A Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Superstar

Behind that cute face is a true Hollywood superstar!! An "American Icon", if you will...


I don't know if I should link to the actual video, but it's hilarious!!

Sorry for no posts...

It's been almost a week! Nothing much going on for me in Lotus land right now. Just moving users to the Notes 7.0.2 Client and preparing to fire up our new System i boxes! Finally got some UPS stuff straightened out and power is being pulled tomorrow.

Oh, and I believe I have contributed to an OpenNTF project (not as a chef - just a taste-tester). Vince Schuurman (et. al.) have released OpenNTF Mail Experience 702b. He posted about one of the new features I'm pretty excited about. I may even roll out the template because of this addition! It's the "Memo size restriction" feature. Users and admins can set a preference or Notes.ini parameter for the maximum size of an email. I posted the following at Vince's site:

I've thought of doing this before, but never got around to it. As an admin, I think we should be able to have this as a "policy" that users cannot edit. Of course, if it's an ini parm, we can set it via desktop policies and the users wouldn't know where to change it anyway.

We have a 50MB email limit, but I still have people trying to send 75-100 MB+ files in their email. The problem is that if you can send it and then get a failure from the router, then the message is still in your sent items.

Also, the message is not only in your Sent items, but the delivery failure from the Router contains the attachment as well!

Regarding my "contribution" to the project, Vince was asking for verbiage for the error message and apparently liked my suggestion (which was just an expansion of his suggested message). I have downloaded the template but haven't looked to see if I made it officially! ;) My suggestion was:

Sorry, this document is 5343 KB. This is larger than the allowed size of 1024 KB. Please review the size and number of attachments to make this document smaller.

New Open Source BlackBerry Site!

I just listened to the latest Taking Notes Podcast regarding BlackBerry development. This was a really good Podcast. Bruce and Julian are doing a great job - keep it up!!

In the Podcast we learn of a new Open Source BlackBerry applications site that is similar to OpenNTF. It is openCOD.org - check it out!

OpenNTF Mail Experience 7.0.2a Beta is out

Cool stuff! Love the Web 2.0 UI. Check it out here. Thanks Bruce and Vince!

domBulletin Skins?

We're planning on using domBulletin for the forum on the CLNUG site. I may be using the "brown" skin that I've been using for an in-house database as the default for the CLNUG forum. Below is a sample and you can download a text file with the css here.

Question - Does anyone else have domBulletin skins to share?



Now Playing: "In Perfect Harmony" by Dragonland

Technorati: OpenNTF, domBulletin, Lotus Notes

Putting SnTT Tips To Use In New App (SnTT)

I decided to take some cues from Nathan's post on using layers. Though my UI is far from where it should be, this is still a slight departure from our "usual" UIs here. I may or may not go with the right-side menu as Nathan did - I'm just so used to left-side menus... This application should go live on August 1, so there may be some other tweaks.



In the above graphic, you can see that I have a Show/Hide History option that will toggle a layer with an embedded view of the tickets entered for that username in the past. I grabbed the icons from a web development application I have. I probably will not get to go "all out" with switchable text/graphic buttons.

Now Playing: "Universal Mind" by Liquid Tension Experiment

Technorati: Show-n-tell thursday

Meet My Twisted Sister, Bruce! (Re: Domino TNEF Extraction)

Listening to the latest Taking Notes Podcast (#25), towards the end Bruce and Julian are talking about the Domino 7.0.2 feature that will extract the files embedded in TNEF objects sent from MS Outlook. These are the wonderful winmail.dat files that we all love. In discussing this, though, you can faintly hear Bruce singing "We're not gonna take it..." That's hilarious!!

When I first heard that the TNEF extraction would be added to the Domino server, I was torn. First, as an MS FUD fighter, I felt just as Bruce was (jokingly) singing. Why should we kowtow to the proprietary email format used by Outlook. We shouldn't just take it! But IBM probably decided that they wouldn't take any more user complaints and just work around the issue. From an admin's standpoint, I heartily applaud IBM on this. It will be great for 7.0.2+ servers to have this natively. I, hopefully, won't have to field the complaints from the "higher-ups" in my company who just feel that all email should work together. Well, thanks to this feature from IBM, utopia is one step closer!

