The presentatin has been held by Olaf Boerner and Uli Krause from BCC at MWLUG 2013, a conference for IBM Collaboration solutions users with over 40 sessions and workshops covering topics including application development, system administration, best practices and customer business cases, mobility and new technologies, and social business.
Why analyze? For a Notes admin, sometimes it is crucial to know your audience. There are many ways how Notes clients can be installed and configured. So, unexpected errors and hiccups become probable, which show up at support desk and keep your staff busy. It would help to limit the range of the options, and to prevent potential trouble. Using Notes policies is a way to manage your Notes clients and apply standards. However before deploying new settings you better know what exactly you need to change. Furthermore how do you know, that policies made the change happen? Starting client upgrades to new version requires knowledge about the environment too.
BCC solves these problems easily, and the best: you don't need any purchase, ClientGenie Analyzer Edition is available for free to all conference attendees. So be sure to attend our session and see how you can audit and analyze your Notes client environment with just a few clicks. ClientGenie Analyzer module collects all relevant client information such as operating system information, Notes program and data directory, location and connection documents, replicas and replication settings, notes.ini parameter, database information without any user impact. Details to find at http://www.clientgenie.com/analyzer
2. Client Management
About: Ulrich Krause
Administrator/Developer since 1993
Senior Software Architect at BCC
OpenNTF Contributor
OpenNTF Board of Directors
Blog http://www.eknori.de
IBM Champion 2011/2012/2013
Notes Forum http://www.atnotes.de
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About Olaf Boerner
CEO and founder of BCC
Working with Lotus Notes
since Version 3 in 1993
Working with large enterprise customers as
Senior Architect
1. To reduce Total cost of Ownership of Notes/Domino
2. To secure and optimize IBM Domino infrastructures
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BCC helps you to âŚ
reduce the Total Cost of Ownership
increase system and process security
automate your Notes/Domino administration
manage consolidation and migration projects
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Analyzing Notes Client: Standard
Notes Client is providing some information via
AdminP request during login
AdminP is adding information to personal
document
⢠Lotus Notes Client Version / Build
⢠Lotus Notes Platform
⢠Notes client machine name
View >by Client Version
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Why do you need more detailed
Information ?
Ensure
standards
Implement
changes
Prevent
problems
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Ensure standards:
Everybody using Notes Client 8.5.3 FP3 ?
Using which Windows Version?
Installed in Standard Program directory ?
Using same notes data directory ?
Notes.ini is located in notes data ?
Cache.ndk is locted in c:/temp ?
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Implement changes:
Typical Changes:
⢠Upgrading Notes Client to new version
⢠Exchanging Hardware -> User receives a new laptop
⢠Browser as your new standard mail client
⢠Server consolidation (Move 4 to 1)
Typical questions
⢠What local databases does your user have ?
⢠Size of notes data directory ?
⢠Where is the notes.ini file ?
⢠Who has database links to SRV 1-4 on his desktop
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ClientGenie Analyzer Workflow
User is starting Notes
Client
ClientGenie is loaded
automatically in the
background
ClientGenie
collects
information
during Notes
Client Session
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What information can be collected?
Hardware
â˘Computer Type
â˘Bios,
â˘Harddisk
â˘CPU, RAM
OS
â˘Version
â˘Computername
â˘OS Username
Notes Client
â˘Version, Type
â˘Program path
â˘Data path
Notes.ini
entries
pNAB
â˘Location
â˘Connection
â˘Policies
Local
Databases
â˘Filesnames
⢠Size
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UC: Standardize notes data path
Ensure that all users are using the same
standard data paths
Why ?
⢠Upgrade local databases
⢠Change single user to multi user
⢠Ensure that changes will apply to users
You also might be interested to
⢠Check directory size
⢠List all files in your local directory
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BP: Monitor notes.ini entries
Monitoring Notes.ini entries
⢠ClientGenie will report all notes.ini entries
⢠Notes.ini entries will be sorted in a view
Check which Notes users / clients has which
notes.ini entries
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Best practices: Policy Management
Policies are mandatory for using ID Vault and
applying security settings
How it works ?
⢠Create Policy and Setting Documents in Domino
Directory
⢠Assign to user (Explicit, Organizational)
⢠User is authenticating with Domino server
⢠Notes Client is âdownloadingâ policy setting and
creating documents in pnab (hidden view ($Policies)
⢠Notes client is assigning settings regarding policies
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Best practices: Policy Management
Troubleshooting ?
20% of all clients do not have current policies in
their local NAB
(My personal experience)
ClientGenie Analyzer can help ď
⢠Collecting policy document in local NAB
⢠Store in central inventory
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Analyze policy documents
All policy documents in local nab will be written
to personâs inventory document
Check created and last modification date
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ClientGenie Server Installation
Domino Server:
⢠2 Databases
⢠ClientGenie Configuration
⢠ClientGenie Inventory
Databases can be copied to any server
Databases can replicate to servers in different
locations
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ClientGenie Client Installation
Add clientgenie.dll to notes.ini:
EXTMGR_ADDINS=clientgenie.dll
Clientgenie.dll must be copied to every machine
⢠Program directory
⢠Notes data directory
⢠Options
⢠Software distribution tools like SMS, NetInstall ...
⢠Copy script during windows network login
⢠ClientGenie installation mail or PostOpen Script