Installing and Upgrading to the New Notes Social Edition Version 9

Andy Higgins, IM Collaboration

andy@imcollaboration.com

Overview

• This presentation shares lessons learned from a recent project upgrading a large environment from IBM Notes 8.5.2 to IBM Notes 9 – More modern looking– More potential for customization– Configurability – The “Discover Page”

• Key differences in the Notes client types• Recommended Notes.ini and

Plugin_Customization.ini settings• Notes browser plugin

The IBM Notes 9 Social Edition Clients

• Notes client• Notes Admin & Dev client• Windows multi-user functionality– No multi-user Admin/Dev client

The Notes Client

• The Notes client can be set as a single-user or as a multi-user install.– Single user install is for when you know one user per

machine and data stays in one place– Multi-user install, then the data directory will be created

under the C:\Users\<username>\IBM\Notes\Data path. • A benefit of the multi-user install allows for Windows

user account data protection security on the IBM data directory. Additionally, the multi-user install is the recommended way to install Notes at present.

The Admin and Designer Clients

• The Admin and Designer clients can only be installed in single-user mode.

• Identify who needs Admin and Designer before roll-out

• Use NICE (Notes Install Cleanup Executable) to put a new installation in its place but retain the data and settings of the old client

Installing the Notes Client• Regardless of whether you are running a webkit install or installing as part of a script, your

first step in the install process (after removing old plugins through the Windows add/remove programs) is to run NICE on the program files only

• NICE.EXE –rp –qn • This will remove all of the program files in the directory apart from the Notes.ini which must

remain for the overlay install to work correctly. –qn makes the process invisible.• The next step is to install the 9.0.1 single-client package directly over the 8.5.2 client.• For the all-client (Admin and/or Designer) option, do the same thing as above. The all-client

package can be installed over the 8.5.2 client or the 9.0.1 Notes-only client package. It can even be installed over the 8.5.2 all-client package.

• Using the above methodology, you could even install a Notes-only client over a previous Notes Admin/Designer install and maintain the user’s settings.

• Using NICE is a best practice when moving from one version of Notes to another. It’s also recommended when moving from a single-user install to a multi-user install, especially because it keeps the Notes.ini on the single-user install in the program files directory (it doesn’t remove it, so the multi-user install can use the Notes.ini that existed before from the single-user install).

Adding the IBM Sametime 9 Embedded Client to the Package

• I don’t need to document adding Sametime 9 to your Notes 9 install here as there is an excellent blog article from the IBM install team that explains this very clearly:http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/installblog.nsf

• Essentially the post explains how you can remove the Sametime 8.5.2 embedded package from the Notes 9 client and then add the Sametime 9.0 embedded client right back in.

• The above is a special case, and it isn’t currently possible to do the same thing with, say, the IBM Connections plugin package

Changing Things in the Standard Notes 9 Package

• In the Notes 8.5 releases, just about every additional package was included in the released product.

• In the V9 release, IBM has taken the opposite tack and removed just about everything.

Notes Minder removal

Recommended Notes.ini Settings for IBM Notes 9

• Following are two important recommended Notes.ini settings when installing the v9 package:

• create_r9_databases=1Include this in all clients’ Notes.ini as it will create all new DBs with the new ODS v52 which is now available using Notes 9 (For more details see this post on the IBM Domino and Notes wiki).

• $ENABLE_ADDITIONAL_KEYSTROKES=1This setting enables some keyboard shortcuts that seem to have been removed in V9, so it is recommended that you make them available for clients that use them.

Notes Browser Plugin• I really like the new Notes Browser Plugin (NBP). It works nicely and

allows seamless access to all Notes databases using your local browser. The only database it won’t access, however, is your mail database, but that is accessible using the Notes web mail access, so NBP will refer to the web mail interface.

• Following are a couple of tips and tricks for Notes.ini parameters that you can include to make NBP work better:

• BrowserUseHttpForiNotes=1 will allow you to connect to IBM iNotes over HTTP instead of HTTPS.

• INOTES_REDIRECTOR_PATH=<Server Host Name or IP address> is required when you need to use specific redirector server and/or port (For further information, see the

• Unable to access iNotes from Notes Browser Plug-in IBM Technote).

Embedded HTML in Mail Items

• Be careful using Internet Explorer 10 with Notes; rendering HTML inside of the Notes client (in mail items) doesn’t work too well if you have the setting in your Notes client set to use the operating system browser. IBM currently suggests you disable the HTML rendering by OS embedded browser option using the following Notes.ini setting:

• BrowserRenderDisable=1This checks the setting in the Basic Notes client Configuration – see next slide

Contrary to what is printed in some sources, this setting disables the use of the operating system’s embedded browser. For Windows, this is always Internet Explorer; it is not the OS default browser as set by the user. It also is not referring to the Notes embedded browser, the code which is effectively used when this setting is set to 1 (Be careful, it’s confusing!)

