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Category Lotus Notes Tips
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I found this great tip that talks about anchor links in Lotus Notes documents. I've been trying to create some in my document but could not find anything in the menus related to that. After a while, I gave up and decided to search the Web. Voila!

http://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf/dx/authoring-lengthy-documents-part-2

Posted by Bodek Frak At 03:08:46 PM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotus Notes Tips
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Did you know that there are several RSS feeds available for the University of Windsor Web site? Among them, we have IT Services HotNews feed which provides updates on any outages, scheduled system maintenance, etc.



You can plug those into your favourite RSS feed reader, or you could use the RSS reader that is integrated inside the Lotus Notes 8. You will find it on the sidebar (right hand side of your screen). If you cannot see the sidebar, make sure you have it open (View - Sidebar - Open), and that the sidebar Feeds panel is configured to show up there (View - Sidebar Panels - Feeds).

For more info on RSS feeds in Lotus Notes, please see this Notes tip:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/notestipsblog.nsf/dx/rss-and-atom-feeds

Posted by Bodek Frak At 02:54:27 PM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotus Notes Tips
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I've been asked by my colleagues if there is a way to insert a link into a Lotus Notes document that points to a file stored somewhere on the network drive. Once this link is clicked by a reader of the Notes document, the file (for example a Microsoft Word document), that this link points to will be opened.

I found two ways of accomplishing this. One involves turning selected text within a document into a "hotspot", specifically a "Link hotspot of the type URL". The other method involves creating Windows shortcut (.lnk file) and attaching it to your document.

Method 1
Create a URL link hotspot

When you hear the term URL, you probably think of an address of a Web site/page (a file accessed remotely though the HTTP protocol) But in this context, the term "URL" means an address of a file that you want to link to using one of many available protocols. Please note that URL consists of two parts: protocol + path to your file. You should also know that in Lotus Notes, the following protocols are allowed inside the URL hotspots:

http://
https://
ftp://
notes://
file://

To create your hotspot that links to a document, we will use "file://" protocol.

1. Make sure your document is in edit mode.
2. Select the text to act as a link.
3. Click Create > Hotspot > Link Hotspot.
4. Select "URL" for the link type.
5. Type in the full URL to your file in the "Value" field. See URL examples below.

URL Example 1
The file "test.doc" is located in a folder called "temp" that in turn is inside a folder called "consult" on a network drive mapped as "M:" on everyone's computers. The path to this file is "M:\consult\temp\test.doc".

You would use the following URL for your hotspot:




URL Example 2
Since network drive letter mappings may differ between computers on the same network, it is safer to use a different method for specifying the file path. The same file used in example above, is stored on a Novell server called ALPHA. When it comes to drive mappings, "M:" actually points to a folder called "common" that is stored on a partition also called "COMMON" on that server. Those names are not case sensitive, I just used lower case for the folder name and upper case for the partition name to distinguish them from each other.

You would use the following URL:




NOTE: This is applicable to both Novell and Microsoft networks, although I only tested it on our Novell network with Notes 8.


Your Notes document will look like this:






Method 2
Create Windows shortcut (.lnk file) and attach it to your Notes document

1. Open Windows Explorer and browse to a folder where your file is stored.
2. Right click on your file and select "Create Shortcut" from the menu. You will see that Windows created a new file. If the original file was called "test.doc", your shortcut will be called "Shortcut to test.doc" in Windows XP, or "test.doc - shortcut" in Windows Vista.  Note that Windows hides the file extension ".lnk" which is appended to the shortcut file name.




If you wish, you can rename your shortcut file and take out the "Shortcut to" prefix (Win XP) or "-shortcut" appendix (Win Vista).


 
3. Attach the shortcut file created in step 2 in one of the three possible ways:
a) drag and drop shortcut into your Notes document, or...
b) copy shortcut to the clipboard, switch to Notes document and paste it from the clipboard, or...
c) use File > attach from Notes' menu and browse to the shortcut file

Your Notes document will look like this:

Posted by Bodek Frak At 09:38:11 AM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotus Notes Tips Lotus Notes and Domino Issues
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One of the new features in Lotus Notes 8 is a preference setting in your calendar that would allow Notes to process meeting cancellations automatically for you, and allow you to specify if you want the cancelled meetings "removed from calendar", or "shown as cancelled in calendar" after Notes automatically processes them:



The question that is being asked frequently is "Why do cancelled meetings not show in my calendar even though I enabled this option in my preferences?"

