The Not-So-Rapid Blog

I'm guessing that I don't need to tell most of my visitors how a Notes client is configured - which files do what, and so forth.

I've had debates with people in the past, usually extolling the virtues of storing configuration information in clearly defined stores like names.nsf, bookmarks.nsf and the notes.ini. It makes support pretty easy, and reduces the problems caused by file corruption sometimes.

However, one of the things I've never quite understood is the complete lack of support options from Iris/Lotus/IBM for handling problems with the configuration. It's assumed you'll just know how it works, and roll up your sleeves and get to it.

For occasional problems, that's fine. However, when we did our Notes R6.5 rollout last year, we used contractors to set up each client. (We had to rip-and-replace an old roaming system with the new R6.5 native Windows multi-user one, so re-setting up clients was somewhat inevitable.)

Unfortunately, not all contractors are equal. Some particularly dim ones were there on the first weekend, and an entire floor got set up incorrectly. Rest assured that they didn't come back for a second weekend - we quickly learnt who was capable and who wasn't!

However, every now and again we found ourselves faced with someone returning from annual leave etc. to find that their Notes client didn't work as expected. Specifically, they were trying to send mail directly via SMTP at the client, and their bookmarks weren't exactly what we wanted. The easiest, fastest solution was to clear down the Notes client - delete all the config files, edit the notes.ini - and go through setup again for the user.

With ten years of Notes experience, that takes me about thirty seconds. I'm sure some of my readers could do that faster, as well. (Maybe this should be an event at LotusSphere? *grins*)

But our first line support staff found it cumbersome. So I wrote a little app to do the trick for us instead. And here it is:

You run it, pick an option (I recommend Smart Cleardown), and it removes what you want. It always leaves the help files intact, it removes full-text indexes when it finds them, and it always removes the Notes roaming cleanup files for you. Oh, and all deletions go to the recycle bin - if it can't delete to the recycle bin, it won't delete the files at all. The rest of the application is self-explanatory from the display you'll see, really. It works fine in my organisation's environment, but please note that this is by nature a destructive utility - so please do back up before you test it!

I GPL'd the utility, but never got round to releasing it to the general public.

Now, I should warn you all that this doesn't work with R7 clients. Only R6.x clients. But if you have R6 clients, could you please download this, back up your notes.ini and your data directory, and then run it to see what you think? Then let me know if I should continue developing this.

Obvious future plans include supporting the R7 client, and possibly putting in a task-killing capability a la the infamous NotesKill application. But at the moment, I just want to know if this is useful to you.

Oh, and IBM - if you're listening, please note that this solution only runs on Windows. A notes.exe -cleanup option that does the same as my app's Smart Cleardown would be quite nice, and would go some way to lowering the TCO of Domino/Notes even further...

Anyway, download and let me know folks. Feedback welcomed, just leave a comment!

Sometimes, I get wicked temptations.

Darren Adams is probably to blame for today's - an innocuous comment on Ed Brill's blog (See comment #3) makes me want to write the most pointless bit of software the world has ever seen...

Lucky for you lot, my train was cancelled this evening. Which meant I didn't get half an hour of sitting with a laptop, but a slightly longer route which was divided into three different stages. Otherwise, you'd all be able to download such a very pointless thing!

You don't know how lucky you all are!