Recent by Keith Brooks 

Does TOTP Work for users in a Secondary Directory via DA  

By Keith Brooks | 8/21/24 6:43 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Like many of our customers, a customer has a large external user community relying on their applications. We have about 7,000 external customers. Some are undoubtedly old customers, but 7,000 is a lot of people. Previously, I wrote about how to bulk add these people into your ID Vault, and that was all fine and good where we have only one names.nsf for everyone and everything. We may have had 2-3 servers in that org. Now, the 7,000 are in a secondary external names.nsf via DA (Directory Assistance). The Problem 1) How do you register and maintain the people in a secondary Directory? 2) Does the DA even work with TOTP?

Domino RESTAPI Bug and WorkAround  

By Keith Brooks | 7/31/24 6:47 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

This is not my usual line of thought as an Admin, but sometimes, AdminOps is better than DevOps because troubleshooting is not an exact science. While customers over the last year or so have been asking about the HCL Domino REST API, my reply is usually something like, I can install it, but you are on your own afterward, or I point them to a Developer friend. To be fair, HCL will help them/me with getting started or "where is/How do I" questions. But this is about the bug my client and I discovered and how to work around it.

An Admin Present You Didn't Know You Needed  

By Keith Brooks | 7/4/24 7:41 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

About 2 weeks ago, I gave an impromptu webinar for Openntf.org as a last-minute fill-in. Openntf, for those that don't know, is the Notes/Domino+ community, where devs, admins, business people, HCL, and others share code and ideas, templates, and projects for the benefit of the greater worldwide community. I wanted to inform people that monitoring Tasks in the Administrator client has some changes. Why is this important? Because unless you are a 1 server company, you have a lot of information to remember, such as: How do you know if DBMT ran? How do you know which server Certmgr runs on? Which web server do you run the Domino REST API on? Which server handles your Backups and Restores, presuming you leverage the v14 options? Is NOMAD running? Is your DirSync working? Are you sure the awesome OnTime Group calendar is running? Have you enabled Aautoupdate yet? One look and you know. Intriguing questions, right?

SSL Cert Renewed in Certmgr but no one could see it  

By Keith Brooks | 12/20/23 2:31 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Certmgr is the greatest thing in Domino these days if you are an admin. Autorenewing SSL saves so many problems, delays, and potential loss of revenue for customers that it is, in my opinion, one of the best things HCL has added to Domino. Much of the credit for it goes to HCL Lifetime Ambassador Daniel Nashed. When you see him at Engage or DNUG, buy him a beer. Daniel was on hand to help me with my problem tonight, and he was correct with his original assessment, Certmgr should just work. I agreed, and it was working, or so it showed in the view when verifying it using "tell certmgr show certs" at the server console, but we could not see the validated certificates for 2 domains. Since I had manually renewed them today, we should have seen a date of expiration for March 18. Instead, we saw December 17th for the one that expired yesterday, and the other showed January 21. The TLS cache should be auto-refreshing when it gets the new certificates, but appeared to not be doing the task.

Domino V14 - A New User Capability - Mail Merge  

By Keith Brooks | 12/14/23 7:14 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

I have asked for this for many years, and we got it in V14! This is my guide and first reaction. If you have Admin Assistants or need to do your marketing, you need to use Word or some 3rd party to do what should be a simple effort. HCL has given us a nice Mail Merge inside the notes client. It may take some testing for your first one, but hang in there, it is much easier than other methods I have used.

Lotus Evangelist: SMTP BlackListing, WhiteListing and Log and Reject/Tag  

By Keith Brooks | 10/5/23 5:09 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

If you rely on your Domino server to handle all your mail, you probably have had numerous attacks on your server over time or even lately, as I did last week. My personal Domino server is a mix of real code, websites, and active email, with various half-coded things and weird templates or customer testing. However, I started getting harassed by sites looking for open SMTP accounts recently and figured something was amiss in my configuration document.

SnTT - Which Database has an FTI?  

By Keith Brooks | 11/3/22 6:43 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Earlier this year, Martin Vogel and I gave a session at Engage titled "Teaching Young and Old Dogs New Tricks: Notes & Domino Shortcuts You Wish You Knew," It was a great session with a filled capacity of the room. But I was neglectful; I had planned to post some essential tips in my blog at the time but did not get to it. I will try to make up for it over the next few weeks. The first one that not everyone may know about is how to find out which databases have a FTI, Full Text Index. Here is the scenario: You are asked to build new servers for your customer or organization and while looking at the old server, notice some indexing on some databases. This causes you to think, how do I find out which databases have an FTI so they can be rebuilt on the new server?

