| Meeting Notes |
| December 13th, 2011 We got bumped out of our normal conference to White Mountain conference, but I can't complain too much because we got free food. IBM was running sessions and that is why we got bumped out of the room, but it was great of IBM for letting the group to enjoy the free food (and bar). Once the NELOTUS group settled down, Purvi started the session on IBM connections. What is the Cognos search you ask? Search capability to look at connections and cognos. Purvi explains using the collaboration business intelligence to help with activities or projects. The colleboration business intelligence is share information in a central location. Purvi shows how Cognos intergrates with the connections. The user can show a report (from Cognos) and be placed on a dashboard that is shared on the Connections events. Cognos intergrate into the Microsoft PPT (and some day soon Notes Symphony.), so a report can be imported into a PPT (for that next presentation). Purvi and her super team did a fantastic job on this very technical presentation. If you missed this presentation, please contact Purvi to get your own demo. Here were some Q/A from the session: Q/A: Can you share Instant Messaging? Yes, there is function to capture information to store in the project. Q/A: Can you capture the decisions making (audit reasons)? Yes, there is function to capture the data you need to show directions. November 15th, 2011 The crowd started really small but we finally got 11 people to this great topic on Administrating Lotus Live. I am trying something and trying to take notes while the speaker is presenting. (I always seem to forget everything when I look back to my notes) John got moving and the questions came as well. John presented the two types of cloud delivered Service and Hybrid. Lotus Live Notes can be run in one of two configurations: Service Only configuration - No integration, and no on-premises mail servers, or Hybrid - looks like on-premise domino application. John reviews the Hybrid model: - Hybrid setup - Network update the firewall (bi-directional) for the cloud mail - Combination of messaging users on-premises & in the cloud - This is not a transitional process (It would be business process) - This is not a temporary thing;This can be an end point to work in both world. - Defines the administrator model allowing more control using standard on-premise administrator. - But note: the administrator will no longer have access to the Administrator client (no more sh Task or bring down the server). - Local Replica is Supported (but not replication to another server) John review the Setup process of Hybrid:
- No Cross Certification required (you have to upload the OU Certifier ID) - Support native NRPC mail routing (preserves database/document links) - No change required to continue accessing existing application This was a great presentation. As the Program Manager, due to the less and less people coming the NELOTUS Sessions, I have had to make a hard decision. As of January 2012, the NELOTUS sessions will be every other month. January 2012 - No Session because most people are going to LotusSphere February 2012 - NELOTUS will be going to SkiLug.org (so don't forget to sign up) March 2012 - NELOTUS Session will happen at IBM, Waltham - Topic will be determine. Remember in May 2012, is election time so you can throw me out for making the session every other month. Or oddity, I could be re-elected for this idea (doubt it) October 18th, 2011 Okay, I admit I took notes for this great session, but I lost them. Don did a great job and we will have him back to present the development section of the good.com product. Presentation coming... September 13th, 2011 Frank started the presentation by introducing himself and explaining what would be discussed during this session. Frank was very professional with his presentation and his manner was very friendly towards the group. He did a wonderful job explaining the new changes in Lotus Notes Client and iNotes Client. After the explanation, he would do a demo to help the audience really understand the new changes. The group enjoyed his enthusiasm when he presented widgets and explained how users can make their own widget. During the presentation, users in the group asked questions, and Frank answered them appropriately. Many ohs and ahs came out from the group, when Frank showed the Lotus Notes traveler. After the session, Frank mingled among the group and the feedback I received was we would love him to come back again, I will highly