BLODEX

Category BlackBerry 10 BlackBerry
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I've been using BlackBerry since 2003, and I did not abandon the ship when it started sinking. Two weeks ago, I put down my venerable Bold 9800 and replaced it with Z10. I had some mixed feelings about switching to BB10 at this time, because I was always a big fan of the physical keyboard that I felt was indispensable. I said "was" because I think this is a thing of the past for me. My scepticism of the the Z10's on screen touch keyboard evaporated quickly once I had a chance to try it for myself. It really is as good as they say; I definitely like it much better than the iPhone's keyboard.

Because Z10 does not have the physical keyboard, there are a few things that are just no longer possible on this device. I found workarounds for some of them. Here's my to 10 list.

1. Speed dialling.

I loved this feature. On the Bold you could assign a different number to each letter on the keyboard (except W and Q which were preassigned to voice mail and silent mode), and you would just press and hold that key to dial the assigned number. Very efficient. For obvious reason this is no longer possible on Z10 (I hope they will retain it on Q10). The closest I found to this feature is a bar in the Phone app that features three speed dial spots. The first one is already preassigned to your voice mail, but you can assign your most frequently dialled numbers to the other two.

2. Switching to Silent with Q

As mentioned above, to switch between the "Vibrate Only" and "Normal" profiles on the Bold, you just pressed and held the Q button on your keyboard. On the Z10 switching between these two modes is much more involved. After unlocking your screen, you have to swipe down to get the menu, then tap on Notifications. This will actually open the section of the settings app, where you will need to switch your mode to the desired one, and close the settings up. Lot's of steps. Too bad that they did not put a special button on the device similar to what the iPhone has.

3. Convenience key

Although there is a button on the side of the Z10 device between the two volume buttons, I don't seem to find a way to customise its functionality as it was possible on the Bold device. On the Z10 it is hard wired to Voice Control app.

4. Menu key

No keyboard, no menu key (the one with the BlackBerry logo on it). On the Z10, you just need to swipe down to reveal the menus. If you are inside an app, you will get the app specific menu for most of the apps. In some places, like the Hub, you need to touch and hold the screen to get the menus, or tap the on-screen button with the three vertical dots.

5. Escape/Back key

No keyboard, no escape key (the one with the curly arrow on it). To get out of your app, swipe up to minimise your app and display the active frames section of your home screen. Up to eight apps can be running at the same time and will be represented by their avatars on this page. To close an open document within the app (e-mail, article), swipe to the right.

6. Hide the keyboard, keyboard shortcuts

Sometimes the on-screen keyboard gets in a way and you need to close it without exiting the page that you are on. On the Playbook, you would swipe diagonally from the bottom corner. On the Z10, you tap and hold the space bar.
"Sym" key was a shortcut to special characters on the Bold. On the Z10 just swipe down on your keyboard.
Holding your key on the letter to capitalise it, and double tap on space to end a sentence with a period and a space still work! Unfortunately, they don't on the PlayBook.
Rebooting sequence: lock your screen and tap Reboot
Flashlight: video camera and space bar - could not find the equivalent on the Z10   :(

7. Universal mailbox

This is now called the Hub and can be customised more extensively than it was possible before. Don't waste your time swiping down to get the menus, in this case you need to touch the screen and hold your fingr down for 2-3 sec to reveal the vertical bar with buttons; one of them will lead you to the options. You will not find these options included in the global device options app.

8. MemoPad and Tasks

These used to be two separate apps that the BES server was able to synchronise with Journal/Notebook and ToDo list in Lotus Notes. The Z10 has an app called Remember which seems to be the merger between the MemoPad and Tasks. Traveler 8.5 is not able to synchronise this app with Lotus Notes, hopefully version 9 will have this functionality since the upgrade pack allows it on the iPhone for the ToDo list (although the separate app has to be downloaded from the App Store since iPhone does not have a native ToDo app). My colleague who attended the IBM Connect 2013 spoke to the developers who told him synchronising with Notes iPhone app (ironic choice of name by Apple) is high on their priority list for the future versions of Traveler. Hopefully Z10 will be included as well.

