You know, I design a certain way and everything works, and I never really thought that the WAY I was designing was a contributing factor in the whole "everything works" bit.

Case in point. For every database I develop, I select my placement of hidden fields at the top or the bottom of the page, usually depending on what the standard is for the organization I'm developing for.

Case in point 2: As most of you know, I'm a Notes client junkie. It's rare for me to do any sort of web developing, but I was that day, so there we are.

I created a $$Return field that would use the parent doc's UNID carried over from another field to form the URL go to back to once the form was submitted. Computed for display, everything looked great, except... no doc ID.

I try everything, until finally I admit to myself that I need to get AWAY from laptop for a bit to think. It had to be something REALLY EASY, as it always is when you tear your hair out.

(I think I should note that perhaps I have been watching a bit too much "Blue's Clues" with Zoë, as I said, "now we sit down in our thinking chair and think....think... .thiiiiiiiiiiink.")

However, I think Steve from Blue's Clues is onto something, as about ten minutes after stepping away from my computer I KNEW what it was.

I walked over, swapped the placement of the $$Return field and the field which pulled in the value of the parent UNID, and it worked beautifully.

Sure enough, it seems that if Field2 picks up Field1's value, then Field1 must be on the form somewhere before Field2. I did note that I can also check "Compute after validation" to make sure it fills in correctly no matter what.

It sounds so easy. Ten years of developing and I'd never made that connection?

How long have I been doing development? Have I really just always been lucky or developed in a way that I never had to make the connection that the way they are placed on the page is the order in which the values will be calculated?

It just goes to show - just when you think you are experienced, it takes one small little field value to show you that there is ALWAYS more to learn!

Has anyone ever had a moment of Zen like that? Can anyone enlighten me some more on ways that computed fields work that really do make sense once you think of them? Let's hear!

Jess

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First of all, apologies for the long delay in between posts! I am discovering that with an almost-11 month old, weeks go by like DAYS!

Anyway, out of all the projects I've been doing lately, one of them has been to add an additional email domain to a Domino server.

There's no shortage of misconceptions about this, so let's examine what's really involved.

First and foremost, let's clear up one very common misconception: the email (SMTP) domain is NOT the same as your Domino Domain. Your Domino domain shouldn't end in a ".com", and is used to control internal mail routing and the Domino directory.

1. Register your additional domain name.

2. Point the MX records to your Domino server, or a SPAM filtering service.

3. Now is a good time to send an email to those in your company whose address will be changing!

4. Add the domain as an alias in your Domino server's Global Domain document.
(Conversions tab --> "Alternate Internet domain aliases" field).

5. As of now, that's really all you need to do. If my domain is "solacelearning.com", and I add a new domain of  "solaceconsulting.com", if my shortname is "jstratton", then I can now receive email from both 'jstratton@solacelearning.com', and 'jstratton@solaceconsulting.com'. 

Of course, my RETURN address will still be whichever address is in the Internet Address field in the Domino Directory.

If I am splitting my Domino Directory, and certain people should ONLY be allowed to receive email from one domain or the other, I need to first make sure the correct people have the new Internet Address field listed correctly.

I can do this by selecting the users in the Domino Directory and using the "Set Internet Address" tool in the Administrator client.

Once that is done, I need to make sure that Domino ONLY uses the entire Internet address to do lookups, and not just the shortname. I can do this by going to the server's Configuration document --> Router/SMTP tab --> Basics tab, and changing the "Address Lookup" field to 'Fullname only'.

The nice thing about this is that if you change the Internet Address for a user, the next time they log in it will automatically pull that address down to their Personal Address book's Location document.

And that's it! The entire process is seamless to your users, with the exception that they now have a new Internet email address that they'll need to notify their contacts.
Are there any "How To" procedures that you'd like to see here? Have you completed a project and would like to share your steps? Log in and blog, or send me an email about it at Jess.42@gmail.com.

-Jess

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Hello

This is a question I would like to pose to the user group is possible.

Both Notes and corporate IT have evolved rapidly over the past two decades. Notes has become a full-fledged, and dare we say, industrial strength development platform. IT has evolved from back-office automation and desktop productivity to the superhighway of business processes. And with IT maturity has come increased responsibility to align IT with corporate objectives and to ensure corporate security, system reliability, and regulatory compliance. Now many organizations find themselves at a crossroads: bring Notes development into the IT fold, governed by the same policies and practices as other development platforms, or abandon Notes and face the costs and pain of excising and replacing potentially hundreds of Notes applications operating in every corner of the company.

