LOTUSCONNECTIONS.org

In Activities you have the option to send notifications to members
of an Activity. At my company we were a bit confused by the behavior
of the sending of these notification mails.

We had an activity with five members, when sending notification mails
to all the members of this activity the mailing was split in two.

One mail for three members and one for the other two.

The thing that then occurred with the members of that activity was that
they didn’t saw everybody in the “To:” field and started mailing everybody
who was not in the “To:” field.

Raised an PMR at IBM for this one and got a very logical answer for it .

In the QA_MEMBERPROFILE table of the OPNACT database for Activities you will
find a column Locale, this one holds the locale you last used in your browser
to visit the Activities page.

When a notification mail is sent to you it will be in the language set by that locale.

It explained for us why the mailing is split sometimes, some of our have
a Dutch browser, NL, and some use an EN version of their browser.

Not that it’s a solution for the “problem” we got, but eh we have a explanation for this .

(more…)

From my blog @ e-office

One of my colleagues Talitha came with a question to become
owner of an activity. Currently she is replacing Pauline. She allso
needed owner rights on a few activities owned by Pauline.

Currently I am digging myself a way into the concept of SPNEGO in
combination with WebSphere servers. With SPNEGO you can create a SSO
config with your clients and WebSphere enabled websites.

The basis is that you have to use an Active Directory server ( W2K or higher ).
In order to make use of the SPNEGO function you have to logon to an AD domain.

When logged in to the AD domain you will receive a kerberos ticket and this is
what is nessecary to make this whole thing rolling.

Besides this requirement you will have to take the following things in consideration.

- AD domain ( W2K or higher )
- WebSphere Application Server 6.1 ( any OS )
- Security enabled for WAS
- A configured User Repository, stand-alone or federared both can be used.
- Type of User Repository can be any of the supported ones by WAS.
( NOTE:
There has to be a link between the login names in the
AD LDAP and the ones in the User Repository used by WAS.

Example: Login attribute in AD is samAccountName, the login attribute
of our WAS Domino User Repo is CN.

samAccountName = MEn
cn = Marco Ensing

Because Domino can use multple CN’s you will have to take care that the
name “MEn” needs to become a CN value in the domino LDAP.
)

For me of course enabling SSO with Lotus Connections is what I’am
looking for but this feature can be used with any Portal or
WebSphere Application server app. running on WAS version 6.1.

Found a two links that were very helpfull for me understanding the
whole concept of SNPEGO in combination with WebSphere.

Step-by-step guide enabling SPNEGO

SPNEGO TAI: Using single sign-on from Windows to WebSphere Application Server

Theory how-it-works

WebSphere with a side of SPNEGO

One handy tool that I found on the web is kerbtray.exe, I was
configuring SPNEGO for a customer running Portal 6.1 in a
Windows 2000 Domain.

When following the documentation mentioned above I
should use the encryption type of DES-MD5 for the keytab file.

Configuring everything to make use of this encryption type I
dug myself in trying serveral variations of the keytab file and
the non-stoppable reboots for the portal server.

But when I ran this tool, kerbtray.exe on one of the client
stations I saw that the encryption type used was RC4-HMAC,
one that only should be used in a Windows 2003 AD domain.

Had now clue why this was happening, but I created a new
keytab file with the encryption type RC4-HMAC thing
that then came above was that everything started working .

( Domain was formed by two Windows 2000 Domain Controlers
and a number of 10 Windows 2003 Domain Controllers.
The forest was Windows 2000 in mixed mode )

Think I have to find a explanation for this behaviour from
the Windows administrators corner.

Windows 2000 Resource Kit Tool: Kerbtray.exe

A while ago I posted my subscription for the LC 2.0 Administering exam.

As can be seen on the screenshot below this mission was completed successful .

About the questions of the exam itself, it was not to hard, there were a lot
of questions about the user registry used by WAS and population of the profiles database.

My thoughts are that if you work daily with Connections you can go through
this exam in a breeze.

Today I registered a date to take the exam of 957 Administering Lotus Connections 2.0.

After some calling with the people of Prometric I could find it under

Date / time

A couple of months ago AT&T release a beta version of their VPN Client for linux.

Unfortunately they released the client as a RPM ( RedHat package ) and not
as an Ubuntu DEB package.

But help was nearby, on this website I found how to convert the RPM
package to an Ubuntu DEB package.

http://blog.afmacedo.com/?p=11

And here you can download the latest IBM AT&T VPN Client
for Linux (@ 07/01/09 )

ftp://ftp.attglobal.net/pub/client/linux/agnclient-1.0-2.0.1.3000.i386.rpm

After converting and installing I could find the app here :

The default behavior for images used in Blog post is to be scaled down to a
maximum of 350px, both width and height, aspect ratio is kept.