9. Missing apps

Besides the two mentioned above, no RSS reader by BlackBerry.

10. No holster included!

Every BlackBerry I ever had, always came with a holster. It just shows had desperate for additional revenue RIM must be that they decided to not include it with the basic package. I had to shell out additional 39.99 for a "Made in China" basic pouch which probably costs a dollar or two to make.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 12:00:00 AM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category BlackBerry 10 BlackBerry
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IBM will not officially support BlackBerry 10 on Traveler until they release version 9 some time in March. However, this does not mean that BlackBerry 10 will not work at all with Traveler 8.5.x. Our initial testing shows that most of the things seem to be working just fine. We have Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.3.100 Upgrade Pack 1 Build 201209141855 running on Lotus Domino server Release 8.5.3FP3|November 15, 2012 on a Windows/64 platform. So far, we found the following issues:

1. When you open a meeting invitation on a BlackBerry 10 device, it does not include the option to accept the invitation. It is only possible to "Add To Calendar" after the iCal file attachment is opened. After it is added to calendar, it will be displayed as a calendar entry on the BB10 device, but this entry does not synchronise to Lotus Notes desktop calendar. Instead, Notes calendar will only display a grayed-out entry for the meeting invitation as if it wasn't yet processed.

2. When you create a new calendar entry on your BlackBerry 10 and invite people, the invitation notices do not get sent out.

3. The pre-BB10 devices connected to the BES server were able to synchronise Lotus Notes' Journal/Notebook with BlackBerry's MemoPad application. This functionality is not available with Traveler on BB10 because there is no MemoPad app on the new BlackBerry.

4. The pre-BB10 devices connected to the BES server were able to synchronise Lotus Notes' ToDo list with BlackBerry's Tasks application. This functionality is not available with Traveler 8.5 on BB10. It is expected that this functionality will be available in Traveler 9.

5. BlackBerry Balance application will not be activated to separate your "work" and "personal" environments, as it is done with Traveler 8.5 on PlayBook.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 01:56:47 PM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotus Notes and Domino Issues
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If you are getting this error message: "Either the Server Controller is not running on host <server name> or is not listening on port 2050" and and you know that the controller is running, then most likely you have more than one NICs installed on your Windows 2008 Server.



In our case, we have two: one for client-server traffic, and one for server cluster replicator traffic. The order of these in Network Settings makes a difference. Network services on the server will access them in the order listed in Advanced Settings. On our server the cluster Network NIC was listed first and the error message stopped coming up as soon as I moved our main interface to the top of the list.


To change the sequence of the network interfaces do the following:

• Go to Control Panel
• Open Network and Sharing Center
• Click on Change Adapter Settings
• Press "Alt" key to see the menus
• Selects  "Advanced Settings..." from "Advanced" menu
• Review the order of your network adapters on the "Adapters and Bindings" tab.
• Put your main network interface on the top of the list and click OK to save the changes.

We also encountered another issue related to the incorrect order of network adapters on this list. When HTTP task was starting on the server running Domino 8.5.3FP1, it would bind to our Cluster Network interface rather than our main network interface. This is despite the fact that we added these line to the notes.ini and had all ports correctly defined in there.

PortOrder=TCPIP,CLUSTER
HTTPNotesPort=TCPIP
SERVER_CLUSTER_DEFAULT_PORT=CLUSTER

At the time, we solved the issue by listing the IP number of the main interface in the host name field (in addition to the host name) of HTTP task in server document with "Bind to host name" enabled. After adjusting the interface sequence, I was able to remove the IP number for that field, and after restarting HTTP task I noticed that it now binds to the correct interface.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 12:30:17 PM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Domino Application Development Tips
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I came across a new @Function that I was always always hoping to see added to Lotus Notes one day. @GetMachineInfo has been been introduced in 8.5.3 and can be very useful to both administrators and developers.

