Current Stories
Friday, May 9th 2008
How do you know if the Out of Office Service is running?03:37:57 PMCategory : Mail,Out of Office
This question came up recently on my
current assignment. And more specifically, how do you know if it's
running as a service on a particular server?
A quick check of the usual suspects didn't come up with an answer so I did a little digging.
You can't see it as a server task, under show server or as enabling in the log when a server starts or the router task starts/restarts.
If you run individual configuration documents, you can check those to see if it's set properly. If you run configuration documents based on groups, it's obviously a little harder to know for sure.
You could also check the Domino Administrator, Files tab and open a mail folder to see if any are enabled under the Out of Office column.
But the most surefire way of knowing is to check the log.nsf. If you check it you will see this line:
<date/time> Beginning Out of office service daily maintenance.
Since it is a service, it would be nice to see it through Show Tasks, but that's a pretty easy way to know.
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A quick check of the usual suspects didn't come up with an answer so I did a little digging.
You can't see it as a server task, under show server or as enabling in the log when a server starts or the router task starts/restarts.
If you run individual configuration documents, you can check those to see if it's set properly. If you run configuration documents based on groups, it's obviously a little harder to know for sure.
You could also check the Domino Administrator, Files tab and open a mail folder to see if any are enabled under the Out of Office column.
But the most surefire way of knowing is to check the log.nsf. If you check it you will see this line:
<date/time> Beginning Out of office service daily maintenance.
Since it is a service, it would be nice to see it through Show Tasks, but that's a pretty easy way to know.
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Saturday, April 26th 2008
Upgrade Gone Awry06:16:00 PMCategory : Ramblings
Well I set out to upgrade this Blog
to the 3.x template during some down time in my Digital Photography class
this morning not remembering how complicated the update was.
I got things working again somewhat then realized that my three most recent posts had been deleted and were no where to be found. The weekend is short enough before I drive off to Pittsburgh again Monday morning so I reverted the design so I can go do other fun things (expenses, wash clothes, pay bills, etc.!)
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I got things working again somewhat then realized that my three most recent posts had been deleted and were no where to be found. The weekend is short enough before I drive off to Pittsburgh again Monday morning so I reverted the design so I can go do other fun things (expenses, wash clothes, pay bills, etc.!)
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Friday, April 25th 2008
How I got started with Lotus Notes and Domino06:19:10 AMCategory : None
In the early 90s I was working as the
assistant to a Vice President at Bell Atlantic. One day I came in
and my VP had been fired, I still don't know why. I was given the
choice to assist another (creepy) VP or assist the Director of Software
Engineering. I chose the Director even though it was a step down
and they of course used Lotus Notes and I worked near many application
developers. I learned the client and started dabbling in development,
bugging the developers for help as much as they could take. I never
expected them to tell me what was in the help, but I would go to them with
thought-out questions so I think that helped. At this time I was
also a Certified Diversity Management Facilitator for Bell Atlantic and
that was a lot of fun.
After more than a year I asked my Resource Manager to be considered for a junior Developer position. He was in his mid-60s, retired military. I'll never forget his response. "But Jeff, you're just a secretary." Well I was a secretary, true, but I was efficient, extremely organized and analytical, all skills that would help me in the Notes and Domino world. Less than a week after that I put in my notice and went Independent. I taught End User classes for about a year while I took my certification exams and then studied for my Instructor Certification. During this year I attended a conference in Dallas. HTTP had just been added to Domino but it wasn't a real add-in task yet. I remember sitting there with the others writing over five pages on how to get HTTP up and running on a Domino server. Good times! A little less than a year after leaving Bell Atlantic I was a Level 2 Certified Instructor in System Administration and Application Development. I mixed things up over the years, teaching, taking consulting assignments to grow my skills, etc. Today I'm with Binary Tree working as an Application Developer, System Administrator, Instructor and Architect.
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After more than a year I asked my Resource Manager to be considered for a junior Developer position. He was in his mid-60s, retired military. I'll never forget his response. "But Jeff, you're just a secretary." Well I was a secretary, true, but I was efficient, extremely organized and analytical, all skills that would help me in the Notes and Domino world. Less than a week after that I put in my notice and went Independent. I taught End User classes for about a year while I took my certification exams and then studied for my Instructor Certification. During this year I attended a conference in Dallas. HTTP had just been added to Domino but it wasn't a real add-in task yet. I remember sitting there with the others writing over five pages on how to get HTTP up and running on a Domino server. Good times! A little less than a year after leaving Bell Atlantic I was a Level 2 Certified Instructor in System Administration and Application Development. I mixed things up over the years, teaching, taking consulting assignments to grow my skills, etc. Today I'm with Binary Tree working as an Application Developer, System Administrator, Instructor and Architect.
