display_font_adjustment=3
 

After removing that line, saving the notes.ini file, closing Lotus Notes and re-opening it: everything was back to “normal”: his fonts were bigger because of the Windows Font settings but not amazingly HUGE anymore.
 

Conclusion (?)
 

Well, this might help someone out there so I figure it might be good to blog about it … but in the meantime, we all should give a big “Thanks!” to the programmers at Lotus who made the client now “see” the Windows Font size and obey it (also for adding the Font size option inside the client itself).
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

Am I Crazy (answer = probably)
 

But seriously … has anybody else installed the Fix Pack 4 for Lotus Notes R8.5.1? I installed it on 2 machines today. And both times I experienced the following:
 

- Super long delay before anything appears on the progress bar (5 to 10 minutes … no, I’m not kidding!)

- Once installed, the version reported in the person document of the employee is “Release 8.5.1FP4″ … there is no “space” between the release number and the FP number like in previous fix packs.
 

Here’s a bit more details …
 

About the “Delay” …
 

After you start installing the Fix Pack 4, the Install Shield wizard starts as usual and you have to click “Next” a couple times … but at one point, this screen appears and nothing happens for 5 or 10 minutes. The users think it’s frozen and want to click on “Cancel” but if I check in the Task Manager, I see that “fixpack.exe” is busy chewing away the cpu …
 

 
So … what’s going on behind the scenes and how hard would it be to update the progress bar to indicate what’s going on? Is it busy uploading my mail file to somebody? Or scanning my hard drive for music? … just kidding … but seriously, what’s happening?
 

About the “Release Number” …
 

I have some private views in my Domino Directory to track down all the versions that we are using “in the wild”. So, I was surprised when I saw “Release 8.5.1FP4″ for my 2 newly upgraded users. Normally, there’s a space between the Release Number and the Fix Pack Number. However, with Fix Pack 4, that’s not the case. I opened a PMR with Lotus Support and they told me it was normal … really? Ok then … not consistent but normal … see below for examples.
 

For the 1st employee that I upgraded, you can see that there is a space between the Release 8.5.1 FP3 release number but not with FP4 (yes that particular employee has used a few version and many machines).
 

For the 2nd employee, there was no previous version listed in her person document … so here’s what it looks like.
 

Does it matter in the end? Well, not really … but so much for consistency …
 

Conclusion?
 

Well, there isn’t much to say … I just wanted to share this … maybe this will help someone somewhere (?).
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

Dear Lotus,
 

I need you to help us help you! More specifically, I need you to make sure that SPR JSTN84CSC7 is given enough priority so that the SURunAsWizard is “fixed/updated” for Lotus Notes R8.5.2.
 

Let’s face it: we all got the memo that said “deploy Notes 8.5 to as many machines as possible” and we’re all working really hard toward rolling it out. But you have to help us at some point. You really do.
 

Seriously, “why” is the SURunAsWizard utility still not working on Windows Vista machines? And why isn’t it working on Windows 7 machines either? I can understand that you haven’t gotten around to fixing it on Windows 7 … after all, that OS is new on the block. But for Windows Vista? It’s been out for 3 years already (4 if you count the RTM release) so one of your genius coders that’s chained to his (or her) desk somewhere deep in the bowels of your HQ should have had the time to update the SURunAsWizard utility for that OS by now … Right?
 

In all seriousness, I can understand why you haven’t fixed it for Windows Vista’s machines! After all, none of the soul crushing enterprises out there would dare to punish their employees by forcing Windows Vista on them (or would they?). But as buggy/weird/stange/messed-up Windows Vista was (especially with the evil User Access Control feature)… the new kid on the block, i.e. Windows 7, appears promising and some organizations are moving away from XP to Windows 7.
 

Which company is moving toward Windows 7? Well, the one that I work for is going that way.
 

Yes, we started handing out laptops with Windows 7. The local LAN Admins have installed the good ol’ Lotus Notes 7 client on them (to be able to quickly move the user from their old clunky machine to their new one) and when I try to Smart Upgrade those employees on their shiny new laptops to Lotus Notes R8.5.1 FP1 (later to FP3 or FP4) it doesn’t work because of Windows 7.
 

I’ve been a good little admin: I tried some things, I did some Google searches, checked the forums and finally, I opened a PMR.
 

Sadly, I was told right away “sorry, we can’t help you, that’s a known bug and there’s an SPR for that.”. I was surprised … shocked actually.
 

I was told that this is documented in Technote #1381191 (click here to view it).
 

