As we're getting ready to start the big push of rolling out some form of the R8.* client, one of the features that management requested was to enable video chat via the integrated Sametime client. After speaking with some technical people from IBM about this, they told me that it was no problem to turn on all of the functions that the stand-alone Sametime client has in the integrated Sametime Connect in Notes. I just needed to have at least standard installation of Sametime installed on the server and it should work.
So of course I didn't read any documentation about it, I just set off to install Sametime Standard on a test server I have in our environment and reconfigured mine and anothers Notes client to use that server as our Sametime server. Thinking that was all that I needed to do, I was pretty disappointed when when we came to find that features like "Call" and "Instant Meetings" were unavailable to us.
Knowing that there are no desktop policies that control functions in the integrated Sametime Connect client for Lotus Notes..harrumph.., I set off to look in the Sametime server administration to see if there were any settings there they would turn those functions one. There are! But, there are not easy to find and can be easily overlooked. Here are the steps I followed:
1. Log into the Sametime server with a web browser.
2. Click on "Administer the server"
3. From the left hand menu, select "Policies"
4. Now click on "Sametime Default Policy"
5. When the page refreshes, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to the "Integrated Sametime Connect" section.
6. In the section "Allow all Sametime Connect features to be used with integrated clients", select the check box next to "Yes" to activate the setting.
7. Click Ok to save the settings

At this point, I restarted the server and when Sametime initialized, we were able to call each other and have a video and voice chat. Neat stuff!

In the past I've posted several "how-to's" on using InstallShieldTuner for Lotus Notes to create custom install packages of the Lotus Notes client for use in either a roll-out or a Smart Upgrade package for an upgrade. With the recent death of the 8.0.x code stream, I decided to bite the bullet and start looking at creating a new package that I could use to test rolling out 8.5 Standard clients. In the past, I had created custom installs for R6, 7 and 8 basic and in those installations, I was able to have some parameters set for the embeded Sametime functionality. My favorite, and the ones that my management liked having set, where that after 5 minutes away from the keyboard, Sametime would set your status as Away and when the mouse is moved, the status retured to Active. The following settings are added to the notes.ini during the install that is created using InstallShieldTuner:
$STActiveToAwayEnabled=1
$STAwayToActiveEnabled=1
$STActiveToAwayTimeout=5
So in looking at creating a new install package for 8.5.0, I couldn't find anything similar to these notes.ini to set that functionality. I can still add those to the install package and they will work as expected if I run the basic install, but in Standard, the settings are ignored. So I opened a PMR asking how to get that setting put in place during install or even with a policy. Well, the email from the helpful Lotus support representative told me that he understands what I'm trying to do, but that functionality is not there.
So Lotus, please hear me, a lowly admin crying out in the night. If it's not too late for 8.5.1, is there some way to either set those Auto-Status change values in the installation or better yet, with a policy?
Stay tuned!

For a while now I've been having a problem with my 7.0.3 Domino server running Symantec Mail Security queuing messages in its mail.box(s) for hours on end before finally delivering them at some point during the day. The messages appeared to be spam in nature and really didn't think too much about it until recently when I've been noticing a lot MORE messages getting stuck there for hours on end. So, it was time for some troubleshooting.
Looking at the messages that were hung up, I could see that they were MIME messages, but that was really about the only thing I could figure out about them. Nothing too special about them at all.
As I was sharing this information with a colleague of mine, she told me that at her former place of employment, they were having the exact same issues with the two products as well. That's when I decided that it wasn't something I did, but it appeared to be a shared problem. So back to the document properties of the stalled messages and the SAV log I went to look for clues. That's when I found the key to the whole problem. From what I've seen over the years in the SAV log, Symantec has never been really good at handling MIME based messages, usually spitting up errors like:
One or more components could not be scanned due to scan error (Unable to open container) from mime.txt.
I then figured that when this occurs, either Symantec or Domino changes the delivery priority of the message from Normal to Low since the messages pending had the DeliveryPriority value set to L. Finding the solution to the issue now was pretty straight forward. Since Domino is very good at doing what it is told, I looked into the configuration for the server under Router/SMTP-Restrictions and Controls-Transfer Controls. The field for Low priority mail routing time range: was set to the default of 12:00 AM - 6:00 AM. So any of those messages that were sitting there would be delivered between that time. I changed that setting to 12:00 AM - 11:59 PM, saved and closed the document, waited a few minutes, and the messages had magically disappeared. So somewhere along the line, bad MIME was causing the priority to be changed and the messages queued. Not sure at what process it was that was causing the issue, but for now I know at least that 1.) I'm not crazy and 2.)The issue is resolved.
Weird.

