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IBM Connections Plug-ins for IBM Notes - without logging in at Greenhouse- 25 March 2016 - (0) Comments

Thomas Hampel
 25 March 2016

IBM Social Software already posted the availability of the new IBM Connections Plug-Ins for Notes.which adds support for Connections Cloud.
In order to get this plug in you would normally have to browse to the Greenhouse Solutions Catalog , log in , find the package of interest, and then click "Get Download".

Maybe you noticed that the zip file itself is not hosted on Greenhouse, so you do not need to log in at all for downloading it.
Just head over to developerWorks and grab the file directly using this link:
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/dw/ibm/connections/IBMConnectionsNotes.zip

IBM Stammtisch in Dresden - IBM Connect Comes to You - 8.April.2016- 23 March 2016 - (0) Comments

Thomas Hampel
 23 March 2016

Hallo IBM Community!

wir, d.h. Anett Hammerschmidt und ich, laden euch wieder herzlich zur IBM Connect Comes to You in Dresden ein.
Unser Motto für diesen Abend lautet "Make Every Moment Count" , und so haben wir folgende Highlights geplant:
  • Update & What's next - Neues rund um die IBM Messaging & Collaboration Produkte
  • Einem -noch geheimen-  'Special Guest'
  • Die Zukunft schon jetzt erleben, Live und in Farbe!
  • Ein IBM Quiz (...ja es gibt etwas zu gewinnen)
Auch diesmal steht das Kennenlernen und Pflegen neuer und alter Kontakte im Mittelpunkt, quasi Social Networking live erleben.

Wann?

Datum: 08. April 2016
Von 17:00 Uhr bis ...

Wo?

Augustiner an der Frauenkirche
An der Frauenkirche 16/17
01067 Dresden
Image:IBM Stammtisch in Dresden - IBM Connect Comes to You - 8.April.2016
Webgeschreibung siehe Google Maps, parken ggf. bei QPark Frauenkirche / Neumarkt

Anmeldung:

Bitte über den nachfolgenden Button anmelden, so können wir die Plätze im Lokal besser planen und ggf. mehr Tische reservieren.
Zur Anmeldung

Ablauf:
17:00 Uhr - Welcome Reception
17:30 Uhr - IBM Connect Comes to You. (mit LiveDemo)
ab 19:00 - Social Networking Live Demo mit #Lotusbeer
21:00 - IBM Quiz (es gibt Preise zu gewinnen!)

Kurzentschlossene können auch ohne Anmeldung einfach vorbeikommen, bitte direkt bei Anett ( +49-176-10315855 ) anrufen

Wir freuen uns auf Euch!
Anett Hammerschmidt und Thomas Hampel

Enable Apple TouchID support in IBM Verse mobile App for IBM Connections Cloud Users- 22 March 2016 - (0) Comments

Thomas Hampel
 22 March 2016

In general IBM Verse mobile app on iOS supports Apple's TouchID for authentication.
And we might agree that using fingerprints for unlocking phone is not only a convenient way for busy people, its also more secure than a 4 (or 6) digit passcode that anyone can get by shoulder surfing

According to Going Mobile with IBM Verse ( see slide #44 ) this feature seems to be available only for on premises Domino servers so unfortunately IBM Connections Cloud users cant use it.
Well... lets see :)

First some basics

To enable TouchID support In an on premises environment, an admin needs to update the on prem Domino Directory using this template which contains a new tab for IBM Verse Security settings.
Image:Enable Apple TouchID support in IBM Verse mobile App for IBM Connections Cloud Users
Which can be allowed or prohibited...
Image:Enable Apple TouchID support in IBM Verse mobile App for IBM Connections Cloud Users
and of course those settings are applied to a user using Domino policies.
Applying the same policy to a Connections Cloud (hybrid configuration) user unfortunately has no effect. TouchID support will remain disabled.
So far about the simple stuff.