Speaking of the TNEF extraction, Julian posted a mail-in database that will currently work to extract the TNEF objects. It works well and is fast! I have already implemented that in my environment, so the next time this happens we can tell users just to forward the email to the "Winmail" address. Details on Julian's tool can be found here at his blog. If you're an admin who hasn't downloaded this, you should go snag it!

Technorati: Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook

Boosted Personal Website (SnTT)

This is semi-Notes related. For my personal website, I am just running an Apache server on a WinXP PC at my house. It was cool to setup and I loaded Perl for some stat scripting - just a general way to broaden my horizons. I may get a real domain name, but for now, it's just at http://cwhisonant.gotdns.com.

Well, since I really didn't like how blogspot does the native image imports, I host pretty much all of my blog's images on my Apache server. Since I'm on a cable modem (5 Mbps down x 512 Kbps up), you have probably noticed slow image loads. I believe I have helped that out!

In steps Puakma Web Booster. Bruce Elgort interviewed Brendon Upson of Puakma Software for a Taking Notes Podcast in April. You should check it out. I followed the Domino steps for my Apache config. Now Web Booster listens on port 80 and gets the data from a different port on which Apache is listening. It does appear to help out image loads a lot!

Relating this directly to Domino, though, I am testing Web Booster at my company to use for http failover. I have it running on a Linux box. I began testing this late last year, but stopped for a while. I searched long and hard for a true failover solution - not just load balancing since my cluster server has much less horsepower. From correspondence with Puakma, they were actually enabling this feature in Web Booster. It seems to be working really well. I just need to get SSL going properly and I may be able to cut over to give my DWA users 24/7 uptime for mail access.

Technorati: Show-n-tell thursday

Any Interest In This Application?

I have a fairly simple application (I guess I could put it at OpenNTF also to see if people are interested) for tracking services performed on your vehicles. It's a really simple app that I wanted to port for use on my BlackBerry web browser. What better to do than create service records while you're waiting on your vehicle to be repaired? Below are some screen grabs from my BlackBerry 8700c. It looks pretty much the same on the web as well as in Notes. The main view will give you collapsed categories for the vehicles with the date, service, mileage (in Notes), and cost displayed. Basically the information available to track is all on the form (Image 2). There is a separate form for the vehicle record as well.

If there is any interest I can post up a template.




Now Playing: "I Wish You Were Here" by Balance of Power

Technorati: Lotus Notes

Notes Toolbar Tools I Use (Show-n-Tell Thursday)

I would like to briefly highlight three excellent utilities I use on my Notes Toolbar as custom buttons. Chime in if you have any other utilities that help make your Admin life easier...

1. Paste Information Application This is an extremely helpful utility provided by Alan Lepofsky. Basically, the toolbar button allows you to pick from a list of Rich Text documents that you can have routine information typed into. I have a copy of this located on a server that my entire team can use. We use it for canned replies to users. This is a huge time saver for me. The less time I have to correspond with users, the more I can devote to my other projects.

2. Document Viewer This is an OpenNTF application that I overlooked until I heard Bruce Elgort mention it in the last podcast. After downloading it, the installation documentation is in the "Docs" tab on the OpenNTF project page. This lets you have a toolbar button that will display all of the fields (field type, name, and value) on any document in any view. You should really get this if you hate weeding through the Notes Document Properties dialog box for the fields... (Will this ever get "enhanced" to be resized and show more information about the fields without having to scroll so much?) But I digress - that's why this tool is so handy!

3. Remote Server Console Just create a button with the following formula: @Command([AdminRemoteConsole]). This will bring up a console window that can be used to view the live console and send commands. Requires an Admin client to be installed.

