Lotus Evangelist: #ibmconnect2013

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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Connect2013 Tip #3 Exporting Your Notes Calendar

Just a few more days and a whole new world will open before your eyes at Connect2013!

But for now, we have to build up interest and what better interest is there than various tips for users?

So far I discussed Lotus Notes letterhead and Sametime Goodies and for today I decided to discuss a Notes Calendar trick. This is helpful not just for the reasons described but if you need to do compliance work or some other similar areas.

If your calendar looks like mine for next week, you may be going to Connect.

What if you needed to get this on to a different mail file, say your Notes9 test site and it is not in your domain? Or in my case I want all my personal and company meetings to merge properly.

Fellow IBM Champion Mat Newman outlined some examples to get an ical feed for your Notes calendar and getting Facebook birthdays and events in your Notes calendar in case you are wondering. In this case I am unable to bridge the domains and see each others mail. You may find synching to Gmail and then back to your phone works but not in my specific case. So here is how i got around it.

1)Bring up your calendar and change the view to show summary from the drop down on the Right side of the page

2) Now check all the events you want copied over

3) Now click File-Export from the menu bar and enter a name, I used week and make sure to select calendar file (.ics). Also put the file someplace accessible from the 2nd machine, like a network share or a dropbox account or email it to the other domain.

4) You will be asked if you want ALL your documents exported, be sure to only click Selected Documents.

5) Now swap over to your other machine or client, open your calendar view and select File-Import. locate the file and open it.

6) You will see a pop up window asking about importing into your calendar with a preview of the entries. You may choose not to use notify me, your phone or client would be going off all the time.

7) Click OK

8) Done, simple enough. if you had similar entries already in place at the other location you will be prompted what to do with them

Maybe not as much fun as the other tips, but just as useful.

See you at Connect!

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Connect2013 Tip #2 Sametime Goodies

Everyone who uses Sametime loves it. It just works and does some great things too, when properly configured.

There are some things few people ever know about so I want to highlight some and end with a few links to nice ST tools.

1) Why does every Community use the same icon?

Because you never changed it. Really. You go into the Manage Sametime Community from File-Preferences-Sametime-Server Communities-CommunityName and the Icon tab and you have a prebuilt set of 5 choices or you could add a 16x16 icon same size as a favicon.

While this normally would not occur or be needed by the average user, if you also logged into

A) IBM Greenhouse for instance, or

B) ~~LotusLive~~ IBM SmartCloud for Social Business
you see where this could be helpful. I made those icons for you for each Community, enjoy.

2) Did you know you can check someone's calendar availability for a meeting from their sametime icon?
Right click on the person and select Check Availability. How awesome is that!

2a) While there, right click and look at all the options you have, Instant meeting! Collaboration History! Wait, you never tried these? Go do it now. I'll wait. Remember to thank the Sametime team and Product managers when you see them at Connect.

2b) If you used SUT or SUTLite you would have even more options and benefits like calling the person directly.

3) Did you know Sametime has a screen capture tool built-in as well?
Where you see the More drop down menu, you have a screen capture tool. It says Capture Part of Your Screen

4) If you use IBM Connections and Sametime you must get the IBM Connections Plugin for Sametime
No administrator needed to make it work, but your mileage may vary based on the installed version of Connections. You get a nice quick integration to hop to your Connections applications.

5) Got Skype? Pentos says they have a plugin for Skype usage with Sametime. Looks interesting and they provide a 10 day trial, just enough for those coming to Connect.

6) Many clients exist for android, iPhone, Macs, Linux in addition to the IBM provided client so ask around check it out. when I am doing testing I use QuipIM on my Android phone in addition to the IBM client.

Lots of Sametime sessions at Connect 2013, see you there!

Monday, January 21, 2013

A Week of Connect2013 User Tips #1 Company Logo on Letterhead

Connect2013 starts next week and I wanted to provide a daily tip for you the person using ~~Lotus~~ IBM Notes and Domino and naturally the administrator managing it as well. This is done using Notes 9 and works in previous editions as well. This is not a new option in Notes 9, but it never hurts to remind everyone.

Customizing your Notes client is not so difficult and can provide some healthy warm and friendly feelings when accomplished. Remember to always store all changes in a separate named database file with a different Notes ID otherwise your changes will be overwritten on upgrading. And document the procedure and reference points so anyone can repeat it later.

So for tip #1, I want to review how to put your Company Logo on every message you send.

You will need a Designer client, download it for FREE from IBM, which usually means the administrator is the one who will do this. However, you, the end user can have some fun on your own. You will need to change the mail template that all users mail files use as their template. I know, editing the mail template is not always approved, but if you already customize it in any way, this is really a simple update and your CEO, well your CMO at least, should love it.

There is a technote, #1094814 that outlines what to do but is a bit out dated, but here are some more details for those who are not so familiar with this topic.

Instructions to Edit the Letterhead:
Part 1: Adding a Logo Graphic
1) I will presume you have a file in GIF, JPG, PNG or Bitmap and is 88 pixels high and 70 pixels wide (although a size as large as 90 x 85 should fit in most cases) you can adjust the size in your graphics program.
2) Open Domino Designer
3) Select File-Application-Open from the top menu bar
4) Find your Server or select Local if you are testing or doing this for yourself

5) Locate the Mail 85.ntf or in my picture maill9.ntf
6) Highlight the file and click on Open
7) Find the Images directory and double click on it to open up a new tab and you will see all your images
8) Click on Import Image Resource and the pop up window asks where to find the file

9) Select the image to add
10) The image will now be listed and you need to edit the name so there is no extension and is named ltr-somename with an Alias of StdNotesLtr51 ( It is also suggested that you start numbering your custom letterheads at a value of 50, so as not to interfere with the letterhead numbers that ship with the Mail template per above technote)

Not done yet, you need to add the new letterhead logo into the drop down box so any user can find it.

Part 2: Editing the Drop Down List of Letterheads
1) With the mail template still open in Designer
2) Double Click on Forms to open a new tab with all the forms and find (Calendar Profile)
3) Double Click to open it
4) Find the Letterhead Tab and click on it
5) Click on DefaultLogo
6) You should see this line in the window below and to the right:
@If(logo = ""; "StdNotesLtr25"; Logo) or something similar which is the default

7) You can change this to your new logo default, I am using 19 as it was free at the time, but you should use above 50 to be safe.
8) Now double click on the DefaulLogo text/box
9) You will see a new pop up window open, go to the Control tab (The old style key)

10) In the Choices box create a new line and add the Graphic name with a pipe the | and StdNotesLtr51 as shown in the picture.

11) Once you added the graphic here, click on the Check Arrow that appears to save it
12) Press CTRL-S or close the Form tab and it will prompt to save it
13) Don't forget to sign the template with your Application ID so the ECL warnings do not pop up for users asking if they trust you.

Test your Work:

While in your inbox, click on More, then Preferences, then Mail tab then the Letterhead tab

Find your new Graphic by name and say ok.

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