CuriousMitch

Tags: tristatelug

The Tri State Lotus User Group announced the next meeting for July 21, 2009.  Registration and networking  at 5:30 PM and two outstanding presentation from 6:00 PM to 8 PM.   Declan Lynch will be presenting on XPages, Declan literally wrote the book on XPages so who better to present.  Akiba Saeedi of IBM will provide an update on Sametime 8.5.  If you want a glimpse of the new features in Sametime 8.5 which will ship later this year this is the session for you.

Check out the Tri State Lotus User Group site for all the details and to register, and follow TriStateLug on Twitter for all the latest news.

Posted by Mitch Cohen on 06/29/2009 @ 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tags: quickr

In Quickr 8.1 once a user set their preference for a view it was saved for them via a Cookie so every time they returned to that view it was sorted and showing the desired number of entries as the user last viewed it.

In Quickr 8.2 the "Folder Setting Cookie Feature" is turned off by default

For performance reasons, the folder settings cookie feature is turned OFF by default as of Lotus Quickr 8.2.

You can turn this feature back on by adding the following to qpconfig.xml

<cookies>
<folder enabled="true" />
</cookies>

and restarting the HTTP on your server.

I wonder if anyone could provide any more detail on the performance impact of enabling this, though I will be testing since I know my users like this feature in 8.1

Technote 1389893 Folder view preferences lost when switching folders after upgrade to 8.2

Posted by Mitch Cohen on 06/25/2009 @ 7:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tags: lotusconnections TDI

Prior to reading this post you might want to take a quick read through my previous post Lotus Connections Profiles Population Wizard, What is Really Going On Under the Covers, which provides a more in depth understanding of the database population process, this post will cover using a custom Javascript function to manipulate data when populating the Profiles Database.  In this example I will cover issues around Country Code, but this example can easily be extended to any other field in the Profiles Database.

One of the fields in a users Profile is their Country, a useful piece of information for a large organization with different locations around the world.  First lets understand how the Country data is expected to display in a profile.  Each user record contains a field "PROF_ISO_COUNTRY_CODE" and expects to be populated with a 2 letter value (Connections provides the ISO Standard Country codes with the Database Population Wizard, and that is what I will use in this example).  When running the Profiles Population Wizard you have the opportunity  to load the contents of "isocc.csv" which populates the standard country codes and the country names in to the "Country" table in the Profiles Database.

The default configuration for Profiles is to display the full country name when rendering a users profile (not simply the two letter ISO code), This is the line in the profiles-config.xml

"<attribute appendHtml="&lt;br/&gt;" showLabel="false">countryDisplayValue</attribute>"

When a profile is loaded the system takes the 2 letter ISO code stored in "PROF_ISO_COUNTRY_CODE" in the EMPLOYEE table, and retrieves the full country name from the COUNTRY table, sounds simple, until you realize that it is all case sensitive.  As you can see here all of the country codes are loaded in lower case



Now in my example I am feeding Profiles completely out of a Domino LDAP which is completely under my control as it is my sandbox, but in the real world you might be taking data in from other sources, an HR system for example where you can not dictate how they store data, so we need a more elegant solution then simply making sure the source data is in lower case.  So in our example here is a view of a users ldap record (using LdapBrowser a very handy utility to keep around, scroll down on the page for the free client)



As you can see here the "c" attribute is populated with US in uppercase

If we simply use the default mapping in the Database Population Wizard



The user table will be populated in uppercase as seen here



Which means when we go in to Profiles and view Alex P. Keaton's Profile, we will not see his country displayed since US does not exist in the Country table (us is there but not US)



Not the result we were looking for.  To fix this we are going to add a function in to 'profiles_functions.js' which is in the TDI Solutions Directory (TDIPopulation\TDISOL under the database Wizards directory) and here is the function I am adding (and bear in mind I am NOT a developer)

// Convert country field to lower case
function function_map_country_lowercase(fieldname) {
        var result = work.getString("c");
        if(result != null) {
                result=result.toLowerCase();
                }
        return result;
}

Once you have saved your function, you can either manually edit the "map_dbrepos_from_source.properties" in the TDI Solutions Directory so it looks like this

PROF_ISO_COUNTRY_CODE={function_map_country_lowercase}

Or run the Wizard again and use the Function Pick list where you will see your new function as seen here



Once the wizard completes even though our source is still providing US in upper case we are writing us in lower case to the database



Now when we load up Alex P. Keaton's Profile we have his country displayed as we expected



This is just one example, using a custom Javascript you can easily manipulate any source data to write it out to the Profiles database correctly to suit your needs.