That Technote even has the exact error that I see when I look at the LotusInstall.log file of my Windows 7 users:
 

Failed to launch process as specified user: 5
 

So, please Lotus, if you want to give me an early Christmas present, please please please increase the priority of SPR JSTN84CSC7 so that it gets fixed in Lotus Notes R8.5.2 … THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
 

Dear Members of the Yellowverse Community,
 

If you are bored to death and are looking for a good excuse to open a PMR today (or tomorrow, or whenever you have the time), would you mind opening a PMR with Lotus Support and ask them to add your name to the SPR JSTN84CSC7 so that it gets a higher priority?
 

The more people who add their name to the list of customers who needs this, the faster it will be fixed.
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc
 

PS: This is not a “rant”, this is a request for help …

Another Cryptic Error Message?
 

Well, in my own opinion, I’d qualify this one as “semi cryptic”. And if you ask me, the message should read as something like this:
 

“Smart Upgrade has detected in your notes.ini that you are using a version of Lotus Notes that includes the Designer and/or Administrator client. You cannot downgrade to a Lotus Notes-only installation via Smart Upgrade. Please verify your current installation and the InstallType= line in your Notes.ini before re-trying.” 
 

I can wish right? Well, sometimes I wish so hard that I open SPRs for suggestions … so the SPR for this is #RSSA87UQVT.
 

So, let’s look at why this happens or why this might happen a tiny bit closer before the solution.
 

Why does this happen?
 

Well, there are a few possibilities that I’ve seen so far … maybe there are more ways to get this error but this is what I encountered in my own environment.
 

Reason #1: Lotus Notes with the Designer and/or the Administrator client is installed on the machine. This causes the InstallType= line in the notes.ini to be set to “2″ instead of “6″. So when you try to ”upgrade” someone with the setup files for the “Lotus Notes” client only, it fails.
 

Reason #2: You had, a long time ago, installed Lotus Notes with the Designer and/or the Administrator client on your old machine. Flash forward a few years, and you’ve changed machines a few times and, due to the amazing backwards compatibility of Lotus Notes, you’ve always moved your notes.ini and your databases when you changed machine. So your notes.ini still has the InstallType= line set to “2″ instead of “6″. So, even if you try to upgrade with the “Lotus Notes” client only files, it looks at the notes.ini and still sees that the InstallType= is set to “2″ and stops right there.
 

The Solution – Official Response from Lotus
 

If you search for Technotes, you’ll find stumble on Technote #1271989 ​(here is a link). That Technote basically says “un-install your Notes and re-install it”.
 

The Solution(s) If You Really Only Have the Lotus Notes Client Installed (no Designer or Administrator clients)
 

So, let’s imagine that you’ve checked the employee’s machine and you confirm that *only* the Lotus Notes client is installed. What can you do? Well you can try the following…
 

Solution #1 – Change the Notes.ini Manually …
 

01. [Click] on File → Exit to close Lotus Notes.

02. [Click] on Start → Program Files → Accessories → Windows Explorer.

03. In the Windows Explorer left pane, navigate to the Lotus Notes Program Directory (for example, C:\Notes or C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\)

04. Find the notes.ini file and [Double Click] on it to open it with Notepad.

05. Search the notes.ini file to find if there is a line that starts with “InstallType=” (it’s usually near the top anyway).

06. Change the value of that variable from “2″ to “6″.

07. [Click] on File → Save to save your changes to the notes.ini

08. [Click] on File → Close to close the notes.ini file.

09. Re-Open Lotus Notes R8.5.1
 

Solution #2 – Send Them A Button …
 

Don’t feel like explaining to an employee what to change and how to change it? Well, simply download the LotusScript code below and create a button with that code and mail it to the user. It will do the modification in the notes.ini for you and let the employee know that it’s done.
 

Conclusion
 

Well, like I said, maybe the message will be changed in the future … in the meantime, keep the 3 solutions above in mind if you run into this.
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

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

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

Another Day, Another PMR and Another SPR …
  

This is going to be a quick post. Nothing fancy but it might help someone out there. To begin with, let’s assume that you have used my two previous presentations here and here to get Smart Upgrade up and running in your own environment. Now let’s also assume that you have a mixture of R7.0.1, R7.0.1 CCH2, R7.0.2, R7.0.3 and even a few R7.0.4 clients out in your environment.
   

Everything is working fine to Smart Upgrade all the clients *except* the R7.0.1 CCH2 clients … why is that?  Even if they click on File -> Tools -> Notes Smart Upgrade, they get the dreaded “No Matching Kits” message box.
   

First and Foremost, what’s the CCH2?
   