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Inbox Maintenance05:58:57 AMCategory : Mail
The Inbox Maintenance feature is certainly
a radical change from how most users are used to having their Inbox managed
so it's important that Administrators fully understand what's involved
with the feature before they roll it out. IBM wrote a great FAQ
that is a must-read before any implementation. I personally think
that an agent is much more flexible than this feature but it is a great
start. Certainly anything that can get a user's Inbox size down is
beneficial to the Lotus Notes client, Domino and BES performance. The
IBM White Paper Best
Practices for large Lotus Notes mail files
has been a life saver in trying to get clients to understand the importance
of this issue. Dealing with clients that have 180,000 + documents
in their Inbox is certainly a painful experience. Getting the client
to do something about those emails is problem even with all the great features
of Lotus Notes to help manage mail (Rules, color coding, attention indicators,
Follow Ups, etc.). During the Beta phase of ND8 I worked with a
gentleman who had over 175,000 documents in the local replica of his Inbox
and watched as Lotus Notes would take upwards of 7 minutes to start up
and allow the user interaction with his client. Running maintenance
on his mail file brought that down to 5.5 minutes but of course maintenance
can only do so much against those kinds of numbers. This particular
client didn't really believe (or want to believe) that his Inbox size was
a problem so I made a local copy of his mail file, removed all but 20,000
documents in his Inbox, closed Lotus Notes and ran maintenance against
his client again. Even with Beta 2, his Lotus Notes started and was
available in under a minute.
So what would I change about the Inbox Maintenance feature? The most important change I would make is to allow a minimum number. So if the Inbox had less than x number of documents, don't run the feature against that mail file at this time. Currently it will run no matter how many documents are in the Inbox so users could open up their Inbox to no documents. Of course they are still available in All Documents but still.... And speaking of All Documents, that is the second change I would make. I would allow the Administrator to specify where the documents will be moved. As in what folder. Even with the great new search feature in Notes 8, many people feel much more comfortable knowing that their documents are in certain folders and that shouldn't be taken away from them. Of course this feature can be rewritten and endlessly customized via an agent but I find that the out-of-the-box features are more likely to be used and the issue of Inbox size is important enough to have strong backing in the form of an out-of-the-box solution.
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So what would I change about the Inbox Maintenance feature? The most important change I would make is to allow a minimum number. So if the Inbox had less than x number of documents, don't run the feature against that mail file at this time. Currently it will run no matter how many documents are in the Inbox so users could open up their Inbox to no documents. Of course they are still available in All Documents but still.... And speaking of All Documents, that is the second change I would make. I would allow the Administrator to specify where the documents will be moved. As in what folder. Even with the great new search feature in Notes 8, many people feel much more comfortable knowing that their documents are in certain folders and that shouldn't be taken away from them. Of course this feature can be rewritten and endlessly customized via an agent but I find that the out-of-the-box features are more likely to be used and the issue of Inbox size is important enough to have strong backing in the form of an out-of-the-box solution.
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Notes 8 End User Resources05:46:26 AMCategory : Training
As a small addition to my current long-term
project I'm currently teaching some Help Desk classes in preparation for
a Notes and Domino 8 rollout. I'm always looking for new resources
to share and I wanted to discuss some:
I don't know how I haven't seen this before but Alan Lepofsky has an amazing link to Notes 8 content to get end users and Administrators alike up-to-date on what's new in Notes/Domino 8.
The two page training card is in PDF form and a must read for anyone new to Notes or Notes 8. So many people don't get any training at all and this free solution is miles better than nothing at all. Although.... there are some errors in it:
Nitpicks aside it's a great document that I will certainly be making sure my clients know is available.
Between that PDF and the short training videos referenced in Alan's post, good free training is definitely available.
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I don't know how I haven't seen this before but Alan Lepofsky has an amazing link to Notes 8 content to get end users and Administrators alike up-to-date on what's new in Notes/Domino 8.