Administrators can use it with policies to distinguish between different workstations that any given user is running Notes on. As per IBM's Technote 1501673, "in prior versions of the Notes Client, and policy control, an administrator could target an individual, but not a specific machine configuration for that individual. For certain settings and customers, this made the enforcement of specific settings problematic, either because a user had multiple machines, or because the configurations and usage were not easily partitioned. "

Developers can use it in applications that need to be aware of the user's environment, or applications that collect information about user's workstations (eg. corporate computer inventory) to extract info ranging from specs on hardware (memory, disk space, whether it's a laptop or desktop) to data on Notes client itself (Standard vs. Basic, Multi-user vs. Single User install, does it have Designer or Admin clients installed). Some of this was possible before but you had to use different @Functions (or LotusScript methods/properties) for different things often in combination with queries to Windows Registry and VMIService objects and a lot more code. Now, most of it can be accomplished with just one simple @Function that is platform independent (yes, it works on a Macintosh as well as it does on a Windows PC).

Don't look for any information on it in your Domino Designer 8.5.3 help file, because you will not find anything useful. For some reason, help file that shipped with 8.5.3 was not updated to include any info on this. Refer to IBM's Technote 1501673 for detailed description.

I'm just a bit disappointed that this new formula does not include any keywords for finding out machine's operating system version, and processor info. In my code, I'm currently doing it by querying Windows Registry and VMIService objects, but obviously this works only on Windows based machines. I need to do the same on Macintosh..., does anybody know how to accomplish this with Lotus Script on a Mac?

Syntax for @GetMachineInfo:

@GetMachineInfo( [Keyword]; "Needed for some Keywords string" )

Keywords:

IsLaptop boolean return True if machine is a laptop, otherwise false
IsDesktop boolean return True if machine is NOT a laptop, otherwise false

Example:
info := @GetMachineInfo([IsLaptop]) ;
msg := @If( info ; "This machine is a laptop" ; "This machine is a desktop" ) ;
@Prompt([Ok] ; "" ; msg )




MachineName string return Name of the machine
boolean return True if MachineName string after keyword matches this machine's MachineName, otherwise false

Example:
info := "Machine name is " + @GetMachineInfo([MachineName]) ;
@Prompt([Ok] ; "" ; info )



Memory number return Total amount of memory (RAM)

Example:
info := "Total RAM installed " + @Text(@GetMachineInfo([Memory])) + " MB" ;
@Prompt([Ok] ; "" ; info )



DiskSpace number return Amount of free disk space
Note: With this keyword, you can add a second parameter for the drive to scan for free space. If this parameter is not passed to the function, free space for the first (logical) drive - for example, drive C on Windows system - is displayed.

Example:
info := "Drive M free space is " + @Text(@GetMachineInfo([DiskSpace];"M:")) + " KB" ;
@Prompt([Ok] ; "" ; info )




IP string/list return String representation of the IP address(es) in the form XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX , otherwise "" (null string) if not available
boolean return True if pattern IP string after keyword matches this machine's IP address, otherwise false

Example:
info := @GetMachineInfo([IP]) ;
@Prompt([Ok] ; "" ; info )



MAC string/list return String representation of the MAC address(es) in the form XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX , otherwise "" (null string) if not available
boolean return True if MAC string after keyword matches this machine's MAC address, otherwise false

Example:
info := @GetMachineInfo([MAC]) ;
@Prompt([Ok] ; "" ; info )



IsSingleLogOn boolean return True if machine has Notes client installed with "single sign on", otherwise false

IsMultiUser boolean return True if machine has Notes client installed as Multi-User, otherwise false

HasDesigner boolean return True if machine has Designer client installed, otherwise false

HasAdmin boolean return True if machine has Admin client installed, otherwise false

IsStandard boolean return True if machine is running Standard Notes client, otherwise false

EnvVariable string return Requires string of the variable name in Notes.ini to read, and returns the value of that ini variable or "" (null string) if not found

SysEnvVariable string return Requires string of the variable name in system environment to read, and returns the value of that variable or "" (null string) if not
found

Posted by Bodek Frak At 12:00:00 AM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotus Notes Roaming
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When roaming is enabled by the administrator on the existing Person in Domino Directory, several fields with names starting with "Roam..." are being populated with data. While most of them are well documented or their purpose is easily understood, among them is the one mysterious field called "RoamingUserUpdateFlag". Coincidentally, this is also the name of the notes.ini parameter that gets added to the client's notes.ini at the time roaming was enabled.

