ShowTable of Contents
Table of Contents
As a Domino Administrator, you know that in order for your users to be productive and happy, the Lotus Notes client must be working properly. Keeping the client configured for optimal performance and up to date is important. There are a number of tools available to help you accomplish those goals. This article introduces you to these features and provides you the access to the best documentation on these topics.
General Client/User Management Tips
- Lotus Notes is extremely powerful software; however, it seems that users are often not aware of how to use many of the features or realize they exist. End-user training can resolve this issue. There are many available options using third-party vendors, free videos from sources such as YouTube or the IBM Multimedia Library. There are also a number of videos related to learning Lotus Notes available in the Domino wiki.
- Starting at version 8.0, the concept of a "basic" client was introduced. The Standard client is Eclipse based and has a heavier footprint from the previous Lotus Notes client version. For more information, refer to technote 1264877.
- Use the Domino Smart Upgrade feature to simplify client updates. You can use smart upgrade to install maintenance releases, fix packs and/or other patches. For more information refer to the Smart Upgrade topic below.
- Know your clients. Do you know what client versions are still being used at your company? Not sure? You can use license tracking to help you answer this question.
- Ensure users only have editor access to their mail files. This is important to prevent users from changing their ACL permissions or granting other access as well as forbidding them to accidentally delete their own mail file. Refer to the InfoCenter for information regarding the access levels in the ACL. Note that users may still use the delegation functionality within the mail and calendaring features with editor access. Also, giving users editor access to the mail file on the server prevents the user from creating a full text index on their mail file. This is desired to ensure all full text indexes in your environment are created in a way to have the least amount of impact on your server.
- Did you know that you can automate application roll outs? If you are still sending application links to users or manually creating local replicas for your remote users, there is an easier way! Using policies you can add bookmarks or have databases automatically replicated to clients. For more information, please refer to the 2.3 Policies article.
- Managing unread marks can be confusing. For example, do you know unread marks are stored in a table? Do you know unread marks are unique to a user and may not replicate? To understand how unread marks work and options available, refer to technote# 1140018.
- Use a local replica and a mobile directory catalog to allow your users to send mail and perform directory look-ups off-line. For information, refer to the information below on local replicas and the wiki article 3.4 Multiple Directories.
- Be aware of client issues affecting your users. Configure automatic diagnostic collection (ADC) to work for you. With ADC, if the Lotus Notes client crashes, the nsd and other relevant diagnostic data will be sent to the fault recovery database on your Domino server for your review. Crashes can be easily monitored and categorized. For more information refer to What is the Automatic Diagnostic Data Collection tool.
- The maintenance tasks (fixup, updall, and compact) can be run in the Lotus Notes client. The tasks are located in the client executable directory and the name is preceded with an "n", for example nfixup.exe, ncompact.exe and nupdall.exe. The switches are the same as on the server.
Recent Contacts
Starting with the Lotus Notes client version 8, the concept of Recent Contacts was introduced. With Recent Contacts, anyone who you send/exchange mail with is automatically added to your "recent contacts" list. In addition to Recent Contacts, the type-ahead feature was enhanced. When addressing a message, type-ahead provides results in order where the contact you interact more often with is at the top of the list. This can be a good and be a very time-saving feature, it can also have some negatives. For example, if someone you exchange mail with gets a new e-mail address, a new entry will be added to your recent contacts list and the old address will remain. This can be frustrating with the type ahead feature. You should delete the old address to avoid sending emails to the old address. For more information on the recent contacts feature including information on disabling this feature, refer to
recent contacts FAQs.
Local Replicas
Using a local replica to access mail has become a more popular option over the years. It is easy to understand why when you consider a properly configured client with a local replica and directory catalog will provide users access to their mail from anywhere connected or disconnected. Also, users working from a local replica require less server memory and CPU to service compared with a user directly accessing their mail on the server. This means you may be able to add more users to a server or postpone an upgrade when moving from server based mail files to local mail files. When you hear this statement do you immediately think "I don't want to go to each client?" or "My users are going to complain because they won't see new mail immediately" or "If the mail is replicated locally it is a security risk as anyone could read that data if the PC or laptop is stolen". Fear not, Domino 8.5 takes away these concerns. Using desktop policies, you can automatically deploy local replicas, configure a default replication schedule and ensure the data is encrypted on the client. Even better, Domino 8.5.2 implements an enhancement to local replicas with a new feature called
managed mail replicas. With managed mail replicas:
- Users are automatically redirected to the server if the replica is unavailable for any reason.
- Not all mail has to be replicated to the client or mail can be retrieved from the server "on demand."
- Replication may be triggered immediately upon receipt of a message.
Simply put a managed mail replica eliminates the negatives of using a local replica. For more information regarding using a server based mail file versus a local replica or managed replica refer to the following article:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/IBM_Lotus_Notes_and_Domino_8.x_local_mail_replicas_Advantages_considerations_and_best_practices
For more information regarding Managed mail replicas refer to:
Configuring managed replicas using the Desktop Settings document
Managed Mail Replica: Use Mail free of network delays and server outages
Smart Upgrade
Smart Upgrade is the process to notify the user to update his/her client to a later release and perform the installation. As you learn about using Smart Upgrade, there is one key point that is often times overlooked. Policies, while recommended, are
not required to use smart upgrade. Keep this in mind as you learn about and implement Smart Upgrade to prevent issues with users being upgraded before you are ready.
The prerequisites for using Smart upgrade are:
- A Lotus Notes Client (version 6 or higher) already installed
- Connectivity to a Domino server
- Smart Upgrade database
- Smart Upgrade database defined in a Server configuration document.
For more information refer to: