So, I've been tinkering a little more with the Weather Fetcher database and I ended up with:

• a few updates to the zip code list
• a sample web page that uses script.aculo.us (and therefore prototype.js) to do cool things like auto-complete a city name lookup field and dynamically update a div using AJAX
• code for an example Sametime bot to do weather lookups from Sametime (attached to the "About" page -- unfortunately, I had nothing to test it against, so I'm not sure that it actually works)

I'm only just now starting to play around with script.aculo.us, and I couldn't believe how easy it was to add to a Domino web page. Just include the JavaScript libraries, add some CSS styles, and do a tiny amount of code and... whoomp, there it is! See the "CityLookupAjax" page in the Weather Fetcher database to see what I did.

BTW, the download link for the Weather Fetcher database is the same -- WeatherFetcher.zip -- but the file has been updated (so if you downloaded before, you'll have to do it again).

And yes, the download is still 19 MB. Sorry it's so big, but it has over 42,000 US zip codes in 5 indexed views, and all that ends up taking some space. It's worth it though, trust me...
;-)

technorati tag: Show-n-tell thursday, SnTT

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I'll be the first to admit that I have not and probably will not have a chance to look at this, but it's pretty amazing stuff to me anyway. Sun has released the OpenSSO Project as free, open source software. From the home page:

The Open Web SSO project (OpenSSO) provides core identity services to simplify the implementation of transparent single sign-on (SSO) as a security component in a network infrastructure. OpenSSO provides the foundation for integrating diverse web applications that might typically operate against a disparate set of identity repositories and are hosted on a variety of platforms such as web and application servers.

It's amazing to me because this kind of enterprisey software is traditionally so expensive and so complex. And if nothing else, what other open source projects have this kind of documentation?

via Simon Phipps

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As I mentioned in our last podcast, I developed an example application that uses code from my new Stubby database. It started off simple, and then... well, it was hard to know when to stop. Anyway, here's the database:

Weather Fetcher: use web services to get the current weather

It's a 19MB download, so plan accordingly.

I started off with the stub files I generated from Stubby, based on the NOAA web service. Then I wrote some classes to interpret the information that came back from the service (it was raw XML, not a complex class like you'd expect), and wrote an LS2J class to access all that information.

It ended up being pretty cool. As an example, on my local copy of the database if I go to my browser and point to the URL http://localhost/WeatherFetcher.nsf/GetWeatherHTML?OpenAgent&zip=32256 , I get:

The agent is all LotusScript, even though it's using Java and web services in the background. There's also an example of using it in the front-end, to prompt a user for a zip code and return weather information in a messagebox.

Anyway, download and enjoy. Remember that it's Notes 7 only though...

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I just realized today that you can use XPath statements in Notes 7 (using Java, not LotusScript). For example:

import org.w3c.dom.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import java.io.*;
import org.apache.xpath.*;

DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
factory.setValidating(false);
org.w3c.dom.Document domDoc = factory.newDocumentBuilder().parse(
	new ByteArrayInputStream(xmlString.getBytes()));
Node n = XPathAPI.selectSingleNode(domDoc, "//temp[@type='max']/value");

Nice! That saves all sorts of work when you're parsing XML, once you get the hang of it (and admittedly, I still haven't got the hang of it). For a couple of reference links, Jake Howlett talked about XPath and JavaScript a while back, and there are some nice examples on the Java Developers Almanac (as always).

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Today IBM officially announced Lotus Sametime 7.5, "The world of real-time business".

Instant Messaging. ? Web Conferencing. ? Extensibility. ? Social Networking.

• Lotus Sametime 7.5 web site
• Lotus Sametime 7.5 animated tour
• Lotus Sametime 7.5 US Channel Announcement

Update 08/23: Register for the Lotus Real-Time Roadshow



Make sure to read Lotus Sametime Offerings Manager Adam Gartenberg's Blog for more news and details.

The intent of this page is to provide you a list of resources for developing Notes/Domino applications. ?Also see my list of Application Development Tools/Products.

Last updated: August 21, 2006


Application Development Web Sites, Acrticles, Blogs, etc.

developerWorks for Lotus: articles, documentation, tutorials, webcasts, and more.

Lotusphere2006 Session Presentations and Samples from the Speakers

OpenNTF - Tons of excellent open source projects, forums, and good people!

Breaking Par Consulting Inc : web site filled with Notes/Domino code samples, solutions to common programming questions, etc.

CodeStore : Jake Howlett's web site filled with Notes/Domino code, articles, etc.

GeniiSoftware (look on the righthand side for great articles/tutorials on rich text)

nsfTools : Tools for Lotus Notes and Domino - Primarily features tips and tools and utilites for Lotus Notes and Domino administrators and developers. Unless otherwise specified, all the tools available for download from this site have been developed by Julian Robichaux, the author of this site.

Developing BlackBerry Applications for Lotus Domino : BlackBerry provides a variety of enterprise options for developing wireless applications that connect to your Domino Databases. Learn more and download the development resources you need.