If you Google "RoamingUserUpdateFlag", you will find references to bunch of documents that make an attempt to document this parameter, but they are all saying that "Currently no further information is known about this variable ".

I noticed that this field in Person document gets populated with a date/time that is 21 days from the moment that roaming was enabled by the administrator. I wonder if this is supposed to be some sort of expiry date for the AdminP to complete the process of enabling each user workstation for roaming... Does anybody have any information about this?

Posted by Bodek Frak At 10:20:05 AM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category BlackBerry Playbook
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We are experiencing intermittent outages of IMAP on BlackBerry Playbook. Much of the time, Playbook is unable to connect to the Domino IMAP server and displays this error message: "'ImapDb' object has no attribute 'notify_folder_emptied'". Both IBM and RIM Tech Support have no idea what is causing this. It seems that removing the IMAP account from the Playbook and adding it back solves the issue, but only temporarily. The error eventually comes back. the strange thing is that at the same time the Playbook is unable connect to the IMAP server, other devices do not exhibit any connectivity issues. Did any one encounter this?

So far, I only found one post on this issue: http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-playbook-f222/imap-email-problem-709130/

Posted by Bodek Frak At 01:02:54 PM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotus Traveler BlackBerry Playbook
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IBM does not officially support Traveler on the new BlackBerry Playbook OS 2.0, but our testing shows that for the most part Traveler works great on it as an integrated app (ie. added as an account through the settings screen). So far, we only run into two issues that I described below. To successfully add a Traveler account to your Playbook, you have to use Advanced Setup, select Microsoft Exchange ActiveSynch (ironic, isn't it?), leave domain empty, and instead of just typing the server name you have to use this format: yourservername.yourdomain.com/servlet/traveler.  

These are the issues that we run into so far:

#1 If you accept Notes meeting invitation on your Playbook, the meeting will not be showing on your calendar in Lotus Notes. It will continue showing as unprocessed invitation.

#2 You cannot add more than one Traveler (MS Active Sync) accounts to your Playbook, if Lotus Traveler Policy Settings in Domino Directory (or Traveler Server settings in Traveler db) are configured to "require device password:



With device password being mandatory, when you add a second Traveler (MS Active Sync) accounts to your Playbook, a message comes up at the end of the setup to "Confirm Wipe". If you cancel, your new account setup will not be saved. If you click OK, your existing Traveler account will be removed form the Playbook and replaced by this one.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 10:19:17 AM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotusphere 2012
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This was number five for me. I started writing this in Orlando, and I sat on it for a few weeks wondering if I should really post this. But I think it needs to be said.

If I was going to sum up this year's Lotusphere in one sentence, I would say that yellow should be added to the endangered species colours list. At this year's gathering of the bumble bees (not really), yellow was drowning in the sea of blue, black and every other colour. The backpack was all black, yellow only on the inside (thanks IBM, we got the message). Lotusphere's bottled water labels were white. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like there were more people wearing blue badges (IBMers) and purple badges (partners) than yellow badges (actual customers). Interestingly enough, customers' badges were still yellow... Did someone forget to change them?

I also heard through the grapevine that the attendance this year was really low. This was evident in particular at the Welcoming Reception on Sunday. There were actually empty tables on the beach and in the pool area. I have been to four Lotuspheres before and do not remember seeing empty tables before.

