ID Vault: How does the Notes client obtain a new ID file if the local copy has been deleted?

HCL Domino Domino Forum
1

Hello,

we tried to evaluate the new feature “ID Vault” and set this function up as described in the Domino 8.5 Administrator help (–> “Summary of ID vault configuration tasks and tools”). After connecting to the server with the Notes 8.5 client the users’ IDs are stored in the ID vault database.

On this Notes client we created different Location Documents, each bound to a specific user ID file and mail file. Now we deleted one ID file from the specified location in the file system and tried to connect to the Domino server again. The Notes client comes up with a dialog window, prompting to select an ID file.

In the “Options…” of the Log-In mask in the Notes client we weren’t able to find any new menu item or function related to the ID vault feature. Just the “Forget my password”-button. This button now appears just next top the “Options” button as well, but even there is no function to get a new copy of the deleted ID file from the server.

Even after we tried some attempts to connect to the DOmino server there is still no new local ID file visible.

What are your experiences? Has anybody been able to restore a deleted ID file from the ID vault? And how? Any ideas what went wrong or what we have to do to get it running?

2

Subject: Try these steps…

  1. Run the Notes client with a vaulted ID file.

  2. Shut down the Notes client

  3. Delete the ID file from the local workstation

  4. Restart the Notes client

Tthe client code that fetches ID files from the vault cannot guess a user’s name (John Doe/Org/Company) from an arbitrary file path. (c:\user.id) The “LastActiveUserName” (and a number of other useful pieces of information about the “current” ID file are stored in the notes.ini file, so those can be used to look for an ID in the vault when restarting the client without an ID file. Since when you switch IDs or locations those notes.ini values are reset…

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Subject: Problem solved

Thanks, Dave, for your suggestion. In fact I switched th Location Documents a lot and therefore the Notes client lost the necessary information for using the ID Vault successfully. If you don’t switch Location Documents the client gets the ID file back from the server and the user even doesn’t notice.

4

Subject: Additional Information

We considered adding a feature like “Switch to ID” → “Switch to user in vault”, but we did not have time to include it in the initial release.

If a user with a single ID file loses it, they just restart the Notes client.

If a user who has multiple identities and does switch ID a lot loses their ID file AND it was not the last ID file in use on the client there are two solutions:

  1. Contact a helpdesk person or administrator and ask that the ID file be extracted from the vault and provided to the end user

or

  1. By hand configure the Notes client notes.ini file to refer to the user whose ID file needs to be recovered:

LastActiveUserName=<user’s name>

Location=,

KeyFileName=path to id file - must not exist

Please let us know if you have user’s who would benefit from a feature to recover any id file from the vault.

Thanks

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Subject: Problem solved

Thanks, Peter, for your suggestion. I sitched Locations Documents a lot and I think this made the ID recovery from the ID Vault running on errors. Now we can use the ID Vault function successfully.

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Subject: Recover any ID file from ID Vault

Peter, at the moment we do not need a function to get any user’s ID file from the ID vault on any Notes client. The mentioned Location Documents and user ID files have been created for evaluation porposes only and because we just installed the Notes 8.5 BETA client on one pc.

In our organisation each user has his/her own data directory and set of personal Notes files.

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Subject: Please don’t forget the roaming user configuration.

If you are considering extraction for any arbitrary user id remind the consequences for roaming users.

Will the corresponding roaming data be replicated to the workstation?

Is the id-file reattached to the personal adressbook?

Will the password-digest and the id-file in the roaming profile (personal adressbook) diverge?

see also →

Thank you in advance

Harald Svab