I've been working with Domino and Lotus for a fairly short amount of time, but every time I have to touch it, I find myself gritting my teeth. I've been a Microsoft Exchange admin for a while, but I have a bunch of experience with several different e-mail platforms. While I am not as familiar with many of them as I am with Exchange, I can set up systems, start e-mail flow, provision users and just generally get by. One of the things that helps me do this is the rich environment of help and documentation that exists out on the Internet. Sometimes the gems of wisdom lurk in forums, sometimes they are on a product's support site, but more often than not, someone else has run into the same problem that I am having. This makes me feel a lot more comfortable and at home with a product, when I know that other people are actually using it and willing to SHARE their experiences.
Well, IBM, you have earned my ire in a bad way!
The situation is that one of Domino 8.0.1 systems I'm managing needed to have Domino Web Access set up so that the end user didn't have to know the whole long URL to his or her mail database file. In Microsoft Exchange 2003, 2007, and now 2010, this is a built in feature that, for the most part, works out of the box. So long as the user is configured for Outlook Web Access, they just have to navigate to a website that was installed on the server by default, enter in valid credentials, and off we go.
This is not the case, however for Domino Web Access. By default, once the user is configured to use DWA, they have to type in an exact URL pointing to his or her specific mail database file. I had known this and just ignored it, since Domino didn't install with any web sites enabled as default, but the client wants people to be able to test the DWA experience without having to know that information. So began the journey (my Google searches):
"how to create a lotus notes login page"
"how to create a login page for DWA"
"how to create a login page for Domino web access"
Now, these searches didn't really net me anything useful, so I headed over to IBM's web site and went to the Documentation section to do some digging. After drilling down, I found this page with some helpful steps:
Setting up Domino Web Access Redirect
The Domino Web Access Redirect template (IWAREDIR.NTF) is in the Domino data directory. To set up Domino Web Access Redirect:
- Create an application using the IWAREDIR.NTF template.
- In the IBM® Lotus® Notes® client, open the application that you created.
- Click Setup and follow the prompts to set up Domino Web Access Redirect.
Note If you select MailServer as the Redirection Type under Server Settings, the common name of the Domino mail server must be the same as its fully-qualified TCP/IP domain name. For example, if the mail server field in the Person document is set to serverA/domainA, the server's TCP/IP fully-qualified domain name must be serverA.lotus.com.
Now, I have to say, this was a WTF moment. Once more, I know that I'm not an expert, but I like to think that I can figure things out. This set of instructions, however, left something to be desired. After poking around on the server, I found the template, and with a right-click, I found that "New..." wasn't an option. How am I supposed to create an application?!?!? More Googleing:
"lotus domino create new application from template"
"lotus domino create new application template"
Which led me to this page with some more detailed instructions on completing the FIRST step in the previous set of instructions:
1. Open the Notes client.
2. Choose File-Application-New. The New Application box appears.
3. In the New Application box, select the Blank Composite Application template from the Template list.
4. Enter a title in the Title field. The File name is also created for you from your title. You may change the file name if you wish.
5. Click OK. A blank composite application container appears with a message that the application does not have any content
6. Choose Action-Edit Application to open the Composite Application Editor and begin working on your composite application. You can use the Composite Application Editor to edit the pages, components, and basic properties of a composite application
This set of instructions is not perfect, but I can steal at least the first two, verbatim, and then monkey around with the settings until I manage to create the new application! Woo! Now I'm getting somewhere...