So I came up to Wisconsin to migrate an old eol sever to new hardware and to upgrade the server to Domino 8. No problem, went smoothly. But to get here, the most direct route is to take commuter jets. Commuter jets are small, torturous planes that like cramming people as many people into them as the airline can get away with. So when I get onto one of these planes, this is how I feel:
Now, I know that I'm a big guy with a slight (cough) weight problem, but seriously, can they get seats that are ANY smaller then what's on these planes!?
Hopefully within six hours I'll be home safe and sound and laying on the floor to try to get my back to straighten back out after riding on these things.

**The comments, views and opinions in this blog post are mine and mine alone. They do not in any way, shape or form represent the company that I work for. Period. It is my opinion**

Once again coming up for air from my self-imposed blogging break. For the past couple of months since coming back from Lotusphere, I've been heads down in migrating users from Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes. Or as I've been calling it , Digital Moses duty. Guiding people to the promised land of communication and collaboration! Sounds all nice and flowery that way, doesn't it.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been noticing the increasing wave of peppered blog posts and heated comment-thread debates about Lotus and how well it does or does not do with marketing it's products to the world. But one thing that I've notice from the blogs and comments are it's either an IBM employee or business partner driving the discussion/debate. Maybe I've missed it but, I haven't seen a lot of names that are customers. It's either someone who is either responsible for or gets paid by someone that is responsible for selling the Lotus product line and services related to such. Where are the other voices?

Well, here is a voice of a Domino Administrator that works at a company that is a customer.
Dear Lotus and the IBM Over-Lords,
Your marketing stinks, and here's why.

Last week the email went out about the "Smart World" campaign. Great idea and looks cool, but, the people I work for don't go to YouTube to look at products and make capital spending decisions. They don't follow Twitter or Linkedin to see what's going on either.
My company has for the most part, relied upon old-school face to face visits from vendors to hear about what is going on in the market place and what their software can do for them. They also learn about things from the vendors because they stop by all the time and see what's going on with us and how their software can help fill in any gaps. For example, one software vendor we have and that will remain nameless is here all the time. Literally. And it's not Microsoft. And it's their messaging and collaboration package that I fear is probably more of a threat to us loosing Domino then Microsoft is. But it doesn't matter to me in the end. I'll still have a job. I love using the Lotus product line, would love to see us move into using Quickr, but is that my job to be that salesperson? Or to forward a link to a YouTube video?
That stuff is all great and flashy, but the value of face-to-face communication should not be overlooked.
Like I stated in the blog title, "I don't have a dog in this fight". Well...I don't.
But from the customer viewpoint, I don't think the word is getting to the people who need to hear it.

Just my opinion.

Since Lotusphere 2009 ended my life has been a mix of mail migrations and other weird life stuff, hence the blog silence. So with a migration project about 85% done, I figured it was time for me to resurface in the blogsphere and jot down my thoughts.
One thing I am learning about mail migrations now more then in migrations past is that it can be a REALLY long process to complete at times. Especially when you don't have access to the Exchange servers that you are freeing those individuals from. Currently when I need to move a user to Notes, I have to get the third party outsource folks to cut me a .PST and send it over to me. Now when there are a few small mail files with not a lot of documents, it's a quick process for CMT, (yes, I am giving props to a vendor in a blog post. They have a good product and they deserve the notice), to complete. But when the mail file has t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d-s of documents to migrate, it takes a while.
So my advice for those Domino Admins that are tasked with playing "Digital Moses" and leading people to the promised land of Domino, fear not. The task, while a long a drawn out one at times, can be done. Just have patience and follow these steps:

1. Use a good product like CMT for Notes. It's a powerful package with a lot of options to configure for how you want your migration to go.
2. Set expectations ahead of time as much as possible. Let the populace know that it's not just a copy/paste type of operation. Let them know that this is a single threaded operation of taking messages one at a time and converting them.
3. Think outside the box when it comes to how you migrate users. For example, I didn't have to travel to each of the remote locations that we've installed a new Domino server at. I set up a temporary Domino server locally at the home office in a VM, created the mail files on that server and then moved the users to their remote home server before migration, but NOT deleting the replica that is left behind. When it came time to migrate them, I configured CMT to convert the files to the server that is local to me and then let Domino replicate the data down to that location. Don't forget, you can configure Domino to compress network traffic between servers and clients when configured correctly and that can save some time and strain on your WAN.
   
