Open Mic Invitation: IBM Lotus Notes Traveler - December 8

IBM is hosting an Open Mic conference call with Lotus Development and Support Engineering to discuss “IBM Lotus Notes Traveler”.

The Open Mic call will be held on Wednesday, December 8. The call will take place at 10:00 AM EST (15:00 UTC-time) and will last for one hour

There will be a brief presentation about Lotus Notes Traveler, then we will open the call for questions. Bring your questions.

Refer to the following technote for phone and web conference details:

Technote: 1433029

Title: Open Mic Q&A: “IBM Lotus Notes Traveler” - December 8th, 2010

URL: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21433029

You can post any advanced questions within the ND8.5 forum by creating a response to this post.

Subject: What about security?

Is there something like best practice available how to setup traveler?

As traveler should be reachable from everywhere so it has to be connected to the internet. Is the preferred method to use VPN? Is it OK to put the traveler server to the internet zone? Should I use a reverse proxy? How can I prevent DoS Attacks? What is the minimum configuration for Domino to run traveler?

Subject: From IBM - Configuration options to consider

This section of the Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.2 documentation wiki on supported configurations may help:

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/Choosing_a_deployment_configuration_LNT852

Subject: ID Vault, SSL, General Encryption vs. Message Encryption

Would like someone to clarify a general overall security configuration for Traveler. It seems that available resources discuss encryption, but its generally not 100% clear to me if they are referring to email message encryption (i.e. using Notes ID/ID Vault to encrypt a message for only another Notes user) or if they are referring to using the ID Vault/ID to actually enrypt traffic between the iPhone and the Traveler Server (similar to end to end as in RIM’s offering)? In addition, is such in lieu of using SSL if implemented or not? Can this be clearly discussed/broken out in discussion?

Subject: Where can Traveler Run

Is it supported to run the Traveler task on a Blackberry Enterprise Server?

Subject: Traveler is a separate mobile offering from Blackberry/RIM

RIM is an important IBM partner and the RIM/Blackberry solution is a separate offering from the Lotus Notes Traveler solution, giving our customers more options for mobilizing their organizations. A Traveler running as a service on a Domino server that is separate from a BES server is advised.

Subject: RE: Where can Traveler Run

Traveler runs as a Domino task, so it needs to run on a Domino server. It can be an existing Domino server or a new Domino server.It does not need nor will it run on a Blackberry server.

Subject: From IBM - Device security capabilities by platform

The chart below shows the device security capabilities in Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1 and 8.5.2 releases, in five areas (data in transit, encrypted mail, remote wipe, data at rest and password monitoring) and across the supported device/platform types.

Device security capabilities - 8.5.1 and 8.5.2

Subject: RE: What about security?

One more thing to add…

Most customers have either done a reverse proxy (many different ones) or put the Domino server running Traveler in the DMZ. VPNs have been more problematic, so they have been used but less often than the other two configurations. All three can be made secure, so it is just up to you on what you are comfortable with, already have, want to support, etc.

Subject: Security

We are planning to implement Traveller, but are concerned about the security part. We already have BES in our environment. Require some information about the security acpect of any device connecting to a Traveller server compared to BES.

Subject: From IBM - Device security capabilities

From IBM - Device security capabilities by platform

Subject: Licensing for underlying Domino Server

What is the least cost domino licensing option that would allows us to run traveler?

Subject: RE: What about security?

The best practices would basically be that this is going to be an HTTP server, so you should secure it however you would secure any other HTTP server.

Most of this is covered in the documentation under Choosing a Deployment Configuration:

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/Choosing_a_deployment_configuration_LNT852

The requirements are documented here:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27019476

Subject: Traveler on iSeries

  1. I also want to run Traveler on the iSeries

  2. If there happened to be no future plans for Traveler on iSeries, could we install Domino/Traveler on a linux based LPAR on our iSeries without needing an additional license? We have been told a $2000.00 license is necessary to run this on a separate Windows server

Subject: RE: Traveler on iSeries

For #1, I’ll add you to the list of names asking for iSeries.

For #2, you need to talk to your sales person regarding licensing.

Subject: Please add me as well to the Traveler on i5 list

We are a non-profit with a big investment in our iSeries. I’ve been asked by management and doctors to look into Traveler to go along with our Domino and Sametime install, but don’t have any budget for another Windows server and Domino license. Disappointed that I can’t provide another Blue / Yellow solution at this time as everyone has been happy with the email and IM solutions so far…

Larry Leonhardt

Park Center, Inc.

Fort Wayne, IN

Subject: Unread/Read synchronization with Mail

We are facing some synchronization issue between Notes and Traveler.Some mails when they are read on Notes are showing unread on Traveler.I always have to force synch reset for the user device which the next user synchronize it will updated traveler. We are running Lotus Traveler 8.5.1.1 Build 201002091011

Subject: RE: Unread/Read synchronization with Mail

This should be working. The only caveat here is that the Traveler server design is not to push the read/unread only changes to the device; the push flags are set but not sent to the client until some other change needs to be pushed to the device (add, update, delete, etc.). If the device does a sync (either push or sync now initiated), the read/unread marks will synchronize. In normal activity, you are getting new mails such that the read/unread changes are being synced when the new mails are pushed to the device. But if you read the mail in Notes on your PC and look 5 seconds later on your device, you might not see it yet for this reason. If you have new mail since that time, the read/unread marks should be up to date.

You should not be using the reset command to “fix” this as that deletes all the data on the device and syncs it all from the server again. If you have had new/updated/deleted mails during this time and the read/unread is still not updated, then something else is going on here and you need to open a PMR.

You are on 8.5.1.1 which is not the latest maintenance either. I don’t think there are any fixes related to read/unread in the subsequent fix packs, but you might want to consider updating to get all the other fixes.

Subject: Messaging Indicators for Forward or Reply.

Can we have the client updated with a fwd/reply indicator when a mail is forwarded or replied from the iphone?

Subject: RE: Messaging Indicators for Forward or Reply

There is a requirement to try and do something about this for messages being sent from the Apple device. The ActiveSync spec does not sync the flags, but maybe something embedded in the message will be enough set the flags on the server side. For the other direction (sent from a Notes client on a PC), there is no way in ActiveSync to specify the flags, so there is no way to update the device.