This is not really handy for screenshots that are posted on Blogs.

Thanks to the reply of Chris Whisonant at the Lotus Connections forum
I learned how to configure this behavior.

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/lcforum.nsf/DateAllThreadedweb/42a2b16da056408bc12575210040b42f?OpenDocument

Made some extra edits so that scaled down images are clickable and a
full version of the image opens in a new window when you click on it.

Tested it with Firefox and IE

Changed the code in the file _day.vm as follow.

/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/AppSrv01/installedApps/localhostNode01Cell/Blogs.ear/blogs.war/themes/blog # vi _day.vm

function openImage(item)
{
window.open(item);
}

dojo.addOnLoad(function(){
dojo.query(‘.entryContentContainer img’).forEach(
function(item){

if(item.style != undefined && item.style.width != undefined && item.style.width == “100%”)
return;
if (item.width > 400) {
item.height = item.height * (400/item.width);
item.width = 400;
item.onclick=function(){openImage(this.src)};
item.style.cursor=’pointer’;
}
}
);
});

Since 1 december 2008 IBM released a bunch of new iFixes to fix a diversity of issues within
Lotus Connections 2.0.1.

For the fixes and what they fix see the list below.

Use this url http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/ to download these new ifixes.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35859
Release date:     22-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     20 – High Impact/Medium Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Function
Abstract:     Profiles: InLine Business card formats poorly in IE, makes the card unusable.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35655
Release date:     22-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Compatibility
Abstract:     Allow PNG photos for upload to Profiles.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO36131
Release date:     22-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Function
Abstract:     /activities/service/html/autocompletemembers?member needs to return extid

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35840
Release date:     22-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Function
Abstract:     Modification of CSS styles specific to IE to fix dojo dialog to 400px height

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO36188
Release date:     20-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     20 – High Impact/Medium Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Function
Abstract:     Communities: IE browser hangs when posting a topic in Community Discussion Forums.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35860
Release date:     20-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Function
Abstract:     Profiles: Cache issues in widgets and javlin card. When changing browser’s locale setting from English to French, the UI screens displayed in the new language for the current page, and all other future navigation.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35887
Release date:     20-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Function
Abstract:     Profiles: For non-default ProfileType (for e.g., profileType=test), the page displays default widgets if the ProfileType does not define its own set of widgets.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35785
Release date:     15-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Data
Abstract:     This is a change to allow the Connections antivirus software to work with Mcafee and Symantec ICAP scanners. Previously, the code only worked for Symantec.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35784
Release date:     15-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Data
Abstract:     This is a change to allow the Connections antivirus software to work with Mcafee and Symantec ICAP scanners. Previously, the code only worked for Symantec.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35783
Release date:     15-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Data
Abstract:     This is a change to allow the Connections antivirus software to work with Mcafee and Symantec ICAP scanners. Previously, the code only worked for Symantec.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35782
Release date:     12-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Data
Abstract:     This is a change to allow the Connections antivirus software to work with Mcafee and Symantec ICAP scanners. Previously, the code only worked for Symantec.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35377
Release date:     01-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Upgrades to version:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Data
Abstract:     There are two problems here, 1) It required the client to provide a ’slug’ header in order to upload a file, which should be optional, so the fix is to make this optional. When slug header is not provided a random file name will be generated. 2) when the slug header is provided, the file separator ‘.’ is missing so, instead of <slug>.extension you get <slug>extension, fix is to add the ‘.’.

Fix name:     2.0.1.0-LC-Multi-IFLO35376
Release date:     01-Dec-2008
Platforms:     AIX, Linux, Windows
Applies to versions:     2.0.1.0
Upgrades to version:     2.0.1.0
Severity:     30 – Moderate Impact/High Probability of Occurrence
Categories:     Data
Abstract:     The problem here is that the feed/entries/atom Atom feed supports tag filtering, however, it only works when ONE tag is provided, if using multiple tags then the filter will fail. This iFix is for supporting mutliple tags filtering.

A while ago IBM released the first IBM
Lotus Connections Administration certification.

Here the link which covers the objectives for the
exam: http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/tests/ovrL957.shtml

They already included a link to the registration area of the prometric website ( http://www.prometric.com/IBM/default.htm ) where you can register for the exam.

But for now I can’t find the 957 exam of Lotus Connections on the prometric website.