Author: Ulrich Krause

It’s Not A Bird, It’s Not A Plane, It’s SuperAdmin!

Have you ever wondered if you have dead mailfiles sitting on your server taking up space, or if all your databases are on the latest ODS version, or if the administration server in the ACL is set correctly on all databases?

If so then this is the application for you.

Written by a notes admin for notes admins all the information that you need to make sure your Domino environment is running like a well oiled machine will be waiting for you once you deploy SuperAdmin.

Declan Lynch just released version 1.0.0 of SuperAdmin on OpenNTF.org


Download and unpack the zipfile, sign the template using an ID with full administration rights for all databases, create a new database from the template on your server and start the agent from the server console using

tell amgr run “dbname.nsf” ‘Check Server Databases’

If you like to run the agent on a scheduled basis, set the schedule and activate the agent.


Programmatically Check If Export Of View Data Is Disabled

In Lotus Notes /Domino 8.0.2 you can disable the export of view data by selecting this option in the application properties. To programmatically check if the export is disabled, you can use the following LotusScript.

Function IsExportDisabled () As Boolean
	IsExportDisabled = False
	Dim s As New NotesSession
	Dim db As NotesDatabase
	Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
	Dim IconDoc As NotesDocument
	Set IconDoc = db.GetDocumentByID("FFFF0010")
	If ( Not IconDoc Is Nothing ) Then
		If IconDoc.HasItem("$DisableExport") Then
			IsExportDisabled = True
		End If
	End If
End Function

Notes stores the information in the application’s icon design document. If export is disabled, the $DisableExport field is present. The script simply checks if the field is available. If so, export is disabled and the function returns true else false.


Notes 8.5 –> Compress Images

In Notes 8.5 you can automatically compress images pasted into documents.  Note that bitmap (.bmp) images that are imported into a Notes document are compressed; bitmap images that are pasted into a Notes document are converted to .gif or .jpg format.

Choose “File -> Preferences -> Basic Notes Client Configuration”, and then choose the appropriate setting under ‘Additional options’

The Notes 8.5 Release Notes says that the setting is selected by default but in the beta it isn’t!


A New Look

After installing Domino 8.5 Beta 2 and reading Jack Dausmann’s post “ND8.5 Beta 2 with XPages Baked In To Templates” I immediately created a new discussion application on the server and opened it in the browser.

The new GUI looks great and using xPages and css it can be easily modified to match a company’s corporate design. Even a company logo can be added by simply attaching the logo to the applications configuration document.

You have sliders for authors and tags and view pagination. I encountered one problem with tags. I tried to add an additional tag and saved the document. I reopened the document and the modification was lost. I created a new document and added two tags delimited by comma. The tags appeared in the tag list; but as a single tag. Seems that the field is not configured as a multi value field. I’ll check this after the Notes 85 Beta2 client download has finished …


Tweak Notes 8.0.2 Start-Up Sequence

The Notes start-up sequence has been reordered as part of performance enhancement in release 8.0.2. Notes users are now prompted to authenticate (log in using their Notes password) before the Notes workbench appears on-screen.
You can (for whatever reason) disable this new feature by adding ENABLE_EARLY_AUTHENTICATION=0 to the notes.ini.


IBM Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5

With Lotus Notes / Domino 8.5, a new version of Lotus Notes Travel(l)er will also be available. Here is a list new features for the IBM Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.

Mobile device security policies

An administrator can now define mobile device security policies, along with other Lotus Notes Traveler application settings. The Lotus Notes Traveler client will monitor the device security settings, and if they are not compliant with the policy, an administrator defined action is taken.

Remote wipe

If a mobile device is lost or stolen, an administrator can issue a remote wipe command to remove all sensitive data from the device. You have the option to remove the Lotus Notes Traveler application and data or restore the device to the factory default.

Improved web server configuration support

The Lotus Notes Traveler server no longer requires the use of Internet Site documents for the Domino HTTP server configuration. This will eliminate a number of integration problems with other web applications that reside on the same Domino web server and that could not support Internet Site documents. Lotus Notes Traveler server will continue to support Internet Site Documents if they are already in use on the Domino Server.

Name Lookup

The name lookup feature of Lotus Notes® Traveler allows mobile users to search for and find information about users in the Domino® directory, or remote directories if directory assistance is configured. The name lookup feature can be accessed by selecting Lookup Name on the tools menu of the Lotus Notes Traveler client. By default, name lookup returns the first 25 results for a given query and returns names, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses. You do have the option to customize the name lookup feature to best fit your needs.

Rich Text mail support

Rich text email can now be displayed on Window Mobile 6 devices, including support for fonts, tables and text color.

Lotus Traveler Access

It is now possible to explicitly limit who can and cannot access the Lotus Notes Traveler service on the Domino server. An administrator can define which users or groups of users that are allowed to use the service and which ones cannot.

Device management

A new Domino application database, LotusTraveler.nsf, shows information about the users and their devices that are using the Lotus Traveler service within the Domino Administration client for the current Domino server.

For further information follow this link.


Disable Export Of View Data

Notes 8.0.2 comes with a new feature to disable the export of view data. You can enable the feature in the application properties. The feature is great but has one disadvantage.

When you disable the export and a user tries to export data from a view, from the security aspect the application behaves as designed. From the users point of view it looks like Notes does not work correct. There is no hint for the user that the export is disabled for this application. ( unless he takes a look at the application properties, what a user never would do )

So IBM, please either disable the menue option for exporting data when the “Disable Export of view data” is checked or at least show a message box to the user who tries to do an export.


Performance improvements from Notes 8.0.1 to 8.0.2

IBM published a technote in the Lotus Software KnowledgeBase about performance improvements in the Notes 8.0.2 client.

“The Notes 8 client is a highly integrated application built on an open framework.  The software stack was optimized to streamline the loading of Java bundles during the initial launch of the Notes 8.0.2 client.

We were able to reduce redundancies and dependencies inherent in a highly integrated application.  Additionally, we have re-ordered the start up sequence. This means that we load only the things necessary to get to your Inbox most quickly, loading other components either in the background, or when they are accessed by the application for the first time. The result is that the Notes 8.0.2 client launches more than twice as fast as the Notes 8.0.1 client.

We didn’t stop there.  The amount of memory that is used by the Notes client was reduced by about 20% in Notes 8.0.2.  This helped us to nearly double the number of Notes users supported by a single Citrix Presentation Server.  This was done by updating to later versions of the underlying stack (JRE, Eclipse, Lotus Expeditor) as well as the same optimization described above.

While the focus has been on the time needed to launch Notes and the memory consumed, attention has been given to other, more generic, tasks that are completed multiple times over a typical day.  These include such tasks as composing emails and opening a calendar entries.  Our findings have shown that the time needed to complete these types of tasks in comparable to the time needed to complete them using the Notes 7.0 client.  The lesson, here, is that while Notes 8 may take longer to launch the many new capabilities it brings, using the client during your work day is similar, with regard to performance, to previous versions.

The efforts that  were spent on performance gains in Notes 8.0.2 will be realized in Notes 8.5 and subsequent releases.

With the many pieces of Notes, this has been a resource-intensive task, but one that is well worth it to give our clients the best possible experience. This information is given in an effort to help you better understand the kinds of things that we have been working on.  The bottom line is that we have looked into many areas where performance can be improved and will present a faster experience in Notes 8.0.2 and Notes 8.5 compared to Notes 8.0 and 8.0.1.”

Chris Miller recently posted a list of technotes for Notes / Domino 8.0.2.