Plugin_Customization.ini

• There is a plugin_customization.ini file in each package (in the deploy directory) but the ones that really matter are the one in the Notes package and the one in the Connections plugin package.

• At install (of the specific package) the plugin_customization.ini file is copied into the install directory and applied to the installation. Thus the changes to this file are startup parameters that we need to have set a certain way at install.

• Plugin_Customization.ini is NOT the same as Notes.ini

plugin_customization.ini file settings

com.ibm.rcp.ui/com.ibm.notes.client.discoverpageshortcut=true

This setting allows for the display of the Discover Page shortcut:

com.ibm.rcp.ui/com.ibm.workplace.noteswc.views.NotesHomepage=true

This setting allows for the display of the Notes HomePage shortcut:

plugin_customization.ini file settings

com.ibm.rcp.ui/com.ibm.notes.client.workspaceshortcut=true

This setting allows for the display of the Notes Workspace shortcut:

plugin_customization.ini file settings

com.ibm.rcp.ui/102=true

This setting allows for the display of the Notes Contacts shortcut:

plugin_customization.ini file settings

plugin_customization.ini file settings

• com.ibm.rcp.jfaceex/overrideAutoStart=com.ibm.rcp.gettingstarted.GettingstartPerspective

This stops the “getting started page” appearing automatically• com.ibm.rcp.ui.browser.launcher/USE_EMBEDDED_BROWSER=false

Use the OS web browser, not the built-in Notes web browser• com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.alertmanager/pref_event_0_option_1=false

This means don't bring window to front for one-to-one chats• com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.calendar/notes_available=true

This feature and the one below ensures that the Sametime Calendar integration plugin is enabled by default.

• com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.calendar/notes_enabled=true

Modifying the Eclipse Features

Example – to remove OpenSocial feature:• Edit the install.xml file to configure the OpenSocial feature to

not install by changing the value below: <installfeature default="false" description="%OpenSocial.description" id="OpenSocial" name="%OpenSocial.name" required="false" show="true" version="9.0.20131022-1138">• When customizing the install.xml file for supplied features,

focus only on the installfeature element, not the sub-level feature element.

Note: Do not edit any installfeature element whose “required" attribute is set to true.

The Eclipse Install

In basic terms, the Eclipse installation piece is done “within” the actual Notes client install (the MSI installer). You can see this reflected in the MSI logs when, at certain points, the MSI goes into a waiting mode. This is essentially where it has handed the installation process off to the Eclipse install; the Eclipse install returns to the MSI install and passes parameters telling it whether the Eclipse install has been successful or not. This is important because you need to look here to check if the MSI install fails as it may not be a problem with the MSI but with the Eclipse install. You can debug a problem by viewing the Eclipse logs under C:\Notes\Data\workspace\logs. Under this location you can see “error” and “trace” logs – the former being less descriptive. Look at the lowest numbered one for the most recent information; most times it’s fairly obvious what the problem is.

Changing the Discovery Page

• The discovery page is controlled by the file populatedTemplate.txt, which is converted on client startup to populatedHTML.htm. The file populatedTemplate.txt comes from within the gettingStarted plugin. In order to be correctly implemented, the startedpageTemplate.tmp file needs to be modified and added back into the gettingStarted plugin in the package. The key thing is to have the whole getting_startedXXX.jar file re-signed after it has been edited. If this is not done, the install will report a provisioning security error as it is designed this way to stop people from editing these plugins without authorization.

• The file that needs to be modified is in the updateSite.zip of the Notes install package. Extract the specific plugin shown in Figure 9 from the plugin directory in this zip file.

• When you have the plugin jar file, change the ending from JAR to ZIP (as essentially that is all this file is – a compressed file). Then unzip the file and you should see the contents shown in the next slide:

• We see the startedpageTemplate.tmp file, which is the same file that gets laid down as the populatedTemplate.txt file after the install. This is the file that you need to modify. Any CSS files or image files that you might need also should reside here.

• After you have modified the plugin, zip the gettingstarted file back up and rename it as a JAR file and then sign it just as explained under “Signing and adding new features to the kit” half way down the page at this location: ( IBM’s documentation on signing plugins).

• After the plugin has been signed, re-add it to the updateSite.zip file. Be careful when doing the recompressing of the zip files as it’s easy to create the zip file with an incorrect folder structure.

• The updateSite.zip file can then be added into the installation build.

The end (of the presentation)

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this article and all the other good stuff from other contributors• THANKS FOR ATTENDING and see you at

ConnectEd 2015!!