Some users assume that with this setting on and configured to "show as cancelled in calendar", they get to see cancelled meetings in their calendar indefinitely, or until they decide to remove them. This assumption, however, is incorrect because, this is not how this new feature was designed to work.

Help file is very unhelpful in this case, as it does not really explain anything, and it just restates the obvious:



The article "Keep your Inbox cleaner - set preferences for meeting invitations (Lotus Notes 8.x Tips)" by Julia Brown on IBM's developerWorks made me realise what this feature is all about.

First, you have to decide if you want Notes to automatically process meeting cancellation notices for you (new in Notes 8), or if you want to continue with the pre-8 functionality, that is manually process each cancellation by opening cancellation notice delivered to your Inbox. By default, automatic processing is turned off. After enabling autoprocessing of meeting cancellation notices, you get two choices that are otherwise grayed out:

Remove from Calendar - When you pick this option, the cancellation notice will not appear in your Inbox folder at all because as soon as router delivers it to your mailbox, it will be processed and the meeting document will be removed from your calendar. You will only be able to see the cancellation notice in All Documents view in your mailbox. The potential problem with this option is that you will not get a chance to acknowledge the cancellation unless you frequently check All Documents view in your mailbox. You may not even realize that the meeting entry has disappeared from your calendar, and you may still attend the meeting. If you notice that the calendar entry is gone, you may suspect that Notes is malfunctioning and is erroneously deleting your calendar entries. We do not recommend to use this option unless you are fully aware of its limitations and are willing to take a risk.

Show as cancelled in calendar -  When you pick this option, the cancellation notice will appear in your Inbox folder until you delete it or remove it, although the router still processes the cancellation notice as soon as it is delivered to your mailbox. After the cancellation notice is processed by the router, the cancelled meeting will continue to show in your calendar, although in a different colour (red/maroon) and with a different icon:



...but ONLY until you either open the cancellation notice in your Inbox (including displaying it in preview pane), or open the cancelled meeting document in your calendar. As soon as you do that, Notes displays an "Update" message and removes the cancelled meeting from your calendar (but the cancellation notice stays in your Inbox). Perhaps what this message should say instead is "The calendar entry will be removed to reflect this change", instead of "will be updated".



Notes removes your calendar entry to keep your calendar "less cluttered" (as intended by the IBM developers).  

How is the second option different from not having autoprocessing of meeting cancellation notices turned on at all? It's important to keep in mind that the main goal of autoprocessing of meeting cancellation notices is to free up the time slot in the "free time lookup" database originally occupied by the cancelled meeting. Even if you did not get a chance to acknowledge the cancellation notice yet (perhaps you are away for a few days), people trying to invite you to a different meeting scheduled on the same date and at the same time as the cancelled meeting, will now see you as available.

Some Notes users here suggested that this functionality be modified in the next release to provide the option for cancelled meetings to remain in your calendar until you decide to remove them.  It looks like some people outside our organization feel the same way (see "Cancelled Meeting does not Show up in Calendar - IBM's Answer" post on Notes 8 forum by Shawn J Kiser.) Here's IBM's position on this:

"The associated SPR (KWSR7LZQ2G) has been closed as "No Plans to fix in this release". Another SPR (MSTR7LDLCW) describes the same symptoms, against v8.5. The status of SPR (MSTR7LDLCW) is currently "Closed/enhancement request". Thusly, feature development is treating this issue as an enhancement request: We are adding further customer reports of this issue to SPR (MSTR7LDLCW) -- so the customer impact is reflected in the weighting. If weight increases sufficiently, as a result of any additional customer reports, the issue may be reconsidered for an upcoming maintenance or feature release"

I suppose all this makes sense if you keep in mind that the main objective of this feature was to free up your time in the "free time lookup" database so that people can see you as available even if you did not get a chance to process the cancellation notice yet.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 01:52:12 PM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)