Peeking into Policies and Profiles:

When enabling this setting in an OnPrem environment, a field named "devPapplAppTouchID" is set to "1" in the policy settings document.
Taking a closer look into the user's mail file using NotesPeek the same field name can be found in a profile document called "travelerprofile"
Image:Enable Apple TouchID support in IBM Verse mobile App for IBM Connections Cloud Users
Comparing this traveler profile document of an OnPrem user with a user in Connections Cloud shows that the field does not exist.
...so if this is the only reason for the TouchID not to work, lets try to set it :)

Activate TouchID support for Connections Cloud users

All we need to do is set the field "devPapplAppTouchID" to a value of "1" in the "travelerprofile".
To do that use the following code in an agent or button...

     Dim s As New NotesSession
     Dim profile As NotesDocument
     Set profile = s.CurrentDatabase.GetProfileDocument ("travelerprofile")
     If Not profile.IsNewNote And profile.IsValid Then
             If profile.getitemvalue ("devPapplAppTouchID")(0) = "" Then
                     Call profile.replaceitemvalue ("devPapplAppTouchID","1")
                     Call profile.save(True,False)
                     Msgbox "TouchID support has been enabled."
             End If
     End If

Once this code runs against the current mail file the missing field is set and a couple of minutes later TouchID support for the IBM Verse App will be enabled on your Phone.
Hint : In case you're working in a local replica, make sure to replicate

Please note the method described above is not officially supported, so please use at your own risk!

References:

Root Cause for ’Type mismatch in method OP_UNARY’- 21 March 2016 - (0) Comments

Thomas Hampel
 21 March 2016

Quickly creating a mail with Buttons containing LotusScript can cause headaches.
It just takes a few lines of code for running into undocumented error messages here is a small example:
Image:Root Cause for ’Type mismatch in method OP_UNARY’
will result in:
Image:Root Cause for ’Type mismatch in method OP_UNARY’

Changing "if not ..." to "is ..." like shown here
Image:Root Cause for ’Type mismatch in method OP_UNARY’
will result in a slightly different error message "Type mismatch in method IfCoerceBool: Unknown found, Uknown expected"
Image:Root Cause for ’Type mismatch in method OP_UNARY’
Do you spot the problem???

What is the root cause?

The property "IsNewDoc" acutally is a property of NotesUIDocument but is not a valid property of the NotesDocument class.
For testing if a NotesDocument is a new document, use the property IsNewNote
When creating a new button within the body of a new mail, Option Declare is not enabled by default like it is in the Designer client, so the error was not detected when saving the source code.
with Option Declare enabled its easier to spot the problem...
Image:Root Cause for ’Type mismatch in method OP_UNARY’

Reminder:

When Switzerland is your last hope- 19 March 2016 - (0) Comments

Thomas Hampel
 19 March 2016

eBay and Paypal are two different companies now. Which is great for support teams because they can now fingerpoint at each other.
For me the fun started early December 2015 when I bought some stuff on ebay from a seller in China who only accepted Paypal.

3-2-1 and the problems started.

I bought the item and have used the "Pay now" button and a lightbox popup showed up where my credentials were requested.
Authentication failed with "Wrong username or password". Of course I was sure that my credentials were correct. And of course URL & SSL certificates were okay, so it was'nt a MTM attack.
Using the same credentials on www.paypal.com worked fine which confirmed my credentials are okay.

I tried over and over again with different browsers and even different computers but nothing worked. I remembered that I've had a similar problem before where I was able to work around the issue by using ebay.com instead of using our localized ebay.de for paypal to work. This time not even ebay.com worked.

Finally I opened a case at PayPal.

They said it is some sort of known bug which is caused by the way ebay and Paypal have integrate their platforms in Germany and other sites, the only site which has not been updated is Switzerland.
So I went to http://www.ebay.ch and to my surprise everything worked fine. A remakrable difference is the layout of the PayPal login dialog box that shows up when using "Pay Now"
For eBay Switzerland the old PayPal design showed up when logging on, while for all other sites the new design showed up.