4. No matter how hard you try to communicate to users before the migration to move everything they need from their local archive in Outlook to the Exchange server, they are going to leave something behind. Hold onto the .PST's for a while so you can easily investigate the "are you sure you migrated everything over" calls. Screenshots showing the old Outlook file and the Notes mailbox looking exactly the same take care of those issues real quick.

So there you have, my postcard of thoughts from along the mail "Migration Trail". Like most things, the old saying "there's more then one way to skin a mongoose" applies to this too. You may have some ways of doing this differently and if it works for you, great! Just post it on a blog so we can all learn from it too ;-)

Name: Buddy Battlescar Donaldson

Occupation: Dog

D.O.B - Unknown, but most estimate him to be around 2 years old

Breed: Mutt. Mix of Beagle and Basset.

Favorite passtime: Following the kids around the house to see what they are up to and laying on the back of the couch looking outside like a cat.

Former life: Left tied to a trailer with several other hunting dogs to die. Some worthless POS decided that he no longer needed them. Luckily, Buddy and his mates were saved by Paws and Prayers. And luckily, we wandered into Petsmart in Cuyahoga Falls yesterday to find him. We almost didn't get him though. They were really pushing that we adopted his friend Eddie too, but we just couldn't do two dogs in our house, let alone the cost to care for two of them.

I know it may seem like a little soon after Sparky passing on to get another dog. But after seeing how this one bonded with both of the kids almost instantly, we knew that he was the one we needed.

After getting into the office this morning, one of my users that has 8.0.2 Standard installed but is running in Basic mode is reporting the exact same thing that I was seeing yesterday with 8.5. Not sure if I'll have the chance to open a PMR since there are two workarounds(resetting the Notes config or running the Standard version), but I wanted to share in case anyone else is seeing this issue too.
Weird.

I have Notes 8.5 running on my laptop and depending on my mood; I’ll run either the Basic or Standard version depending on what shortcut I click. Today I decided to use the Basic client when going in to check my mail and also to make sure that with the DST changes that went into effect today that everything was in order. Upon opening the calendar in the week view, I could see right off the bat that then entries were off an hour. Now, when I hover over those entries on Monday, the pop-up window that appears contains the correct time. Example, that first meeting tomorrow that appears to be at 9:30, shows the correct time of 8:30.
Here's where it gets even weirder. I remote connected into my "admin" workstation at the office which is running 8.0.2, and everything appears as it should be. So back on the laptop, I shutdown the Basic client and launched the Standard version. Upon opening my calendar and expanding the "Day-At-A-Glance" sidebar, I see this:
Everything appears as it should be. So I again closed down the Notes client and dug into the notes.ini file. First stop, the dstlaw= line. That appears as it should be, "DSTLAW=3,2,1,11,1,1". So I deleted it, saved and closed the notes.ini, and relaunched the client in Basic mode thinking that the error revolved around that. No change. The document information is correct but the view shows differently.
So I decided it was time to pull out my favorite Help Desk trick that I have used many a time to cure a Notes client that doesn't want to behave. Basically, you delete all but the first couple of lines of information from the notes.ini file, save and close it, and then relaunch Notes. Once Notes fires up, it launches the configuration wizard for the client and you have to step through the configuration once again. Once that was complete, I jumped into the calendar and everything appeared as it should.
So what caused it? Not sure. But again, this only happened on a computer that is running the Notes 8.5 client in Basic mode. Was an easy fix, but I wanted to share.

Doesn't matter if you are 4 or 40, loosing a pet you love stinks. A good friend emailed this to me today. Thanks, Robin.

WELCOME AT RAINBOW BRIDGE

There is a bridge connecting Heaven and Earth.
It is called the Rainbow Bridge because of its
many colors. Just this side of the Rainbow
Bridge, there is a land of meadows, hills and
valleys with lush green grass.

When a beloved pet dies, the pet goes to this
place. There is always food and water, and
warm spring weather. The old and frail animals
are young again. Those who have been maimed
are made whole again. They play all day with
each other.

But there is only one thing missing. They are not
with their special person who loved them on
Earth. So each day they run and play until the
day comes when one suddenly stops playing
and looks up. The nose twitches! The ears are
up! The eyes are staring! And this one suddenly
runs from the group!

