Like most of you, I glean my information from various sources: Blogs, IBM Notes/Domino FAQ Newsletter, Notes Discussion forums at IBM, IBM technote searches, custom Notes/Domino google searches, Stumbleupon, delicious.com, and various other newsletters such as the searchdomino.techtarget.com or LotusUserGroup, etc.

I just recently signed up for LinkedIn and joined a few Notes/Domino groups. I haven’t done much with it yet, but here’s my public profile http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkillingsworth.

Today, I received a LinkedIn post with an answer which pointed to Technote 1196837 – Using a Desktop Policy to set notes.ini and Location parameters.

I really wish I had seen this technote a very long time ago.

Posted by david, filed under Client config, Deployment, Policies, Tricks, notes.ini. Date: November 12, 2008, 12:17 pm | No Comments »

I just want to mention that I love HP (and previously Compaq) servers. I love installing Windows 2003 with a Smart Start DVD and all of the HP Insight Management agents, the Windows drivers for the various systems components being installed when it’s all said and done.

I’ve been playing with the HP Systems Insight Management Console for the last few months. It’s a great tool and lots and lots of granular monitoring, patch and firmware deployment, etc.

I just realized this week that you could go to HP’s website and install what’s called a Proliant Support Pack.
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Posted by david, filed under Deployment, HP, Hardware, Monitoring, Windows, maintenance. Date: October 1, 2008, 7:57 am | No Comments »

I’m sure that most admins have been using text files to generate IDs for a long time.

I haven’t.

I sat down to register 284 users this week. It was a new process to me, so I’m going to go through the list of steps here.
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Posted by david, filed under Administration, Deployment, Registration, Tricks. Date: October 1, 2008, 7:30 am | No Comments »

For a very long time, the “Optional Network Drivers” that Lotus forces you to install has been a very big thorn in my side.

Who uses anything besides TCPIP anymore?

I always disable any non TCPIP ports after install as it complicates Notes configuration for desktop support people, complicates location document creation, and I had one user once who had all the default ports enabled. He also had some network drives permanently mapped. When he was at a site that could not see the network mapped drives, and he would save an attachment, Notes would freeze.

After some study, I realized that Notes was trying to build the list of places to store the attachment for explorer and searching every possible port to map those drives.

I disabled everything except TCPIP for the guy and tried the same process. The guy thought I was Santa Claus and that he’d just received the best Christmas gift ever. The attachment save dialog window instantly opened and presented a local directory.

I’ve tried several ways to get around this on install (and there is no way to disable the ports by policies).
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Posted by david, filed under Client config, Deployment, Domino Reference, InstallShield, Tricks, notes.ini. Date: September 23, 2008, 3:55 am | 3 Comments »