Training Material

Lotus Education On Demand: Building Databases with Domino Designer 7
This free tutorial is designed to take you through the steps of building a fully functional Domino database using Domino Designer 7. You will be introduced to all the necessary design elements such as forms and views, as well as actions, agents and outlines. Each part of the course is accompanied by a database file. This database provides completed examples of the exercises in each part.

Lotus Education On Demand: Creating Script Libraries in Notes: This tutorial covers the tasks in creating and implementing script libraries, including: Creating user-defined functions or subroutines, setting up a script library, and incorporating script libraries into Notes/Domino applications.

Lotus Education On Demand: Securing Your Notes Application: This Learning Byte to help you decide how to: Develop a plan that provides the required security for your data and appropriate access for each user, Set up an access control list (ACL), Restrict access to database elements, Create roles to manage access for groups of users, and Control document access.

Lotus Education On Demand: Notes Error Trapping in LotusScript:

Lotus Education On Demand: Logging Notes Application Activity: A NotesLog object can be used to record actions and errors that occur in scripts. This information can be stored in one of the following ways: Notes database, Mail memo , Text file. ?In this Learning Byte, you will learn how to create and populate a Notes database with application activity information.

Redbook - Domino Designer 6: A Developer's Handbook
In this IBM Redbook, we describe how to develop applications with IBM Lotus Domino Designer 6. With Domino Designer, you are able to create applications hosted by a Domino server. These applications can be used by different clients, such as Notes clients, Web browsers or mobile devices.
We introduce, and show in detail, how you can use all the design elements of Domino Designer, such as forms, pages, views, agents, outlines, resources and framesets. Readers who are familiar with developing applications using Release 5 of Lotus Domino may want to start at Chapter 12, which introduces the new features in Domino 6.0, and continue from there.
In the chapters toward the end of the book, we discuss the different programming languages, @functions, LotusScript, JavaScript, and Java, that can be used in Domino. We detail how to manipulate rich text objects by programming, as well as XML, in Domino.

Redbook - Lotus Domino 7 Application Development - This IBM Redpaper shows application developers how to use the powerful, new features in Domino 7 by enhancing an example application.
Chapter 1. An introduction to Lotus Domino 7 application development
Chapter 2. Using DB2 integration to enhance the ITSO Electronics application
Chapter 3. Enhancing the ITSO Electronics application with Web services
Chapter 4. Implementing new design elements in the ITSO Electronics application
Chapter 5. Diagnosing and troubleshooting the ITSO Electronics application

LotusScript: Rich text objects in Notes/Domino 6 Part 1 of 5: This article looks at the new classes for Rich Text objects and provides example code for extracting meaningful data from Rich Text fields, adding new elements programmatically, and controlling the visual style of the database.

LotusScript: Programming views in Notes/Domino 6 Part 5 of 5: This article, fifth in a series on new classes and enhancements to LotusScript in Notes/Domino 6, looks at class enhancements and new features to make elements such as the view selection formula and the view's look and feel programmable.

LotusScript: XML classes in Notes/Domino 6 Part 2 of 5: This article, fourth in a series on new classes and enhancements to LotusScript in Notes/Domino 6, looks at new LotusScript classes for exporting, importing, and processing XML data, with example code.

LotusScript: More XML classes in Notes/Domino 6 Part 3 of 5: Continuing the series on new classes and enhancements to LotusScript in Notes/Domino 6, this article presents examples of XSL transformation to convert Domino data to XML AND HTML, and using the DXL importer to convert XML to NSF format.

LotusScript: The NotesAdministrationProcess Class in Notes/Domino 6 Part 4 of 5: This article, fourth in a series on new classes and enhancements to LotusScript in Notes/Domino 6, shows how to use the new NotesAdministrationProcess class to create scripts to automate common administration tasks.

Lotus Education On Demand: Creating Calendar Views in Notes: The Calendar view is a view style that allows documents, organized by date and time, to appear in a calendar format. This tutorial covers the tasks involved in creating a Calendar view

Building Lotus Notes/Domino calendar applications: Many people use the Lotus Notes calendar "right out of the box." But did you know you can also incorporate calendar features into your own custom-built applications? This article explains how.

Calendar and scheduling features are available through the C API. This section will focus on how to add an appointment or a meeting invitation to a User's schedule, delete a scheduled event from a User's schedule and query a User's busy/free time information.

IBM Lotus Notes Calendaring & Scheduling Schema: This white paper introduces you to the Lotus Notes/Domino calendar and scheduling schema in release 5 and later. It describes the different document types and the fields on each document.

Integrating Macromedia Flash and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino: Flash-based UIs for your Domino-based solutions - Present content and incorporate the design from a Domino view into a Macromedia Flash-based view. With this solution, you can quickly expose standard Domino views for Web users and easily update the design of a single Domino view for both Lotus Notes and Web clients. ?This article shows you how to present IBM Lotus Domino view content in Macromedia Flash, based on and controlled from a flat Domino view. In this way, you can maintain the same design and content presented both in Lotus Notes and in Flash user interfaces (UIs) simply by altering the Domino view.

Consuming Web services from a Lotus Domino Java agent - New in IBM Lotus Domino 7, the Web service design element is a great way to expose services to the world. But do you know how easy it is to use the Apache Axis framework for consuming Web services? Discover how to take advantage of Apache Axis and Lotus Domino 7 technologies to create a Web service consumer.

