Domino, Email, Spam and IT Related

With Lotus Domino, we have the abilities to access our mailbox via web. First, is nothing more than quot;Hey, I can access my email via webquot; or simply webmail, and now it become ‘full features’ Lotus Notes client or iNotes (later it called Domino Web Access or DWA).
Now in Domino Web Access there are three options on how to access your mailbox via web.

• Domino Web Access
• Domino Web Access Lite
• Domino Web Access Ultra Lite

Big thanks to Gunawan’s blog who give me the news about the new web access ultra lite and how to enable it.

Domino Web Access
This is the standard web access. If your main internet browser is Internet Explorer and you have fast internet connection, than this kind of web access is the most suitable for you.
As normal Lotus Notes client, It give you more features, like preview and full access to your calendar.
I still having problem to access Domino Web Access via my Firefox 3.0.1, it still buggy. One big problem that I can’t attached any files to new email. I’m not sure if the problem is in Domino or Firefox, but I do hope that both parties can work together to solved this problem.

Domino Web Access Lite
As in the name, this web access is a liter web access version than the standard. If you have slow or medium internet connection maybe you can try this web access. It does not give you preview and full calendar functionality, but it will give you tabs for email and sidebar for calendaring.
You can easily change from full dwa to lite dwa from the right top menu.

Domino Web Access Ultra Lite
This is new since Lotus Domino 8.02, designed for mobile users with smartphone or pda. It designed to run on iphone but it run perfectly in my Opera Mini under my Nokia E61. But because of the landscape screen in Nokia E61 , the icons does not fit very well. It should fit well in any screen that in portrait mode.
As in Gunawan’s Blog you can try to access your Domino Web Access Ultra Lite via Google Chrome, but because Google Chrome is using some part of Opera engine, I think it should run in Opera browser too (it run in my Opera Mini).

Domino still support standard webmail for older internet browser or non standard internet browser (I can access webmail via Opera Mini).
For more security, it is wise to enable SSL encryption in your web server to prevent someone else hacking into your data, specially your username and password.

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There are some users reported to me that emails to certain domains are being rejected. After further check, I realized that the emails are being blocked by uceprotect.

This is the error message

—– Transcript of session follows —– … while talking to
some.domain.com.:
>>> DATA
<<< 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
blocked
using dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net; Net xxx.xxx.0.0/16 is UCEPROTECT-Level2 listed
because of 301 abusers. Your ISP xxx has to fix this. See:
httpx://www.uceprotect.net/rblcheck.php?ipr=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
<<< 554 5.5.1 Error: no valid recipients

I heard about uceprotect before, how they block the entire ISP’s IP just because of some users of that ISP sending spam emails, but never though that will happen to me.

Normal rbl (dnsl) usually only block certain IP’s, but this uceprotect “smart” and “brave” enough to block the whole ISP’s IP range.

Simply said that I’m getting punished by uceprotect because somebody else spams. That is stupid.

I try so hard to make my IP’s clean, by removing viruses and make sure that no spam going outside through my mail servers. But my hard work is not enough, I still got blocked by uceprotect because somebody else spams.

Uceprotect in their website suggest that I should change ISP, that not that easy, and certainly not cheap.

So, I use a shortcut. I contact the admin of the domain that use uceprotect, and asked politely if it possible for them not to use uceprotect for emails from my domains. I gave them every information they need and explain my situations, and thankfully they agreed and approved my request.

Uceprotect may be want to be a good guy in spam fighter, but to me, uceprotect simply a bad guy.

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I do many times migrate from outlook pst files to lotus notes nsf files. Some are easy to do, and some are not.

For small pst files, the migration are flawless. Small pst is smaller than 5 GB. While for big pst files, there could be many problems.

I just encounter problem when trying to migrate about 20 GB pst file into lotus notes. It just crash with dump file that I can’t understand. I tried to split the pst file into several smaller pst files, and it really help in migration.

Do not try to compact pst files, I just spend more than 8 hours to compact 20 GB pst file, and it only reduced into 19 GB. Better create new pst file, and move the folders. It alot faster and compact.

One thing about the migration process, if only there is a verbose mode in nupgrade that will really help. Right now, there is only few information in the nupgrade console. Only when nupgrade found error, it will displayed in the console. So the switch like ‘nupgrade -v 3′ to display verbose mode will really help us to know what is going on in the process.

By the way, the 20 GB pst file is the result of imported from outlook express dbx files. And it took me about 8 hours to import them into outlook pst file.

Right now the time is 11:10 pm, and still running the migration.

