I had my first referral via google today.  It’s a great feeling especially as I never submitted the site to any spiders 🙂  I can only hope I get some more now.

It seems like R6 has removed support for directives in the httpd.cnf file.  In the past you could enter in nearly all of the standard httpd directives so that you could turn on things like directory browsing and even create your own error messages for 404 Not Found etc.

Ok, it has always been stated that changes to the file were not supported by Lotus but to remove basic web server support is a bit much in my opinion.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the http engine is different then from previous versions of Domino.

Anybody know of any good Photo Gallery applications for Domino?  I was just going to allow directory browsing of the pics folders but now I need something a bit different.

We’ve all seen it happen: Somebody sends an e-mail to the entire 10,000+ workforce asking, “Who took the stapler from my desk?” Someone is bound to complain, especially since 90 percent of the people who received this fascinating e-mail probably work in a different office or even a different country.

This article originally written by myself for TechRepublic in Dec 2002 will explain how to restrict who can send e-mails to company-wide groups if your company uses Lotus Domino.

Create a new address book on the Domino server
Given the flexibility of the Domino system, it’s possible to implement many different solutions. However, I recommend creating a new address book on the Domino server because it is easy to implement and simple to control.

The new address book should be based on the “public address book” template. If you have multiple Domino servers, then this new address book can easily be replicated to the other servers.

Set up your corporate groups
Step two involves setting up your corporate groups in the new address book. Most organizations will likely have an “all users” group for each office. In your new address book, you can create groups that nest these office-level groups. There is no limit to the number of groups you can create in your new address book.

Set the access control list on the new address book
The easiest way to control the access control list (ACL) is to create a new group in your main address book and add it as a reader to the ACL of the new address book (NAB). By using a group, you won’t be forced to alter the ACL each time a new user needs access to the corporate-wide groups. All you have to do is update the main group in the NAB. The default access to the new database should be set to No Access.

One way to give users access to this new address book is to add the name of the new address book to the NAMES= line in the NOTES.INI file on the server. But keep in mind, this method will cause the address book to show up on every user’s client. As an alternative, we use a little-known trick of cascading the address book directly on the client of the user who needs access to the corporate groups.

Normally, when you cascade a second address book on a client, the address book must be physically on the user’s computer; however, the task of making sure that all these local copies of the address book are up-to-date when a change is made is a big job. Instead, we point the client to use the address book from the server.

To do this, we edit the user preferences and add ‘servername!!databasename.nsf’ to the local address book field, where servername is the name of the Domino server which holds the database and databasename.nsf is the actual filename of the new address book. The double exclamation marks that separate the server name from the database name tell the client that the cascaded address book is actually sitting on the server and not on the local machine.

Now, when a new senior staff member needs access to the corporate groups, all you have to do is add them to the broadcast group in your main NAB and then update his or her User Preferences. If you’re a bit adventurous, you could even write a bit of Lotus Script to do the update so you don’t even have to visit the user’s desk.

Update : I forgot to mention that in R5 you can no longer add the line in via the user interface however if you edit the notes.ini file directly and add it to the names= line the tip still works correctly.

:: I was recently asked to setup a domino server so it would catch all email sent to the domain if there was no recipient found for the message. This is known as a Catch-All server. Here’s how I did it…

First of all you must configure the Domino server to hold all NDR messages. In R5 and R6 this is done in the configuration document for the inbound SMTP server :

1) Open the Domino Administrator
2) Connect to the server
3) Click on the “Configuration” tab
4) From the left panel, expand the “Messaging” twistie and click on the “Configurations”
5) Open the record for your mail domain and click on the “Router/SMTP” tab
6) From the sub-tab, click on “Advanced”
7) From the third row of tabs, click on “Controls”
8) Ensure that the field named “Hold undeliverable mail” is set to “Enabled”

Once this is enabled all messages received by the server that can’t be delivered for anybody will be held in MAIL.BOX. It should be noted that the sender will NOT get a message back to say the email failed.

You then need to create a small agent in MAIL.BOX that will run on a schedule. I find that running the agent every 30 minutes or so is the best.

The agent should be set to run on all documents in the database and you should specify a search criteria of :

“field RoutingState contains HOLD AND “field FailureReason contains public”

The agent itself consists of the following code :

SELECT RoutingState = “HOLD”;
FIELD RoutingState := “”;
FIELD Recipients := “your email @ Your Domain . Com;
FIELD SaveOptions:=@Unavailable;
FIELD Form := @If(@IsAvailable(MailSavedForm) & MailSavedForm!=””;MailSavedForm;”Memo”);
FIELD $Hops:=25;

The agent will basically get all messages that are held by the router and contain the error message ‘User not found in PUBLIC address book’ and will change the recipient to your email address and set the message state so the router can send it on to you.

I’m sure this could be improved upon a lot but it’s a great starting point.

:: I’m working on an Articles section for the blog. I’ll move this into it when I complete it. I also have a few articles that I wrote for TechRepublic a long time ago that I’ll publish there also.