recommend Frank as a speaker and I hope he comes back again! Summer Break - See you in September May 10th, 2011 This was a great Administration Session on the Domino Configuration Tuner. We had another low turn out. I thought with an administration topic more people would attend. Scott was a great speaker on this subject and others. Check out the attachment and visit the website. April 10th, 2011 This was a great and interesting session. It was too bad that the turnout was a little low, but I heard that some people contact Jonathan about his product through the newsletter. Wow, I thought no one read the newsletter. Jonathan(JPG Consulting, Inc.) presented the EZ Search and it was really interesting and for the price you can't go wrong. I have already download the eval copy on my XP machine. NOTE: If you have XP, check to see if you have Windows Search 4.0, if not go download and index before install EZ Search product. After going through that, OH IT IS SO COOL!!! I found documents so quickly. If you didn't make the session, check out the youtube. March 8th, 2011 Rafael reviewed the 6 Best Practices to help reduce email overload on Mail Servers. Rafael has a product that improves the domino policy which is on a Lotus Notes Server. There was so much that I can't type it in all in, if you want to see and hear more about his products, contact Rafael. February 8th, 2011 Jim Murphy(Lighthouse) sponsored the food and spoke about Lighthouse. Jim is also helping the New England Lotus Notes User Group find more speakers. Jason Dumont changed his schedule so he could present at the New England Lotus Notes User Group. Jim reviewed the changes in the Lotus Notes R8.5.2, and then presented some of the upcoming changes. RNext will be change for everyone in the world of Lotus Notes. Also, the term "Lotus" might be fading away like the record player and black/white tvs. The RNext doesn't show Lotus logo anywhere, it doesn't mean Lotus Notes is going away, but maybe new branding. (we will see) Presentation Janauary 11th, 2011 He was a great speaker with his energy and excitement about Evolution Transformer and GROUPLive. He had to cut his presentation short due to the pending snow storm. Hopefully, he will come back again. If you are interested in these topics, contact T.J. Whitte. I had a lot more notes but lost them..... Presentation during meeting. December 14th, 2010 Carl Fink (GroupSoft) sponsored the food and presented GroupSoft Help Desk v14 using Xpages. GroupSoft Help Desk usage of Xpage made the web interface extremly user friendly. The main presenter Donald Whalen was an excellent speaker and very enthusiastic about Lotus Connections 3.0. Connections is the business version of facebook (but it is more than that. There is no farmville in this application). Today's company have to face that social networking is the next wave to train, find knowledge and communicate in the now. (Email is the new 'snail mail'.) Donald presented Connections on Lotus Greenhouse so the group could see the different areas of Connections: Communities - Could be used for: Project Tracking Area to set up users and tracking information about a project . Department Information Inter Department Information Profiles - User could document their knowledge. Discussion Forms (which can be turned on or off) could be used discussing any work items. The session reviewed Files loading, Wikki and Microblogging. Once the session was over, we were all interested in signing up to the Lotus Greenhouse to play in Connections. It was a great session and I hope this speaker will come back again. Presentation from Session. November 9th, 2010 Sonian sponsored the food and combined their presentation with Chris Baker. There were about 20 people at this session. Chris Baker presented "LotusLive". He explained how email worked in the cloud (up to 25GB space, No VPN and reverse DMZ). In addition, he presented the different cost model (LotusLive Notes, LotusLive Engage and the LotusLive Collaboration). The key highlights of the "LotusLive" presentation was 1) Customers on the service no longer are required to manage their mail, hardware or software. 