Additional Resources
Using the Profiles population wizard
Mapping fields manually
Tivoli Directory Integrator V6.1 InfoCenter
IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator Users Group

Posted by Mitch Cohen on 06/16/2009 @ 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tags: lotusconnections LPTA domino

I have been burned by this one,  and I am not alone, so I thought it was time for me to get around to writing this post.

One thing you can accomplish fairly easily is create a Single Sign on environment between Domino and Websphere Application Server (WAS) in order to do so first you need to Generate an LPTA Token in WAS, and then Import the keys in to Domino.  There is also an article in the Lotus Connections Wiki on how to accomplish this.  Overall it is easily accomplished taking only a few minutes to set up.

So by now you are asking What is the catch?  The catch is that by default WAS will rollover the LPTA keys every 12 weeks or put another way your SSO between WAS and Domino will work for 12 weeks and then mysteriously stop working.  What you want to do is Disable Automatic Generation of LPTA Keys in WAS.

Log on to the Integrated Solutions Console (ISC)
Navigate to SSL Certificate and Key Management > Key set groups



If you are on a Deployment Manager you are looking for the CellLPTAKeySetGroup



If you are on a Standalone Node you are looking for the NodeLPTAKeySetGroup



Select the appropriate group per above and clear the check box  for "Automatically Generate Keys"



Save your changes and restart WAS for the changes to take effect.

Wait 12 weeks and sit back and relax knowing you will not be answering calls about SSO being broken.

In the WAS 6.1 InfoCenter: Disabling automatic generation of Lightweight Third Party Authentication keys

Posted by Mitch Cohen on 06/08/2009 @ 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tags: Lotus Notes8

In a meeting I was in today a conversation came up about Widgets in the Notes 8 client. Sure we all love widgets but what are we really doing with them?  I think Widgets are part of the answer (note I said part, I am not saying it is the complete answer) to marketing Lotus Notes and getting the end users excited about using Notes

There are widget catalogs available on the Greenhouse, and  openNTF, but lets take a closer look at what it really out there

The Greenhouse currently has 35 Widgets in the Notes/Domino Category, pictured here are the 11 top downloaded the other 24 have between 0 -10 downloads each



The openNTF Catalog has a grand total of 6 widgets with a grand total of 104 downloads (I do realize that openNTF is in the middle of significant changes for the better and some issues are being worked out that should increase the number of contributions)



Look at some of the widgets out there Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Linkedin, Google Map, Google Docs, the Greenhouse even has a widget for MLBtraderumors.com, which is great for baseball junkies like me.  

Installing a widget from either of these sites could not be easier, all you need to do is drag and drop them in to your Notes Client, and while some require a client restart others don't even require that much effort to get up and running.

I believe the average person would find something useful in these widget collections, something that would make their life easier in some way every day, something that would make them just a little more productive, and therefore make their lives just that much easier which would make them love notes just a little bit more, maybe even show their friends the cool things they can do in Lotus Notes.  Well it is not happening based on the download numbers shown above.

So how do we make users more aware of the different tools available to them in Lotus Notes? Lets take a look, if I visit LinkedIn I see this



Take a look at the instructions on TripIt this is a site that has received acclaim for it's ability to integrate with Lotus Notes, but you would never know it reading their instructions or browsing their site.

Hopefully you get my point, why isn't IBM out there developing relationships and using their existing ones to get the word out that YES! Notes can do that!

Resources for Lotus Notes Widgets
Greenhouse Catalog (note you need a Greenhouse ID and Password to access the Greenhouse catalog)
OpenNTF Catalog
TwitNotes
Sample Plug-ins from Julian Robichaux (Check out Scrapple:Drag 'N Drop Scrap Collector a worthy successor to Alan Lepofsky's Paste Information tool)

I am sure there are more catalogs and widgets out there feel free to post then here as comments.  I am always on the look out for a good widget :)

Posted by Mitch Cohen on 06/03/2009 @ 7:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)