Then, there was this thing with the name. It seems that IBM is dropping "Lotus" not just from the names of their products. Although this year's conference was still called Lotusphere (apparently there was a big debate about this at the top), it does not take an oracle to predict that next year it will most likely be called something else. And we were already introduced to the new name this year, although nobody dared to say it on record just yet. Lotus, and especially Lotus Notes and Domino, were no longer the stars of the Lotusphere. This year, IBM Lotus Connections, took the centre stage. Being a die-hard Notes fanatic, I could hardly find any sessions that were geared towards audiences like me. I felt like a yellow dinosaur attending EverythingElseAndNotMuchLotusPhere. I wonder if people didn't submit any proposals, or if they did and perhaps were turned down?

Finally, I knew that something was really wrong when I came to the Gurupalooza session and there was no crowd on the hallway waiting to storm into the room as soon as the doors open. I really miss those days. Ten minutes until the start of the presentation the room was not even 20% full. That was really depressing. Once the session started, there were still way too many empty seats left. The tone of the session was different too. Although it was still very funny and insightful, you can sense some desperation among the people on the stage. I mean just look at Paul... His face says it all: "That water just doesn't taste the same...."

Posted by Bodek Frak At 09:44:31 AM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotus Notes and Domino Tips
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I just discovered that you can now see and manage all private views inside NSF file using Domino Administrator client. Not just your private views, all private views including those that belong to other users as well. I'm not sure when this functionality was added, I must have missed this announcement. In the past, we used to have to use some tricks, (like creating new view and saving it without any name), or scripts to extract info about other user's private views.

Now, you just need to open the server in Domino Designer, click on Files tab to list the files on that server, turn on Full Access Administration, right click on any file and select Manage Views form the pop-up menu, and voila!



You should see something like this (I'm using Domino Designer 8.5.3):

Posted by Bodek Frak At 02:35:56 PM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotus Notes and Domino Issues Just Venting
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I just LOVE to try all the new stuff that gets added to each maintenance release of Lotus Notes. It makes me feel like a kid opening Christmas presents. I savour and enjoy each one of them. And I appreciate the effort that the IBM put into improving their product and listening to the feedback from their customers. I really do. But I also hate when I discover that some things that were available in previous versions are no longer working properly, or worse, have been removed purposely without any notice or fair justification. Especially when it is something as useful  as the Screen Capture tool built into the Sametime Contacts pane in the Sidebar, which I was using practically every day, I was very disappointed to find out that after upgrading my Notes client to the latest 8.5.3, this tool is no longer available to Sametime Entry users. The icon for it is now greyed out, just like the icons for sending files, sending broadcasts, inviting to a meeting room, and inviting to instant meeting (which they were from the beginning).


Fig. 1 Sorry to say this, but this screen capture was taken using Microsoft Windows 7 Snipping Tool.

Yes, I know. If we get the full version of Sametime, I can continue to enjoy this wonderful feature. But we are not getting it. It's something beyond my control, which just adds to my desperation. We have been using Sametime Entry ever since it was released and bundled/integrated with the Notes client. That is since the release 6.5 in 2003. For eight years the Screen Capture tool was there and available to the Sametime Entry users like me. Not anymore.

I contacted IBM Tech Support to get an official answer on this back  in November, although I suspected I knew what the answer will be. Sadly, I wasn't wrong.

IBM: "I got a response from dev about a similar PMR, and unfortunately the change is most likely fixing a "bug" where the screenshot button was not greyed out in situations when it was supposed to be."

Me: "I will be honest with you and tell you that this makes some of us here very upset. I was fearing this scenario, and it seems like it came through... I think that it is a really bad move on behalf of IBM that you effectively take away something that has been made available for many years! It does not matter that this tool was made available to Sametime Entry users unintentionally, you should not make the users to pay the price for IBM developers' mistake. If the goal was to alienate many loyal long-time users and supporters of Lotus Notes like me, then MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! But is it really what IBM-Lotus needs these days? "

IBM: "I understand your frustration, and I will pass your comments along to my manager. Thank you for using IBM Lotus Support."

Sorry for being so negative, but things like this really get to me. There. I got it off my chest. Now, let's focus on something positive, like Lotusphere 2012 and the announcements that will surely come with it. Can't wait! I'll be there...

Posted by Bodek Frak At 01:31:18 PM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)