IBM Notes 9 introduced a slight UI change which you may not see if you are not using IBM Connections or installed the option.
There no longer is an Activities option when you look at your File->Preferences view.
There is now a Connections option and Activities is now a sub option under it.
Why is this important? It isn't per se. I happen to come across this problem where my Connections details in preferences are greyed out. Not through a policy setting or anything else i could come up with at the time.
However, there is a Community Article at the Wiki that states the following, it still worked for me on 9.0.1:
Q. I am unable to set up the Activities sidebar in a Lotus Notes 8.5 client to connect to the SmartCloud Engage Activities server because the Activities preferences are greyed out (that is, disabled) when trying to edit the sidebar.
A. If the Activities Preference is greyed out, it means the Activities sidebar was in Local/Offline mode at a time when the server became unreachable.
The Activities sidebar in Notes 8.5 is designed so that if you are working off-line, the Activities Server Settings cannot be modified, thus the option is disabled or greyed out. This design causes problems when your password on the server is changed while in Local/Offline mode and the server is no longer accessible.
To recover from this scenario, perform the following steps:
- Close the Notes client.
- Edit the following file in a Text editor:
\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.runtime\.settings\com.ibm.openactivities.client.common.prefs- Set the following parameter:
user.is.offline=false- Start the Notes client.
The Activities preferences should now be available.
For a Macintosh OS, the path of the settings file is [home]/Library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data/Expeditor/Applications/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.settings/com.ibm.openactivities.client.common.prefs
Hope this helps some of you out there.