You have been spotted, and when you and your
special friend finally meet, you cling together in
joyous reunion, never to be parted again. Your
face is kissed again and again and again, and
you look once more into the eyes of your trusting pet.

Then you cross the Rainbow Bridge together, never again to be separated.

Anonymous

Editors Note: This is not an ASW post. This is not a post to solicit pity, that's why comments are disabled for this post. This is just to clear my mind of a lot of thoughts right now.

No, you read the title right. I had a mammogram on Friday. I know what you're thinking, "only women have those!" Well guess what buddy, so do guys....and it's becoming more common from what the people told me.
Back in December, I started having a lot of soreness around my right nipple and it didn't go away. So after returning from Florida, I decided that it was time to go talk to the doctor about it. Last year a male member of my wife's family had gone through breast cancer so I figured I should be cautious. The doctor took a look at me, felt me up, (no drinks were involved unfortunately), and decided the best thing to do is to get in and have a mammogram done. Let me tell you what guys, you just have not lived until you have a mammogram done! If a woman in your life tells you that they are going to have one of these leftover scientific experiments from the Dark Ages, pity them.
What they do is take your breast, in my case, my man boob, and flap it around this imaging machine like it was a flank steak at the butchers. Oh, but the fun does not end there. They then bring another piece of the imaging device down to lock the breasticle in place so they can take a nice picture of it. And they repeat the step a couple of times per boob. Then, the REAL fun begins if you are lucky. Since my soreness has been in the nipple region, they do whats called a cone test. The only thing missing from this test is the red ball gag and candle wax. They change the tools out so that they have a smaller device to basically pinch the nipple area into position and lock it down. Plain and simple, it hurts.
So after the mammogram it was time to have an ultrasound which was much nicer compared to the other torturous event that was done upon my person earlier.
Now came the waiting game over the weekend. The radiologist had to look at the films and needed to pass along to my doctor the results. I didn't think it was going to come this soon. Last night while with one hand I was migrating users from Exchange to Domino and cooking dinner with the other hand, the doctor called to tell me the news. Ultrasound was negative, but the mammogram had a hit. He wants me to see a surgeon.
How fascinating!
So now I have to wait until next week to see the surgeon. It could be nothing and I'm just being a big baby over everything. But in the back of my head, FUD is lurking. So my thought to my readership is, if you think something is wrong, don't screw around. Go get it looked at.
More updates on this as things progresses.
And for now, don't tell my kids either. It's bad enough that the dog has a tumor in his stomach and they didn't take that news too well.
How fascinating!

I had another one of those "pulling what's left of my hair out of my head" moments today. You see, as my company grows, I've decided that it's time to install a couple more remote Sametime servers instead of having all users come back to the home office to connect. My WAN people would appreciate that I'm sure. So with the new server up and running at the remote location, I thought all I would need to do was dabble in the STConfig.nsf and make sure that the VPS_TRUSTED_IPS= was populated correctly. But after checking, rechecking and checking my configuration settings again, I was still unable to have the Sametime server talk to another one. Then I remembered to look in the sametime.log. All of a sudden it was like watching "Blues Clues" with Molly when she was younger. A clue! A clue!
The log file reported the following error:
I Server 09/Feb/09, 12:55:24 Rejecting server server IP - reported security level=0

After searching Sametime support site for "reported security level=0" I found the answer right away. To resolve the issue, I opened the sametime.ini on the new server and looked for the line:
VP_SECURITY_LEVEL=
By default, the server had set the value to 25 during initial install. After changing the value to match what my other servers are set to, 0 (zero) and restarting Domino, I was able to get the servers talking to one another. That value must be the same in each Sametime server that you are attempting to get to connect.
Now if I just remember to do this again in a couple weeks with the next server, I just might save a few hairs.

So I installed the Notes 8.5 client on my laptop this week and for the most part, things have been working about the same as 8.0.2. But there was one really weird thing that happened yesterday.
After turning on the Address toolbar in the client, tab after tab after tab after tab after tab in Firefox started opening up. All of these websites just started appearing out of no where. Legit ones too. First thought of course was virus. These were all websites I have visited in the past, but not with Firefox, these were addresses that existed in the Address drop down in the Notes client and not in the history of Firefox. After I disabled the Address toolbar in Notes, things returned to normal. No more tabs.
I didn't open a PMR because, of course, there is no way to reproduce the weirdness, but I wanted to share the weirdness.

Make sure anyone in your organization that needs to see it, see's it! Even includes The Blue Men and Dan Aykroyd.
Click here to view it!