2) Customers on the service manage their administration in the LotusLive web UI. 3) Existing Notes Domino customers on the service are able to maintain control by extend their on-premises assets in the cloud via the LotusLive Notes hybrid environment configuration. Once Chris completed his presentation, he passed the presentation over to Troy and Rami of Sonian. Sonian presented Email Cloud Archiving presentation. Many of company's worry about Sox Compliance and legal actions, Sonian Archive software is a IBM sponsored solution. The Sonian application integrates into the LotusLive Mail smoothly. Check out their website: www.sonian.com and read about their product. I passed along what I learned from this session to my boss. He was very interested and will be looking into the LotusLive Cloud. I believe if I didn't have this hands on introduction to the LotusLive, I might not have been able to give a true opinion on this product. Thank you goes out to Chris Baker and Sonian. -Sheila October 5th, 2010 TeamStudio sponsored the food, presentation and raffle. There were about 20 people at the session. The TeamStudio Unplugged was presented by John Kingsley ( a long time member of the NELOTUS Group). John explained most corporations on Lotus Notes want to know why they can't access the databases on their smartphone/blackberry. Today's Lotus Notes Developers have to figure out how to develop create views/forms on a 2 inch screen. TeamStudio Unplugged approach is put the Notes Client on the device. The user logs into the Client with the web notes name/password. The "UnPlugged" Client has an Administrator area to set up security to document which user can access which database, formula replication, and so much more. The Developer still has to set up the minor xpages to pass information to the device. (Remember to download Smartplace Simulator) I highly recommend if your company wants Notes database on smartphone/blackberry contact Tim (TeamStudio) about Unplugged. After the presentation, we reviewed the NELOTUS Review Survey, 41 people filled out the survey. Most people had no issues with the location or 2nd Tuesday of the month. Time was the only issue, so Networking will be from 6pm-6:30pm. The Main Speaker will start at 6:30pm (which will give people time to get through the 5:00 traffic). It was a fun and interesting meeting. (Don't find to join the New England Lotus User Group on Linkedin.) -Sheila September 21, 2010 Bitray Consultant sponsored the food, which was great. We had about 25 people feed at this session. The R8.52 presentation by Peter Janzen, IBM Product Manager, and Dan O'Connor, IBM Senior Software Engineer Dominio Designer was excellent Quick Overview of the Presentation: Client Improvements The key changes are: Inbox can be sorted by First or Last Name Forward Email from your Trash Save Emails to your harddrive as .eml files (like Microsoft Outlook) When creating an email, Type ahead starts with most recent list (before searching address book). - recent Email list pulls from contact list (and blackberry contact list) Calendar shows unaccepted Meetings View Application Calendars on your mobile device (like Teamroom calendars, group calendar...) Replication improvements iNotes Full and Lite have been improved Questions from the group that presentors(waiting for follow up). 1) How to shut off the export to .eml file (saving your emails to harddrive), if the company has compliance issues around emails. 2) When client is upgraded, the most recent list is very long (with contact list and blackberry list of names) and way to easily reduce the list (vs right clicking on the name and selecting remove from list (one at a time)). 3) Prior to 852, in calendar you could look at two months at time (by month option as scrolled through the month), this option has been removed and you can only look at one month at time. Administrator Improvements: The key changes are: Administrator can create a policy to maintain local replicas (for users) Administrator can update local database (on clients) to new ODS Client Installation Options to help with upgrade Disabling and Re-Enabling Notes Roaming Status Questions from the group that presentors have to follow up. 1) Is there issues with SmartUpgrade and Windows7? 2) Any issues with Preloading and .dll locking? Developer Improvements: The key changes are: Developer Clients opens faster Xpages improvement with radio buttons, property analysis Design Property box show the latest version the design was saved in - Sheila May 11, 2010 Well, as the new Program Manager, I was luckily to meet Chris Toohey while I was at the LotusDeveloper2010 Session. If I was not at the LotusDeveloper 2010, I am not sure how Chris would have made it to our User Group meeting tonight. Chris Toohey (http://www.dominoguru.com/) gave an informative session on Component Control and Xpages. He did a great job comparing known designer elements (subforms and html) to the new