Engage 2022 Bruges - Tips To Delight Your Domino Admin

Below is a copy of my presentation from Engage “30 Tips To Delight Your Domino Admin”

This was my first presentation in over two years and Engage couldn’t have been a better choice. As always the event was packed with people and content as well as being hosted in beautiful Bruges. Thank you to Theo Heselmans and Hilde for all their hard work and pulling together the whole thing.

From day to day administration to advanced configuration from automated maintenance to running the best multi client mail server on the market, from advanced security to data access, prepare to be surprised and delighted as we cover as many top tips that we can fit into the time of this session.

All About That Volt (v11 launch)

We are still a few hours out from the v11 launch event for Domino and Sametime live from Tokyo (https://www.cwpcollaboration.com/blogs/join-us-for-a-live-broadcast-from-tokyo-december-4-our-global-product-launch) but there is already much talk about “Volt” a low code (maybe no code) development tool.

I found this great short demo video which shows what it is better than I can explain having not touched it myself. Very smart stuff that enables rapid simple application development that can work on mobile, be extended with more complex programming if required, and easily integrated with other systems such as sharepoint or salesforce.

Looking forward to hearing all the news in only 6 hours.

Sametime v10 - Technology Changes Galore

Sametime v10 Limited Use shipped last week and later on this week I’ll be posting a step by step guide to my install but for now I wanted to talk about the technology changes that it brings. This release focuses only on the Community server elements, the other components such as Meetings will be part of the v11 version which is due to be released along with Domino v11 towards the end of 2019.

My thanks to Mat Newman who posted this updated roadmap on his blog where he also shares more detail about the licensing

20190601 Sametime Roadmap - Current

“Entitlement” is part of your Notes licensing and enables you to use the chat features of Sametime inside the Notes client, the browser mail cilent , a web client and the standalone mobile client.

The largest changes for the clients in v10 are the support for persistent chat (and chat history) across multiple devices, an improved conversation UI, a new lightweight web client, and the removal of the System Console as a requirement for the Community server install.  Those are all great changes that justify an upgrade to your existing Community servers by themselves.

Starting with the biggest technology change, the System Console (which itself required WebSphere and DB2) is now optional and it is possible to install and manage a Community server entirely on Domino. However if you want to use either the browser client or mobile client you will need to still install the Sametime Proxy server which does still require WebSphere and DB2.

To maintain the persistent chat across devices, a server-side storage solution is required and in this release it is MongoDB.  HCL have committed to replacing that in v11 and having a data migration solution out of Mongo so it’s a temporary solution.

You may have heard that Sametime 10 will be 64 bit only on Domino but in fact this first version still requires Domino 32bit and at least 9.0.1 FP10 version.  Domino 10 is 64bit only so right now Sametime 10 cannot be installed on Domino 10.  That does however make it suitable for an in-place upgrade to your existing servers which will already be on 32bit Domino.  This is still very early in the release and the technical requirements are not yet published but will eventually be here .

Last week HCL hosted a webcast where they introduced Sametime v10 and answered questions, I’d recommend looking at the Q&A and watching the webcast here

I have been documenting my own install this weekend - I opted for an in-place upgrade as I assume that’s what the majority of people will be doing on this release, and will be publishing that in the next couple of days.

Face/Off Domino vs Exchange On Premises @ Engage

Here is my presentation discussing how Exchange and Outlook on premises differs from Domino and Notes given at Engage in Brussels last week.

I hope you find it useful, this was my first presentation pulling together my ideas from the past few years of working with Exchange on premises integration projects.

How do Exchange on premises and the various Outlook clients line up against Domino on premises and its clients? In this session we’ll look at the configuration options and management interfaces for each server as well as the client options and client behaviours. We’ll also discuss the general ecosystems, considerations for migrating or co-existing and lessons learned. A great session for Domino admins who want to know more about the other side.

Exchange 2019 On Prem Install

In a couple of weeks time I’ll be in Brussels presenting at Engage and one of my sessions is Face/Off Domino vs Exchange On Premises (Weds at 8am).  I have an Exchange 2016 install but since Exchange 2019 shipped last October I wanted to update my install with that so I could use the latest version to demo.  In truth very little has changed in Exchange on premises since 2008 but I don’t like using an old version in my presentations.  So this is the story of the 4 days it took me to complete the install.

Four. Days.

Day 1: My big mistake.  I decided to uninstall Exchange 2016 instead of upgrading it. I wanted an entirely clean server to demonstrate.  The uninstall failed half way through.  It wouldn’t uninstall and it was still listed under installed programs.  Several hours of trial and error and internet research confirmed this is a common problem with Exchange uninstalls and the “fix” is to flatten the machine and start over.  The problem was the Exchange install was on the same box as the Active Directory 2016 Domain Controller which I really really didn’t want to flatten.