How to Enable, or Disable, TOTP for HCL Traveler and Verse  

By Keith Brooks | 10/28/22 3:01 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

After a discussion with fellow HCL Ambassador David Hablewitz, I realized I did not fully explain the HCL Traveler/Verse (will just refer to it as Verse) and TOTP issue in my blog post the other day, I intended to explain the pros and cons of using TOTP and Verse, but I neglected to explain how to enable or disable TOTP and what you do if you have one server or separate servers. The how-to is what this post is about.

Customizing the TOTP Login Form and MFA Pages  

By Keith Brooks | 10/26/22 3:27 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Continuing the extension of my TOTP session from Collabpshere, I wanted to expand upon modifying the Login Form and MFA page for those who need it and want to know how to do it. The truth is I covered this in my 2021 Collabsphere presentation but since learned a few things which I want to pass on to all of you.

To TOTP, or NOT To TOTP, Traveler/Verse users, THAT is THE Question  

By Keith Brooks | 10/21/22 7:56 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

The question continues to arise about using TOTP for Verse(Traveler) users. If you attended my session, you heard me discuss the pro (not sure if there is anything beyond my insurance/compliance or security people require it) and the many cons.

Engage Recap  

By Keith Brooks | 5/31/22 12:20 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

I can't even begin to tell you all the things we saw and learned, and that was before Engage even started,

TOTP Needs an ID file in the ID Vault to Work, What if some are Missing?  

By Keith Brooks | 10/20/21 5:06 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Yes, of course, a properly managed Domino environment should have been using the ID Vault for several years now. But we all have customers who, for one reason, or another, just never did it, or worse, think they did, but never checked it worked. And then we hear from them out of the blue to help get TOTP installed and update their environment. No big deal, right? Set up the ID Vault, and when people log in to their Notes client, their ID files get sent to the ID Vault. Newly registered people are also automatically added to the ID Vault. But what do you do about people who solely use webmail/iNotes? How do you get their IDs into the ID Vault?

Changing Some, But Not All, User's Mail Templates  

By Keith Brooks | 10/8/21 2:16 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

You know how to convert one person, you know how to convert a folder or a directory...But do you know how to convert just some people's templates in your company? Well, here is my story, how I changed 250 out of 450 people's templates.

Hacking Administrators, my AdminCamp session  

By Keith Brooks | 6/23/21 5:12 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

This is the second of my sessions from AdminCamp. This session had a theme of the Avengers, but was about helping administrators do repetitive tasks faster, easier, and in multiple ways.

When you need OS Acces, but DON'T Have it, OPENNTF to the Rescue  

By Keith Brooks | 4/6/21 9:52 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Picked up a new client from my home state with a small but necessary business, which they run on their HCL Domino application. The problem started when I realized I needed to scrape their old website from a hosting provider and then put it under HCL Domino. Simple enough to get the site files and fodlers, but when I went to add the site to Domino realized I did not have RDP/VPN/FTP access to their server at the OS level. What do I do?

Adding a 3rd party Task to the Domino Admin Client Monitoring Dashboard  

By Keith Brooks | 3/16/21 6:38 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

This has bugged me for a while. I may have just been a bit lazy as well. But that's what friends are for, and Ted Hardenburgh came to my rescue in our Openntf slack channel. You can join the slack channel here: https://openntf.slack.com if you have FOMO or just want to ask us your crazy questions. Anyway, back to Ted's help with my situation. We have a client running a task that is not a native Domino task, and I wanted to monitor it from the Admin client's Server-Monitoring tab that acts as a Dashboard. You did know you have a dashboard built into the Admin client, right?

Lotus Evangelist: SnTT - Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Something new at Openntf for ADMINS  

By Keith Brooks | 1/19/21 8:25 AM | Business - News | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

That's right, I resurrected Show n Tell Tuesday for this post because I can, it's my blog, and why wait for Thursday anyway? A few months ago, my friend Roberto had the luck to join the Openntf Board. If you don't know what Openntf is, click on the link and check it out. NOW! Openntf is THE place to go when you need a template for an HCL Domino or Notes application to help your company. It is also where you can go for tutorials on various development topics and all kinds of developer code snippets. Admittedly, few admins ever add to the site, because, well, historically there is not much for admins there and often what we see/know is proprietary to our clients and companies. This has been my perspective for many years. However, a new world, a new time, and progress is being made, thanks to Roberto.

The Resiliency of HCL Domino and how to get Multiple SSL Certs to work with it  

By Keith Brooks | 11/18/20 1:35 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

There was a technical limitation since removed in Domino 11 related to how Domino handled the SNI(Server Name Indication). Prior to R11 you can only use one SSL certificate per IP address in Domino. Since I run about a dozen domains on my server, this was not helpful, but now, it works quite well.

Domino Administration Wizardry - Dark Arts Edition  

By Keith Brooks | 3/3/20 11:58 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by John Oldenburger

Here are the slides to my session I just completed at the Engage conference. This session was and is aimed at junior admins that need to find better, faster ways to do some redundant tasks. If you have any questions just ask me. The code used is not perfect and alternative options do exist.

Can We Get To Work Now?  

By Keith Brooks | 7/2/19 12:05 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger

As you may have heard, the divorce from IBM of the Lotus Portfolio of products has come to a conclusion and HCL has come out the winner. The value of the deal ensures a decent rate of return to HCL within 3 years(maybe earlier) based solely on Support and Services, otherwise known as renewals. The efforts to stop the leaving and increase the renewals only adds gravy to the deal for HCL.

NCUG Session on Admin Hacks for Users and Your Sanity  

By Keith Brooks | 6/12/19 2:31 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Aimed at New and Old admins. Focus on the Rooms and Resources database changes we have made over the years and ideas for the future of the template.

ISBG now NCUG My Session "Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me Notes Could Do That"  

By Keith Brooks | 6/11/19 7:18 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Matteo Bisi

This session was about how to make your case to get changes pushed through to end users. How to talk to management and other teams to give users a better experience and in turn provide happier customers and fewer support tickets.

Engage 2019, We Came, We Saw, We Heard  

By Keith Brooks | 5/20/19 6:02 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

I went to Brussels last week for the excellent conference Engage, run by Theo and Hilde with a supporting cast of dozens. Thank you for an excellent event and Dinners! Not only was I speaking, I was looking forward to the discussions with the HCL team and seeing friends and meeting new ones in person, and learn a few things along the way.

Next Week at Engage, Let's Talk About...  

By Keith Brooks | 5/9/19 5:31 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Engage is back, after last year's excellent event in Rotterdam, at the SS Rotterdam and my personal highlight, The Pinball Museum, Theo brings us to Brussels to AutoWorld. I arrive Sunday and stay until Thursday so I am rested up for the event. I will be looking for the mythical export only Corvette, a few exist, but I digress.

Dear CXO, Can We Talk about IBM Domino 10?  

By Keith Brooks | 7/12/18 6:23 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Executive Summary (TL:DR Synopsis): You may, or may not, have heard about a 30 year old platform still managing applications and workflows inside the Fortune 100. Would you believe it comes from IBM, not that other blue company that still maintains a legacy 27+ year old office platform? If you have yet to bridge the Internet with your Enterprise, which is where the business benefits can be found, then you owe it to yourself to go listen to your IBM representatives.

One Firm's Wild Ride to the Cloud  

By Keith Brooks | 2/23/17 4:48 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

My IBM Connect presentation is now posted on Slideshare. Thank you everyone for coming and your questions.

Lotus Evangelist: Welcome to NOT Orlando  

By Keith Brooks | 2/22/17 1:53 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

IBM Connect, or Lotusphere, as us old people call it kicked off last night with the welcome reception and today with the Opening General Session. This year we break from tradition to visit San Francisco instead of Orlando. Many traditions may not return, but thank God for Ephox and Aussie Night, and Mat. Disclaimer, IBM Champions are invited in advance and are loved by Ephox.

Fix Your Own Computer And Advanced Backups  

By Keith Brooks | 2/14/17 2:13 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

I did these two sessions today as part of the technical track "SpeedGeeking" sessions. The Backup one was more of an interactive session with a link to numerous free and not so free backup software options.

Lotus Evangelist: Me? At a Hackathon? Lead a team? What?  

By Keith Brooks | 1/31/17 8:58 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

I submitted a topic for Alan Hamilton's IBM Connect Hackathon which takes place the day before the event. It was accepted, my team "Domino Tweets" is good to go! Our Motto : Stay at the pub longer, we'll tweet you if we need you, love your Domino Server!

How to Create Multiple Communities in IBM Connections or Conenctions Cloud  

By Keith Brooks | 12/1/16 7:14 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

As a non developer, this was easier than I imagined it would be, once help arrived from my friends. I have a Lotus IBM Quickr customer, my last one, so any Quickr sites, contact me I am available! Anyway, I am moving them from Quickr to the IBM Connections Cloud environment.