R8.5 Xpages programming. During the QA, a member was straight and to the point when he asked "Does Lotus Notes have a future?" to Chris Toohey. Chris Toohey posted this incident on his website. Chris, on the spot, responded "Lotus Notes -- as an application platform -- absolutely has a future. The way you develop Lotus Notes apps today, however, does not. There is a paradigm shift at play with how Lotus Notes applications are written, and it's not due to the advent of XPages, but rather user expectation." After the session, I checked out his website to download several applications. April 14, 2010 When I took on the task of reviving the user group last year I made a one-year commitment. Last night I handed this responsibility over to Sheila Blanchette, and I'm confident that she will bring new energy and new ideas to the group. I'll leave it to her to introduce some additional volunteers who will be helping out with the web site and other tasks. I'll be staying on as a group advisor and contributing to this column, which we hope to convert into a full-featured blog in the near future. David Marshak and Rob Ingram gave an interesting presentation on Sametime 8.5 and related technologies, with lots of live demos. First up were improvements to the core Sametime functionality that most Domino shops can implement. We then saw the obligatory (but always funny) live video chat with someone off premises, and participated in a 4-way conference call with David, Rob and two attendees on cell phones. This is fascinating stuff, even though those attendees working with small and medium businesses probably won't be installing the more advanced telephony and video features at their customer's sites any time soon. You can download their presentations by clicking the "Past Meetings" link at the left of the screen. During his talk, David mentioned Lotus Greenhouse, a great place to try out new Lotus technologies of all kinds. http://greenhouse.lotus.com I've been deep into XPages development for the last month after a year of just playing around. The XPages Redbook (available on the Domino Developer wiki site) has been a great help, supplemented by some of the tutorials that I've mentioned in previous postings. - carl March 17, 2010 Think This Is Wrong? I don't have a personal blog, so forgive me for using the user group blog to vent about this salesforce.com ad for "Salesforce Chatter" that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on March 12. "Chatter" is a cloud-based social networking product that competes with Lotus Connections. Or it will, when it's officially released. Yes, you read that correctly... this is a feature comparison ad for a product that is still in private beta. The ad consists of a quote from the IT experts at Fortune: "Salesforce Chatter does what Lotus Notes and SharePoint do, only Chatter is far more flexible and fun." (The actual Fortune quote is: "In effect, Chatter does what IBM's Lotus Notes and Microsoft's Sharepoint do, only Chatter is far more flexible, and, at the risk of sounding silly, fun. " Risk noted, silliness confirmed.) It's followed by a table that looks like this:
So they are not only comparing Apples 0.9 with Oranges 8.5, but by leaving off the checkmarks for Mobile and Development Tools, they want you to believe that oranges have no juice and no vitamins. They might as well have put the Dyson Cyclone in column two and a Yugo in column three. (Oh, wait, they *did* put a Yugo in column three.) Any surprise that Oracle alum Benioff has adopted the same 6x6 format and FTC-injunction-baiting content as his former employer? (Update 3/26/10: the ad appeared again today, coincidentally below an article about Oracle.) - carl March 9, 2010 Thanks to Judith Artley and Sheila Blanchette for preparing material for last night's Show-and-Tell segment. Judith kicked things off, showing some favorite commands for debugging Directory Assistance. Sheila showed us how to implement icons in an XPages view. Here's her presentation: Brian Cooney described an action button he's implemented to let impatient users quickly toggle between Basic and Standard versions of the Notes client. Here's the code: %REM Agent Toggle: NotesLite/Full Version Description: sets the UseBasicNotes ini variable through UI %END REM Option Public Option Declare Sub Initialize() 'Exit out if Mac platform Dim session As New NotesSession Dim plat As String plat = session.Platform If plat="Macintosh" Then MessageBox "This feature is not applicable to Mac computers" Exit Sub End If Dim UseBasicNotes