Beware of "Recent Contacts"!

Well, it's not like they are going to attack you in a dark alley in the middle of the night or something, but they can be a real bugger sometimes. Case in point, me trying to send an email today. Here's the scenario.
Several new-ish users to the company at one time had forwarding email addresses set in their entries in the Domino Directory. Over time, I had emailed a couple of them several times while they still had the forwarding on but since the forwarding had been taken off, I hadn't had any communication with them until today.
I address the email and in the "To" field, the corporate address shows up correctly, I clicked send and went on about my business. But then I got a delivery failure show up with the old forwarding address as the culprit. I open the Domino Directory on the server and the local replica and double-checked that the forwarding address was gone. It was. Then I checked my local address book that I hadn't added him as a contact and I hadn't. I then went to another person's computer and was able to send a message from there without any problems. Okay, this was seeming weird. It wasn't in the Domino Directory or any other view used. That's when it dawned on me to look in the Recent Contacts view in the new R8 personal address book. Bingo! For some reason, even though it wasn't prompting for which address to send to, my Notes client had decided that mail to that user should use its old forwarding address rather then the one in the Domino Directory. After deleting all entries for the person in the Recent Contacts view, mail flowed as it should. While the Recent Contacts feature is nice, it's shown today that it can come back in bite you in the butt!

Create_R8_Databases=1: Not just a server setting!

Today I started taking my first baby-steps into the wonderful world of the R8 upgrade. One of the most popular topics of interest for the upgrade that I have seen so far is the space savings you can realize using the design element and document compression in the R8 mail template. But what to do if you don't yet have an R8 server up and running in your environment and you feel like playing with the new features? Simple. With the Standard client and the Admin client loaded on your machine, you really have all the tools you need to do some testing. Now, your mileage my vary, but I was able to shave 40MB off of my mail file by following these steps:
1. Using the Domino Administrator client, locate the mail8.ntf template on your workstation
2. Right click on the file and select Properties.
3. In the database properties window, click on the Advanced tab and check the options for compress database design and compress document data.4. Now create a copy of your mail database locally. Make sure to give it a unique name and to use the New Copy option, not New Replica. That way, no changes can replicate back up to the server. Once the copy is complete, take note of it's size. You'll want that for later comparison.
5. Add the line Create_R8_Databases=1 to your notes.ini file and restart the client. This command tells Notes that any time you create a new database, like when your doing a copy-style compact, to create it in the Notes 8 ODS of 48, which allows for the compression tools to work.
6. At a command prompt of C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\ , (of whatever path you are using for the Notes client on your workstation), use the following commands

• nconvert -u mailfilename.nsf * mail8.ntf (This will upgrade your mail file to the R8 mail template)
• ncompact -c mailfilename.nsf (This will convert the mail file to the new ODS of 48 and also compress the design elements as well as documents inside the mail file)

Tada! Take a look at the properties of the database now and compare the size with before you completed these steps. Pretty neat, huh!
Okay, I know it's not all that spectacular, but this can at least give you a quick and easy idea of how things have changed and can be improved with the new functionality of Lotus Notes 8. It's also nice to be able to show something off to the boss too!

Two disappointments with the 8.0.1 release..

But they are not too major.
1. Where's the updated InstallShield Tuner for Lotus Notes? The one that puts the wizard back into the application to allow you to make an answer file.
2. Where's Quickr Personal Edition? I was hoping that would hit at the same time.

Oh well. Not major things, but it would have been cool to have those out with all the excitment.

8.0.1 Admin Client with Nomad getting an error

So I was all excited yesterday when I got Nomad installed and running with not only the Notes 8.0.1 client but also the Designer and Admin pieces installed as well. This of course was thanks to Chris and Declan's blogs on how to do it. But last night, I started getting the following error when trying to launch the Admin client off of the USB drive:

"Unrecognized date/time STRUCTURE format specifier"

So after doing some digging around on Notes.Net, I was able to narrow down what the problem was. In addition to copying over the four files of:

• admin.exe
• designer.exe
• events4.ntf
• domadmin.ntf

You also need to include statrep5.ntf. What was happening was that the Monitoring task for the Admin client was trying to start and since there was no database created due to the lack of the template, it was throwing out that error. I shut down the Admin client, copied it over from another machine, restarted the Admin client and no more error. Hazzah!

Happy Nomad-ing!

(Remember, in 8.0.1, Nomad is only supported with the Basic client.)

8.0.1 Basic Client goes Nomad!

More happiness with 8.0.1 this afternoon. At the request of one of our managers, I was asked if Nomad was supported. You remember Nomad, right? Notes on a stick? USB Stick that is.

Well, going back through the old blog time machine, (ie: the search function at the top of the website), I found the steps that I had linked to on Chris Whisonant's blog back in October of 2006. I am happy to report that those steps work without a problem for 8.0.1 Basic. I also added the Admin and Designer as per the instructions on Declan's blog, and those worked too.
I remember seeing somewhere that the Standard version will not work, but I can't say with 100% that it won't because I haven't tried it yet. If I get some time at the end of the week, I'll give it a shot.

Information on obtaining Lotus Notes Traveler for 8.0.1

I noticed on the Passport Advantage site this morning that Traveler was not available for download listed there along with the other 8.0.1 goodies. Then I remembered reading, (I think on Ed Brill's blog), that there is a separate registration process for downloading Traveler. At the bottom of the Lotus Notes Traveler web page, there is a link that will take you to the site to get the application, but be prepared to answer the following questions:

• Your Passport Advantage identification #
• Total number of Lotus Notes users in your company
• Total number of Lotus Domino Web Access (DWA) users in your company
• How many Lotus Notes Traveler licenses are you requesting today?
• Total number of users in your organization currently accessing their Domino mail from a mobile device (e.g., RIM/Blackberry)?
• Have you downloaded the required Lotus Domino 8.0.1 version with a plan to deploy it for use with Lotus Notes Traveler in your company?
• Has your company already installed Lotus Notes Traveler?
• Over the next 6 months, how many Lotus Notes Traveler licenses are you planning to use?
• Over the next 6 months, how many users do you plan to have accessing Domino via mobile devices (e.g. RIM/Blackberry)?
  
• How long you plan to stay in the D.D.R.?

Okay, the last one isn't in the questions, but you get the gist.

Happy 8.0.1 Day!

The wait is finally over! Download yours today!

What an awesome Friday!

First I find out that I got tickets to the game 4 of the ALCS playoffs between our Cleveland Indians against the Boston Red Sox. I know, I suck. And then to top it all off, I found this online:



And now third, I found this IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1 : PREVIEW


Check out the "How to" regarding Lotus Notes Traveler

IBM Lotus Notes Traveler

I'm reading more of the official IBM announcements coming from the Collaboration Summit in NYC today, and this announcement has REALLY gotten me excited!

Mobile support for Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access users through IBM Lotus Notes Traveler- Following the shipping of Lotus Notes and Domino 8 that began worldwide in August, IBM is announcing Lotus Notes Traveler, a new client for Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1. Currently scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2008, Lotus Notes Traveler will provide out-of-the-box, mobile support for Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access users, enabling access to Lotus Domino mail from Microsoft Windows Mobile devices. As currently planned, Lotus Notes Traveler will provide automatic, real-time replication of email, including attachments, calendar, address book, journal and to-do’s and will work over all wired and wireless connections.

Wow! Could this mean that no longer will we have to rely on a third party vendor for handheld support!?

You can read about this and much more exciting information about ND8 on the IBM site by clicking here.

Update 9/19/07: Thanks to a post by Ed, here is a link to screen shots of Traveler! Looks awesome, but how about support for a Palm based device?