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You are here: Home › Blog

E-Pro: Sys Admin Newsletter Nov 2004


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Editor's Note: Chris's 0.116969 DKK

I returned from Copenhagen (Admin2004 Europe) with more than just a new country that I have never visited before. I met some wonderful people everywhere we went around the city. From those people and the others at the conference, from other numerous countries, I gained an understanding of how they view Domino technology and certification. I asked the same basic questions in each session and was surprised by the consistent feedback and input from the attendees.

In terms of Domino technology, there were few people who had aggressively upgraded their environment, especially when it was working successfully in the current state. I compared that to many of the companies here that move ahead quickly in the versions, or at least test the new versions as soon as they can download the code. Much of the feedback I received when we were discussing new features was that they understood what was available, but how could they do it with the version they were running. Some had no choice but to implement a Domino 6.5.1 server: to use Domino's built-in spam protection options, for example. So, they upgraded some elements while the rest of the internal infrastructure remained at 4.6.3b due to how stable it was for them and the fear of upgrading hardware. One site even went as far to say that the servers will stay R5 well past the time Lotus stops support since they have heavily customized the mail template and do not have the resources to test it on Domino 6 or 7. Plus they are stable and happy with the infrastructure.

Now certification has another twist. I went to the Lotus Certification pages to gather some statistics before writing this part. Before stating what I found from visiting with everyone in Copenhagen, here is some basic statistical information as of November 1, 2004:

  • Lotus Workplace currently has 10 total certified individuals (I am one of the US administrators) with all the developers being in EMEA.
  • Notes/Domino 6 certified individuals shows almost 2,000 more people in EMEA than the US/Canada
  • Collaborative Solutions Certified are almost identical across the US/Canada and EMEA
  • The number of people certified in Domino Release 5 has EMEA far exceeding the US/Canada by almost 9,000 people
So what did I take away from the conference about certification? It is apparent from the statistics that they (Domino technologists in EMEA) look at certification more often and with more value than we do here. Rarely do we get asked when engaging a new customer if anyone is certified and at what levels. While I have seen this listed on proposals, it is not common to be asked in person at a meeting. I still have not grasped if it is not seen as a value or beneficial, or if work history is looked at harder and in more detail in the US/Canada. I would love to see more people get certified, but with the hands-on training that should be required. I asked a few people while speaking about certification outside of the sessions, and the resounding majority felt that it was a great sign of their capabilities and skills that could be shown no matter where they worked. We did not discuss if it also helped with salary over there, as in some areas that is not appropriate to bring up, but I have a feeling if they are that interested in keeping certified for versions they are not even running, it holds a high value in that area also.

Just my 0.116969 DKK for this trip.

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Today's Underexposed Cool Tool: Domino Web Access Skin Editor
At Lotusphere 2004, Lotus debuted a new utility that is not part of the installation of the Notes client or Domino server. It allows you to greatly modify the Domino Web Access (DWA or iNotes) skins.

The types of changes you can make are:

  • Placement of objects on the view pages
  • Placement of objects on the form pages ("new" and "edit" pages)
  • Add/remove objects from either the view or form pages
  • Modify color and style of all objects on the page (via CSS rules in the StyleSheet.css file)
Note that Lotus still has not determined if this will be part of the actual installed code as of this time. But you can download the skin editor at the developerWorks: Lotus Sandbox.

Lotus strongly recommends, as you see in the notes on the download page, that you back up forms5.nsf or forms6.nsf so if you do make any changes that do not function, you can always roll back to the standard templates without reinstalling to get the databases back.

The program is designed to run locally, according to the documentation, and here are some of the functionality highlights, taken directly from the download page:

After you open a Forms6.nsf (or Forms5.nsf) database, this tool displays a list of the skin groups. There is a skin group for Internet Explorer, for Mozilla, and for all other browsers. Choosing a skin group populates the skins selection control. Select one of these skins to view the HTML or CSS content.

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Administration Tip: A Recent Sametime and LDAP Issue
A customer of ours has successfully been using Lotus Instant Messaging (Sametime) with authentication provided through LDAP. Everything seemed to work great for some time and then the issues began. At some points no one could log in to the system, there was no awareness, and no ability to authenticate for meetings. Restarting the Sametime server always seemed to fix the issue for some time. But when it came back we could not figure out why or how.

Little did we know that the LDAP server was actually becoming unavailable for short amounts of time, as we did not control nor monitor the LDAP server. But by the time we would check into the authentication failures, tests to the LDAP server would be successful. So we never caught this right away. Once we actually caught the LDAP server as down, through some freeware tests to verify the bind was correct, we caught on.

By restarting the Sametime server, it was re-authenticating with the LDAP server with the bind account. Apparently if there is a delay in time where the Sametime server cannot reach the LDAP server, the bind stops functioning. We could have gotten around a total restart of the Sametime server by simply restarting the STDirectory service and speeding up the time of availability. Restarting a Sametime server can result in it being unavailable for over 5 minutes. It may take a minute or two to shut down and then up to 5 minutes to get all the services running again. Just restarting STDirectory service would have had the system available in under one minute. Another lesson learned.

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Lotus Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook (DAMO) .PST Size Issue and New Features
Lotus has released some information for those of you deploying Lotus Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook (DAMO) with Outlook 2003 in your environment. Previously, there were size limits on the local .pst file of 2GB in older versions of Outlook. Well, Microsoft went ahead and let you go up to 20GB in the new Outlook 2003 version. Unfortunately Domino does not see the difference in the ability for the different Outlook versions to have different local sizes. So instead, Lotus has stuck with the 2GB maximum size limit across all supported Outlook version with DAMO.

But Lotus did think ahead with the new calendaring features they released with Domino 6.5.3.

Starting in DAMO 6.5.3 the Calendar Management feature lets you set access restrictions on your mail file to allow another person to manage your mail file. You can specify a group or person as your delegate to read mail, schedule meetings, accept invitations, and check your schedule. Using this feature your designated mail manager can perform all of these functions using a single Microsoft Outlook client.

You can allow delegates to open your mail file and read your messages, Calendar entries, and to do items. Additionally, you can allow people to create, edit and delete messages, calendar entries, and to do items for you. You determine how much access, if any, other people have to your mail file.