My Experience Upgrading to 6.5

HCL Domino Domino Forum
1

I read a few posts from people who weren’t quite getting their Sametime integrating properly with 6.5, but the issues seems to be more related to having an older version of Sametime or pre-existing config issues. I am running Sametime 3.1 (latest) on a 6.02CF2 server and am pretty confident the config is airtight, so I took the plunge. I was not disappointed.

Using myself as the guinea pig, I installed the full client (Notes, Admin, and Designer) and when I started up, after logging in with my Notes ID, I was next prompted for my Sametime password and username. Incidentally, it listed my abbreviated hierarchical name in the user box (Roland Reddekop/BlackPhoto) which confused me briefly because I normally log into sametime using just my common user, but I assumed this was ok and entered my password checking the same password box which I assume saves in in a cookie or something. Anyway, lickety split, I saw the glorious green dot appear in the status bar beside “I AM Active”. Yey.

But I didn’t see the famous new Workplace Welcome page. Checking my policy documents on the server, I had locked down the welcome page, so I unlocked it, selected Workplace as the default Welcome page and saved the policy setting document. After restarting Notes twice, I saw the nifty new Workplace Welcome Page. On the right side was an empty Instant Contacts list (nee buddy list). I simply clicked on the add group option, selected our Everyone Group, and like magic, a number of our Sametime pilot users showed up with their glorious green dots and a couple yellow diamonds.

My mail was the same as before, so I made a non-replica copy of the mail6.ntf, calling it mail65.ntf and changed the design name from StdR6Mail to StdR65Mail, then replicated it to our 6.02CF2 server and ran load convert on just my mail file. It worked like a charm. Everywhere I looked in my Inbox, folders, and in the address listings inside e-mails I saw those glorious green dots inviting me to just reach out and bug somebody. I restrained myself.

Now about the Workplace Welcome page, it does have a lot of cool things, and its going to take me a while to look at the design to figure out how they did it, but serious thing is still lacking and nobody seems to be listening. I think we really need and option to designate any database as the welcome page, even if this could simply be a tab on the new Workspace. My users are spoiled with a fully functional portal-like database as their welcome page that adjusts itself based on what group they are in (I use UserRoles and hide-when formulas to pull this off). If their system or bookmark.nsf ever goes awry (as if this never happens)I just reload Notes set the Portal database as their welcome page (manually) and they are off to the races. Please, please Lotus add a policy setting that will let us designate any database as the welcome page. We can do this now for Web clients (server config setting), so why not for Notes. How hard can it be?

2

Subject: Just one note.

My mail was the same as before, so I made a non-replica copy of the mail6.ntf, calling it mail65.ntf and changed the design name from StdR6Mail to StdR65Mail, then replicated it to our 6.02CF2 server and ran load convert on just my mail file.

You really did not have to do this. You could have just replaced the design on your 6.0.2 server with your Local Mail6 template. The Template version for 6.5 (for some reason???) is 6.0.3 (9/16/2003). The design task will respect this and not overwrite your design changes with the old template 6.0.2

3

Subject: RE: Just one note.

Bill, Not sure I understand you or if you understood me.

Let me explain furhter why I did what I did with regard to the mail template.

First of all, the server (6.02) already has a mail template with the file name mail6.ntf, so if I wanted to test the new template with a handful of users, obviously I need to use a different file name so I chose mail65.ntf so both templates could exist on the same server. Secondly, even if I do this, we’d have two templates on the server with the design name StdR6Mail, which would conflict, so I changed it to StdR65Mail to resolve the conflict and to prevent the new design from upgrading my non-test user’s mail files. Anything wrong with this logic?

4

Subject: All I was suggesting is that you did not need to put the 6.5 Mail template on your server at all.

These steps work.Click on your mail File without opening it.

File, Database, Replace Design

Template Server: Local

Select Mail (R6).

Let it replace the Design.

Now lets look at your mail file properties on the design tab and observe the Template version

Now File, Database, Open, select your Server and type into the filename below mail6.ntf. Click on database properties.

Notice that the Template version is lower than yours. That will tell the design task not to update your mail file as the template on the server is an older version.

5

Subject: No need for template on server

Thanks Bill, I understand now. I remember briefly reading something in the documentation about the new Template version numbering feature (starting in 6.x), but didn’t really pay any attention to it because I thought it was simply a way to identify which version of the template you were using. I didn’t realize it was another layer of control over the design task. Good to know. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

6

Subject: Sorry, I may be wrong about this. For 6 months now I have had my 6.5 Mail File on my R6.01CF1 - 6.02CF2 server.

and it never replaced my design. All of a sudden, last night for some reason it replaced my design. And I thought I knew how it worked. Go Figure.