This blog post is contributed by David J. Pearson, Solution Architect and Technical Staff Member (TSM) working for IBM Collaboration Software's Centre Of Excellence based in the UK.

IBM Notes Traveler is a free product that when deployed onto a IBM Domino server can extend the user’s email, calendar, contacts and tasks to their chosen mobile device. As a solution architect with IBM’s Collaboration Software team, I work directly with customers to help them meet the challenges of being a social business, and this includes leveraging mobile solutions such as Notes Traveler.

IBM Notes mail is rich in features and functions, one of which is the doclink which can be seen as essentially a “bookmark” to another Domino-based resource hosted somewhere within the corporate Domino infrastructure.

There are different types of doclinks that can be used, as shown in this image. Ensuring the appropriate configuration of the Traveler product to handle doclinks will provide for a better user experience, so in this blog post I will describe some of the settings that can be implemented to manage doclinks for Traveler mobile users.

The challenge

When users create mail messages using their feature-rich IBM Notes desktop client, they will typically make use of the doclinks feature, which allows “bookmarks” to Domino resources to be included in an email. When the recipient of the message reads the email, also using their Notes desktop client, clicking the doclink will immediately take them to the target information held elsewhere within the Domino infrastructure.

For mobile users, the default behavior of the IBM Notes Traveler product is to expose the doclinks as web-based URL links, which can be clicked by touching the link (see image, opposite). When a doclink is clicked, the URL stored within the doclink is passed to the browser on the mobile device, which then attempts to connect to the target Domino resource.

For those organizations who have not web-enabled, or exposed, their Domino applications to the Internet, this leads to a disappointing user experience as doclinks are clicked on the mobile device that do not work.

Management of doclinks on mobile

In order that doclinks can be correctly configured for IBM Notes Traveler users there are a number parameters that can be added to the NOTES.INI file on the Traveler server:

When implementing IBM Notes Traveler, I would recommend that the parameter “NTS_DOMINO_LINK_SUPPORT” be initially disabled by specifying the value 0. This allows the organization to define their plans for the transformation of Domino applications for web-enabled mobile devices separately from the implementation of Notes Traveler. This value can be changed once the deployment of web-enabled applications is completed.

The other key consideration for the management and use of doclinks from mobile devices is security. When a doclink is clicked on a mobile device, the Domino application server must be directly accessible, and to avoid a user authentication prompt, it is recommended that multi-session authentication is used—so the same credentials used by the user to authenticate against the Traveler server are used against the applications server. This can be achieved by creation of single sign-on (see this article for further help).

Tell me what you think. Leave your thoughts in the comments section or connect with me on Twitter @DJPearson1.