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I believe that OpenNTF.org has given many contribution to lotus notes/domino developers.

I also uses at least three of their templates, and the one that I like is OpenNTF Mail Experience, which give me much features than the original mail template has.

Vince Schuurman - the one who manage OpenNTF Mail Experience project in OpenNTF - also create this script or plugins that can be embedded into any website, the idea is to promote OpenNTF to the internet, so many people will become aware of it presence.

This script or plugins, as default will show three random projects from OpenNTF in any website, and it only take 5 minutes to put it in any website.

So, let promote OpenNTF.

if you have any blogs, any websites, please put this script into your website and join to promote OpenNTF.

I use OpenNTF templates, at least this what I can do to support it.

For more information about the script, you can visit here.

For more information about OpenNTF, you can visit here.

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What is the most ask question from MS Outlook users when they confronted with Lotus Notes?

This is my personal experience when trying to convert MS Outlook users to Lotus Notes users.

1. How to attach email in Lotus Notes?
This is the most annoying question, because Lotus Notes can’t attach email as attachment as MS Outlook does. Almost every MS Outlook users ask this same question. And if my answer is Lotus Notes can’t attach email as attachment, the next question or statement from them almost the same “why we have to use Lotus Notes?”. That is why this question for me is the most annoying question.

Exporting message to rtf file works for some users, but not for others. For me, exporting emails into rtf file, is not the same with attached the emails it self, because emails contains headers and attachment(s) that can’t be handle by rtf file.

But there is a work a round.

There is another mail template from http://www.openntf.org that have many features. One of the feature is to be able to forward emails as attachments. So far the template is works great for me, and I will give it to my users who need it.

You can download the OpenNTF Mail Experience in here. You need to register first, but it only take less than 5 minutes.

2. How to automatically added email addresses into contacts.
While this can be done by Lotus Notes 8 standard edition, Lotus Notes 8 basic edition can’t do it - as far as I know.

For me personally, the features in MS Outlook is annoying features, personally - I have to disable it.

Why, because I want to take control of my contacts, and keep it clean as possible. Only add email addresses if I want it too, not automatically. I don’t know why people like the feature. More than often that I see people have double or triple records for the same contact in MS Outlook. They can live with that, but not me.

And again, I have to promote the same template from http://www.openntf.org, because it have the feature to add not only add the sender, but also the recipients to the contacts. This will save a lot of time for Lotus Notes 8 basic edition.

3. How to change the default font, style in Lotus Notes?
MS Outlook is easy to customize, specially if the use MS Word as their mail editor, and now they want to customize Lotus Notes the same way they customize MS Outlook.
My simple answer is that they can use text properties to change the font, style etc, but they can’t change the default font.

4. Have more than 64 columns.
One bad habits of MS Outlook users is copy paste table from excel file to the body of the email. While this is work for another MS Outlook users, but (they should know that) not every body use MS Outlook.

Lotus Notes having problem since the design of Lotus Notes, that Lotus Notes documents doesn’t support any table that have more that 64 columns in it. So, simply Lotus Notes can’t open emails if inside the emails contains a table that have more than 64 columns, the way around to solve this is to open the email via web.

5. How to put attachments in top of the emails?
This is the last question they ask. In MS Outlook they can see attachments in top of their emails, make them easier to look. In Lotus Notes, attachments are put in the bottom of the email, so user need to scroll down the email until they can find the attachments.

I agree this is annoying, but if all users using Lotus Notes, we can put attachment the way we want and the recipients can see the way we put the attachments.

But, than again, not everybody using Lotus Notes.

My summary is that MS Outlook and Lotus Notes have different strength and weakness, while MS Outlook is easy to use and customized, Lotus Notes is very stable and power full mail client and much more. Personally I think that without custom applications, Lotus Notes will lose it appeal.

One thing that I learn about this is changing another mail server to Lotus Domino is easy, changing another mail clients to Lotus Notes is easy, but changing people habits is very difficult, specially if the already using MS Outlook for years.

Note, that I hate HTML mail, not every body using HTML mail clients. There are some people still using mutt as they mail client.

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I just do a fresh install of Lotus Domino 8 server in a fresh hardware.

The hardware is IBM Xseries 3650 with 2 internal scsi harddisks and with external storage that can handle up to 12 scsi harddisks.

The plan is, the two internal scsi harddisks will be configured as raid 1 and become C drive, where OS Windows Server 2003 and Lotus Domino 8 program files installed.

The external storage will become Lotus Domino 8 data files and else (transaction log etc).

