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

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