Show-n-tell thursday

The Shirts! (LS06)

While you're at Lotusphere, don't forget to get these shirts from the showcase floor!!


Get this from Workflow Studios (see Lance Spellman)


Get this from OpenNTF.org

Jumpstart Day (LS06)

Today has gone well. As others have said, the numbers have increased this year about 15% (almost along the lines of Lotus' growth too!) I went to two sessions today and met with Kim Greene to go over our presentation. I also saw on Chris Miller's blog that iCollaborate for iSeries was announced. I'm anxious to see what this is. Hopefully it will be among the announcements tomorrow. It was also really great to start putting faces with people!!

The first session I went to was the Java Jumpstart for the Domino Developer from Tom Duff and Julian Robichaux. This was a great session!! As Julian posted last week, he had a demo of a Pie Chart and Bar Graph all from within Notes. It was a great session, but I didn't win a prize. This session was packed out in a fairly large room. The highlights were Julian squirting Tom with a watergun (as part of a coding example) and also Julian's laser pionter (a.k.a. Red Light Saber!!)

Speaking of prizes, though, I did get two t-shirts. Bruce Elgort gave me an OpenNTF.org shirt and Lance Spellman gave me the coveted "Take Your Exchange Server and SHOVE It!" shirt. Also, John Roling gave me an "I'm A Sicko!" button. Awesome - thanks guys...

The second session I went to was An Introduction to All Things IBM Lotus Domino Clustering by Gabriella Davis. To be a strictly admin session, there was a packed room here too. It was a good session and I have some notes on some clustering things I would like to implement. However, I disagree with her statement that clustered unread marks are fixed as of 6.5. I know I've seen these still get out of sync. It is true that there is now a setting to control this, but with server and/or client crashes this number can be skewed across replicas.

Assistance Needed - Domino Development

We have a database in which we are getting poor view response times. Here are the general DB stats:

747 MB
179 MB View Index (24% of total db size!)
22,000 Documents
16,000 of the Docs in one of the views in question
About 200 documents edited per day on average

Here are some of the "basics" that I have checked:

Program Document running UPDALL -V on this specific DB every 30 minutes

Advanced Database Properties:


For the users, the view is embedded on a page showing them their own documents. Regardless of whether we open the view directly or via the page it takes several minutes to open, so this leads me to the view being the issue and not the Show Single Category criteria. That criteria is:

@If(@IsMember("[Admin]";@UserRoles);"*";@IsMember("[Post Proof]";@UserRoles); "Post-Proofing";@IsMember("[Pre Proof]";@UserRoles);"Pre-Proofing"; @IsMember("[Graphics]";@UserRoles);"Graphics";@Name([CN]; @UserName))

The view selection criteria is:

"Simple Search" - "uses 'Contract Tracking' form"

All columns refer to fields on the documents (i.e. no date/time functions in the view...):
ResponsiblePerson, Year, Directory, AccountNumber, ApplicancName, Status, CompletedBySales, DateCompleted

The first 3 columns are Categorized. The 4th column is sorted Ascending. None of the columns allow the user to sort.

Any further insights?

By the way, the newest Taking Notes podcast was really good about large-scale Domino deployments. Right up the alley of us iSeries guys...

Now Playing: "Learning to Live" by Dream Theater

Beta testers for OpenNTF Mail Experience (dwa7 template)

Check out Bruce and Vince's sites for their call for testers. If you haven't used the OpenNTF mail template, it's really nice with some good "candy" features!! See my comments at Vince's site as well.

Now Playing: "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" by NewSong

My Lotusphere 2006 Session Schedule

Here is the full list of sessions.

Here is the list of sessions in the new BootCamp category.

Also, for the eServer folks, there is usually a room in the Dolphin on Tuesday or Wednesday evening where IBM will host an informal gathering (with refreshments and food) of IBMers and eServer customers. Stop by one of the IBM eServer booths and ask an IBMer about it. Tell them you're a customer and you would like to stop by. We could hang out for a bit there - I would probably be there shortly after it opens.