Julian Robichaux - Setting Up Repeating Dates In Notes - Have you ever set up a repeating event on your calendar in Notes and thought to yourself, "I sure would like to use that functionality in my custom applications"? I have, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how it all works. ?Essentially, there's a hidden LotusScript class called NotesCSEventOwnerDocument that generates the list of repeating dates, based on rules that are specified in the dialog box that allows you to choose your repeat rules. This class is undocumented and probably completely unsupported outside of the standard Notes calendar, but it's such nice functionality that I did a lot of experimentation to try to understand it.

Andre Guirard - Tip: How to update rich text in a document that's open and redisplay it without saving

Andre Guirard - The Complete Reader and Author Field Troubleshooter

Chris Toohey - Context-Sensitive Tabbed Navigation in the Lotus Notes Client : In this article, I'll showcase exactly what we did to facilitate such functionality and ultimately provide our users with a simple, intuitive interface (at least in my and several of our users' opinions)

John Head - Presentations on Notes integration, including The Hitchhikers Guide to Microsoft Office Integration with Lotus Notes and Domino, Extreme Integration - Techniques for Advanced Integration of Office and OpenOffice with IBM Lotus Notes and Domino, and many more.

Julian Robichaux presentation about Web Services:
- Part 1: Introduction to Web Services
- Part 2: How Notes/Domino 7 can play in the world of service oriented architectures.

Julie Kadashevich's Agent FAQ

Justin Freeman - Ho w To Extend Domino Authentication For Websites, Single Sign-on and Persistent Sessions

Richard Schwartz - Links to all things Domino and AJAX related.

Various Contributors - Domino and AJAX demos: Lance Spellman has put together a video highlighting some of the uses of AJAX for Domino applications, including: the Ultimate Web View Navigator by Bob Obringer, View Search by Lance Spellman, Name Picker by Matthew White, and AJAX Crypto by Richard Schwartz.

REDBOOK Lotus Domino and .NET coexistence (April 6th, 2004) : This paper is provides information on Lotus Domino and .NET coexistence. It provides development scenarios where Lotus Domino is the service consumer and the .NET application is the service provider, and the other way around where Lotus Domino is the service provider and the .NET application is the service consumer. The technologies used for integration are Web services and the COM interface.

Technote: How To Send Lotus Notes Mail Messages with Microsoft Visual Basic: The following Visual Basic code will send a Notes e-mail message. The code includes examples of code to include an attachment and to save the sent message, which are both optional and can be removed if desired.

REDBOOK COM Together - with Domino (May 12th, 2000) : This redbook is written for Domino solution designers and programmers, customers, IBM Business Partners, and other members of the IBM and Lotus community who know how to program in BASIC and need a good technical understanding of how to use Domino with COM.

Lotus Notes/Domino 7 application performance: Part 1: Database properties and document collections (31 Jan 2006) : This series covers three areas of application performance: database properties, document collections, and views. In part 1, we will discuss database properties and document collections. In each case, we will point out areas that are most significant and provide concise, real-world examples to help you understand what to do in your own applications. We'll use examples from many applications; you'll probably find that at least one of them closely matches something that you do or that you use. Our goal is to help you build applications that are as fast as they are beautiful.

Lotus Notes/Domino 7 application performance: Part 2: Optimizing database views (14 Feb 2006) : ?In part two of this article series, we explain how you can build views that are optimized for performance in your Notes/Domino applications. ?Over many years of analyzing application performance issues, we found that views are frequently involved in both the problem and the solution. Often, view indexing is the issue. This article explains how this can happen and what you can do to troubleshoot and resolve this type of problem. But there is another kind of view performance problem that has been popping up more frequently over the past few years. This involves views that display reader access controlled documents. The performance problems seen in these views are often not indexing related, so we’ll take a little time to discuss these separately.

Troubleshooting application performance: Part 1: Troubleshooting techniques and code tips (29 Mar 2005) : In part 1 of our article series, we explain a tried-and-true performance troubleshooting process along with an example of how following this process quickly narrowed down a vexing performance problem for a real-life customer application. We also cover some tips to help you optimize view indexing and agents.

Troubleshooting application performance: Part 2: New tools in Lotus Notes/Domino 7 (05 Apr 2005) : In this article, we continue our discussion about identifying and solving performance problems in Domino applications. ?We look ahead to new Lotus Notes/Domino 7 tools that will help you identify trouble spots, and use these tools to identify performance issues in agents that we created to demonstrate the code tips from the first article.

Building PHP-based UIs for IBM Lotus Domino (09 May 2006)- In this article, you learn how to interact with IBM Lotus Domino databases from Web applications created with the PHP programming language. You also learn how to access Domino applications from PHP pages using a COM object, the IBM Lotus Notes application programming interface (API), and XML.

Building a JSR 168 portal application for Domino: In an earlier article, we described creating a DXL framework for working with a Lotus Domino database over the Web. We now turn our attention to building a JSR 168 portal application as a frontend to a Domino database.

