Comments on Andy's House O' Blog: The woes of registering users with a text file

I've run into the same challenge, and found th...

2010-03-18T08:55:07.592-04:00

I've run into the same challenge, and found that the agent is an easy way to go in populating the field. I go further and create a view in the Domino Directory to tag users being migrated. The comments section I use includes their preferred language - one of the biggest issues with the import text method is that it only uses one mail template, so if you migrate 400 people, and 40 are to use Italian, and 30 to use German, etc. you DO NOT want to register them all at once. Instead I break up the import files into 1 per language - I used comments field for the language ID to help me separate them. Then its a matter of setting up the New User profile with the desired language template, then register via that specific import file.

Starting puns... NOW!
I was wondering if...

2008-09-06T08:25:00.000-04:00

Starting puns... NOW!
I was wondering if this would 'keep you up at night'...
I thought that maybe you would have to use 'java' code on this...
I bet that Mrs. Olson is happy you got it working...
Puns engine shutdown... complete!

@all - Thank you all for your ideas and input!!
2008-09-05T20:53:00.000-04:00
@all - Thank you all for your ideas and input!!

@Chris - Did you ever know that your my hero? ;-)

It's a lot easier than that guys... :) I cross-pos...

2008-09-05T20:22:00.000-04:00

It's a lot easier than that guys... :) I cross-posted this to the IJ page too:

Andy, when you import the users you can enter the value you want for the forwarding address in the "comments" column of the csv (or scsv). Then just use an agent after you've registered the accounts and take the contents of the comments field and move them to the forwarding address field. :)

Really, we're talking one line of code in a formula agent here - two if you want to clear the comments field!

I ran into this while setting up a new environment...

2008-09-05T18:32:00.000-04:00

I ran into this while setting up a new environment and was similarly annoyed.

If you have a consistent naming convention, you could write a one line agent to build the forwarding address. In our case, the short name was imported (the client wanted to keep their eight character UNIX name). We selected the users and ran the following agent:

FIELD MailAddress:=ShortName+"@old_domain.com"

Again, assuming a standard naming convention, you could build the field in numerous other ways:

FIELD MailAddress:=FirstName+"_"+LastName"+"@old_domain.com"

Of course, if you're importing into an existing address book the new users would be intermixed with the existing users. However, if the existing users have a "Company" name, you could sort that column and have the new users grouped together.

If your existing users _don't_ have a company name you could use a similar agent to temporarily set one before you do the import. I believe the field is "CompanyName."

After applying your MailAddress agent, you could run your updated CompanyName agent to all records in the NAB and set everyone back to a Null value.

In the end, it seems like a bad design. The Forwarding field is exposed for a Notes user, so the import process should respect it, regardless of the "mail system type."

Continue with the import as you described, then cr...

2008-09-05T18:29:00.000-04:00

Continue with the import as you described, then create a formula agent to set the forwarding address on all the documents after the persons are registered.

Run the agent on a local replica of the directory and only replicate it back to the server when you validate the data.

Here's a quick sample formula you can put in a 'on selected docs' agent. It will set the forwarding address to the internet address (domain a) to a different domain (domain b).

temp:=@LowerCase(@Left(internetaddress;"@")) + "@domainb.com";
FIELD mailaddress:=temp;
SELECT @All

You can create another agent to clear the field as well.

FIELD mailaddress:="";
SELECT @All

Tip: Set the option for the mail files to be created in the background.

Good luck!

Create an agent that reads the text file and uses ...

2008-09-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

Create an agent that reads the text file and uses LotusScript to create the new users. I wrote something similar here. Using ODBC, I have to query our HR system every night for new employees and use the information from HR to create their Notes Accounts. We are creating many accounts everynight, and whe the person starts work, their account is waiting for them.

-- Jeff