Day 2: Being Stubborn.  I’d do just about anything to avoid flattening the entire box and rebuilding so some more internet research took me to several blogs that talked about manually removing registry entries in order to clean up the install.  Hundreds of registry entries.  After doing that I still couldn’t delete or rename the folder despite no services being present so then it was into safe mode to do the rename.  That worked and I started the upgrade to Windows 2019 (the only supported platform for Exchange 2019). You can now do an inplace Windows upgrade from 2016 to 2019 and that worked maintaining all my Active Directory settings.

Day 3: Accepting the inevitable. Off I go with an Exchange 2019 install once more which started to install then prompted me for the Exchange installer disk.  It wouldn’t take the mounted disk I had started the installer from.  After a few hours’ research I realised this is a common red herring error that basically means the server can detect some old installation files and won’t complete.  At this point there were no services, no directory, nothing listed under installed programs.  Sometimes you have to accept you’ve strayed too many hacks from your starting point it’s best to startover and do it properly.  Windows 2019 install #2 this time letting it blat the server and rebuilding Active Directory from scratch (luckily it’s just my demo machine and I could do that but good luck if it’s your production environment).

At the end of day 3 I had a new Windows 2019 Domain Controller fully patched and I was ready to start my Exchange 2019 install.

Day 4: The Long Road.  Before Exchange will install the installer program will verify you have all the pre-requisites required on the operating system.  There are many from IIS management tools to .Net 4.7.1 to the basic authentication system.  A scrolling page of missing features is shown with URL links explaining them.  Since 90% of those features were actually Windows features you go to add/remove features to install I don’t know why the Exchange installer doesn’t just offer to install them for me because it took some time to work out where in the multi level hierarchy of features each one was.  In addition serveral of the URLs brought up 404 pages on the Microsoft site refering to Exchange 2003 and that link not being available(!).  Anyway finally after a few hours of digging around, downloading libraries, installing features and restarting it agreed to install Exchange 2019 and I was done.

If you take one lesson from this it should be that the Microsoft solution to many problems seems to be “flatten and start over”.  For that reason I wouldn’t put Exchange on any machine you wouldn’t be happy to flatten and start over or replace.

 

Language Packs, Verse and A New App Dev Pack, Someone Has Had A Busy Week..

Well a bit more than a week.

This week the G1 language packs for Notes 10.0.1 that include French, German, Japanese, Italian, Brazilian, Chinese and Korean were made available.  If you are now having a bit of deja vu that’s because these language packs were already released once and very quickly withdrawn when it was discovered there were considerable problems in the way the translations had been done.  To their credit HCL withdrew the products almost immediately when they were told of the issues and have been working to redo and re-release them all.

So why were the bad versions released at all?  This goes back to the transfer from IBM to HCL.  In the IBM days there was a large team who were entirely responsible for product translation but weren’t part of the collaboration development team, they were just a general IBM product translation team.  When HCL took over the products they didn’t inherit that team which meant they also didn’t inherit any of the knowledge that team had about the quirks and challenges when doing the Notes translations.  HCL went ahead with having the translations done without realising the hurdles they needed to verify. None of that is great but in my opinion it shows commitment and intent that they withdrew the products almost immediately and then made redoing the translations correctly their highest priority.  They have also committed to a day 1 release of G1 languages with English in future versions.

So we had a stumble but one that was publicly claimed, explained and fixed quickly.  I can’t expect more than that.

Last week was the release of the new update to App Dev pack for Domino v 1.0.1 which includes the Node.js integration features that can now be depoloyed under Windows as well as Linux.

The new IAM (Identity and Access Management) service provides OAuth authentication for applications running outside Domino to Domino resources.  By installing IAM you can authorise it to use LDAP over Domino or Active Directory as its IdP (identity provider) for authenticating users.  There are a few steps in setting up IAM including setting up secure LDAPS in Domino or Active Directory so I’ll be covering that in more detail on its own blog.

More on the App Dev Pack update here and IAM specifically here

Last week we also got an update to Verse on Premises ( v1.0.7 ) which I have rolled out for a few customers so far.   The deployment if you already have verse installed is very easy (just make sure you back up your Plugins folder before deleting the old files). Here is a list of new features including some significant calendar enhancements and work towards providing the Verse UI on mobile browsers where it’s not appropriate to use the Verse app.

Lastly I heard very good things about the Connections workshop (jam) in Switzerland this week with the product team working to brainstorm ideas on Connections wanted features.  I will be attending the London workshop next week and look forward to hearing more.

