Gee... David

Exam Objective: Creating Dynamic Policies

A new feature to the administrative capabilities of Domino is the dynamic policy. This option allows administrators to assign policy settings to individual users and groups by entering a particular user or group name in a policy document.

By way of review, an explicit policy document allows assignment of default settings to users and groups such as

With dynamic policies administrators are able to "set it and forget it" the assignment by using updates the group document as needed. This way, if a user moves to a new  position in the company, the administrator does not need to figure out which policies are involved.
When is the change 'effective'. According to the InfoCenter, “The updated group information is applied the next time the effective policy is calculated for any users in that group.”

How do I do that?
There are four ways to assign explicit policies:

•        Use the Policy Assignment tab of the policy document (explicit policy)
•        When registering a user.
•        Edits to the user's Person document.
•        Use the policy assignment tool in the Domino Administrator client.


I have decided to provide an example of the process when registering a user as the InfoCenter has plenty of information for the other approaches. Additionally, this example shows the 'magical' consequence of removing a user from a group to which the policy is applied.

First, the environment. We have created a settings document and a policy with which it is associated:




We have also defined a group named “Contractors” and have assigned the policy to that group.



When Registering a user:

The user is configured in the usual way including membership in the group, “Contractors”




Now for the 'big reveal'. First:
But, when we perform a policy synopsis we see the effective policy.


Now, for the magic. We will remove Sue Synergy from the “Contractors” group and repeat the synopsis.



And, here's the result:


Things to keep in mind include the latency of updates to the group membership cache. By default this will occur once per minute but is configurable. Also, keep in mind how different settings are achieved. An excellent resource is the Wiki article at

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/domino-policies-faq

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David Wilkerson January 21st, 2009 01:36:51 PM

Don't Envy the iPhone, Hug Your Blackberry

Lotusphere 2009. Today IBM announced a major expansion of tools for collaboration on the Blackberry platform.

IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM) (TSX: RIM) today unveiled new Lotus collaboration software and developer tools on the BlackBerry(R) platform that will bring collective intelligence to BlackBerry smartphones. The new features will help customers find expertise, form teams, share information, and stay in touch in real time making them more effective and productive while on the move.

Imagine accessing document management, file sharing (photos, videos, etc) on your Blackberry device!

The key to this relies upon two initiatives: an eclipse plugin and XPage support. I can hardly wait to play with these toys!

To read the full story go here.

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David Wilkerson January 19th, 2009 02:24:43 PM

I am reading "Wikinomics" and "Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations" I will happily concede that Web 2.0 could not happen in the absence of technology. What concerns me is that Web 2.0 has been happening for several years and ignorance of it remains pervasive. The latter of the books I mentioned was published in August of 2008 and the prefix is an eloquent statement of what 'it' is. Yet business leaders and the technologists that support them remain, in far too many cases, clueless.

Web 2.0 is not about Ajax or REST or Web Services. It is about massive collaboration that can be conscious or unconscious. The outcome of this collaboration would shock the socks off of Adam Smith ("The Wealth of Nations") because today people collaborate, socialize, participate, and as a consequence create value. Real 'spendable' value. Ask Amazon. The changing shape of the market is not the demise of the market it is the radical reinvention of the market and, as such, we who participate in the online world are creating value, if not for ourselves, for someone else.

My thoughts today turn to our own web site. It is very much a Web 1.0 presence. The absence of community or much participation in the on-line community, as a business indicates that businesses like ours may not fully grasp what benefits can be gained from the Web 2.0 world. It is far, far more than simply creating a site that looks nice and has interesting information. Today's most compelling sites are communities. Consider IBM Developerworks as an example of a site reinvented. Wikis abound.

For companies such as mine we must consider the idea that 'playing our cards close to the vest' will ultimately work against us. Consider how Google has enlisted tens of thousands of volunteers to dream up new applications and ways to use them. Or, to borrow again from IBM, consider how the Lotus brand has leveraged collaborative creativity with IdeaJam. Really, right now, check it out and see how people are helping IBM Lotus generate value and target product enhancements in a way that a semester of focus groups could never do.

Web 2.0 is far more than hype and yet many of us are, sad to say, happy to live with a vague sense that something is happening and have no idea that the value we create is wealth in another's pocket.

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David Wilkerson January 5th, 2009 12:24:09 PM

My brother's email signature includes the phrase,  "If you can't find it, why have it?".  Just today I needed to find an email that I received from one of my colleagues. I new that it was sent in December, I knew that it had an attachment, and I knew that it referred to a vendor by name. I have used the 'multiple words' feature of Notes searching on many occasions but I can't specify a time range, easily, and the fact that the document contains an attachment.

I installed the personal mail search tool from OmniFind and was delighted with the speed at which my mail was indexed and the ease with which I could do semantic searches.

You can get this tool from IBM's AlphaWorks here:
 http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/emailsearch/?open&S_TACT=105AGY83&S_CMP=TWAW.

After you download the software installation if easy and fast. I installed on an XP SP3 machine running Notes 8.5 Beta 2.