As String UseBasicNotes=Session.GetEnvironmentString("UseBasicNotes", True) 'UseBasicNotes=0 or no entry is the full client, UseBasicNotes=1 is the basic/lite. Went with 'lite' and 'full' instead of 'basic' and 'standard' as those terms confused users during testing If UseBasicNotes="1" Then MessageBox "You have now selected the full version of Lotus Notes. Please restart the program to enable the change." Call session.SetEnvironmentVar( "UseBasicNotes", "0" , True) Else MessageBox "You have now selected the lite version of Lotus Notes. Please restart the program to enable the change." Call session.SetEnvironmentVar( "UseBasicNotes", "1" , True) End If End Sub Brian also followed up on an issue that arose during the meeting with this: Link to the article on how to get webmail/web apps to use windows authentication: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.domino.admin85.doc/H_SETTING_UP_SPNEGO_AUTHENTICATION_FOR_WEB_CLIENTS_STEPS.html Judith also sent this along: "At tonight's NELOTUS group meeting, Brian asked how to prevent older Sametime clients from connecting to a server. Use the VP_SECURITY_LEVEL sametime.ini parameter to prevent older versions of Sametime from connecting to a Sametime server. The two parametes in STSecurity.ini provide the message and the sender. Note: When you have multiple Sametime Servers, the VP_SECURITY_LEVEL needs to set the same on all of them or else they will not be able to connect to each other On each Sametime Server, 1. Edit Sametime.ini, [Config] Section 1. Change VP_SECURITY_LEVEL=651 (from 0) 2. Add: VP_SECURITY_ALLOW_USER=0 2. Edit StSecurity.ini 1. VP_SECURITY_MESSAGE=To use Sametime, you must upgrade your Sametime client. Instructions are at http://instructions.mydomain.com 2. VP_SECURITY_MESSAGE_SENDER=Sametime Support Older clients log in, get the buddy list, get error box and message to upgrade, and then are disconnected. Looks something like this: Terry Traphagen wasn't able to join us but did lob in a vote for NoteFIX as a favorite tool, which I believe is available at OpenNTF. Rich Schwartz also wrote in to tell us about his All Unicode Characters database, and provided this link to the OpenNTF code bin: http://openntf.org/Projects/codebin/codebin.nsf/CodeByDate/CE6B55B6B4A04A6E862576E10008B911 "It's a reference source for anyone needing the mappings between LMBCS and Unicode UTF-16 and UTF-8. It's also a useful test tool for anyone wanting to see how their code processes all the many of thousands of characters that you might encounter in rich text. I've even used it to email data to check whether the combination of my sender options and a recipients mail client and settings will preserve various characters.", Rich explained. - carl February 26, 2010 In my post dated January 12, I noted that the only way I could find to display a user-selected view (from a list of views in a combobox, for example) on an XPage was to add individual view controls to the XPage and use the Visible property ("show-when" formulas) to hide all but one view. In a blog entry dated February 16, John Mackey seems to confirm this limitation but offers a workaround that he has posted to OpenNTF. The workaround doesn't have expand/collapse or click-to-sort columns, at least for now. Still, a great contribution. http://www.jmackey.net/groupwareinc/johnblog/johnblog.nsf/d6plinks/XPages_Dynamic_View_OpenNTF Unfortunately, this puts us right back to where we were with Web development prior to XPages. In an attempt to mimic a popular feature available in the Notes client, the community comes up with a cool hack that gradually gets more capable, but also more complex. For those of us developing commercial software, there are also IP and maintenance issues to consider. In short, we need features like this added to the core product. We don't want heroic efforts by the community to be a pressure-relief valve that prevents Lotus from filling in the gaps in a great product. - carl February 9, 2010 Our little group raised $165 for Haiti earthquake relief tonight at our "Swag for Haiti" event! Thanks to Mike Kinder for the suggestion and to the group members who brought their Lotusphere swag and donated so generously. The money is going to Partners in Health (www.pih.org), a Boston-based organization that is one of the charties chosen by the Hope For Haiti Now telethon. I also checked them out at charitynavigator.org where they earned a top rating, with just 2.8% spent on admin and 2.3% on fundraising. Terry Traphagen kicked off the meeting with a look at the