The two page training card is in PDF form and a must read for anyone new to Notes or Notes 8. So many people don't get any training at all and this free solution is miles better than nothing at all. Although.... there are some errors in it:
- It refers to the shortcut for locking the ID as F5. That was true pre-Notes 8 but now it's Ctrl+F5.
- It refers to Window Tabs as tab rows.
- It refers to the MiniView as the Follow Up Pane which certainly does that a great disservice as it can show not only Follow Ups but New Notices and New To Dos.
- In the really picky department, the screenshot for Show is orange which is it's color when selected. A user could have a hard time finding that since it's blue most of the time.
Nitpicks aside it's a great document that I will certainly be making sure my clients know is available.
Between that PDF and the short training videos referenced in Alan's post, good free training is definitely available.
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Where the heck have you been?05:33:01 AMCategory : Work
OK, here I go...
I started this blog with the intention of sharing my experiences as a Domino Administrator/Developer/Architect/Instructor etc. I'm still working full-time in the Notes and Domino world but have been wrestling with how I could share my experiences while maintaining client confidentiality and not embarassing or offending anyone. Well I've obviously been dragging my feet on that one. Since I'm listed on PlanetLotus.org, I've been getting some emails and calls asking why I haven't been updating I decided to just jump back in and see what I could contribute to the community.
So what have I been doing? For the last couple of years I have been involved heavily in Notes and Domino 8 projects from all aspects starting with a great beta rollout. I'll be sharing some of my experiences on those projects in upcoming posts...
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I started this blog with the intention of sharing my experiences as a Domino Administrator/Developer/Architect/Instructor etc. I'm still working full-time in the Notes and Domino world but have been wrestling with how I could share my experiences while maintaining client confidentiality and not embarassing or offending anyone. Well I've obviously been dragging my feet on that one. Since I'm listed on PlanetLotus.org, I've been getting some emails and calls asking why I haven't been updating I decided to just jump back in and see what I could contribute to the community.
So what have I been doing? For the last couple of years I have been involved heavily in Notes and Domino 8 projects from all aspects starting with a great beta rollout. I'll be sharing some of my experiences on those projects in upcoming posts...
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Monday, December 4th 2006
And so it changes...11:21:13 PMCategory : Ramblings
In my last entry (way too long ago),
I wrote about a bad Parallels update. Well another just came out
(one of many since my last entry) and it is chock full of goodness. Resizing
of the main window while running XP (finally!), showing a Windows application
like any other Mac application, and allowing the Boot Camp partition to
be used in Parallels are my favorites. When will Apple just buy Parallels.
It truly is the one must-have application.
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Friday, September 8th 2006
A Warning about the latest Parallels update11:19:57 AMCategory : Tools
I love running
Parallels on my MacBook Pro. With
the full screen mode, windows just becomes another open app on my mac.
I keep my notes databases (not names, bookmark, etc., obviously)
on my Mac and map to them through Parallels. That way when the 7.0.2
beta comes out later this month I can have my databases on the laptop once
but use them through Mac and Windows.
So yesterday Parallels came out with an update. I installed it, fired it up and couldn't get to any mapped Notes databases. I couldn't get to my shared folders at all even though they were still enabled and had worked perfectly prior to the update. I wrote Parallels but haven't received a response yet. Not wanting to wait, I installed the prior release (no need to uninstall) and bam, my shared folders were back.
Just so you know...
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So yesterday Parallels came out with an update. I installed it, fired it up and couldn't get to any mapped Notes databases. I couldn't get to my shared folders at all even though they were still enabled and had worked perfectly prior to the update. I wrote Parallels but haven't received a response yet. Not wanting to wait, I installed the prior release (no need to uninstall) and bam, my shared folders were back.
Just so you know...
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Tuesday, August 29th 2006
I feel I must share....09:32:16 AMCategory : Work
I did a server upgrade/hardware move
for a client last weekend. My SOW was limited to the Domino portion,
no add ins. When the anti-virus software was added in by the client,
the Domino server wouldn't even start. After stripping the server
and bringing it up with no anti-virus, the server came up fine.
So what was the problem? The client was using an older version of the Domino server and the anti-virus software was not certified to work on a version that old. Easy lesson....check your versions!
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So what was the problem? The client was using an older version of the Domino server and the anti-virus software was not certified to work on a version that old. Easy lesson....check your versions!
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Saturday, August 5th 2006
Welcome dominojeff.com
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