This solution should be retroactive to previous versions of iNotes.
Imagine small community groups who wish to simply and efficiently manage
participant activities, including administration of a centralized calendar of
events, group notifications, mail lists, etc. A handful of group admins would
have access to modify information, the rest would have read access to certain
portions of the information.
The iNotes webmail template provides a simple way to offer all that
functionality. A difficulty we ran into was how to keep certain information out
of the way, so that anonymous users would see, for example, only the calendar
and notebook areas, while not being able to read the contacts (with all those
juicy email addresses…).
A first utterly simple technique employs a hidden view of this community
mailbox (mail\mygroup.nsf, for example). You will have to get there through
the Notes Client, opening the database or selecting it in the workspace, then
holding CTRL-SHFT while clicking on the menu VIEW - GOTO. Scroll down to the
(HaikuTOC) view and open it.
You will see the web elements of mail file, displayed as documents. You can
eliminate elements available to web users by deleting these – but you must
create an agent to do it. And, well, it {is] rather permanent. You’d
have to go to another mail file to resurrect the documents (and maybe create
another agent to copy them?).
Better is to simply select a document and change the reader access rights on
it. Right-click / Document Properties / Security tab (key icon). For example,
if you only want the mail managers to see and use the MAIL section, go to that
document’s properties dialog and deselect ALL READERS AND ABOVE, choosing a
subset of the ACL. I used the Administrators group (so I could retain control
over the document), plus another group which I created for the central managers
of the mail DB.
In a similar fashion, you could remove the welcome page for all users –
without having to eliminate the document, as suggested in the IBM iNotes
Whitepaper: you will need a third ID file – probably your corporate
developer’s signature – added to the ACL of the database. Remove read access
for everybody but that signature ID… the document should go poof from the
view, but will be visible if you switch to that ID.
Last, follow instructions in the IBM iNotes customization Whitepaper (sorry, I
am linkless) to change the logo of the mail template to be something
group-related.
I’ve always loved the ability to make Domino mail into something attractive and
really useful for our end users. While iNotes is perhaps less “tweakable” than
the almost fully re-codable NotesMail template, IBM/Iris/Whomever has done a
good job of keeping that door open, and delivering a tool we can really
leverage.
(And really, a superb webmail template all around… kudos!)
Mark