SnTT - Who Blocked my Activities in Notes?

It may be Halloween but I doubt the ghosts in the machine caused me to find this situation.

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:

1. Close the Notes client.
2. Edit the following file in a Text editor:
   \workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.runtime\.settings\com.ibm.openactivities.client.common.prefs
3. Set the following parameter:
   user.is.offline=false
4. 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.

The Social Zombie

I was working in the lab late one night, when my eyes beheld an eerie site, a new social site popped up asking me to join them.

What crazy thing is this I thought? Join us it said. Join them? There must be social sites I bet even for vampires, werewolves and zombies. (Yes they are real sites, may not be safe at work for obvious reasons.)

Social sites? Don't they know people have work to do? Talk to your buddies after work or on the weekends.

It was then I heard a knock on the lab door and opened it to find one of the guys in a vampire costume. It being Halloween and all, I laughed and asked what he needed, aside from my blood.

He replied, "we don't do that anymore". We suck people's lives away by their social sites they visit. It's much less headache for us.

Okay, how can I help you again I asked?

We have noticed you rarely use any social sites. It is your prerogative, but you are hurting my fellow, shall we say, comrades. I was sent to outline to you all the great things you could be doing and helping us at the same time.

I'll bite, what do you want me to do? Post a picture? Tweet?

Nothing that simple, he said. We need you to help our zombies mobilize.

Huh?

You heard me, we need the zombies to organize. They have started bugging us, we the undead, but we have better things to do. Since the zombies all follow whatever the hottest social site is, we want you to start posting misinformation. Something like how Google has Zoggles, some reader for zombies that have lost their eyes.

Are you crazy? Why would I do this? I would be lying and not be authentic at all, which is what being social is all about.

At this, he fell over laughing.

That's a good one, authentic, nice, who put you up to that? Some politician?

Look, try it, you might have fun, anything is better than hanging out in a lab all by yourself waiting for a vampire to visit.

He had me there. Off I went to wreck havoc with the zombies.

Happy Halloween because even Social Media deserves some fun.