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

Kids Say the Darnest Things …
 

And End Users Ask the Darnest Questions … point in case: an employee calls me up and asks the following simple question:
 

“Hi Marc, I want to add an arrow into my email. In Microsoft Word, I click on Insert → Symbol and then I get to pick the arrow from the Wingding font selection and insert it right into my Word document… it’s soooo easy … I need to know where’s that option in Lotus Notes R8.5.1 because I can’t find it!”.
 

The answer is: *nowhere*. Seriously it ain’t there. Don’t bother looking.
 

A PMR a Day Keeps The Doctor Away?
 

Since I couldn’t find the option myself, I did what I usually do: I opened a PMR (I swear, I’ve opened almost 1 PMR day over the course of our 8.5.1 rollout for various questions, bugs and issues that I couldn’t figure out myself).
 

And the answer I got from Lotus Support was a bit surprising. Here’s a copy-paste of what the Support Rep wrote me:
 

I did discover that there was an SPR enhancement request submitted for this and the SPR# is MCHZ6DUMHZ. The SPR was closed with “No plans to fix in the 8.0 code stream”
 

I just wanted to let you know that I created an Notes client 8.5 code stream document for this issue. This will increase the”weight” of the issue. If weight increases sufficiently, it may be re-raised for triage for an upcoming maintenance or feature release.
 

So, there you have it … it won’t be added to the R8.x codestream. Tough luck heh?
 

But It’s In Outlook! [Cried the End User Weilding A Torch and a Pitch Fork in front of My Cube]
 

Yes, I cannot deny that this feature is in Outlook (and MS Word). In fact, here’s a screenshot of the Outlook 2010 client (I think) with the button that shows up in the right hand corner when a user clicks on the “Insert” tab of the [evil] “Ribbon interface” at the top …
 

So, there you have it folks … the option is right there in Outlook. Even better: they can insert mathematical Equations that are transformed into embedded images once the email is sent (it’s kinda neat, I have to admit) … but it won’t be in Lotus Notes R8.x …
 

Dear Lotus … Help us Help You …
 

Before I end this blog post, I must utter the following prayer …
 

Oh Lords of Thy Yellowverse
Please Add Unto Lotus Notes
The Ability to Insert Symbols
And Maybe Even Equations
So That My End Users Will Be Satisfied
And  Love Thy Email Client Even More
 

Ok, seriously Lotus … please add this “feature” into the next client … and my users will love their client even more!
 

One Last Thing …
 

Just in case someone smarter than me reads this blog post … is there anyone out there who would happen to know the code that I could put into one of the Toolbar icons to do this? This is just out of curiosity … maybe someone … somewhere has already done this(?) …
 

Conclusion …
 

Well, there isn’t much to say really … with the R8.5.1 client, Lotus has improved the email side of things by leaps and bounds to a point where my end users are amazed when I show them some of the new features (messsage recall anyone?) .. but there still is a bit of space left for improvement …
 

Anyhow … 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.

Ever Get a Problem That’s Straight Outta Comptom The Twilight Zone?
 

Well, I had a call today that made me go “whhaaaaa?” … and the problem was somewhat simple: the employee had lost his “Follow Up Mini View” in the lower left corner of his mail file.
 

I checked it out and it was true: there was no way for me to get the Follow Up Mini View back. Here’s a screen shot to show that we could not “drag” the mini-view back onto the screen.
 

Here’s The Solution …
 

Before you start following this procedure, please verify if the employee is using any widgets and make a note of each of them: he will loose them all and you will need to find them and re-add them.
 

However, in the case of the employees in our company, we don’t have or use any widgets (for now) so, I followed these steps to get the “Follow Up Mini View” to display again:
 

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 My Computer → C: → Notes → Data (or wherever the Lotus Notes client is installed).
 

04. [Click] on the “workspace” folder to select it.
 

05. [Right Click] on the “workspace” folder to get the options menu.
 

06. [Click] on Rename in the options menu that appeared.
 

07. [Type] “workspace-old” and press <Enter> on the keyboard to rename the folder.
 

08. [Click] on File → Close to close Windows Explorer.
 

09. [Click] on the icon to start Lotus Notes R8.5.1 … and once Lotus Notes R8.5.1 has started
 

10. Verify that the “Follow-up Mini-View” has reappeared in the employee’s mail file.
 

11. [Click] on the menu “File → Preferences” and verify that his settings are the way he wants them (some of the settings are reset after removing the workspace folder.
 

That’s it … “simple” as that.
 

Conclusion?
 

I actually opened a ticket with Lotus Support about this and they were puzzled too … but that little “workspace” procedure above resolved it.
 

