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

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

Sametime Business Cards … Who Wants To Upload Their Picture?
  

Following a post I wrote a few weeks ago about Sametime Pictures and another here about a security issue with the Sametime Business Card feature, someone asked via the comments if I could post my code that I used to resize and upload the pictures in our Domino Directory. The short answer was “sorry, no”. For various reasons I cannot post the code of the agent that I wrote for my company because it does various other things and even pulls data from other sources that wouldn’t matter much to anyone else but us.
   

However, I gave this some thought and I decided to write a small agent that can be called by employees from the Actions menu of the Domino Directory to upload their own picture. And, since I said that I’d try to write a blog post about this, here’s the result.
   

Before You Start – You Need To Setup The Business Card Feature!
  

Before you start thinking about using this agent to allow people to upload their own picture into your Domino Directory, you need to make sure that your Sametime server is configured correctly to pull the pictures from the right place using the right field name and data type. I won’t go into details here because Lotus has written Technote #1244204 on the matter which I used to setup our own Sametime 7.5 server to “see” the jpegPhoto field correctly. Basically speaking, you need to add “:binary” to the photo field of the Business Card configuration screen … which is weird if you ask me.
  

Keep in mind that we have not upgraded our servers to Sametime 8.5 yet (way too scary for now … but we might go with the “classic” edition later down the road) so you’ll need to look somewhere else for the “how to make sure it’s configured properly” if you are using Sametime 8.5 servers.
  

The Good Stuff: A Bit More About The Agent
   

Well, right away, I need to mention that the agent is in Java. Yep, Java. Scary isn’t it? It’s in Java because that programming language has classes that can resize an image built right into it. And because of that, it means that employees don’t need to install anything on their computers to resize the 10 mega-pixel picture they are trying to upload.
  

Also keep in mind that I’m very rusty when it comes to Java so, although the agent does the trick for me, feel free to revamp it to make it better. In fact, you might find the code a bit “procedural” and not very fancy in terms of “object oriented-ness” but hey, it does the trick. Also, keep in mind that image resizing techniques in Java are a dime a dozen on the Intertubes and I used the most basic method I could find (you can read more about the method here on Java.net but I tweaked it to suit my needs).
   

How to Use The Agent
   

Well, first and foremost, you need to download the code below and create the Java agent in your own Domino Directory that can be called from the “Actions” menu. I called my agent “Import Picture”. 
  

Once you have created the agent, any employee that opens the Domino Directory can select his/her name can then click on “Actions -> Import Picture” (or whatever name you gave the agent). When the agent starts, it does a check to make sure that the employee has only 1 “Person” selected but it does not check to make sure that it’s the employee’s very own document that’s selected. So, “buyer beware”: they’ll get a nice error if they try to upload a funny picture into someone else person document (unless you’ve set your Domino Directory ACL wrong and anybody can modify everyone else person doc in there … if that’s the case, you have bigger things to worry about than someone uploading a picture of someone else passed out drunk on his lawn).
  

Anyhow, if the employee has a person document selected, they’ll then be prompted to select a file with a “JPG” extension from their hard drive. Yes, a file with a “JPG” extension. Not “JPEG”. Not “GIF”. Not “BMP”. I need a ”JPG” file. Sure, I could have updated the code to work around this but I wanted to keep it simple.
  

It’s important to note that the picture that the employee selects has to be on their own computer (or on a network share that they have “write” access to) because the code will create a resized copy in the same location as the original file. In other words: they’ll get another nice error if they selected a picture on a network share that they only have “read” access to.
 

Once the jpg file is selected, the code will kick-in and create a copy of the selected image resized to a width of 100 pixels (it will keep the aspect ratio). You can modify the code to resize them smaller or bigger but 100 pixels seems a good compromise between the “look & feel” of the Sametime Business Cards vs. how much more data the Domino Directory has to store. In fact, I think that the Business Cards feature re-downsizes the pictures to 90 pixels but I could be wrong.
   

Once the image is resized, the code checks to make sure that the resized picture is not bigger than 20 000 bytes because that kills the Sametime Business Card feature (read more on that topic on the excellent blog of Mr. Vladimir Kocjancic in his post here).
   

At that point, if everything is ok, the resized picture gets inserted into the hidden “jpegPhoto” field on the person document. That field is not visible on the UI so employees cannot “see” the results when they open their own person document in the Domino Directory. However, they can right-click on their entry in their Sametime Contact list and select “Refresh Business Card” to see their new picture.
   