Thank you Switzerland !!!

Message to eBay & PayPal :  A new fancy design is worth nothing if it doesnt work, so make sure to fix this annoying problem.

Deploying a customized Discover page in IBM Notes 9.0.x- 17 March 2016 - (3) Comments

Thomas Hampel
 17 March 2016

Vlad Tatarincevs already described how to customize the Discover page in the Notes Client.
In his guide he is assuming that all Notes clients are installed in exactly in the same path. While this might be the case for small deployments, its often not the case for enterprise deployments.

What is this Discovery page based on?

When starting the Notes client for the first time, it creates a text file in the Notes Data directory called "populatedTemplate.txt"
This file is used as a reference for computing the Notes Discovery page which is stored in a file called "populatedHTML.htm" in the same directory.

Both files are nothing else than a HTML page which you can customize according to your needs, but since the file populatedHTML.html is overwritten every once in a while, you should not modify this file directly.
Instead apply your modifications to the "populatedTemplate.txt"

Example Customization

In my example the following customizations have been done:
Image:Deploying a customized Discover page in IBM Notes 9.0.x
This file unfortunately contains hardcoded file and path references to the Notes program directory which are unique to the current computer.
In order to deploy a customized discover page in an enterprise environment you'll need to replace the path with the correct path on every single workstation. .

Once you've done your customizations you'll need to replace hardcoded path references with a placeholder which can be updated with computer specific path information when rolling out your new discover page to end user workstations. To do this we will be using a small VBS script that will read the Notes program directory from the Windows registry (sorry, no Mac / Linux support in this example) and updates the placeholder used above with the correct path reference before copying the file into the Notes data directory.

So this is what you have to do:

1.) put your customized "populatedTemplate.txt" into a new directory, and rename the file to "DiscoveryTemplate.txt" - this file name is used in the VBS script
2.) search "DiscoveryTemplate.txt" for the path of your Notes program directory and replace it with the placeholder. In my case I'm using "@NOTESPROGRAMDIR@" which is used in the script later on.
3.) put the following VBS script into the same directory
InstallDiscoverPage.zip

Running the script will overwrite any current "populatedTemplate.txt" in the Notes data directory with the DiscoveryTemplate that contains your customizations.
To display the updated Discover page you need to close and reopen it in the Notes client, or just restart your Notes client once.

You can manually open the Discover page from within the "Open" menu
Image:Deploying a customized Discover page in IBM Notes 9.0.x
where the second item from the bottom is your customized Discover page.
Image:Deploying a customized Discover page in IBM Notes 9.0.x

Remarks
  • Upgrading the Notes client to a future version will most likely overwrite the file "populatedTemplate.txt", so all your customizations will be lost.
  • Yes, it would be possible to deploy a custom discovery page from within the Notes client, but in my experience most enterprise environments have some sort of software distribution method for rolling out patches.

PS: Thanks to Bjoern Wolfgardt for providing a few hints and Marc for testing.

Connections Cloud - Upload Logo- 15 March 2016 - (0) Comments

Thomas Hampel
 15 March 2016

Having difficulties uploading your company logo in IBM Connections Cloud ? I'm talking about
https://apps.ce.collabserv.com/theming/theme/customize

It seems like there is a small problem which is being investigated already. As a quick workaround you can use Firefox with Firebug installed
You can select your company logo but changes will not be taken over when you click on Save Changes

Hit F12 to launch Firebug and select this icon:
Image:Connections Cloud - Upload Logo

Then hover over the navigation bar
Image:Connections Cloud - Upload Logo
In the HTML tab you should now see the following code highlighted:
Image:Connections Cloud - Upload Logo
all you have to do is to remove the property "value" which I have highlighted in red.
Image:Connections Cloud - Upload Logo
the result should look like this:
Image:Connections Cloud - Upload Logo
When completed just click "Save Changes" and your logo will be updated.

References:
Thomas Hampel, All rights reserved.