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

Summary
 

Last year, on November 19th 2009 to be more precise, I posted an entry on my blog with a nice 160 page presentation on how to deploy Lotus Notes R8.5.1 using a combination of SmartUpgrade, the Install Shield Tuner, SURunAsWizard and Policies.  The post was quite popular and I thank every one of you who visited my blog and/or who commented.
 

However, one of the problems with the last presentation was that, if you followed the steps religiously, the Lotus Notes R8.5.1 client would not login the employee into Sametime on the 1st startup. In fact, to get it to work automatically, you had to open the sidebar and click on the Login button at least once. Fortunately for me, last month, Tony Trout of Lotus Support sent me 1 more line that should have added into the plugin_customization.ini file to get the notes client.
 

And what line needs to be added? Simply this one: 

com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.login/autologin=true

So, after updating the file, recreating the package and testing it, I can safely say that this line works. So, what did I do next? Well, I updated the presentation for your enjoyment. You will find the download link after the “Thank You’s”.
 

Once again … a few “Thank You”!
 

Just like on my lst blog post, before you get to the download part, I would like to say Thank You (again) to a few people who have made this presentation possible …
 

• Andy Donaldson and his blog posts here and here on how to use the Install Shield Tuner. His blog posts helped me a lot!
   
• Michael Willard, Andrew Lapidas and Andy Liew of Lotus Support for working with me and discovering the bug in the SURunAsWizard.
   
• Jean-Paul Mehanna of Lotus support for his help in figuring out how to setup the Sametime Community in the plugin_customization file.
   
• And most importantly #1, John St. Germain of Lotus Support, for all his help and discovering that using “-d” in the SURunAsWizard caused most of the issues I was running into (it’s an undocumented gotcha).
   
• And most importantly #2, Tony Trout of Lotus Support, for not giving up on me and my questions in regards to the Sametime Community config in the plugin_customization file and keeping me constantly updated on his research.
     

As you can see, it was a team effort … so I have good reasons to say “Thank You” to all these folks … but that’s the power of the Notes community … lots of people all working together and sharing information.
 

So … What does the Presentation cover again?
 

Basically, this 161 page presentation still covers the following (only 3 pages were updated):
 

• 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 – Using SURunAsWizard to create a single-file executable.
   
• Part 5 – Uploading the package and updating the policies.
   
• Part 6 – A deployment example.
   

And Now … The Updated 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 more quickly and more efficiently.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
Click on the icon above to download the presentation
 

I hope you enjoy it.
 

Addendum
 

On November 17th 2009, Mr. Ed Brill posted on his blog a post with links to 2 new wikis that had just been published which contains similar information. I felt kinda ackward because I had been working on this presentation for a while now (John St. Germain can attest to it since I had sent him draft copies of the presentation). However, since I had spent so much time on it, I didn’t want to let it all go to waste and I decided to finish it and post it. Maybe it will help someone out there …?
 

PS: I’m leaving for Lotusphere on Saturday so I might not be able to respond to comments for the next week.

Summary

I have been working with Lotus Support for a couple weeks (months actually) on getting Smart Upgrade to work in my company. At first, I was trying with the R8.5 client and we had tons of issues (including the discovery of a regression in the SURunAsWizard.exe in R8.5 which I blogged about here). While working with Lotus Support, R8.5.1 was released so I switched gears and started working toward deploying that new version … and truth be told, it was so much easier to tune R8.5.1 than R8.5.

While working with the folks of Lotus Support, I promised one of them that I’d create a step-by-step presentation of every single step it took me to get it to work. So … here it is for your enjoyment.

But first … a few “Thank You”!

Before you get to the download part, I would like to say Thank you to a few people who have made this presentation possible …

• Andy Donaldson and his blogs posts here and here on how to use the Install Shield Tuner. His blog posts helped me a lot!

• Michael Willard, Andrew Lapidas and Andy Liew of Lotus Support for working with me and discovering the bug in the SURunAsWizard.

• Jean-Paul Mehanna and Tony Trout of Lotus support for their help in figuring out how to setup the Sametime Community in the plugin_customization file.

• And most importantly, John St. Germain of Lotus Support, for all his help and discovering that using “-d” in the SURunAsWizard caused most of the issues I was running into (it’s an undocumented gotcha).

As you can see, it was a team effort … so I have good reasons to say “Thank You” to all these folks … but that’s the power of the Notes community … lots of people all working together and sharing information.

So … What does the Presentation cover?

Basically, this 160 page presentation 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 – Using SURunAsWizard to create a single-file executable.

• Part 5 – Uploading the package and updating the policies.

• Part 6 – A deployment example.

And Now … 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 more quickly and more efficiently.

Click here to download the presentation

Addendum

Last Friday, Mr. Ed Brill posted on his blog a post with links to 2 new wikis that had just been published which contains similar information. I felt kinda ackward because I had been working on this presentation for a while now (John St. Germain can attest to it since I had sent him draft copies of the presentation). However, since I had spent so much time on it, I didn’t want to let it all go to waste and I decided to finish it and post it. Maybe it it will help someone out there …?

I hope you enjoy it.

PS: I am leaving for vacations on Friday somewhere where my cell phone won’t work and where there’s no internet so I won’t be able to respond to comments for the next 2 weeks.