Raj Patil

Just completed my presentation at IBM Connect 2014 along with my co-presenter (Hiro - Hiroyuki Okamoto), and I think we had a great attendance and response from the customer.  Bumped into a few people who had good things to say about the session.  Thanks for those who attended. 

Here's my presentation that you can view on SlideShare -> http://www.slideshare.net/rajeshpatil/id111

I will try to post the examples which Hiro covered around customization at a later point.

--- Raj

Can't find the right mail in your inbox?  What about being able to search your mail & archives and provide granular search strings?  Our ICS Services team has created an Asset which you can use.  It's a plug-in to be installed in Notes Client, and makes searching your mail & archives easier.  It will continue to leverage the same Full-text index that is used by the client, but makes it easier to specify field values, like specifying "subject contains xxxx" and "sender is yyy" etc. 

You can get more information about this -> https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/87f3fbd1-c0ec-4f28-be5b-39e1a20ef11b/entry/new_asset_ibm_notes_extended_search_plugin_for_ibm_notes_9_available?lang=en_us

If you would like to try this, you will need to get in touch with your local ISSC rep (link is also given on that page).

-- Raj

Henrik has a good information on the ID to use for downloading various packages -> http://per.lausten.dk/blog/2013/10/ibm-notes-9-0-1-and-ibm-domino-9-0-1-are-now-available-for-download.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Per_Henrik_Lausten+%28Per+Henrik+Lausten%29

For IBM Notes Browser Plug-in, the code to use is

Notes Browser Plug-in Lite (without JVM)    CIQ96EN    
Notes Browser Plug-in (with JVM)                 CIQ90EN 
 

We have also updated the Notes/Domino WIKI and I can tell you that my colleague Archana Pawar has done a great job in putting together all the information for using Notes Browser Plug-in.  This also includes all the notes.ini parameters we support. You can refer to it here -> http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/xpDocViewer.xsp?lookupName=Notes+9.0.1+Browser+Plug-in#action=openDocument&res_title=IBM_Notes_Browser_Plugin_9.0.1_NBP901&content=pdcontent

And thanks to each of the member of Notes and Notes Browser Plug-in team for getting this quality release out.

-- Raj

Yippee!!!!!!!

IBM Announced yesterday the general availability of IBM Notes 9.0.1 release as well as IBM Notes Browser Plug-in 9.0.1 and IBM iNotes 9.0.1.  Lots of new features included in this update release, mainly to take care of key customer requirements.  One that I would like to write here about is the most asked capability in the IBM Notes Browser Plug-in. 

Access to Mail Template based applications - including mail-in databases

This was identified for a good number of customers as a blocker for their deployment of IBM Notes Browser Plug-in.  In order to prevent Mailfile from opening, we probably went too far and disabled access to any database which was based on the mail template.  And we found out from all your emails that most of you had used the mail template as a starting point in creating new application. 

Well, we are now opening access to these applications inside Notes Browser Plug-in. You can freely open these as you wish and work with them.  The only application we try to restrict is your mail file and which we re-direct to IBM iNotes (and I strongly recommend taking a look at 9.0.1 iNotes, lots of features you would love).  So there you go.  This should take care of any blocker you might have and I expect with this removed, and access to mail database in the back-end API, all of your workflow applications should now work.

Please go ahead and give this a try and let us know how it's working.

-- Raj

Notes Browser Plug-in is a product for accessing Notes/Domino based applications inside your browser, and not require any modification to your applications.  For accessing Mail inside a browser, we recommend IBM iNotes (Previously known as Domino Web Access - DWA).  We have modified Notes Browser Plug-in to form a mailfile URL in http when the user tries to double-click on the mailfile icon on the workspace or the bookmarks.  For example, if my mailfile was on a server xyz/ibm, we find out it's http name (somethinglike xyz.ibm.com) and then append the pathname to the mailfile to it and fire it up in the browser.  So it could come up as:

https://xyz.ibm.com\mail\abc.nsf

Notice that we always try to use https.  But if your Domino Server's URL is 'http' only, where you want the URL launch your mailfile to be :

http://xyz.ibm.com\mail\abc.nsf

then simply add the following to your notes.ini file:

BrowserUseHttpForiNotes=1

.

As I had mentioned in my earlier blogs, installation of Notes Browser Plug-in supports both GUI based and Silent Install options.  As also mentioned before, there are multiple packages that we support - Standalone Notes Browser Plug-in installation (MIN & MAX), and one with Notes Standard Client. 

Both of above installations support "Silent Install"

Go to Command prompt. and change the directory where setup. exe /installer is copied.
Provide below command from command prompt.

The -s -a -s are required for any silent installs now.

e.g.     :  setup.exe -s -a -s /v"SETMULTIUSER=1 PROGDIR=\\"%s\\" /qn"


The first -s silences the Package For the Web wrapper UI
The -a passes all following command line options to the embedded package
The second -s silences the embedded package's extraction UI
The /v passes the rest of the quoted string to the msiexec engine.



Install NBP at default location :

        setup.exe -s -a -s /v"/qn"


Default installation directory can be changed to your preferred directory with below command

setup -s -a -s /V"PROGDIR=C:\<nondefault Path> /qn"

Note : Default Data directory path of NBP can not be changed.

Users Planning to install standard client + NBP can add below parameter to their silent installation command

setup.exe /s /v"ADDLOCAL=NotesPlugin /qn"

Upgrade

setup.exe -s -a -s "/v ALLOWNBPUPGRADE=1 /qn"

For more information on Notes silent installation

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.help.domino.admin.doc%2FDOC%2FH_USING_NOTES_SILENT_INSTALLATION_ON_WINDOWS_STEPS.html
 

-- Raj

A common occurrence these days of rapid acquisitions is where an organization using Notes/Domino acquires a company that's using Outlook/Exchange, and until the infrastructure is replaced with notes/Domino for all the users, there's a need to exchange emails between the 2 groups.   This requires some changes to the Domino setup.