 

 

 

 

 

The Painful Journey To Abandoning iCloud

As some of you know I’m very committed to the Mac ecosystem.  I have Mac laptops, an iPad with over 4000 books, iPhone (not the latest because who needs that), a watch Apple TVs x 4 etc etc.  I’m also extremely risk averse and cloud wary.  I gave in and let Apple put all my books in the cloud just because iTunes sucks for syncing and cloud syncing worked across all my devices however I also had a lengthy open support call last year with Apple wanting to know where my books were now stored on my Mac so I could find them and back them up

“they are all in the cloud”

“yes I get that but they are also on my laptop so where are they”

“no they are only in the cloud”

“well that’s not true because here I go, switching off wifi and hey I can still read my books in ibooks so they are here somewhere”

..>> pause for several weeks whilst this is escalated>>>>

“they are on your Macbook but stored in a way you can’t find them or access them”

(please no advice on this one, I found my own workaround to find them and backup un-DRM copies)

So.. iCloud. I agreed about 18 months’ ago to let my Documents and Desktop folders sync to iCloud.  My only reason for that was so that I could get at files if I needed to on my iPad or by logging into any browser but tbh I rarely used it.  Still it worked and seemed a decent idea.

Then one Saturday about two weeks’ ago it all went horribly wrong..

I was sat working when I got an alert saying facetime had been added to my watch.  Which was odd.  My watch is 18 months old and was on my wrist and nothing had changed. The watch itself had no alert.  So off I go digging and I find under my account and devices a list of my current watch and an old watch I wiped and sold to a friend to give to his wife 18 months ago.  Well still odd but no big deal.  They hadn’t done anything so clearly just an odd gremlin.  Just in case I removed that old watch from my devices.

Then I got alerts saying my credit cards had been removed from my watch.  Except they hadn’t been removed from the watch on my wrist and the other watch was flattened before I handed it over 18 months ago.

I did some research, found nothing nefarious and let it go.   I did notice I had been logged out of all my Apple accounts on all my devices and things like Sonos had to be re-authorised again.  Weird and annoying but a side effect of whatever happened I assume**

Then a few days later I restarted my laptop.  I probably only restart it every two weeks so this was the first time since that alert.  The laptop restarts but finder and anything that uses finder like spotlight or even terminal were entirely non responsive.  They would briefly work long enough for me to type 2 characters or click on a folder then there would be a spinning ball for about 25 seconds before it would respond.  That gradually got slower and slower over a few minutes.  So off we go to research because I now have a broken laptop.

After several hours research we found this article which gave a bit of a clue as it pointed to a cloud corruption problem http://osxdaily.com/2015/04/17/fix-slow-folder-populating-cloudkit-macosx/

Unlike some of the other Finder troubles, the Finder process usually doesn’t eat much CPU or crash repeatedly, it’s just inordinately slow when loading folder views, populating files, and opening folders.

So I followed the instructions and deleted the files they specify and immediately my laptop was more responsive.  OK.. Well that was a scary afternoon and I’ll just go ahead and disable cloud syncing so that never happens again.

Did you know Apple doesn’t let you do that?  If you disable cloud syncing for Documents anbd Desktop it actually deletes the contents of those folders and keeps the files in the cloud for 30 days in case you want them back.  So that’s dumb.  I decided to move the contents of both folders to temporary folders, disable cloud syncing then move them back but my laptop was working and I was busy so I parked that for later.

Later…. about a week later again the Finder sluggishness came back but this time I knew how to fix it.  Once it was fixed I went ahead and moved the contents of both Documents and Desktop to temporary folders, disabled cloud syncing and moved them back.  My laptop immediately started working, finder was faster than it had been for a very long time and I’ve had no more problems.

Now I wonder if that first alert about this non existent “watch” was a precursor to some cloud corruption on my account.  That cloud corruption caused all the authentication for my account to be lost and also corrupted the authentication for my cloud data which only tried to reconnect when I signed back into the OS.

** for anyone who was wondering if I had asked an apple “genius” about this. Yes I did. No they had no clue what I was talking about since most of them are “iphone experts” in store now and the one who called me back seemed to think I made it up.

Lesson learned. Apple iCloud for all but my books is now disabled.

Think-Ing From Far Away Pt5 - The Big Wrap Up

Our final podcast of Think-ing from far away is a wrap up of the week, announcements and thoughts in general.  We were joined by Maria Nordin from ISW, Kris de Bisschop from Groupwave and Christoph Adler from Panagenda. All dosed up with coffee at 8am on the last day in San Francisco.