Unfortunately, the external storage is not available yet, I must wait for another week. So while waiting for external storage, I installed Lotus Domino 8 program and data files in c drive. If the external storage arrived, I will configured some of harddisks as raid 5 and format it as D drive. Than I can simply move the Lotus Domino data from C drive into the D drive, and adjust the notes.ini manually.

I did this too many times without a problem.

But not with Lotus Domino 8.

After I moved the data and adjust notes.ini, I tried to start the Lotus Domino service, and I got this following error.

“An error occurred during license use management initialization. Ensure that you are running Domino with a valid license file.”

Curious I press enter and it show up another line of error.

So I killed Lotus Domino server and re-check the notes.ini, nothing is wrong.

Try to start the service again, and again I got the same error.

Restarted the server, still got the same error.

Start to ask Google.

After few modifications in keywords, i found it in IBM support here.

The solution is simple enough, reinstall Lotus Domino Server.

At least they not telling me to reinstall the OS too. :).

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Time to do my homework.

There are plenty of users here, well around 500 users that want to migrate their emails and contacts from MS Outlook and MS Outlook Express to the new and more powerful Lotus Notes client .

First, I confuse, how can I do that? I got help from the IT team, but how? How can I migrate user mail file from MS Outlook/Express?

Lotus Notes is shipped with migration tools so you can migrate your MS Outlook/express emails to lotus notes.

But after I read this wonderful article, I realize that the migration tools nothing more that create a new IMAP account in MS Outlook/Express that point to IMAP server in Lotus Domino server. After that you can simply copy the emails from your MS Outlook/Express account to the Lotus notes IMAP folder. As simply is that.

That will save a lot of works. Thanks.

Now, I don’t have to install the migration tools after I knew they little secret .

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More and more I received emails with very very long signature. That, for me is annoying.

Most of the signatures are “company policy” that will be added automatically everytime the employees send an email.

That what happen, if management involved in email signature. Very long, boring and annoying signature.

This is just an example about annoying email signature.

The information in this message may be proprietary and/or confidential,
and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is not the
intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering
this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any
dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly
prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please
notify xxx, yyy immediately by replying to this message and deleting it from your computer.

See, how long that is?

Edit:

I found this article from www.usatoday.com very interested.

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Like a dream.

Finally, I resigned from my 7 years office, move to another office, new office.

All the good times that I had in my old office I will always remember, and try to forget the bad one.

I do hope that this is not a bad decision, like I usually do, but I do hope not this one.

This new office, will be my next challenges. They just bought a lotus domino and notes, and they need someone to make it happen. Based on my friend sugestion, they called me.
It’s not easy to say yes to them. It’s the hardest decision I ever made. I’m stressed out but finally I said yes.

When I leaving my old office for the last time, it seem that I don’t wanna to leave. Some parts of me will always stay in that office.

I will not leaving my friends, they still and always be my firends, and I will have new friends in the new office. So, the good news is I will have more friends.

Cross my fingers, and moving forward.

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I’m a loyal customer of Symantec Anti Virus product, it serve me well for the last 7 years.

Now, from my consultant, I’m being told that Symantec, again, releasing a new product for security called Symantec Endpoint Security. Symantec Endpoint Security will be replacing Symantec Anti Virus Corporate Edition 10.

Why security, why not Anti Virus? Because it’s more than Anti Virus, it have:

• Anti Virus
• Anti Spyware
• Firewall
• and Intrusion Prevention

You can download a trial version of Symantec Endpoint Security in here.

This is a good news, that meant that Symantec is trying to do their best to improve their security product to protect their customer.

But, this is also a bad news for me. Why? Because I need to migrate to existing Symantec Anti Virus CE 10 to the new Symantec Endpoint Security. And that, will be NOT an easy job.

There are three version of Symantec Endpoint Security:

1. Symantec Endpoint Security pdf
2. Symantec Endpoint Security Small Business Edition pdf
3. Symantec Multi-tier Protection pdf

What suprise me that, in Symantec Endpoint Security Small Business Edition they have Symantec Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange, but Lotus Domino.

Why, I’m not sure. Symantec Mail Security for Domino only exist in Symantec Multi-tier Protection.

If you using Lotus Domino, and want to use Symantec product, than you need yo buy the most expensive product which is Symantec Multi-tier Protection, and if you use MS Exhange you can buy more cheaper product.

Now, again, I need to learn how to migrate our Anti Virus or Security software and I hope that the new software will perform better than the previous one.

Cross my fingers, and moving forward.

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