Hi,
how can i create programmatically with VB6 or C# an Button/Tab in Lotus Notes Client.
I want write a assembly/COM for comunication between Lotus Note CLient and my own Application.
How i can programmatically select an e-mail in lotus notes client.
I have a pdf-document about lotusscript. But i can’t find this points.
Thanks for tips, infos or links.
Greetings from berlin
Asim
Subject: Inside…
Please provide more informationwhat is your own application from a technical point of view. Is it a VB app, a C# app? Does it run on the same workstation as the Notes client?
what does it do?
what type of communication between your own app and Lotus Notes do you want to establish, i.e. what would you like to achieve?
what version of Lotus Notes are you running?
In general here are a few things you could do:
In Lotus Notes you can create a button and attach some logic to it. This could be a button in your Toolbar or an action button that is attached to a form or view within a Notes application (for example within your email database). These buttons can trigger the execution of LotusScript code which can manipulate any Notes object (including emails) and also talk to external applications (for example via COM). You need the Domino Designer to do this.
In your VB app you could setup logic to talk to the Lotus Domino Objects via COM.
In order to access a specific object like an email programmatically you need to understand the Domino Object model. This is explained in the Domino Designer Help manual, which is also available online: IBM Developer
I suggest you start here:
For a graphical representation see Domino Objects for LotusScript/COM/OLE, Part 2 from here:
http://www-12.lotus.com/ldd/doc/uafiles.nsf/docs/designer65poster
Subject: Lotus Notes 8.0
Ok, i decribe my idea exaktly. I want select in lotus notes a item(e-mail, contacts, etc etc). i push my own button in lotus notes and export the e-mail as ima-file fro archive in other application. I want change the properties of selected e-mail: attaschments, subject, perhaps color or icon. My application run only on clients.
I write my application in VB6 or C#(what is better?). My application create a Button und communication for export and changing properties of selected e-mail. How looks the specification of the AddIn for Lotus Notes.
In outlook and novell groupwise i can do this.
thanks…
asim
german: Ich möchte eine Application schreiben, mit der ich in Lotus Notes eine markierte Mail als IMA-File exportieren und archivieren(in einer anderen Application) kann. darüber hinaus möchte ich die selektierte E-Mail ändern, z.B. Anhänge löschen, oder Texte ändern, vielleicht ein Icon hinzufügen/hintergrundfarbe ändern, dass die selektiete Mail verändert wurde. Mein Anwendung läuft nur auf den Clients.
Das soll über ein Button geschehen, das meine Application in Lotus Notes erzeugt. Wie kann ich meine Application an Lotus Notes anbinden. ibt es vorgaben wie mein AddIn aussehen muss, damit diese geladen werden kann.
Mit Outlook oder Novell groupwise geht das ganz gut.
Danke…
Asim
Subject: some ideas
Your description sounds like there’s really no need for your external application to talk back to Notes.Assuming your users would start in the Notes UI (in email, in contacts,…) you could design a view action button that triggers the export operation. The logic behind that button would be written in LotusScript.
The 'only" problem: Lotus Notes doesn’t know about the IMA file format so you have to find a way to generate that format. Do you have a library that allows you to generate that format?
Lotus Notes also comes with a set of export filters. For example you can export the content of a Notes document as a RTF document. Or you could export the data as an HTML or XML document. Does your external application accept different input formats beside IMA?
Lotus Notes also has a mechanism called the Extension Manager that allows you to write your own “add-ins”… However this isn’t trivial and you should expect to do some heavy C++ programming when following that route.
Subject: thanks
Hi Erik,
thanks, but is not easy way. Have IBM no enterprise-content-management-scenarios? I want archive my mails in us archivesystem per user.
thanks
asim
Subject: Archiving…
IBM has several email archiving solutions (for example FileNet as well as IBM Content Manager Common Store for Lotus Domino) and there are many 3rd-party archiving solutions for Lotus Domino available as well. All of them support automatic archiving per user according to some centrally defined rules/policies/profiles. But when it comes to manual archiving triggered by the enduser, my guess is that you always end up with some sort of action button implemented in the email template. This is no problem for a Notes application because you have to implement that button only in the mail template and all individual mailfiles inherit that “extension” from the template. Of course this assumes that you don’t have to distribute additional DLLs onto your users workstations but even then there are ways to do this in Notes as well.Any archiving solution i’m aware of also comes with a server component which would be the place to take care of any format conversions. Depending on your archiving needs it may make sense to archive in Notes format or in DXL/XML or in PDF/A or TIFF or whatever.
Subject: Lialis Notes email archive solution
I would like to invite you to have a look at this solution.
The solution
The Lialis email archiving solution archives the emails in your environment as you demand. Once configured, the selection of the emails to be archived runs automatically. You can determine which emails will be archived by the solution, for example emails older than 100 days.
How does the solution work?
The archived emails turn up on the normal Lotus Domino-server, on which the Lialis archive solution is installed. This central email archiving solution manage the entire archiving process. The main advantage of the Lialis solution is that employees have access to their archived email messages as easy as before, while the emails remain visible in their mail file folders. Via a link there is an invisible connection between the mail file and the archive database.
Find information
The archive solution has an special search functionality. This functionality searches both archived and not archived email messages. Therefore users don’t notice what happens in the background. The solution can be used for both personal as general email databases.