Simply put, it’s the Client Cumulative Hot Fix Pack 2 for Lotus Notes R7.0.1. “Back In The Days”, we had to deploy that CCH2 to some machines who used a particular database because it contained a fix for a weird DBLookup issue. We had no choice back then …
   

So, What’s The Work Around?
   

The Work Around is quite simple: edit your Desktop Policy Settings document to remove the mention of the FP1 in the “Deploy Version” field. In effect, the “Deploy Version” field will need to only contain “Release R8.5.1″ and your R7.0.1 CCH2 clients will get prompted to upgrade.
   

But This Creates Another Problem … and Here Comes Another Work Around!
       

Now that you have removed the mention of the “FP1″ from the “Deploy Version” field … guess what? Nobody gets prompted to upgrade to Fix Pack 1 (or Fix Pack2 if you have already packaged it … the steps are exactly the same as the one I wrote about before). So, every couple days, you need to re-edit your Desktop Policy to put back the “Deploy Version” to “Release 8.5.1 FP1″ so that people who got upgraded to R8.5.1 also get prompted to install the Fix Pack 1. And you have to “flip-flop” back and forth until all your CCH2 clients are upgraded. Not. My. Idea. Of. Fun.
   

What’s for Desert? An SPR of Course!
  

None of my posts would be complete without the mention of an SPR … it’s almost an habit nowadays (a bad one if I may add that). But anyhow, I have opened a PMR about this with Lotus Support and this turns out to be a known bug with the CCH2 and has been documented in SPR #BJGY83KQGR. The Lotus Support Rep that I worked with provided me was extremely good but he was very careful not to mention if this would be addressed and/or if it will ever be fixed at all (probably not since it applies to an “old” version).
   

Parting Words…
  

For me, in my company, I’m going to be “flip flopping” the policy back and forth a few times … because I have about 400 R7.0.1 CCH2 clients. Hopefully, I’m one of the few companies “out-there” who’ve had to install this and who’s facing this now. But if that’s your case … I feel your pain.
  

Thank for reading!
  

Marc

My New Addiction…
   

Right out of the gate, I have to confess to something: ever since I got Smart Upgrade to work correctly, I got addicted to watching the views in the Smart Upgrade Tracking Results database.  There is something oddly satisfying in watching the results appear in the database now that it just plain works. I really can’t explain it. So while I can’t say this thing is a “sport”, I have to admit that I’m watching it often … anyhow, I thought I’d share my new addiction with you.
  

You Mentionned Something About a Fix Pack I Believe?
     

Oh yes and that’s why I’m writing about it! As you all know, the Lotus Notes & Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 1 was released about a week ago. The technote with the links to the various versions of the Fix Pack 1 can be found here. A few of you have followed my two previous posts here and here on how to create a Smart Upgrade kit for the R8.5.1 client and are now wondering “How can I package an deploy the R8.5.1 Fix Pack 1 the same way?”. Well, here’s how I did it.
  

The Joys of Smart Upgrading a Fix Pack
 

Truth be told, Smart Upgrading a Fix Pack is a walk in the park. It’s a piece of cake. It’s … well, you get the point. Smart Upgrading a standard client is the equivalent of undergoing root canal without anesthesia in an airplane flying in heavy turbulence in my own personal opinion but Smart Upgrading a Fix Pack is so much easier that it dosen’t even compare. Smart Upgrading a Fix Pack is like getting a chair massage in the Certification Lounge at Lotusphere when your back really really really hurts from walking around with a heavy backpack all day … maybe the guys from the special forces can do that all day long without breaking a sweat but I sure can’t … and oh … wait I just remembered there were no chair massages this year!
  

Right out of the gate, you won’t need to use the Install Shield Tuner! So, with this simple fact, you just saved yourself from a few more gray hairs. And the command line? Simple too! So, how do you Smart Upgrade a Fix Pack? Well, download the presentation to view the steps. It’s fairly quick and easy and it just plain works.
    

How to Smart Upgrade the Lotus Notes R8.5.1 Fix Pack 1
  

Writing down step-by-step instructions in this blog post would take 10 pages so, instead of boring you to death with a super long post, I offer you my usual step-by-step slides to get it done. So simply click on the icon below to download the 82 page step-by-step PowerPoint presentation with the instructions:
  

Parting Words …
  

Please note that another blogger, Mr. Mick Moignard, posted a nice entry on his blog about an error message that said “Error encountered when installing Notes Hotfix Core component” when he tried to install the Fix Pack. If you ever run into this error, make sure to read his blog post on how to get around it.
  

Thanks for reading & have fun Smart Upgrading!
  

Marc
  

I hope this helps you!
 

Marc