Application Performance Tuning, Part 1 (01 Apr 2003) : Part 1 of 2: This article looks at the database, view, and form properties that most commonly affect how well your applications perform.

Application Performance Tuning, Part 2 (01 May 2003) : Part 2 of 2: This article looks at coding practices that can improve application performance. It also examines some common LotusScript methods to see which ones perform best under different conditions.

Maximizing Domino Performance White Paper () : This white paper defines what you can do to maximize the performance of Domino in terms of Web applications from the development perspective and overall server performance from the server adminstration perspective.

The DigestSearch method for Lotus Domino databases (31 Jan 2006) :This article introduces DigestSearch, an alternative solution for working with IBM Lotus Notes Profile documents and for performing simple, high-speed searches. For searching server-based databases from a Notes client, DigestSearch is twice as fast as any other search method available, outperforming both full-text search and LotusScript's GetDocumentByKey method.


Further Resources:

Lotus Notes/Domino Product Catalog

Lotus Notes/Domino Administration Tools

Lotus Domino Catalog

Global Solutions Directory Catalog

Business Partner Application Showcase

For the next few blog entries I'll be discussing tips for making lengthy Notes documents easier for users to read. ?The tips will cover the use of sections, tables, and anchor links. ?Today I'll start with Sections.

Sections are a wonderful Lotus Notes feature which allow you to collapse a lengthy portion of a document down to small, more reading parts. ?Readers can expand or collapse sections to see the part of the document they wish to read.

Sections can be created in two ways. ?1) You can first create a section then add text to it, or 2) You can select the portion of the document you want and turn it into a section. ? For #1, while editing a document from the file menus choose Create - Section.

Lotus Notes will insert a closed, untitled section similar to this:

Pressing ALT+ENTER will bring up the Section's Properties Box, where you can change the title, border, colour, font, and other characteristics. ?

Enter the name you wish to be displayed when the section is collapsed, and choose a border style and colour. ? ?Pay close attention to the border style pick list, there are some really great options (such as gradient fills, boxes, tabs, etc) but you may miss them if you don't scroll down to see more choices. ?On the 3rd tab of the Properties Box, you can change the font (size, colour, style, etc) for the Section's Title.

For method #2 of creating a Section, highlight the text (can be multiple paragraphs, images, anything you'd like) and click Create - Section. ? Lotus Notes will create a new section for you, and even fill in the title based on the first line of the content you selected. ? *You can change the title to whatever you would like using the Properties Box.

It may take a few moments to get used to Sections, so I suggest you practice by creating a fake document and adding several sections to it. ?After a few moments, you will have a good undderstanding for what the various combinations of border types, colours, and title fonts, will enable you to do. ?For example, you can compress down a long document to something like this, where users can easily collapse and expand the section they wish to read.


Finally, you can remove a Section by selecting the title to make the section "in focus" and then from the file menus choose Section - Remove Section. ? This DOES NOT delete the content in the section, it just removes the Section that was "wrapping" the content.

I just created a new project on the OpenNTF site:

Stubby - The Apache Axis stub file generator for Lotus Notes

This database is meant to help you create Apache Axis "stub" files that can be used to call web services from a Lotus Notes client or server. The files that are produced here can be used in Lotus Notes/Domino 7 with NO modifications to the client or server, and NO external library dependencies. I even have an LS2J example agent that uses LotusScript to call a web service, using the generated files.

All you have to do is create a new Stub Doc in the database, enter the URL of the WSDL file you want to make stubs for, and click the "Generate Stub Files" button. Everything you need to start writing an agent will be generated for you!

The magic that happens when you click the "Generate Stub Files" button is mainly controlled by the "StubGenerator" script library. The methods in this library will:

• Read and parse the WSDL file
• Generate stub files (Java source files) in a temporary directory
• Compile those stub files into java class files
• Package the class files up into a JAR file
• Generate sample agent code based on the stub files

The normal course of action after doing all this (it's all done with the single button click) is to create a new Java agent, paste the sample code into it, and use the "Edit Project" button in the agent to attach the JAR file. You now have a working agent that can call a web service!

As a visual, here's a screenshot of a document in the database after you've clicked the "Generate Stub Files" button (click the image for a full-size picture -- sorry for the huge graphic... there are several tabs):

There are several example agents in the database to help you get started.

And in related news, Joachim Dagerot just wrote a great developerWorks article about using Apache Axis to call web services from Notes: Consuming Web services from a Lotus Domino Java agent. His technique involves generating the stub files manually and adding the Axis library as an external reference (whereas the Stubby database uses the built-in Notes Axis libraries), and it's really good material.

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I found this poll on the Innovation Creators web site: Lotus Notes Email Vs. Microsoft Outlook

"The point of this survey is not to consider blogs and wiki stuff, but instead, just to simply ask users today which tool they prefer as an email tool."

Vote away!

Here we go... the start of the march towards the best software related conference on the planet, Lotusphere.

The 2007 event is going to be amazing! ? You NEED to be at this event to hear about the next releases of Notes, Domino, Sametime, QuickPlace, Portal, Forms, and a whole lot more!

