Archive for the ‘Lotus Notes’ Category

Check Your Lotus Notes E-Mail on the iPhone

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

inotes on iphone

Even though our office does not officially support iPhones yet (we do support BlackBerrys), we thought this post might be informative for those Lotus Notes users out there who have in their possession an Apple smartphone and have been waiting patiently for a way to access their Notes e-mail, calendar and contacts. This information was sent to us from one of our Lotus Notes administrators on campus:

"You can quickly access e-mail, calendars, and contacts by typing https://notes.cc.sunysb.edu/login.nsf directly into your Apple iPhone Safari browser. You will be asked to log in with your Lotus Notes username and password."

In most cases your Lotus Notes Internet password is the same as the Lotus Notes password that you use to access Notes from the computer in your office. If at any point you change your Notes password, the Notes Internet password does not automatically change. If you would like to keep your Notes Internet password the same as your new Notes password, or if you just don’t remember your Internet password, you can go to SUNYSB’s Address Book and change it (.pdf)

Read through our Lotus Notes - Web Access page for some more helpful reminders.

IBM has a Lotus Domino eMail Web page that may also interest you.

 

Posted in Lotus Notes, Smartphones, iPhone | 3 Comments »

Portable Notes Made Easy

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

In a previous blog I gave instructions on how to install "Notes on a Stick". Well, forget that. We created a much easier way of doing it.

Just in case you didn’t read my previous blog post, let me back up and explain. Portable Notes is an installation of Lotus Notes on a USB flash drive. When plugged into a PC, you can start up your own copy of the Notes client.  It can include your ID file and your workspace. The advantage of this compared to using the web iNotes is that you are accessing the client and you can open mail plus other databases.

To make it simple, we took all the files that get installed on the USB flash drive and stuffed them into a self extracting zip file and then put that file up on Softweb (under Email–Lotus Notes–Portable Notes).  So, basically, after you download the zip file (Notes702-usb.exe), all you have to do is double click on the zip file and extract it to your USB flash drive. Follow the instructions on Softweb or read them here.

Once you install the files on your USB flash drive (and add your ID and Contacts — (Names)), you now have a working Notes client that you can take with you wherever you go. I already had reports of people taking it worldwide and not having any trouble.  Not only can you access your mail database, but also any other Notes databases that you use.

Here’s an added bonus. If you plug your USB drive into a Linux system that has wine (a Windows emulator) installed you can run your Portable Notes on a Linux box!  I am amazed!

Another strange thing happened. While testing this, I mistakenly unzipped the package to my SB Drive, the X drive share that all students have (coming soon for faculty and staff). I went to a computer in a SINC site and it worked while being executed off that share as well.

 

Posted in E-Mail, Lotus Notes | 23 Comments »

Notes on a Stick

Friday, March 2nd, 2007

The release notes for Lotus Notes 7.0.2 have instructions for installing Notes on a USB flash memory device. I recently did this install and gave the flash drive to someone that travels around the University using different conference rooms and the occasional spare PC. She is thrilled to have her Notes client, her ID file, contacts and all her bookmarks of other Notes databases with her at all times.

Caveats:

1. Your flash drive should be a USB 2 device and some of these are faster than others. It might take 15 or 20 minutes to install Notes on the flash drive, but loading and executing Notes seems to be reasonably fast.

2. I have used a 512 Meg flash drive but it looks like it could be done on a smaller one as well.

3. The bookmark and address databases that you copy to the flash drive are not updated as they reside on your PC not the Notes server.

OK, Let’s Do It:

1. Insert the flash drive and remember it’s drive letter. In my case it is H:. When actually using this, the drive letter will be dynamic depending on the number of drives on the computer you plug into. The software will accommodate this.

2. You need to install Notes from a command prompt. You need to use the original Notes install not the one from Softweb.

a. Map a drive to //ccnt/notes. i. Right click on My Computer and choose Map Network Drive …

 

ii. Remember the default drive letter (in my case it was V:) and in the folder box type in //ccnt/notes and click Finish. If it requires you to authenticate use your NetID and NetID Password.

 

b. Go to a command prompt i. Start, Run type in cmd and click OK

 

c. Move to the command prompt to the mapped drive.

i. Type in the drive letter of the map drive in a. ii. (my case V:) and Enter.

 

d. Move to the Notes Client directory.

i. At the command prompt type cd 702\client and Enter.

 

ii. You should now be at \\ccnt\notes\702\client directory the command prompt should look like V:\702\client> (my case).

 

e. Begin the installation by typing:

setup /a /v“NOMAD=1 TARGETDIR=H:\ /qb+” H in my case

^ ^ ^ ^ (spaces)

Be careful about spaces.

f. Wait for installation to complete.

g. Launch autorun.exe. Make sure your Notes is not open and be ready with your Notes ID file. Now go to the root of the USB flash drive and double click the autorun.exe file to launch Notes. It will go through the normal notes post install set up and ask for your ID file and password.

 

You now should have a working installation of Notes 7.0.2 on your USB Flash Drive. This is all you need to work on any computer. Simply plug your USB Flash Drive into any computer and double click the Autorun.exe file on your USB Flash Drive. Yes, I think it is supposed to start automatically when you plug in the Flash Drive but I haven’t gotten it to do that and in fact I like the option of using the Flash Drive for other things.

One other thing you might like to do is replace the default address book that is automatically created during the install with your desktop address book that has your contacts email addresses, etc. To do this stop Notes and copy the names.nsf file (my case c:\lotus\notes\data\names.nsf) on your desktop to the Flash Drive replacing the default file. If you do this step you will have to re-select “Office” as the location in the lower right border of the Notes window. Another way to get your contacts is to sync with your Notes account via the web interface.

You should also be aware that if you look at “Add or Remove Programs” in the control panel of the PC that you used to install Notes on a stick you will find an entry for “Notes on a USB”. This can be removed with no effect on your regular Notes or the USB drive Notes.

Note:

This install will auto-run Notes, however it may also ask you what to do with the files it found on the USB drive. If you want to just auto-run Notes and nothing else, go to My Computer, right click on the USB drive and select properties. Select “take no action” for each file type.

Some reference links:

 http://www-128.ibm.com/
developerworks/lotus/products/notesdomino/notesonastick/

 

Posted in Lotus Notes | 8 Comments »