So, Where’s the Beef … err, Where’s The Code?
   

Well, here you go… the code of the agent is attached below. Simply click on it to download the code to your hard drive. Once you have it, import it into a new Java agent that can be called from the Actions menu in your Domino Directory and test it out in your test environment first before moving this production.
  

The Usual Disclaimers …
  

Well, as usual, I have to do a bit of CYA: if you decide to use this code, test it in your test environment 1st. It works for me but you need to make sure it works fine in your own environment before moving it production.
  

Also, if you are a Java guru, please review the code to see if you can improve it. And if you can: please post the updated code on your own blog (you are blogging right?).
   

Parting Words …
  

Oddly enough, this is only blog post in April (so far) … it’s been an insanely busy month (which included a business trip to New Jersey). I have no idea where time went but I haven’t been able to keep up with everything so blogging took a back seat up to this weekend. Hopefully, things will quiet down and I’ll be able to post things more often.
   

Thanks for reading!
   

Marc

Ever since I got the Sametime Business Cards pictures to work …
   

… I’ve started to receive a steady stream of calls from people asking me (a) ”why” their picture is there now and (b) how to update it. Today is not an exception and I got 1 call from someone asking me the usual questions … but this time the picture was not being pulled from the usual place.
   

Here’s the phone call I got …
   

[Phone Rings]

1. Marc [answers] – “Marc speaking, how can I help?”

2. Sales Rep – “Hi Marc, can you remove my picture from Sametime?”.

3. Marc [replies] – “Why”?

4. Sales Rep – “Check this out”.

5. [sound of email typing ...].

6. [new mail sound].

7. Marc [looks at email] – “Well, Mr. X, this is interesting (see modified version below)… that’s not the kind of picture HR would upload … let me check a few things… ”
   

Seriously, Where’s that Picture Coming From?
  

So, I checked the main database where our pictures are stored (an HR database). There was no picture for that employee in there. The pictures from the HR database are exported, resized and re-imported into the Domino Directory by an agent that I wrote so this is why I looked in there first.
   

I then checked the Person doc of the employee in the Domino Directory. There was no jpgPhoto field on his document. That confirmed that he never had a picture in the HR Database.
  

At this point, I was puzzled. But as I looked back at the picture, I thought it was funny looking. It looks like he’s mid sentence trying to grab his phone back … and that’s when I remembered that he’s a BlackBerry user.
   

So, I asked him to check in his Personal Address Book (names.nsf on local) for an entry with his name in it. He said that “Yes”, he had an entry for himself which he keeps some personal notes into. His entry also has his email address in it. He opened it up and … presto, there was the picture.
  

He promptly removed the picture from his own entry in his Personal Address Book, saved it and then right clicked on his name in his Sametime Contact list and selected “Refresh Business Info” … a few seconds later, the picture was gone.
  

That’s it … that’s all.
  

So it looks like the Sametime Business Cards feature in Sametime does a lookup on local first and if it finds a match on your email address, it will pull up that picture 1st. Interesting…
   

Addendum …
  

After we got his picture removed, I asked him if he remembered where that picture had been taken. Mr. X told me that it was taken during “one of those nights at the bar” during a Sales Meeting by another sales rep who had grabbed his phone on the table and started to take pictures … so that explains it.
   

Thanks for reading!
  

Marc

Summary …
  

While working on getting the Business Card feature to work correctly, I discovered that I was able to access the UserInfoServlet on my Sametime server without having to provide any credentials and “see” what Business Card information would be returned for me, Patrick and anybody in our company.
  

The important keywords here are “without having to provide any credentials”. After digging a bit more, I discovered that I could reproduce the same results when I accessed the internet facing Sametime servers of other companies. With this, I was able to get one of the phone number another famous blogger of the Yellowverse (one who happens to be a pilot to give you a hint) and the location of a famous speaker at Lotusphere (one who likes Turtles to give you another hint).
   

This. Is. Not. Good. 
  

The Problem …
 

The Sametime Business Card feature, introduced a while back, works by having the Sametime server call a servlet called “UserInfoServlet” in the servlet directory. Mr. Mikkel Flindt Heisterberg has written a very nice, and detailed, blog post (here) titled “Reverse engineering the Sametime 7.5 business card servlet” to help us all understand how that servlet works.
  