If you've not attended in the past, I'd like to discuss the details of "why"? ? Is it just cost? ?Is it awareness of the event? ? What can we (Lotus) do to help get your manager to approve?

Also, stay tuned for some exciting new community related ideas we have for this years event!

Lotus Notes provides a great deal of granularity regarding the security of your mail file. ?For today's blog entry, I'd like to clarify the difference between two Calendar features which I believe some people may not fully understand, Calendar access and Schedule access.



Calendar Access controls who can actually read/create/edit/delete the entries on your calendar. ? For example, you may allow your manager and your teammates to read your calendar, enabling them to see where you are and what you are working on. ?Similarly, you may allow your assistant to create, edit, and delete entries on your calendar. ? * Don't worry, the details for entries marked Private are kept from even those you grant calendar access.

Schedule access is something different. ? This is what controls who can and can not see your "free/busy time" when scheduling a meeting. ?The people you allow access to your schedule can't actually open your calendar like the people mentioned above.



Is someone tries to find an available time to schedule a meeting with you, and they're not allowed access to your schedule, they will see your availability returned as "Info Restricted"



I hope this helps you understand the difference between these two features.

More on this topic: Open Another Person's Mail and Discover the power of Calendar Delegation in Lotus Notes.

I few weeks ago I mentioned a new a new podcast series featured on the IBM web site called Shortcuts. ? The first of several topics that I've recorded for the show is now available, Cut #3: Archiving e-mail.

Since archiving may be a new concept for you, I'll explain the basics. ?Most people have a set of folders and documents on their desk that they access on a regular basis. ?The items you don't use often (ex: old bills) you put away in a filing cabinet, or perhaps in a box in the attic/basement or some other "long term" storage area. ?The same thing can be done with your email.

Rather than keeping all your messages in a single mail file, you may want to archive certain messages away into another database(s). ?This database may be on your own computer or may be on one of your company's servers. ?You may even archive onto a CD or DVD. ?You can choose to archive documents that are older than a certain date, or maybe all the documents from a project you are no longer working on, or some other criteria that meets your specific needs. ?As I mention in the podcast above, archiving is not just for reducing the size of your mail file, in some situations there may be legal reasons depending on who you work for.

Lotus Notes has several built in archiving features, and also works with many 3rd party archiving products. ?IBM offers DB2 CommonStore for Lotus Domino and several IBM Business Partners make similar or complimentary products.

I suggest you speak with the System Administrators in your company to find out more about the archiving rules, process, and products/tools available at your company.

IBM Business Partner Rob Novak wrote to me about an excellent tip, one of those things that I've used for so long that I tend to forget not everyone knows about it! ? That is one of the reasons I love blogging, to share just this type of information. ? On to it...

Do you know that you can place shortcuts to programs or documents on the Lotus Notes Bookmark bar?

For example, if you have a document on your Windows Desktop or in your My Documents folder (say that presentation you are working on for the boss), drag it from your desktop onto the Lotus Notes Bookmark bar and it will be easily available for you to access without ever leaving Lotus Notes.

I use the Windows calculator several times a day. ?Rather than having to find it each time, I can simply drag and drop its shortcut onto the Lotus Notes Bookmark bar. To do this I click on the Windows Start button - Programs - Windows - click on the Calculator shortcut and without letting go of the mouse button, drag it onto the Lotus Notes bookmark bar, then release the mouse button (drop).



Now Calculator is available to me right inside Lotus Notes any time I want to use it.



Go ahead, make your work environment easier to use... add some shortcuts to your Lotus Notes Bookmark bar!

I've added two new features to the left side navigation bar of this site. ?The first is "Meebo Chat", the second is a set of two new OpenNTF widgets.



The Meebo Chat* window will allow you to send me an instant message. ?This just provides simple chat, nothing too sophisticated. ?For example you are not authenticating against a directory for true identity. ?If I am on-line when you visit, please say hi, but I'd prefer if you changed your nickname to your real name. ? This is all based on trust, not true authentication, so I won't be sharing any confidential details with you!

The second new feature provides easy access to project information from OpenNTF, the community committed to open source Domino applications. ?The top of the section will randomly show you either a list of the most active projects, the most downloaded projects, or the most recent releases. ?The bottom half displays the most recent Taking Notes Podcasts. ? I can't stress enough how incredible these two sites are to our Lotus community. ?Please make sure your company is looking at the FREE applications available on OpenNTF, and listening to the excellent information available on Talking Notes.

In closing, I have to say, I'm amazed how easy it is to customize Domino based blogs! ? Adding these new features took me about 2 minutes!

*Before you ask "Why are you not using Sametime for this", the answer is simple. ?First, IBM does not have Sametime Links enabled on our external gateway yet. ? Second, my job is "Competitive Marketing Intelligence". ? So when I found out about Meebo I thought I would try it out for a while. ?I may remove this feature completely, I may use another product, or I may end up using Sametime. ?

I once heard a story that Tim Berners-Lee never intended for people to actually know about URLs. ?They were intended to be behind the scenes only, used by computers to locate various resources on the internet. ?As we all know, things turned out a bit different, and "http://" is a part of all of our lives.