Your first action is to provide your Notes password:



Next you will select the mail files (local replicas) you wish to index:


Once you confirm the installation and it completes the indexing server will start:

It appears that the JVM for this server is about 38 mb. Not too serious of a footprint.

The interface is browser based and you can configure the indexer for different impact levels:


Once done, there is a tutorial to get you started creating your queries and, after I increased the level of impact to moderate, I found that the results were everything I could hope for an alpha project. I hope this semantic approach to searching will get some traction in the Lotus space because it is much more efficient than the aging and limited search interface of the Notes client.


,

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David Wilkerson December 29th, 2008 03:40:05 PM

Ed Brill, in a coy manner, has indicated that the release of 8.5 will occur after the first of the year and before Lotusphere. Decision to postpone was related to marketing. Gee, you'ld think with the holidays and all, no one would notice...

For the full story visit his blog here

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David Wilkerson December 18th, 2008 09:31:04 AM

Thanks to Len Barker for this tip.

He was working with a client yesterday who runs the Notes 8 client.  He needed to replace the design of a database but he could not find the options under File - Application - Replace Design.  Len thought that was odd because he could see the menu options on his computer.

It turns out that if you have a Notes client without Designer or Administrator clients the advanced menus are hidden.  Users have to select View - Advanced menus to expose those choices.

Other advanced menus include File - Replication - New Replica.

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David Wilkerson December 17th, 2008 12:22:05 PM

Did you ever look at a document on Friday and try to remember on Tuesday night what it was called? You know, the sort of problem where you don't know what to call it but you will know you found it when you see it.  Well, today I searched three times (successfully) for the same document never realizing that it was available in my history all along.  One simple picture should show you all you need to know to take a shortcut to your own 'recent' past.

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David Wilkerson October 7th, 2008 08:56:12 PM

The noise surrounding XPages has certainly grabbed my attention but, to be honest, this statement took my breath away:

XPages allow Domino Web application developers to both extend the functionality and the end-user reach of current IBM® Lotus® Notes and Domino applications. . . Delivered through Java™Server Faces (JSF) technology, XPages provide both novice and seasoned Web application developers with nearly limitless data architecture. . .

That simple reference to JSF technology was overwhelming, to me. For a long time I have spoken to Domino developers who are tasked with creating Java based web applications to understand the similarity between Domino web development and JSFs. Of course those conversations have often resulted in sighs and wishes that Domino could do things 'like that'. Well, here we are. The quote is from the getting started section of a tutorial available at IBM's DeveloperWorks site. "Harness the power of XPages in Lotus Domino Designer".

But wait, to borrow from the patter of the TV infomercial, there's more: The power of XPages conceals the underlying complexity of JSF development and allows the power of the Domino Designer to retain its premier perch as a true RAD tool. (And NO I do not mean Rational Application Developer"). It is like having your own private rendering engine. Remember the "Domino Rendering Engine? Well, now you can have your own   rendering engine. XPages provide the mechanism by which 'you', the developer, supply your own markup and the resulting interpretation is mapped to JSF custom class libraries.

What does this mean for my applications?

• For starters, it makes it simple to bind multiple data sources to a single HTML form. Imagine allowing for an update to response documents, a related profile document, and a parent document all in one form submission. User input can be greatly simplified.
• Another benefit is that you can retire those old $$ hacks and the tedious effort it took to maintain them. XPages support page submission redirection without all the fuss we are used to.
• You can now easily work with CSS to drive layout and avoid placing your components in a (solitary confinement) cell.

When should you consider migrating to XPages? In my view it depends on where in the product maintenance life cycle you find yourself. I think, however, that when you consider the effort you typically expend maintaining your existing forms you will find that a little time in becoming comfortable with this powerful feature will enable your organization to cost effectively address the re-engineering required to do a soup-to-nuts renovation of your Domino web based applications. You won't simply extend their lifetime you will enhance their functionality.

So, head off to DeveloperWorks and take the tutorial for a spin. You will be glad you did. To paraphrase an famous religious figure, When we were children we saw but through a glass darkly but now we can build a new face for a new day.

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David Wilkerson October 6th, 2008 09:17:37 PM

I am struck by the likelihood that a substantial number of existing portals will need be upgraded. To this end I provide a link to what appears, on brief review, to be an excellent guide to the process. In a nutshell, this is NOT trivial and, in my view, if you are teetering on the precipice of installing 6.0, DON'T. You should go directly to 6.1. Despite all the usual caveats about waiting for the first service patch keep in mind that by the time your deployment begins to mature such a patch will most likely be in place. This chore and the risks of the unknown are by far out weighed by the complexity of the upgrade process.

Check out the PDFs in this link and see for yourself: Step-by-Step Migration Guide.

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David Wilkerson October 6th, 2008 09:10:36 PM

Here's a 'new' product that has emerged in the IBM Lotus brand. It is the outcome of IBM's fairly recent acquisition of Proventia. This security suite bundles several features and is expected to grow in depth as the offering matures.

IBM Lotus Mail Protector

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David Wilkerson September 3rd, 2008 08:00:54 AM