The information from Mr. Heisterberg’s blog is especially useful, for example, when you are setting up your Sametime Server and fiddling with the Business Card feature. Why? Simply because you can troubleshoot and test what the Business Card will display by accessing a URL like this:
  

http://st.uu.com/servlet/UserInfoServlet?operation=3&userid=rincewind
   

And here’s the catch 22: if your Sametime Server is configured to allow anonymous access so that your employees can have Sametime meetings with other people from the outside, the server will give you the info about that user without asking for any credentials whatsoever.
  

So, now that you know this, what’s stopping you from doing a Google search on “Welcome to IBM Sametime”, finding a server which allows anonymous access, doing a cross-check in the company’s “Contact Us” page or forums to find the CEO’s name and hitting that URL to get his phone number after a few trials and errors to get his user id right?
  

Answer: nothing is stopping you.
   

The Fix That Lotus Recommends …
   

Well, I thought I had a security issue on my server so I did what I always do: I opened a PMR with Lotus Support. After going back and forth in emails with a support rep, he said that the only solution he could think of was to put in a firewall restriction on any url with “servlet/UserInfoServlet?” in the URL. When I asked if that would break the Sametime Business Card lookups, the answer I got was “Most of the our clients do not send the information directly via HTTP directly to the HTTP server. We use the VP channel via 1533. In this case we send this information to the Sametime server which then uses this request to format the URL to call to the userinfoservlet and send this request to lookup names. In this case if you denied external HTTP access to the server, other calls (browser based) would be denied, but the client based calls should still go through.“.
  

Apart from that, he wrote that there no other solutions yet. Since there was no other solutions, he created an SPR for a future release (the SPR # is MALN82QM5M).
       

Now, just to make sure that I wasn’t crazy, I emailed Mr. Mikkel Flindt Heisterberg and he quickly replied back to me that, “yes”, this could be a potential issue depending on your viewpoint and that “yes”, the firewall workaround would be a good workaround for now. Mr. Heisterberg also mentioned in his reply that ”the servlet specification doesn’t provide any access control in the same way we’re used to with Notes and Domino so unfortunately protecting the servlet is not as easy as “just adding access control”. It will also make getting business card data from Sametime more complex.”.
  

The Temporary Fix … Until your Firewall Guys Put the Rule in Place … 
  

Since most of my firewall experts are snowed-in and currently digging their way out of their own house, I could have decided to fiddle with the firewall myself … but I decided to go another way: I created a temporary URL redirection rule for my Sametime server to prevent access to the servlet. 
  

That’s what I did for now and here’s the exact steps on how I did it if you want to go this route …
  

01. Open the Domino Directory on your Sametime server.
  

02. Go to the server documents view and open the Sametime server  document (if I remember, internet sites docs aren’t allowed for a ST 7.5 server … but if I’m wrong and you are using Internet sites documents then open the site for your Sametime server).
  

03. Once the server doc is opened (or internet site document), click on the action button “Create Web…” and select “URL Mapping/Redirection”.
  

04. Once the new document has appeared, go to the “Basics” tab.
  

05. On the “Basics” tab, select “URL –> Redirection URL” in the “What do you want to setup” field.
  

06. Now go to the “Site Information” tab.
  

07. Enter the IP address of our server in the “IP Address” field (actually, I noticed that it’s not required …).
  

08. Now go to the “Mappings” tab.
  

09. On the “Mappings” tab, go in the “Incoming URL Path” field and type this: /servlet/UserInfoServlet*
  

10. Now, click in the “Redirection URL string” field and type this: /stcenter.nsf
  

11. Click on the “Administration” tab.
  

12. Set the Owner and Administrators field to whatever is the standard in your environment.
  

13. When ready, click on “Save & Close”.
  

14. Now go on the server console and type “TELL HTTP REFRESH”.
  

15. Once the HTTP tasks has refreshed, try to access the same url as above (change the hostname to your server name and the userid to yours) to test if it redirects you to the Meeting Center instead of handing you information about your user id.
  

 
Parting Words …
 

Keep in mind that “mileage may vary” … i.e., I want to protect this Servlet and the information it returns from the outside but maybe this is a non-issue for you. If you haven’t configured the business cards feature or if your Sametime server uses a completely different directory, maybe this is not something you need to be worried about … just keep this in mind.
       

Thanks for reading!
  