The use of links within Lotus Notes can be thought of in a similar way. ?You can create "graphical links" to databases, views, or documents, which hide the address of the object, but did you know that you can also create "notes://" style links if that is what you want?

When you are looking at a Notes view, or a Notes document, simply click twice on the "down arrow" on the Address bar.



The first click will clear any value currently shown, the second will fill in the value of the current view or document. ?You can then copy and paste this value to an email, document, web page, chat, etc.



If you don't see the Address bar, simply right click anywhere on your toolbar and select Address.



The main intent in this post was to introduce you to the notes:// format. ?If the steps to create these links seems too advanced, in a previous post, I explained the creation of a toolbar icon you can add that makes the process much simpler!


For further reader, I've blogged several times about creating links in Notes:
{ link } { link } { link } { link } { link } { link }

Does your company use both Lotus Notes and SAP? ? If so, you should be using IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions. ? Please watch the new animated demo, and make sure the people who run your Domino environment view it as well.

Time Reporting and Contact Management are just two of the many Notes <-> SAP integration points.

One of the most common questions I stumble upon is "Which Lotus Notes files do I need to move when I get a new machine?" ? ?IBM has a technote on this, perfectly titled "What Are the Default Files You Need to Copy when Moving a Notes Client Installation to a New System?". ? ?I'll let you read the technote for the details, but the short answer is:

• names.nsf
• bookmark.nsf
• desktop6.ndk (Desktop5.nsf in Notes 5.x, Desktop.nsf in Notes 4.x)
• your ID file
• user.dic
• notes.ini (this is good since some settings are contained in it, but it can also cause some problems on your new machine, for example if you install notes in a different directory)
• headlines.nsf if you use subscriptions
• Any personal databases you have created, such as journal.nsf
• Any databases your have replicated locally, such as your mail file
• Your mail file archive if you have one

One technique I've used in the past is to first backup the files above, then uninstall Lotus Notes. ? Any files that were not part of the original install (meaning files you've created) will remain, making it pretty easy for you to see what to move to the new machine.

QuickRule is a Lotus Notes feature, which allows you easily create mail rules, helping you manage the burden of email overload.

Select a message in your mail file, and click "Tools- Create QuickRule..."


The will bring up the Create QuickRule dialog box, and the values from the selected message will be filled in for you automatically.

In section #1, you select the condition(s) you want the rule to match: Sender, Domain, or Subject, the values (pre-filled in for you so no typing errors!) and how they should be evaluated: Contains, Does not contain, Is, or Is not.

In section #2, you decide if the rule must match any one of the conditions or all of the conditions.

In section #3, you define the action to take, such as which folder to move the message into.



With just a few simple clicks, Lotus Notes will help you manage your email.

I've just updated my Application Development Resources with a bunch of new content. ? For example, Lotus Education On Demand released a great set of tutorials on Building Databases with Domino Designer 7.

This free tutorial is designed to take you through the steps of building a fully functional Domino database using Domino Designer 7. You will be introduced to all the necessary design elements such as forms and views, as well as actions, agents and outlines. Each part of the course is accompanied by a database file. This database provides completed examples of the exercises in each part.

• Part 1: Getting Started with Domino Databases: This first part will provide you with the information you need to know to get started developing Domino databases, from the basics of working in the Designer client to creating a functional database. (Timing: 4 to 5 hours)
• Part 2: Adding Functionality to Forms: In this part you will use formulas to add greater functionality to your database forms. (Timing: 4 to 5 hours)
• Part 3: Views and Navigation: At the end of Part 1, you will create a very simple view to display the documents in the Time-Off Request database. In Part 3, you will enhance the view with special columns and create new views using selection formulas. You will also learn additional options for database navigation. (Timing: 3 to 4 hours)
• Part 4: Agents and Security: You will learn about the functionality of agents within a database and how to secure the design and content of a database. (Timing: 3 to 4 hours)

As we move closer to the next year's release of Notes/Domino, your company should be extremely excited about upgrading and enhancing your current Notes and Domino applications, as well as thinking up dozens of new applications you can develop with great new features.

No Lotus Notes/Domino developer wants to hear the following comment: “Beautiful application, too bad it’s so slow!” In this two-part article series, we explain how you can avoid this embarrassment by building Notes/Domino applications optimized for performance.

Tip: Lotus Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes interoperability: I want my doclinks!
What could be more useful than Lotus Notes doclinks? This tip explains how you can extend Notes doclink functionality to Microsoft Outlook.

Single Sign-on in a Multi-directory World: “Never say login again” Part 2
In this conclusion to our two-part series, we look at several different scenarios you may encounter when implementing single sign-on (SSO) functionality at your site.

The requester side caching pattern specification: An overview
Learn how the requester side caching pattern mediates the interaction between one or more clients and one or more data providers and how it can speed access to the data while reducing costs.

Lotus Notes Out of Office Agent, revisited: Part 1
The Lotus Notes Out of Office agent is one of the most widely-used and useful agents in Notes. In this first of a two-part article series, we take a detailed look at how the agent works and how you can customize it.