The final wrap up podcast is here

Content from Think is already beginning to be posted here  You must have an IBM ID to login and download although you don’t need to be a registered Think attendee.  Some content already available including:

Supercharged Notes 10 Upgrade: Turning the Worst Notes Deployments into the Best from Christoph Adler and Jared Roberts

Domino on Docker Boot Camp from Thomas Hampel (and Daniel Nashed)

Get Started with IBM Connections Customizer for Dummies  from Wannes Rams and Martin Donnelly

Best Practices for Maximizing Your Investment in IBM Verse On-Premises from Drew Birnbaum and Barry Rosen

Using Node-RED to Bring IBM Domino Content into Your Web and Mobile Applications from Scott Good

Register for one of the IBM Connections in person design “jams”

Keep an eye on the Social Connections site for the announcement of where the European even in September this year with a keynote from Richard Jefts will be held.

Follow Twitter

@IBMSocialBiz

@IBMChampions

@HCL_CollabDev

@IBMLive

@planetlotus 

IBM Champions- All - List

Blogs

PlanetLotus http://planetlotus.org

IBM Collaboration Solutions Blog https://www.ibm.com/blogs/collaboration-solutions/

HCL Collaboration Workflow Platforms https://www.cwpcollaboration.com/blogs

Aha! Domino Ideas Lab https://domino.ideas.aha.io

Aha! Connections Ideas Lab https://connections.ideas.aha.io

Collaboration Today https://collaborationtoday.info

Other In Person Events Already Announced For 2019

https://engage.ug

https://collabsphere.org

https://admincamp.de

https://dnug.de

https://isbg.no

https://socialconnections.info

Think-Ing From Far Away Pt4 - It’s All Connections

Today’s podcast of Think-ing from far away is all about Connections.  We have heard so much news coming out of Think already regarding Connections so we were joined by Sandra Buehler from Belsoft and Wannes Rams from Ramsit - both kindly sat on the floor in a quiet corner of the Moscone Center!.  We were also joined by Chris Reckling who leads the design team in Littleton MA to talk about what’s new and what’s coming.

The Connections podcast is here

What is new with CR4, what’s coming with CR5, how to work with customiser and how to register for the design jams rolling out this year starting in April and May.

A great summary page of all that’s new in Connections

Register for one of the IBM Connections in person design “jams”

Keep an eye on the Social Connections site for the announcement of where the European even in September this year with a keynote from Richard Jefts will be held.

Great to hear so much news from Community and developments continuing to progress fast during the transitiion from IBM to HCL.

Next up: Connections from Think 2019 !

Follow Twitter

⁦@IBM @ Think

@IBMSocialBiz

@IBMChampions

#Think2019

#IBMThink2019

@HCL_CollabDev

@IBMLive

@planetlotus 

IBM Champions- All - List

Blogs

PlanetLotus http://planetlotus.org

IBM Collaboration Solutions Blog https://www.ibm.com/blogs/collaboration-solutions/

HCL Collaboration Workflow Platforms https://www.cwpcollaboration.com/blogs

Aha! Domino Ideas Lab https://domino.ideas.aha.io

Aha! Connections Ideas Lab https://connections.ideas.aha.io

Collaboration Today https://collaborationtoday.info

Other In Person Events Already Announced For 2019

https://engage.ug

https://collabsphere.org

https://admincamp.de

https://dnug.de

https://isbg.no

https://socialconnections.info

Think-Ing From Far Away Pt3 - Community Day & Chairman’s Address

Today’s podcast of Think-ing from far away is entirely “far away” as we welcome Andreas Ponte from Belsoft in Switzerland and Mike Smith from The Turtle Partnership to discuss the news from Community Day and the Chairman’s Address from Ginni Rometty that we all watched via live stream.

The Community & Chairman’s address podcast is here

What is IBM’s new message and what does that mean to those of us working in the collaboration space?

Replays including the Chairman’s address:

Watch sessions live stream: https://www.ibm.com/events/think/watch/

Think Today “newsdesk

The new HCL Partner Connect Program https://www.cwpcollaboration.com/hcl-partner-connect-registration.html

Domino 11 Sneak Peek registration on March 14th

Register for one of the IBM Connections in person design “jams”

Great to hear so much news from Community and developments continuing to progress fast during the transitiion from IBM to HCL.

Next up: Connections from Think 2019 !

Follow Twitter

⁦@IBM @ Think

@IBMSocialBiz

@IBMChampions

#Think2019

#IBMThink2019

@HCL_CollabDev

@IBMLive

@planetlotus 

IBM Champions- All - List

Blogs

PlanetLotus http://planetlotus.org

IBM Collaboration Solutions Blog https://www.ibm.com/blogs/collaboration-solutions/

HCL Collaboration Workflow Platforms https://www.cwpcollaboration.com/blogs

Aha! Domino Ideas Lab https://domino.ideas.aha.io

Aha! Connections Ideas Lab https://connections.ideas.aha.io

Collaboration Today https://collaborationtoday.info

Other In Person Events Already Announced For 2019

https://engage.ug

https://collabsphere.org

https://admincamp.de

https://dnug.de

https://isbg.no

https://socialconnections.info