Marc

Hi everyone,

Last Saturday, Patrick had to fly back home to his family for personal reasons. I tried to call him on that day but I got transferred to voicemail almost right away. So, I was a little surprised when he emailed me at around 3:30 pm and his email was simply 1 line: ”I’m on a plane!”. Since it wasn’t written “Sent by from BlackBerry” at the bottom, I figured he was joking and using his Notes client … so I logged into Sametime.

After a small chat via Sametime he told me that he was on a flight above Nevada and was using “GoGo Wireless Internet” on the plane to get into Notes and Sametime. He said he was flying at 485 mph at 38 000 feet. How did he know? Simple: he had his automotive GPS along for the ride and he sent me this screenshot while he was over Wyoming:

So, because we were both bored (him from sitting in a plane and me from studying for my re-certifications exams all afternoon) we decided to test out a few things to see if GoGo Wireless Internet was blocking any kind of traffic.

The first thing we tried was fiddling with a Sametime Online Meeting. It didn’t work the first time: partly because I got out of the meeting room when I discovered that my Logitech QuickCam 9000 was broken. On the second try, I plugged back into my computer my old QuickCam Live for Notebook and that worked!

The only bad thing was the he didn’t have a headset that had a microphone (only headphones) with him on the plane so his laptop microphone was picking up the engine noise and I couldn’t hear him. However, if I talked, he could hear me and reply back via the group chat feature in the meeting room. The video was a bit sluggish: Patrick said there was a 15 second delay in his video but hey, it worked!

Utter nerdgasm. Or boredom. Or a mix of both?

Anyhow, after we had our fun with the Sametime Meeting room we tried a Skype Video Call and it also worked! The same “engine noise” problem drowned out Patrick’s voice but he could hear me. The video was a bit quicker in Skype … but then again the lag in the video while we were in the Sametime 7.5 meeting room might have to do with how Sametime 7.5 encodes video. Maybe we’ll get to re-try if I ever get the courage to upgrade our Sametime server to 8.5? Time will tell.

I hope you enjoyed this post …

Marc

Summary

Your boss calls you up and says “Hey, take a look at my Sametime Chat window … it’s not displaying my chats the same way it used to: can you look into it?”. Since you enjoy your job (most days) and want to keep it (because you need to pay for your gambling habit bills), you say “Sure!” and you VNC/LANDesk/Remote Desktop into his machine to check it out.

You begin thinking that it’s related to IE 8.0 but it’s not installed on his machine (IE7 is installed but he’s a FireFox addict anyway and never uses it) … what gives?

Screenshot of the Sametime Chat Window

As you can see below, his chat window is displaying each name and date/time stamp on the 1st line and then the actual “text” from the chat is right below. Also, notice that the text from the “header” is also a bit larger than the rest of the text. Usually, the name of the person and the text of the chat are on the same line and in a smaller font.

Patrick Darke Sametime Chat Window

Steps Taken & Solution

Well, after trying several things … like:

- Resetting his Sametime Chat Window Fonts preferences (I thought it had something to do with technote #1247489).
- Resetting all of his Sametime Preferences (File -> Preferences -> Sametime -> Restore Defaults button)
- Finding and replacing the stchat.css file (hidden deep within the folder structure of the Lotus Notes 8.x client … see technote #1380355).

None of that worked … but you know what fixed it?

We simply went into File -> Preferences -> Sametime -> Accessibility and unchecked all the boxes in there and presto!

Accessibility Settings Turned Off

I think it’s really nice that Lotus has included Accessibility settings for the Sametime chat window. However, the help file in my R8.5 client has no mention whatsoever of the Sametime accessbility settings so I figured I should post this here.

Enjoy!

Summary

You upgrade your R7.02 FP3 server to R8.5 FP1 … before the upgrade, your iNotes clients had presence awareness enabled and it worked. Now it doesn’t work anymore. What gives? It’s actually super easy to fix …

The Solution

The solution is actually in the R85 Administrator Help database in the document titled “Setting up Lotus iNotes with Sametime”. Since presence awareness *used to work* before, you can skip pretty much everything in that help document BUT you need to check, just as it’s written in that help file, if there’s a servlets.properties file in your Domino server Data directory.

If there isn’t a servlets.properties file in your Data directory, you need to create it (it’s notepad time!) and put the following line in it:

servlet.DWABuddyList.code=com.lotus.dwa.stbuddy.DWABuddyList

Once that file is saved, simply issue a RESTART TASK HTTP command and … presto! It works again.

Easy isn’t it? Please kill me now …