Ext.ND Javascript framework. This was followed by our annual Lotusphere review. We hope to have a table at the Lotusphere-Comes-To-You event in Cambridge on April 8. Volunteers are needed to man the table and help recruit new members. A reminder to join the NELOTUS LinkedIn group. Thanks to Judy Artley for the excellent sandwich tray. And no, I didn't sing... fortunately, no one who attended the meeting reads these posts. - carl February 2, 2010 One of our members has suggested that we auction off high-end swag and send the proceeds to a reputable charity for Haiti earthquake relief. He has contributed his Lotusphere backpack to get things started. I added this note to the second meeting announcement that went out today. As an added incentive, if we raise more than $100, I will sing "We Are The World" (just the chorus, not the high part). Or would it be more effective to say that I will keep singing until we raise $100? - carl January 25, 2010 Back from Lotusphere and working on the February meeting. This will include our annual Lotusphere review. Like the story of the blind men and the elephant, your impressions of Lotusphere can vary greatly depending on your role. Presenters, showcase exhibitors, analysts and general attendees all have a unique perspective. I hope to have someone from each of these roles tell us what they observed. - carl January 12, 2010 A hardy bunch braved the cold to make it to last night's meeting. John Kingsley of Teamstudio showed us some tools for keeping track of agents and user activity in Notes/Domino applications. You can roll your own to do some of this in LotusScript, but as John pointed out their products generally use the API to do it faster. That's a big concern if you have thousands of users and hundreds of agents. I demonstrated my latest head-scratcher in my on-going XPages development saga. A combo-box allows the user to select from a list of views. The selection is stored in a sessionScope variable. But it seems you can't use this variable as a parameter for the data source of an XPages view control. (Whereas in Notes, the embedded view on a page can be a formula.) Instead, you need to put all the potential views on the XPage and use a computed show-when based on the aforementioned combo-box choice. That can't be right, can it? I cited the Lotus XPages.nsf sample database that uses the same technique. Somewhere during our discussion, Terry "volunteered" to present an interesting app he has built using Ext.ND (Google it) at our February meeting. Teamstudio provided the T-shirts, GroupSoft provided the pizza, and of course we thank Jeff, our host at the IBM Innovation Center in Waltham for the always warm (Summer too!) meeting room. - carl December 9, 2009 We always hope that our guest speakers will let down their guard a little and give us the *real* story behind the slides. Small group, generally friendly, no press, and no bloggers. (This doesn't count as blogging.) We got a bit of that last night as Mary Beth Raven gave us a quick tour through the improvements in the Notes 8.5.1 client with some frank and sometimes funny commentary. We also learned a bit about what goes on in the development partner sessions that influence UI decisions. Mary Beth left with a few useful suggestions from our always-sharp group. Mary Beth's blog can be found at: www.notesdesignblog.com I presented a combination Show-and-Tell and Stump-the-Experts on my latest XPages prototype. The issue was how to properly map a Notes list field (allow multiple values) to an Xpages mult-line edit box so that each list element appears on a new line. Fun with @Implode and @Explode. - carl December 3, 2009 Have you registered for Lotusphere? If so, you've probably received an email asking you to rate the proposed Lotusphere breakouts. Please vote for my Birds-Of-A-Feather proposal in Track 5: "Starting and Growing a Local User Group". You can vote even if you've never rolled out of bed early enough to attend a BOF session. [update: no, it didn't get accepted.] - carl November 11, 2009 After reviewing the evaluations from last night's meeting, I think the key to a successful user group isn't "fewer marketing pitches by vendors" (see quote below) but rather selecting vendors with interesting and useful products presented by the people who conceived and/or developed those products. That was the case at our Tuesday meeting, when Alan Forbes demonstrated VitalSigns and Alex Homsi showed us ProjExec for Quickr Domino. VitalSigns (tm) is a messaging infrastructure monitoring tool targeted