Your opinions and views on this would be very welcomed.

Many thanks

Lisa

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If you've needed an excuse to check out the weekly Topic Forums here at LotusUserGroup.org, Kevin Pettitt of LotusGuru.com has given you a good one.

He's placed a download link to the latest version of his SuperNTF template and has asked for beta testers.

--> Get the beta of SuperNTF from the LUG Topic Forums!

(From OpenNTF) - SuperNTF is a Notes Client framework to make development easy for novice developers. It contains modules for tasks such as configuring the Help file for a database, exporting, soft deletions, user activity, and more.

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There is a silence in the air... apparently last week was brought to us by the letter I - (iPhone, ILUG). The dust is settling. Twitter is relaxing. Everyone take a deep breath.

Now! Onto the fun stuff. Ed Brill is happy to announce eight new Lotus product Wiki's:

• IBM Composite Applications wiki
  
  
• Lotus Connections Deployment wiki
  
  
• Lotus Notes/Domino wiki
  
  
• Lotus Domino Web Application Development wiki
  
  
• Lotus Quickr wiki
  
  
• Lotus Sametime wiki
  
  
• WebSphere Portlet Factory wiki
  
  
• Lotus Web Content Management wiki

Here's a link to the IBM Lotus Wiki list of the eight, so you can bookmark it directly.

On another new note, Yancy Lent has decided that our community has too many downloads - and has done something about it. He's created a "Downloads" page on Planet Lotus to directly link to downloads on other sites (think tucows, or downloads.com).

Check the downloads page for direct links (tucows-style) to sidebar widgets, product trials, conference session slides and corresponding material, templates, etc. I'd love to see direct links to the top downloads from OpenNTF.org, such as Blogsphere, Ext.nd, or whichever seem to be the most searched for there.

I'd also love to see direct links to all the end-user related applications on OpenNTF. I know I have a few up there. Lots of conversation lately has been how to drive end-user traffic to the Lotus community; this could be a great start.

On a side note, Yancy has also illustrated how it's a great idea to go over your web site's stats and search terms to give your users what they are looking for. According to him, over the past 30 days, the phrase "download" is the most searched-for term on PlanetLotus.org. My guess is that term skyrockets a few weeks after each conference.

Now. Time to dust off my presentations and downloads and get them up there. I have to find them first. To quote Ben Poole, who introduced me to this great phrase, "Gah!"

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Hello all,

I have a $$Return field on a form that redirects user's to different web sites, depending on their choices.  This works just fine.  My question is, is it possible to have the URL's open in a new window?  Currently, they just open in the current window and I would like my page to stay open in their browser when they go to a different URL.

My code looks like this:

I have a field called "FieldRedirect" that is hidden.  Depending on what the user clicks on, I use JavaScript to change the value of this field to 1, 2, 3, etc.  Then in my $$Return field, I have this:

redirect := @GetField("FieldRedirect");

@If(redirect="1"; "[http://www.someurl1.com]";redirect="2"; "[http://www.someurl2.com]"........etc.

Again, this works just fine, I would just like the url's to open in a new window.  Does anyone have any ideas?  Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you!

Stephen

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We are a manufacturing company located in Batavia, NY, which is between Buffalo, NY and Rochester, NY.  We are looking for a contract Notes Developer.  I have been developing myself for about 3 years, but we would like some additional help as I am the only Admin/Developer on staff.  We are looking for one who has experience in converting client apps to web apps, ODBC to our legacy AS400, and general notes experience.  This person would work side-by-side with me 4 days a week, in-house, for approximately 6-8 months.  This person would have more experience than I and teach me everything they know about development.  Interested applicants can reach me at jvollmer@graham-mfg.com or via phone at 585-343-2216 x 410 to set up an interview.
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I go to sleep on Thursday and all is well.... and then on Friday IBMLOTUSNOTES8.5BETAISAVAILABLEOMG!!?!

In what is I think the most streamlined place to announce it ever, IBM has released in directly in the Public Beta forums on LDD. Because it's a forum, we get a great easy to read thread containing:

1. A link to the download;
2. A brief list of "what's new";
3. Where to find documentation.

Apparently some users have been having trouble with the download, if you are among them, the general consensus seems to be to just keep trying and eventually you will get through.

If you are among the early downloaders/adopters, please let us know your first impressions, thoughts, etc.


Go get it! --> IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 Public Beta

Jess

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