A nice step-by-step article for doing this is published by my colleague recently.  I would recommend this for everyone or bookmark it for future reference.

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/Sending_Emails_and_Calendar_Entries_between_Notes_and_Outlook

Do add comments on the WIKI directly if you have suggestions.

Thanks

- Raj

So how does IBM Notes Browser Plug-in authenticate with the Domino Server when user tries to access any databases/applications?

- As I have been mentioning from the beginning, the Notes Browser Plug-in uses NRPC protocol to talk to the Domino Server, not http. So you will need to use your Notes Client password rather than the iNotes or http password you might have setup. 

- Another fact you need to understand is that the Notes Browser Plug-in continues to use the ID file that you have been using with your Notes Client.  So all the features and access control that were available to you in Notes client will continue to be governed when using this plug-in.

What this means is that if you are using an ID Vault with your Domino Setup, the same can safely be used with Notes Browser Plug-in.  If you had setup NSL (Notes Shared Login) for use within your organization, the same would continue to be supported by the Notes Browser Plug-in.  Or if you were using the old Single sign-on with synchronization with windows password.    All of these, because the ID file and underlying security code is re-used by the Notes Browser Plug-in, remain the same.  

In this first release of the Notes Browser Plug-in, we do not support SAML though.  

-- Raj

That's the question that keeps coming up again and again.  I get an email from some customer about this atleast once or twice a week.  And my response is the same. 

• We provided Notes Browser Plug-in with the Notes Standard client (an option during the installation) only for you to install & use it to try.  This is for you to see what it is, how it works and use it to test and ensure your applications work with browser plug-in.  But once you have verified this, for the roll-out within your organization, you should use the standalone browser plug-in installation package.
   
• The main intent of Notes Browser Plug-in is to give you a light-weight way to access your Domino Applications inside a browser, with iNotes being your primary mail access.
  
   
• since you can access all your apps in the standard client along with the mail, you really do not need the browser plug-in. 
   
• It's upto you whether you need a browser access for all (Notes Browser Plug-in + iNotes), or desktop based application access (standard client)
   
• Having both for all your users does not make sense and defeats the purpose of trying to go to all-web strategy, unless you want this during the transition phase, in which case, go ahead and roll-out the standard client with the Notes Browser Plug-in selected. 
   
• the above gives a choice to the user as to what they want to use.

Please note that you cannot use Standard client and Notes Browser Plug-in at the same time on the same machine.  You must completely exit out of one to launch the other.   This is by design.

-- Raj

I know there are lots of questions about installation of IBM Notes Browser Plug-in.  Following article will clear up all the questions:

Installation

The Notes Browser Plug-in can be installed in below two different ways:

Notes Browser Plug-in with Notes Standard client:

If you want to be able to run the Standard Client and Notes Browser Plug-in on the same system at various points, you should select this so you can install both the clients on the same system. Please note that you cannot run both the client at the same time. You must exit one to start another.

Steps to install Notes Browser Plug-in with Notes Standard Client:

1. In the Standard Client installation user Interface, once you specify the directories for Program Files, and Data Files, you get to the below screen.

2. In this screen, if you expand the "Notes Client" feature, you will see an option to install "Notes Browser Plug-in". By default, this option is disabled. If you wish to install the Notes Browser Plug-in, please "uncheck" this option.

   
   
   
    

3. Once the installation of Standard Client is complete, it will also register the plug-ins for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Notes Browser Plug-in stand-alone

Use this if you want to only have IBM Notes Browser Plug-in on your system, and plan to use iNotes for mail.

There are two variants of the stand-alone Notes Browser Plug-in installation: NotesPluginMax and NotesPluginMin. These will always install a multi-user version of the Notes Browser Plug-in.

NotesPluginMin – does not contain attachment viewers, JVM, or spell check.

NotesPluginMax - JVM is required if you have any application which has a Java Agent in it.

Both of these packages are packed into "setup.exe", so you simply need to run "setup.exe" and accept the License agreement. The remainder of the installation is done in the default path as follows:

Program Directory: C:\Program Files(x86)\IBM\Notes

Data Directory: C:\users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\IBM\Notes\Data

Both of these installations support "Silent Install" and all of its options.

By default, this will be a multiuser installation. Since the new installers do multi-user installations, and due to the change in the Install & Data directories, your old data may not get migrated. After the installation is complete, and before launching the client, please copy any of your existing saved data (bookmarks, names.nsf, etc.) into the new Data directory.

Once the installation is complete, the first time you bring up the browser (IE or Firefox), it will ask you about a "new Plug-in" which has been installed, and whether to enable it. Please make sure that the answer to this is "Yes".

Configuration
Once the installation is done, it will create a desktop icon "IBM Notes Browser Plug-in". Double-click the icon to launch the Notes Browser Plug-in. For the first launch, you have to go through the configuration wizard.

1. Welcome Page. Hit Next
   
   

2. User Information - Enter your name, Domino server. Hit Next
   

3. Notes ID File - Specify the path to your Notes .id file. Hit Next
   
    

4. Select “Yes” if you want to copy the id file to data directory in next prompt

5. Enter password for user in password prompt and hit “Log In” button

    

6. You can see the starting home page for user opened up in browser. From here you can access user's iNotes, Workspace, database and documents

-- Raj