Houskeeping makes sure the archive database does not grow larger than a for example 5 GB.
Pricing of this tool lies between 5 and 8 euro per Notes database (pricing 2009)
http://www.lialis.com/Applications/xspwiki.nsf/dx/Lialis_solution_email_archiving_user_experience
Subject: ReduceMail Pro archives email and it is easy to use
Check out ReduceMail Pro at IBM Notes Email Archiving Solution - What Is ReduceMail Pro Archive? it is reliable and easy to use for both end user and Administrator.
Subject: Just as a hint, Notes Rich text convertion into RTF is not really anywhere close to perfect …
you would not be the first one to learn the expensive way -with a complete product trying to sell it- that many potential customers don’t find a product to be good enough because of this.
Notes Customers additionaly usually expect an archiving solution to cover more than Mail and todo, but to have an answer for their custom apps, too. - I would bet an excellent bottle of Champaign on that there are hundreds of differrent active CRM Applications in Germany alone, to point to just one example (I have personally written more than one) - How many are there for Groupwise? - It is different markets and different expectations on the customer side.
IMHO, you will have to do this market right or to skip it. There is good reasons for both decissions.
Subject: It is not in there.
IF you realy realy need this in the very way you descripe I would look at the code generated when exporting a rich text field with a button and some lotus script in there to dxl, how to round trip the info back into the document and how to change the dxl.
Be prepaired for a rough road. This is only how to get a button in there, nothing else. Not sure if it could do 100% of what you think you need at this point.
Actually I think you have to go the other way around and tell what you want to do.
I think you will have to share your idea with someone more into this and with more time. Things like which app is expected to trigger what at which point. Things like shortcuts, things like using the best tool for the job on the Notes side, too.
Subject: Lotus Notes 8.0
Ok, i decribe my idea exaktly. I want select in lotus notes a item(e-mail, contacts, etc etc). i pushh my own button in lotus notes and export the e-mail as ima-file. I want change the properties of selected e-mail: attaschments, subject, perhaps color or icon.
I write my application in VB6 or C#(what is better?). My application create a Button und communication for export and changing properties of selected e-mail. How looks the specification of the AddIn for Lotus Notes.
In outlook and novell groupwise i can do this.
thanks…
asim
german: Ich möchte eine Application schreiben, mit der ich in Lotus Notes eine markierte Mail als IMA-File axportieren kann. darüber hinaus möchte ich die selektierte E-Mail ändern, z.B. Anhänge löschen, oder Texte ändern, vielleicht ein Icon hinzufügen/hintergrundfarbe ändern, dass die selektiete Mail verändert wurde.
Das soll über ein Button geschehen, das meine Application in Lotus Notes erzeugt. Wie kann ich meine Application an Lotus Notes anbinden. ibt es vorgaben wie mein AddIn aussehen muss, damit diese geladen werden kann.
Mit Outlook oder Novell groupwise geht das ganz gut.
Danke…
Asim
Subject: I would check for this way:
a) Visual Basic (LotusScript) is a tool to allow to do such buttons to select mails within Notes and access the outside world, too. To do so you need domino desginer.
=>
I have never heard of the format you want to end up, temporarily.
I would not use an external format to change Subject or something either.
At the end of your work you will have a modification in the Lotus Mailfile, which needs to be distributed etc.
=> You should expect to hit into Admins who would prefer simply not to allow your app on their server, at all, if it is not giveing a significant benefit to the Corporite (Like for an Archiving system or something), and you can’t explain in detail why it could not have been done within Notes in the first place.
Notes is not an easy area for folks comming from the outside, wanting to integrate without really caring for the system in detail. Seams like you are comming down this road.
… Grüße nach Berlin …
Subject: Examples
Hi Bernfried,
you have examples or links for my problem.
thanks
Asim
Subject: I guess it is more classes to visit, what you need
If you get along with Domino Designer, and don’t need necessarily a button, you may start with an Agent - Advantage: This is visible for all documents and all forms, if done right it will work from both, the view and from within the document (could even switch the document into editmode if necessary. There is a class library and sample codes for all this in the help in designer (F1)Such an Aktion ends up in the Aktions menu. - If any of this is new for you, or you don’t know how to do so I realy realy do think you should go to multiple classes or hire someone in your area for support. Same if you have not been using Notes Mail for some months, as you most likely need to hit what folks expect in the user interface
Once you have created this Agent (or some Action button in the relewant forms) I would go for ‘LotusScript’ which is a Visual basic dialect allowing a lot of things within the client and external actions - e.g. to access the outside via com or to call a dll.
Honestly, I am not in the business to provide you with at least severl hours of free documentation of allready documented stuff and tons of free tips off all kind to get you running, as this would not pay for my bills, and is just beyond what you offer in places like this one.
It takes most people with guidance just hours to get from zereo to where you are planing to go., Saying this, I don’t think you are planing to go far enough, as you have most likely not used Notes for a bunch of munch intensively.
If you have a budget for this, you can reach me at Info2@Intellisys.de, I have worked for folks integrating the outside world, before, but I am in south Germany (Stuttgart area), you might be better on with someone nearby.
Anyhow, wish you the best of luck!
Subject: i have no much time
Hi Bernfried,
thanks for ideas. I think i read much documentation and hope i can find a result for my problem.
regards
Asim Tozlu