at Notes/Domino shops. It incorporates Alan's years of admin experience along with feedback from customers about what's important and how best to present it. ProjExec (r) for Quickr Domino brings "Project Management 2.0" concepts to the IBM Lotus platform. Alex demonstrated its seamless two-way synchronization with Microsoft Project and the tight integration with the full range of Lotus technologies including Sametime. Thanks to Lotus marketing for providing a selection of Lotus Knows posters for our raffles. - carl October 25, 2009 While Googling myself today I stumbled across a 2004 article in SearchDomino.com titled: "Are Domino User Groups Endangered?" This paragraph caught my attention: "Another user group, NUTS -- Notes Users of the Tri-State -- in Cincinnati, has also been rejuvenated, according to Mike Peeler, the group's technical coordinator. He credits the group's growth to more-technical topics --such as 'how to code JavaScript' and 'best practices in debugging' -- and fewer marketing pitches by vendors. " (emphasis added) With that cautionary note in mind, I invite you to our next meeting featuring.... two marketing pitches by vendors. But before you make other plans, consider that Alan and Alex are local business partners who have supported our group and made major contributions to the Notes/Domino ecosystem over many years. Their insights about the state of the Lotus world are worth listening to, and networking with these guys is never a waste of time. October 14, 2009 I stumped the experts at last night's meeting with my little XPages view demo presenting the runtime error: "View <viewname> does not contain column named null". (Shows in server log as: "JVM: SEVERE: CLFAD####E: Exception processing XPage request.") I ran into this on Monday evening after upgrading to Domino 8.5.1, so I had not had time to do anything except search the Web prior to the meeting. It didn't take long for me to find the culprit today: a checkbox column that was being used to select documents for deletion. A workaround also came quickly: in the Column properties, select Data and change "Display data using:" from Column Name to Computed Value, with a value of quote-quote, or keep it set to Column Name and pick any column. In 8.5 I'm pretty sure that you could just set a column as a checkbox without visiting the Data tab. I'll leave it to others to figure out if this is really something that changed in 8.5.1. I wondered why I could reproduce this using some of the simple tutorials such as Chris Toohey's pnab.nsf, but not the more advanced ones like Declan's (see links below). It's because Declan isn't using the View container control... seems the cool kids are all using the Repeat control. - carl October 13, 2009 Tonight's meeting was content-full. First up was the main presentation by Steve McIntosh from Teamwork Solutions. He gave us an overview of the mobile device marketplace and his thoughts on near-term future trends. This was setting the stage for the design approach that his firm took in developing a device-independent mobile solution for Notes apps that is entirely HTML-based. Steve did a live demo of a Domino directory lookup using his Blackberry. Simple and cool. Our second presentation was by Ken Gartner of Permessa. He showed us a custom email branding and disclaimer system that his firm developed for a very large Notes/Domino shop with some complex requirements. This required a brief explanation of the CD-to-MIME conversion that takes place when sending mail to external domains using SMTP. The solution required use of the MIME API's available in the Domino SDK as of 7.0.2. Complicated and cool. Here's a link to the presentation: http://www.permessa.com/slides/a-case-study-for-branded-email-disclaimers One of our members refuses to use the "vibrate" setting on his cell phone... either that or he has completely misunderstood the purpose of this feature. - carl October 12, 2009 8.5.1 should be available for electronic delivery today. The Designer Client is now free (again)! October 10, 2009 Created a basic group listing on LinkedIn. Feel free to add yourself as a member. We really need a new logo that works in the space provided by LinkedIn. October 4, 2009 Just noticed an entry about our DAOS meeting by Ken Gartner on the EmailTide.com blog. EmailTide is the blog of Stefan Mehlhorn, CEO of Permessa. Ken will be doing a brief Show-and-Tell presentation at the October meeting. - carl September 17, 2009 Ed Brill noted our meeting and provided a link to the presentation below on his