This list is definitely subject to change, but here is where I will be...

Sunday
10:30-12:30-->JMP201 - Java Jumpstart for the IBM Lotus Domino Developer
1:30-3:30 --> JMP102 - An Introduction To All Things IBM Lotus Domino Clustering
4:00-6:00 --> JMP202 - LEI, DECS, LSXLC: Understanding the "How and Why" of IBM Lotus Domino Integration with other Systems

Monday
11:00-12:00 --> ID407 - Single Sign-On Strategies
1:00-2:00 --> BP308 - IBM Lotus Domino Web Facelift Using Ajax and DXL
2:15-3:15 --> AD202 - Web Services and IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 7
3:45-4:45 - Speaking with Kim Greene --> BP406 - IBM Lotus Domino for IBM iSeries Administration and Performance Best Practices
4:45-? --> Meet The Speakers - Swan Hotel - Toucan 2

Tuesday
8:30-9:30 --> AD207 - IBM Lotus Domino Web Access Customization
10:00-11:00 --> ID112 - Using IBM Lotus Domino Domain Monitoring in the Real World
11:15-12:15 --> INV101 - IBM Lotus Notes and Domino: "Hannover" and Beyond
1:00-2:00 --> BOF307 - Upgrading IBM Lotus Notes and Domino
3:00-4:00 --> AD206 - IBM Lotus Domino 7.x (and 6.x) Application Performance Optimization
4:15-5:15 --> BP304 - Code for Speed, or Code for Easier Reading: You Make the Call!
5:45-6:45 --> BOF105 - The IBM Lotus Blogging Community

Wednesday
7:00-8:00 --> MTG603 - IBM Lotus Domino Web Access
8:30-9:30 --> ID122 - An Early Look at IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5
10:00-11:00 --> ID401 - The Boss Loves Microsoft: Where Does That Leave Lotus?
11:15-12:15 --> ID110 - Getting the Most Out of IBM Lotus Domino Domain Monitoring Probes
1:30-2:30 --> ID120 - How to "Sell" IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Inside Your Organization
3:00-4:00 --> BP312 - Object Orientated LotusScript Techniques and Tricks
4:15-5:15 --> BP303 - Big-Time Tips and Tricks for Your IBM Lotus Domino Web Applications: The Great Code Giveaway!

Thursday
8:30-9:30 --> INV302 - Activity-Centric Collaboration: A New Approach to Productivity
10:00-11:00 --> BP105 - OpenNTF: Learn How OpenNTF Open Source Solutions Can Save You Time, Money and Your Hair
11:15-12:15 --> ID119 - IBM Lotus Notes and Domino @ IBM


Now Playing: "The Glass Prison" by Dream Theater

Inbox Management (Adding Mail File Size to Template)

One of the items I posted about at Ed Brill's thread on this was that I have implemeted a text section below the mail file owner's name that will display the mail file storage utilization. This looks nearly the same as the OpenNTF implementation, but my implementation was far simpler after looking at their code.

The following modifications need to be made in the most current releases of the "Domino Web Access" and "Mail" templates (or other template(s) you may be implementing).

1) Open the "Switcher Form for Mail" Form.
2) After the first "Computed Value" section, hit Enter.
3) On the blank line create a Computed Text Field named dspMailFileSize with a default value of dspMailFileSize
4) In the PostOpen event of the same Form, use the following code:

Sub Postopen(Source As Notesuidocument)

Dim s As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim size As Variant

Set db = s.CurrentDatabase

size = (Cdbl(db.Size) / 1024) / 1024

Call source.FieldSetText("dspMailFileSize", "Usage: " + Cstr(size)+" MB")

End Sub

Please note that due to client caching of the mail template(s), this change may not be propagated for a few days. From my research, I could not find a way to force the client to update the cache. Deleting cache.ndk would force it to work after restarting Notes, though.