Abstract
This document is intended to be a concise summary of Business Cards in the Sametime Application. Most of the information provided here was compiled from the IBM Lotus Sametime 8.0.2 information center.
Business Cards are enabled in the Sametime Application by default. Basic elements/attributes available are:
- Photo
- Name
- Company
- E-mail address
- Telephone
- Address or location
- Title
To access Business Card information you must log into the Sametime Server as someone with administrative privileges. The Business Card Setup page is selected from the Sametime Administration page under the Configuration section (Business Card Setup).
To set up the Business Card, choose the fields that represent the information that you want to display in the Business Card. To reorder the list, select an entry in the list and use the up or down buttons to raise or lower the element in the hierarchy of information. (If the photo feature is used, Photo should be the first item in the selected list.)
Business Cards in Sametime are supported with both the Domino Directory and LDAP. The Attribute Values for the above elements will be automatically populated according to the selection you made for directory type during installation. A table is provided below. Populating the specific attributes for a particular brand of LDAP server will not be covered here.
| Attribute Name | Domino style attribute value | LDAP style attribute value |
| Name | FirstName, MiddleInitial, LastName | cn |
| Title | JobTitle | title |
| Address | Location | postalAddress |
| Telephone | OfficePhoneNumber | telephoneNumber |
| E-mail address | InternetAddress | mail |
| Photo |
| jpegPhoto |
| Company | CompanyName | ou |
The simplest configuration of business cards is that shown above. Without doing anything else (LDAP attributes must be configured to those specific to your brand of directory) the information above, with the exception of Photo, will be displayed in the Business Card. It is also possible configure Business Cards to display additional information. What you see above is a Single Repository. To display more fields it is necessary to configure an additional repository - Dual Repositories.
Types of Dual repositories:
- The dual repository with Domino/LDAP directories
- The dual repository with LDAP/Domino directories
- The dual repository with Domino/Custom Notes databases
- The dual repository with LDAP/Custom Notes databases
The Primary Storage for the user information is what we discussed first, either Domino or LDAP. The Secondary Storage can be either LDAP, Domino or a Custom Notes database. It is important to note that the primary storage can never be of the same type as the second repository; for example, the primary and secondary storage cannot both be a Domino directory.
The application that runs the Business Card is an HTTP servlet called UserInfo. It pulls information from both the Primary and Secondary Storage to populate the Business Card. No matter which configuration you choose, if you use Dual Repository, you must update the UserInfoConfig.xml file.
RECAP:
Basic Business card information is pulled from the primary directory configured during the installation of the Sametime Server: Domino or LDAP
If you would like to include other than the basic information shown in the table above you must use a Secondary Repository.
The UserInfo servlet pulls the information from both repositories to populate the Business Card.
The UserInfo servlet has an associated configuration file named UserInfoConfig.xml
Options available for a secondary repository are:
- LDAP directory
- Domino directory
- Notes Custom database
This gives us the possible following combinations:
| Primary Storage/Secondary Storage | Domino directory | LDAP directory | Notes Custom database |
| Domino directory | NO | YES | YES |
| LDAP directory | YES | NO | YES |
Each repository type is different so it is necessary to use specific code to pull the information. That code is termed "Black box". They are basically search engines that operate against the various types of repository.
Since there are three different storage types, Sametime provides three different black boxes to search for user information (one per storage type). These are:
- Notes–used to search a Domino directory
- LDAP–used to search a LDAP directory
- Notes_custom_db–used to search a customized Notes database
About the User Information servlet application
The Business Card requires information about users to display in hover-over mode in the business card feature of the Sametime client. This information is retrieved by the UserInfo application which serves both as an HTTP servlet running on the Domino server and as a Sametime service. The servlet reads its configuration parameters from the UserInfoConfig.xml on the Domino server and from a local database where your administrator updates are written.
The UserInfoConfig.xml file, generated during the installation, contains an LDAP section if, during install, the server is configured to work with LDAP, and a Notes section if it is configured to work with a Domino directory. The UserInfoConfig.xml file contains user information fields, and also contains such data as host, port, and the LDAP or NOTES "black box" which retrieves data from the directory that Sametime is configured to work with.
The UserInfo component contains two default implementations for black boxes, one for Domino which retrieves details and photos from the Domino directory, and one for LDAP, which retrieves details and photos from the LDAP directory. In the out-of-the-box configuration, UserInfo servlet works with one black box which is configured upon installation. Sametime also supports retrieval of user information from multiple LDAP hosts.
UserInfo supports data retrieval from more than one data resource by activating several black box types. It is important to note that the first black box specified in UserInfoConfig.xml should always be the one that retrieves data from the same directory that the Sametime server is configured to work with. The client uses the DN (distinguished name) that is received from this directory during queries to the service; therefore, the first black box being searched must contain the distinguished name.
As a quick test to determine if the UserInfo servlet is functioning properly you can send a request to it through a web browser. The format of the request is as follows:
http://[hostname]/servlet/UserInfoServlet?operation=3&setid=1&userId=[distinguished name]
Note: [hostname] is the placeholder for the server's actual Fully Qualified Internet Host Name. [distinguished name] is the canonical name of the user
Examples:
Domino Directory:
http://sametime.ibm.com/servlet/UserInfoServlet?operation=3&setid=1&userId=cn=Sametime User/O=IBM
Active Directory:
http://sametime.ibm.com/servlet/UserInfoServlet?operation=3&setid=1&userId=cn=Sametime User,cn=users,dc=austin,dc=ibm,dc=com
TDS Directory:
http://sametime.ibm.com/servlet/UserInfoServlet?operation=3&setid=1&userId=cn=uid=Sametime user,ou=Austin,o=IBM
Things to watch out for when entering this string:
- No spaces anywhere.
- UserInfoServlet is case sensitive: UserinfoServlet, UserInfoservlet, userinfoservlet.... will not work. You must enter the string exactly as it appears here - UserInfoServlet.
- No single or double quotes in the URL address.
If you receive UNKNOWN check your spelling, confirm the directory is searchable and can be reached and that the user actually exists in the directory. If all that checks out you'll want to enable tracing. For more on this see the Sametime online infocenter section on "Troubleshooting Business Cards".
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/sametime/
Examples of UserInfoConfig.xml
Taken from a server installed as Domino Directory:
Taken from an 801 Sametime server installed as (Domino) LDAP
The UserInfo servlet will read the UserInfoConfig.xml on startup and determine which source to pull the display data from. To use a field in the Secondary Repository instead of the Primary just remove the the values for the attributes that will be retrieved from secondary storage. Attribute Value (Business Card Setup) in the Configuration section of the Sametime Administration pages (described above). The exception to this is whichever field you choose to associate or link the Primary Repository with the Secondary. This is see in both examples as "CommonFieldName". The attribute you choose for this must contain a unique value for each user, a good selection would be "E-mail address" which corresponds to the Internet Address field in the Domino Directory.
If changes are made to a any of the fields used in the Business Card the information can be immediately updated by Right Clicking on that person in your Contact List and selecting "Refresh Person Info".
You may notice an arrow in the corner of the business card which expands to show some additional and possibly redundant information. This is the Additonal Attributes section. It is not possible to reorder this section, however, in the 8.5 release there will be a parameter in the plugin_customization.ini file that will allow you to hide the section.
In closing I recommend watching the web for the following technotes that are currently in progress:
1245560 Sametime: How does UserInfo Servlet and Blackboxes work?
1328398 Troubleshooting Business Cards