blog today. - carl September 15, 2009 Collin and Pat did a great job walking us through DAOS from its 2007 conception on a napkin in the Orlando airport to its implementation at significant customer sites today and some enhancements planned for future releases. Along the way they answered some complex and insightful questions from our always insightful group. Here's a PDF of the presentation: The presentation contains some useful links to DAOS resources: DAOS Wiki http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/archive?openview&title=DAOS&type=cat&cat=null&tag=DAOS DAOS Backup and Restore http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/daos-backup-and-restore DAOS Estimator http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=463&uid=swg24021920 September 7, 2009 Finally had a chance to resume the XPages education and R&D that I started back in May. Since then an excellent tutorial consisting of 26 exercises has appeared on the Lotus Domino Designer wiki: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/Tutorial-intro-to-XPages.htm Although I haven't worked through the exercises, it looks like another great resource. - carl June 16, 2009 Traffic was heavy and there were many requests to move the starting time back a bit, so we'll try that at the next meeting. We started the meeting with introductions, then Show-and-Tell. I brought home a copy of a tabloid newspaper from my recent trip to Denmark with a two-page spread on Stein Bagger of IT Factory fame. Turns out he was in the slammer since the fraud was discovered in December, and by happy coincidence his trial began the day that I arrived. Wall-to-wall media coverage, as they say. (Update: he was sentenced to seven years in prison.) Next up, guest speaker Stan Uptagrafft gave us helpful tips on integrating Dojo with Domino web apps. I had seen the slides in advance that he helpfully addded to the zip file on OpenNTF (see link below). http://www.openntf.org/Projects/codebin/codebin.nsf/CodeByDate/A2A3F3DB69E21F2A8625740E005B8EC9 So the real surprise of the night was the sample real-world app that Stan demonstrated, using Dojo and other open-source bits and pieces. This was a beautifully crafted internal web site that could best be described as a Sharepoint killer. It even looked like Sharepoint! It certainly didn't look like any Domino 6.5 web site that I've created. We'll try to get some sanitized screen shots posted here soon. If your management is leaning to Sharepoint, you've got to show them this. Stan also showed a simple utility that he uses to manage his reusable code snippets. Finally, as promised, we devoted a good chunk of time to "Stump the Experts". I walked away with solutions to two of my own puzzlers, so you can be sure we'll be giving all of our speakers the hook in the future. - carl May 12, 2009
Pete set the stage with some slides on the goals the dev team hoped to achieve with XPages. Then a live XPages 8.5 web client demo by Philippe, and a sneak preview of XPages in the Notes client, coming later this year in Notes 8.5.1. With so much content to cover, we had to defer the return of "Stump the Experts" (f/k/a "Clinic") until the next meeting. Raffled off another Lotusphere backback and other goodies this evening that we snagged at the Boston/Cambridge LCTY event. Here are a couple of XPages tutorials to get you started: Declan Lynch's 54-part blogathon beginning 21-Feb-2009 and ending 13-Mar-2009. http://www.qtzar.com/blogs/qtzar.nsf/htdocs/LearningXPages.htm Harness the Power of XPages in Lotus Domino Designer by Chris Toohey of Clearframe. A 43-page PDF document available in IBM DeveloperWorks. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/ls-dw-ls-ddxpages.html Domino 8.5 ships with the Dojo 1.1.1 toolkit, but you don't need to wait for your organization to upgrade to 8.5 to start using Dojo in your Domino web apps. Attendee Stan Uptagrafft offered this link to some Dojo sample code in the OptenNTF Code Bin that works with earlier versions of Domino: http://www.openntf.org/Projects/codebin/codebin.nsf/CodeByDate/A2A3F3DB69E21F2A8625740E005B8EC9 - carl April 22, 2009 Afterwards a new member asked if this was a typical meeting. No, our meetings are usually more technical but it's good to step back and get the big picture from time to time. Note the "Happy 20th Birthday" slide in the background of the picture to the left. That's how long Notes has been in the market. Our user group is just a few years shy of that mark. - carl (photo: Glenn Orenstein) nelotus.org Home Page |