Sherpa Software
Recent Entries | Lotus Notes 6.5x End of Life ScheduleDenny Russell May 9 2008 09:30:00 AMJust happened across this bookmark and thought it was a good reminder that the schedule for the final releases of Lotus Notes 6.5 is out and end of support is now less than 1 year away.
Small issue with a sidebar applicationDenny Russell May 6 2008 07:05:51 AMA while back, Alan Lepofsky had a great post on how to 'Add a view to the sidebar' and I did so for my customer support incidents. This works great if you never use any other view in that database.As soon as I open that Database and switch to another view, the next time I open Notes, my sidebar view no longer works. So I'm turning to the best people in the industry to see if anyone has any creative ideas to make this work all the time. Is there a way to set this view as my default every time I open the database. I believe the only setting like this is a global one for all users and I don't want to do that to everyone else. Any ideas would be great.
What a great Community this is!!!Denny Russell May 5 2008 06:53:04 AMI've often talked about what a great, strong community the IBM/Domino world is and again, I've not been disappointed. I'm amazed at what everyone has done to help out a 'friend'. If you haven't taken the time to see what I'm talking about, go on over to PlanetLotus and check it. Know that from all of us at Sherpa, you and your family will always be in our hearts and prayers.
ADMIN 2008Denny Russell May 1 2008 12:42:49 PMWith another Admin show almost wrapping up, it got me thinking. In the weeks leading up to Lotusphere, and during and for weeks after the show the buzz was all about what's happening in and around the IBM/Lotus community.Admin seems to have such a different feeling. I know from what we see at the Booth, it's a much smaller focused audience but I'm curious how others view this show. Why do you go, what are you looking for when you are there and what's this show been like this year. Do you find it to be a better show than Lotusphere?
So what does "On-line" really mean?Denny Russell April 25 2008 03:07:19 PMAbout a week ago, I signed for a new loan and was told, "We have on-line banking you can sign up for on-line and check your account on-line and manage your payments on-line." So I thought, what the heck, I do everything else on-line, I might as well do this one too.So last night I sit down at the computer and go the website provided and see the form to 'Register on-line'. Should be simple, right? After filling in a half dozen fields and clicking submit, I'm prompted with an error, that they are unable to complete my request on-line and I should stop by the nearest branch. Huh? Stop by, isn't this an on-line setup? I tried a few more times with no luck so I gave up. I waited until this morning and called and sure enough, I was instructed I would have to stop by and fill out a form. After several questions from me, I was assured I had to fill out this form in the office and I would be all set. So my wife was out and about and stopped by to fill out the form, only to be told, we would receive a letter in the mail with our password in 5-7 business days. Huh? Let me get this straight. I've got to stop in the office to fill out a form to get a userID to log into your website. Then I have to wait for the snail mail truck to deliver my password? Wow. With all this manual labor going on, I'm surprised your rates were the lowest. If the woman who answered on my call back this afternoon is reading this blog, I certainly apologize, I didn't mean to shoot the messenger.
Is that the bottom of my inbox?Denny Russell April 18 2008 03:26:09 PMAs I work, I try to use my Inbox as my 'To-Do' list. It's nice to keep it under control and really see who needs what from me. This afternoon, for the first time in a long, long time, there is no scrolling on the right side.This doesn't mean I'm sitting here looking for things to do, it just mean's I'm caught up, sort of. Lot of other things going on, but it's nice to just see a few things from customers and no one waiting for too much from me. What a nice way to go into the weekend. It's gotta be 5 o'clock somewhere, right?
How do you learn?Denny Russell April 15 2008 07:28:15 AMIt's been a while since my last post, but for good reason. We are working on some good things at Sherpa. Reading this post about learning styles really has me thinking about all the different types and how not everyone learns the same way. While we've gotten better at our product documentation over the years, there is always room for improvement.Currently, I'm working on rebuilding our customer resource center. Soon, you will have all the documentation in one easy to search location. These will include some of the following: - Technotes with text and screen shots. - Self-paced Tutorials that will guide you thru step by step that you will go at your own pace allowing you to configure the product as you go. - Video Tutorials that will be quick 'how-to's' with voice over the visual presentation to lead you through your tasks. As always, the F1 help built into the products will also help guide you but each will provide a different way to accomplish the same task. Keep watching the Newsletters and this blog for release info.
By the way, you need to learn Lotus NotesDenny Russell April 7 2008 05:50:47 AMLotus what?In 1995, I was a substitute teacher for a High School teaching business classes to 9th - 12th graders. I had a guest speaker come into my accounting class and talk about technology and things they were doing in the accounting field. Fast forward about a year and I was still a long term sub when the phone rang. The same guy was calling me because his Accounting firm had spun off a new division and was going to offer IT services and training and they wanted me to come in and train their customers. Just newly married and still looking for a full-time job, I jumped on the opportunity. Day 1 on the job, he walks me over to a computer with this screen of all these little box icons and says, this is Lotus Notes. We use it to communicate with a world-wide partner, you'll need to learn it. Not long after arriving there, the buzz turned to 'We need email' and the logical choice seemed to be Lotus Notes. A few classes and some trial and error later, we had a Notes 4.0 server up and running with about 25 clients. Not long after I was a CLP as both an Admin and Developer. At one point, I even had the Notes Fax server up and running. About a year later, I was headed to Cambridge to take my Certified Lotus Instructor test. Passing that opened a lot more doors for me. Along the way, I taught for a couple of national training companies but soon the monotony wore on me and I needed a change. In August of 2000 when Sherpa called, it was not a difficult decision to make. Here I am almost 8 years later and the excitement for this product and community drives me everyday.
Fixed: Odd DWA IssueDenny Russell April 4 2008 02:21:00 PMIf you've followed my other posts here and here, you'll love the answer to this.I was testing some of our product code changes in the DWA template and noticed how well this particular test mail file worked in the browser. So I thought I'd retry my mail file on this laptop, even thought I'd already tried this multiple times. I didn't have it bookmarked so I mistakenly put a space in between my first and last name as I typed, and viola, it worked. Are you kidding me? My bookmark looked like this... If I enter like this, with a space instead of a +between my names It works perfectly. I went back and realized that is how my boss was entering it too, with a space, not a +. Called up the other user having an issue and it works like a charm. That's just wrong.
Odd DWA Issue, Part 2Denny Russell April 2 2008 08:26:45 AMAs I blogged about yesterday, I'm getting some very weird results when opening my DWA mail. After some digging, I've found another piece of interesting info, the URL that is opening.When I open the mail, here is what I see.... Here is what my Boss sees... OK, so everything is cool to this point. Now, when he clicks on the folder, this is the URL returned to him... When I click the same folder (or any folder for that matter), this is what my URL looks like... Notice the highlighted section? Mine is launching the 'WebInteriorMailFS' Frame Set. So why is this different for different users? Is it because I've been using Webmail for as long as I can remember and he didn't start to use it until more recently? Is there something being cached/used from a very old version? Yet it happens for me on any computer I log into. And he can open anyone's mail and it looks fine. He has tried logging in both with his credentials and mine and it always works. Very odd. I think my next step may be trying Keith's suggestions of checking the browser settings and see if I can remove the ActiveX and start over. Thanks again to all those who provided insight and ideas yesterday.
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