Backing Up IBM Sametime Buddy and SUT Phone Lists

Did you ever start to work on something only to be deeply involved when someone comes over and asks what you are doing?

You respond and they look quizzically at you and ask why did you not just do X?

X of course is right under your nose and would be obvious to anyone else, except you because you were so involved in your project.

So I found myself when someone screamed about losing their Sametime buddy list. Sure there is a menu item to import/export your lists but you know, how many people remember to do that? Or if they ever do it?

Wrote a batch file to copy the lists to my network server. I included in it both stand alone and embedded options. Why? Because along the way I also realized, as an SUT user, that the SUT phone list was not copied in this, in fact it is stored in a different directory.

Thought it might be easier for people to just have a batch file to back it up than a rather serpentine directory structure to remember.

If you would like the batch files, you can find them here in a zip file with both backup and restore files and an instruction guide.

Suggest adding them to your desktop, that way you will notice them and click on backup randomly which would still be used more often than the default menu option I would bet.

Built using a Windows7 laptop and running Notes9 Embedded Sametime and SUT and also a stand alone 853 Sametime client.

Will update this blog post and the files as necessary over time with tracking details below:
Version 1.1 Added SUT Phone Lists to be backed up as well
Version 1.0 Backup Buddy Lists to Network Drive

How did I Miss This Feature in Notes?

Admittedly it probably is important to specific people in specific countries but I needed it for my Hebrew references. You learn something new every day. Or maybe in my case, you forget more than you remember.

With your Contacts db open (local names.nsf) select View-> Additional Language Options and select whichever language you need...or all 7! How cool is that!

The languages to choose from include: Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese and Cyrillic

It makes a list of the alphabet next to the English one and is searchable as well.

I thought it was new in Notes 9, but went back to an 853 client and it was there, looks like we got it in the 8.X stream.

Carry on with your normal work now.

R8 Addressing, You Worked Where?

As some of you know, Lotus Notes R8 is all about you/me... the user.
Make life better. And it does, it is and Outlook clients want to see it in action.

Now a part which I like is you can now retain email addresses from every email you send or receive in a sort of indexed view. So the email you deleted, you might find the person's email address still there. Thank the Lotus God.

On the other hand you may find yourself amazed at the email addresses you have in your history. I have about 15 that come up now. Cool, but weird since some are 12 years old.

Some users may find this odd that 6 years after the Lotus/IBM merger for instance, you can still come up as joe bloggs/sta/lotus as well as joe bloggs/sta/ibm.

The answer my friend is delving in deeper and you will need to wait for 801 to resolve this in a simpler manner.

In Notes 8, a view is created in the Personal Address Book (names.nsf) which stores up to 2000 contacts to which mail has been addressed. When you address a memo, the client will automatically provide entries from this view which correspond to the text being entered.

But if this is an issue for you or your client and they just can not be bothered to check who they are emailing, then you need to follow this tech note I have copied the text for those unable to link to the file:

The contents of the Recent Contacts view can be reset by shutting down the Notes client, and moving or deleting the contents of the directory,\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\com.ibm.notes.dip\...

where is the path to your Notes Data directory, such as C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\Data.

Note: The previous contents of the Recent Contacts view may still display until a new message is sent, which populates an entry in the Recent Contacts view and causes the dipTable.ser file in the com.ibm.notes.dip directory to be re-created.

In the end, moving ahead brings about more possibilities than previously known or thought of, so it is here too.

I look forward to where the 801 and later versions take us for the contacts/pnab/pnames.nsf/personal address book which so rarely gets a 2nd look by so many in the industry.