Lotus Notes/Domino 7 application performance: Part 2: Optimizing database views
In part two of this article series, we explain how you can build views that are optimized for performance in your Notes/Domino applications.

Building RSS feeds for Lotus Domino Document Manager
Set up an RSS feed for your binders in Lotus Domino Document manager, so users are notified when content is added or modified. Using a new view and modifying existing design elements in the database, you can easily create an RSS feed.

Lotus Domino Web Access client performance improvements
See how significantly your Domino Web Access client performance can improve with the release 6.5.3 hotfix (included in Domino Web Access 6.5.4 and later). Administrators and users learn tips to increase performance and to improve user satisfaction.

Single Sign-on in a Multi-directory World: “Never say login again” Part 1
Learn all about Single Sign-on (SSO) in Notes/Domino from that international man of mystery, Jim Bland. In this first installment of a two-part series, we examine SSO basics and look at issues that arise in multi-directory, multi-identity environments.

The DigestSearch method for Lotus Domino databases
This article introduces DigestSearch, an alternative solution for working with IBM Lotus Notes Profile documents and for performing simple, high-speed searches. For searching server-based databases from a Notes client, DigestSearch is twice as fast as any other search method available, outperforming both full-text search and LotusScript’s GetDocumentByKey method.

Best practices for large Lotus Notes mail files
Learn how you can manage the ever-growing mail files of your Lotus Notes users, conserving your system resources while ensuring your Notes users continue to enjoy high performance and reliability.

Under the hood of IBM Workplace Collaboration Services
Take a peek under the hood of IBM Workplace Collaboration Services and learn about the layers that make up Workplace Collaboration Services, including IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal.

Lotus Domino 7 server performance, Part 1
How does Lotus Notes/Domino 7 perform compared to its previous release? In this first of a three-part series, we discuss testing we performed to determine how the various Domino 7 platforms stack up against the previous release of Notes/Domino.

Manipulating data in Domino Web Access
Read this article to learn how you can customize Lotus Domino Web Access to adapt to the specific requirements of your Notes/Domino data. We describe how Domino Web Access determines the appropriate scene to play for a form type, how data is reflected within the scene, and how updated data is validated.

Troubleshooting Lotus Domino hangs and crashes
Quick — what’s the difference between a server hang and a crash? More important, how do you go about fixing them? In this article, we explain how you can identify Lotus Domino server hangs and crashes, and what you can do to analyze and correct them.

Using Ajax to manipulate Lotus Notes documents
Giving users instant feedback instead of the time-consuming page reloads they re used to is simple when you use Ajax. Discover how a view and an agent can help you build Ajax-driven applications and learn how to define an API for getting the client and the Domino server to collaborate.

Lotus Domino 7 on the IBM zSeries
In this article, we look at IBM’s own implementation of Lotus Domino 7 on the IBM zSeries platform. We focus on the performance improvements we’ve seen, which should bring a smile to the face of all Domino administrators.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA): an interview with IBM Workplace and Lotus developers
Service Oriented Architecture, better known as SOA, has gotten a lot of press lately. But what does it mean, and what can it do for you? In this interview, three members of IBM development talk about SOA, and how IBM and Lotus products are incorporating its concepts.

Introducing IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions
Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions is a new feature in Lotus Notes 7.0.1 that integrates Lotus Notes and SAP, so you can perform some common SAP functions from within Lotus Notes, such as time reporting, vacation and leave requests, and so on. Developers can extend this new feature even further.

Lotus Domino 7 server performance, Part 3
In the conclusion to our three-part article series, we look at test results we obtained by running the new Server.Load Enterprise Mail workload, introduced in Domino 7.

Tip: xsd:any: A cautionary tale
xsd:any is a popular feature for people designing XML schema. But it’s often more trouble than it’s worth. Explore some of the shortcomings of xsd:any, both in XML itself and in the JAX-RPC Java language binding, so that, even if you decide to use xsd:any, you will be more prepared to deal appropriately with it.

Creating hierarchy objects in Lotus Domino Designer
This tip shows you how to create a hierarchy of related objects, using design elements in Lotus Domino Designer. It applies to Domino Designer 6.5 and later.

Lotus Domino 7 server performance, Part 2
In this second of a three-part article series, we review the results of tests we performed to determine how Domino 7 compares with Domino 6.5 for supporting Domino Web Access users.

Building a JSR 168 portal application for Domino
In an earlier article, we described creating a DXL framework for working with a Lotus Domino database over the Web. We now turn our attention to building a JSR 168 portal application as a frontend to a Domino database.

Working with application layouts in the IBM Workplace Managed Client
Learn how to control the way in which your application is displayed in the IBM Workplace Managed Client by understanding the RCPML parameters that control how the application is displayed.

Adding social bookmarking tags to Lotus QuickPlace
Implement social bookmarking tags in Lotus QuickPlace and let users classify their own content for easy retrieval of information. This article shows you a simple solution to enable users to add and to share tags with each other.

Managing IBM Workplace Managed Client applications
Ever wonder what the ‘managed’ means in IBM Workplace Managed Client? Read this article and learn how to manage Workplace Managed Client applications through both the Web browser and XMLAccess interfaces.

