DominoJeff

All certified (for now)...

Jeff — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:27:00 -0400

Time for a certification break. I passed my ND8 Application Update exam on Monday so hopefully ND9 is far, far away!

These certifications are starting to make me feel old.

IBM Certified Advanced System Administrator – Lotus Notes and Domino 6 / 7 / 8
IBM Certified Advanced Application Developer – Lotus Notes and Domino 6 / 7 / 8
IBM Certified Associate System Administrator – Lotus Sametime 3
CLP Domino R4 / R5 Principal System Administrator
CLP Domino R4 / R5 Principal Application Developer
CLI Certified Lotus Instructor R4 / R5

My Wordle

Jeff — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:51:50 -0400

Here is my Wordle based on my resume. I think it's very accurate. I love that R5 is so prominent as that was the release in which I felt I really hit my stride in the Notes/Domino world.

The IBM Lotus Domino and Notes Information Center

Jeff — Thu, 5 Jun 2008 05:04:22 -0400

IBM has set up a one-stop shop for all of the Notes 8 Help Databases which pretty much invalidates your help/ databases but in a good way. Any changes made to documentation are made here and each page allows for comments that are used to improve the documentation on-line.

Check it out.

Speaking of improving documentation, do you ever comment on documentation in the Knowledgebase? I do whenever I see what I perceive as an inconsistency. Some I comment just because the software version ends at 7.0 and I'd like for documents to show if they are valid in 8.x or not. You can tell the first version a topic was valid pretty easily but nothing is really in place to tell if it's not valid anymore.

How do you know if the Out of Office Service is running?

Jeff — Fri, 9 May 2008 15:37:57 -0400

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:

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.

Upgrade Gone Awry

Jeff — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:16:00 -0400

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.!)

How I got started with Lotus Notes and Domino

Jeff — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:19:10 -0400

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.

Inbox Maintenance

Jeff — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:58:57 -0400

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.

Notes 8 End User Resources

Jeff — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:46:26 -0400

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:

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.

Where the heck have you been?

Jeff — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:33:01 -0400

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...

And so it changes...

Jeff — Mon, 4 Dec 2006 23:21:13 -0400

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.