I just hope this helps someone … somewhere …
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

The Devil Is In The Details …
 

And this is going to be a quick post about one of those “details” … let’s say your running two servers in a cluster and the 2nd server catches on fire (not that mine did).
 

If half of your users are on Server A and the other half are on Server B … what will happen to the mail being delivered to the users on Server B when it goes out in a ball of flames?
 

Logic dictates that, since you are running in a cluster, the mail router will “see” the 2nd server as being down and deliver the emails to the Server A mail file of those users … right?
 

Well, you’re correct *only* if you have configured the router to do that.
 

How To Configure The Router To Deliver Emails to Cluster Mates …
 

If you ever run into this same situation (as I did), you need to do the following:
 

(a) Open your Domino Directory

(b) Go to the “Configurations → Server → Configurations” view.

(c) Open your Server A configuration document.

(d) Put the Server A configuration document in Edit mode.

(e) Go to the “Router → Advanced → Control” tab.

(f) Make sure that “Cluster failover” is set to “Enabled for all transfers in this domain”.

(g) Save the server configuration document.

(h) Repeat for all your other server configuration documents.
 

 
Once you’ve made the change, make sure to replicate your Domino Directory around and issue a RESTART TASK ROUTER on them all.
 

Conclusion …
 

Domino Clusters are awesome and they just work out of the box … but that’s one of the details that you need to be aware of if you want mail to flow even when one of your clustered server is down.
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc

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

I sit here at my desk with a somewhat vexing issue. You see, we are a Blackberry standard shop. By being so, it does offer some simplification in how we support our infrastructure from a support and security point of view. However, we are also in the midst of an ERP refresh, that does have some challenges with that mobile platform choice. One of those choices is the iPhone. Now the iPhone is a great device, with some distinct comparative limitations. I am choosing to speak about one of those limitations, Sametime usage from the device.

Traveler does a very nice job of messaging, calendaring and contact management, with also offering a nice vertical in terms of support and deployment with our existing Domino environment. Missing though is the same ease of deployment of Sametime collaboration. Yes, I do know about the new v8.x Sametime server, but the investment support in such a back-end infrastructure to support mobile devices is not there for a company our size.

So I ask the regular readers of this site, do you know of any clients for IOS that will function with Sametime v7/v8? Without requiring a large back-end investment?

Sometimes, I Just Want To Share the Pain …
 

And this blog does allow me to do a bit of that.  But before I explain what happened, I must mention one thing …
 

My users just L-O-V-E the Message Recall feature in Lotus Notes R8.5.1! They really do. When any employee starts to complain about their new Lotus Notes, I listen to them, I fix whatever they need fixed and then I show them some of the new features of Lotus Notes. And it never fails: as soon as I show them the Message Recall feature, they go bezerk and want to kiss and hug their new Lotus Notes client (ok, maybe not that much but … close).
 

So with this said, something happened today at work which could have ended up being “The Greatest Message Recall Ever” … but didn’t. 
 

Here’s the sad sad story …
 

Step 01 – Someone fowarded an email to a very important employee that contained a link that needed to be sent to all the employees.

Step 02 – The very important employee, copy pasted the link into a new memo.

Step 03 – The very important employee, selected the “All Employees” group into the “To:” field and clicked on ”Send”.

Step 04 – The email got sent to a few thousand employees … but, unfortunately, the Lotus Notes R8.5.1 FP3 client of the very improtant employee crashed.

Step 05 – A few minutes passed by.

Step 05 – A wave of panic ensued as more and more people reported that the link in the email did not work.

Step 06 – Panic ensued even further when the very important employee realized that the email had *not* been saved into the “Sent” view of the mail file (probably because of the crash) so the email could not be recalled.
 

At that point, my phone rang, a couple sametime windows appeared on my screen and my cell phone rang … I was being called in to help.
 

However, there isn’t anything an Administrator can do when the email that needs to be recalled isn’t in the Sent folder, and unless someone at Lotus has a tool for such a special occasion, this is the sad reality that I was faced with.
 

Bottom line, I would really really really have liked to see the servers around the world recall that message. We’re talking a few thousand employees on servers spread across each and every continents all connected together with just about every type of link imaginable (from 56k ISDN lines all the way up to T1′s).
 

But that message recall never happened … and I’m sad.
 

So until next time, I’ll just go cry in a corner somewhere while I open a PMR to ask Lotus to figure out why the client of the very important employee crashed.
 

Just sharin’ the pain …
 

Thanks for reading!
 

Marc
 

PS: Yes, I took the time to upgrade that very important employee’s Lotus Notes to Fix Pack 4 after her crash … maybe it will help for the next email that needs to go out to all the planet.

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 …