Implementing notifications in Web applications using Lotus Sametime
Learn how to add event-driven notification functionality to your Web applications with Lotus Sametime.

Understanding the Lotus Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook Notes.ini file
Following in the footsteps of Professor INI, Nathan Barry highlights some of the settings of the Lotus Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook Notes.ini file to help you troubleshoot common issues and to enable new features in the software.

The History of Notes and Domino
Notes and Domino began in the work of Ray Ozzie, Tim Halvorsen, and Len Kawell, first on PLATO Notes at the University of Illinois and later on DECNotes. Lotus founder Mitch Kapor saw the potential in Ozzie’s collaboration project and the rest is history.

Creating Mail policies in Lotus Notes/Domino 7
Learn how policies, first introduced in Lotus Notes/Domino 6, have been enhanced to include the powerful new Mail Settings policy document that lets you administer calendar and mail settings for your users.

Configuring a redundant ClearCase backup server
If ClearCase availability is critical to your organization, maintaining a redundant replica enables your organization to restore normal operations faster with less data loss.

Discover the power of Calendar Delegation in Lotus Notes
Learn how to setup and use the Calendar Delegation feature in the Lotus Notes client to grant another Notes user access to your mail file and act on your behalf.

New serviceability features in IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 7
Enhancements to the automatic diagnostic collection feature and the new fault analyzer feature make Lotus Notes and Domino 7 more serviceable. See how these improvements can help you with your next server or client crash.

Taking a tour of the new features and technology in IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5
Examine the architectural and design changes planned for IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5, including a new Connect client, a new Web conferencing UI, policies, click to call, click to chat, A/V integration, and a new SIP solution to connect to external communities, including AOL and Yahoo.

Building a Lotus Sametime bot for language translation
Build an IBM Lotus Sametime bot that works with IBM WebSphere Translation Server to translate text strings on-the-fly. Use the Lotus Sametime Java toolkit, the WebSphere Translation Server Java API, IBM’s public Sametime server, and the IBM Community Tools client for development and testing.

Name resolution and searching: Comparing Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access
In this article, we compare how Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access interact with address books to find and resolve mailing addresses.

Lotus Notes Out of Office Agent, revisited: Part 2
We conclude our two-part series on the Lotus Notes Out of Office agent with a look at Out of Office agent administration, using Out of Office features with Domino Web Access, and troubleshooting Out of Office issues.

Configure IBM WebSphere Information Integrator to access a Lotus Notes database
This article introduces the capabilities of IBM WebSphere Information Integrator for integrating and updating data in IBM Lotus Notes databases. You’ll learn how to set up access to the Lotus Notes data sources from IBM DB2 federated database using the DB2 Control Center.

New Rooms and Resources features in Lotus Notes/Domino 7
In this article, we look at all the new Rooms and Resources features introduced in Notes/Domino 7.

Controlling spam: Advanced SMTP settings in Lotus Domino
Find out how to control spam mail using the Server document and Notes.ini variables. Then preview the anti-spam controls in Lotus Notes/Domino 7 and see what s ahead. This article is part two in a series about Lotus Domino methods of spam control.

Lotus Domino on AIX memory usage explained
Learn about IBM AIX segment layouts for the Lotus Domino server and how to configure the Notes.ini file settings ConstrainedSHMSizeMB and PercentAvailSysResources to alter your server memory allocation. Find recommendations for configuring the server.

New features in Lotus Notes 7 mail
People use Notes/Domino in all sorts of different ways, and one of the most popular is email and messaging. With that in mind, Notes/Domino 7 offers significantly enhanced mail functionality, including expanded calendar and scheduling. This article reviews some of the more important and useful of these new features.

Exploiting IBM DB2 in your Lotus Domino 7 application
In this article, we discuss how you can work with the new IBM DB2 integration features offered in Lotus Domino 7.

Wikis, blogs and other community tools in the enterprise
Wikis and Web logs (blogs) make a big impact on the Web, but they can also be useful in an enterprise. A community is a group of people with common interests, goals, or responsibilities, such as a project team or an interest group. Combine wikis and blogs with existing collaborative tools to enhance the productivity and effectiveness of enterprise teams.

Tip: Validating a rich text field in Lotus Notes
This tip offers three ways that you can validate rich text input fields in Lotus Notes.

Integrating Lotus QuickPlace with Lotus Domino Document Manager in real time
This article describes a way to integrate IBM Lotus QuickPlace with IBM Lotus Domino Document Manager (Domino.Doc) in real time. This will allow you to use Domino Document Manager s revision controls on QuickPlace content.

Building PHP-based UIs for IBM Lotus Domino
Discover how you can interact with Lotus Domino databases from Web applications created in the PHP programming language. Learn how to access Domino applications from PHP pages using a COM object, the Lotus Notes API, and XML.

Lotus Domino 7 performance in production at IBM on pSeries servers
In this article, we review the performance improvements we achieved by deploying Domino 7 on pSeries servers in a live IBM production environment.

New workloads and features in Lotus Domino 7 Server.Load
Learn about all the new features we’ve added to the Lotus Domino 7 version of the Server.Load performance testing and planning tool.