Presented by Kevin Pettitt at ILUG 2008 in Dublin, June 2008. SuperNTF is the open-source Notes client application framework built from the ground up to enable even novice developers to embrace coding best practices. No more customized discussion databases! The feature-rich yet uncomplicated design of this template encourage wide adoption, enabling you to promote coding standards across your organization. Even advanced developers will find plenty of features to cherry pick for use in other applications. From integrated help and error handling to getting soft deletions right and providing an alternate "dashboard" interface, SuperNTF makes it easy to look like you're working hard. The session will also offer an in-depth review of the template’s advanced features for user activity and field change tracking, configuration, and data reporting/exporting, and show you how to inject new life into existing apps, or provide a strong foundation for new ones.

1. Starting Your Application
the SuperNTF Way
Kevin Pettitt

2. Your Host for Today’s Session …
Kevin Pettitt
President
LotusGuru Consulting
Independent Consultant
Developer, Admin, Architect
Blog: www.lotusguru.com
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3. What Is SuperNTF?
 Generic starter application template that isn’t
“-blank-”
 Notes Client application framework designed
for easy understanding to encourage wide
adoption
 Built from the ground up with the goal of
making development best practice easy for
even novice Notes developers
 Fusion of many other open source projects
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4. Agenda…
 A brief history of File – Database – New
 Overview of standards and frameworks
 SuperNTF feature walkthrough
 What’s under the hood
 Creating a new application
 Overhauling an existing application
 Final Word
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5. In the Beginning, There Was -Blank-
 And it really was “blank”
 Next step - Doc Library or Discussion
template
– Just to have some code to start
 Advanced developers
created their own “common
design elements”
– Great for reusing code among
many applications
– Problem: Only they understood
how it worked
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6. Agenda…
 A brief history of File – Database – New
 Overview of standards and frameworks
 SuperNTF feature walkthrough
 What’s under the hood
 Creating a new application
 Overhauling an existing application
 Final Word
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7. Design Standards – Huh?
 Notes is a very “approachable” development
platform
– Any decent spreadsheet jock can whip up a Notes database
 limited skills hinder code standardization
efforts
 It takes time and effort to enforce standards
 Only way way to achieve some level of
coding standards for novice developers
– Make it EASY to do things “right” without thinking
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8. Key Benefits of Standardized Code
 No more reinventing the wheel
– Unless it’s a better wheel
 Commonly used routines are readily available
 Easier to troubleshoot, maintain, and
enhance
– Especially when the standard code has been more rigorously
tested than any one application
 The next developer to touch the app won't
curse your name
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9. What Is an Application Framework?
 A basic template for jumpstarting a new
application
 A collection of generic design elements useful
in any kind of application
 A way to standardize the “plumbing” of all
your custom Notes applications
 Everything *except* what makes the
application unique
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10. Framework Pitfalls
 Often developed organically over time by
single developer
– Thoughts of having others use the framework may not take
hold until after most of it is built
– Only that developer understands the “quirks”
– Steep learning curve for others without that developer on the
team
 Tendency toward complexity
– Time spent “improving” the framework may actually detract
from others’ ability to maintain code later
– The more tightly integrated it gets the easier it is to break
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11. What Makes SuperNTF Different?
 Conceived with ease of understanding in mind
– Novices can create nice looking applications without quot;breakingquot;
something
 Design goal: Make it easy to follow and thereby
gain wide adoption
– Low learning curve also helps intermediate and advanced
developers ability to customize and extend more easily
– Code is written for readability – elegance over complexity
 Designed to facilitate quot;cherry pickingquot; code
– Many individual pieces can be copied and reused in other
applications and still work
– Copying elements with their dependencies will be made easier in
the future 11

12. Meet the SuperNTF Team
 Head of R&D: Kevin Pettitt
– aka quot;Robbery and Deploymentquot;
 With contributions from: The Domino
community
– No one has a monopoly on best practice ideas
– Most borrowed code reworked significantly to adhere to
SuperNTF simplicity standards
 New quot;volunteersquot; all the time as more great
ideas appear
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13. So How Simple Is “Simple”?
 Simple doesn’t mean boring
– There are still lots of cool features, as you will see
– Significant attention was paid to offering an attractive default
UI design
 Many advanced functions are “black boxed”
– Eliminates the need to manipulate truly complex code (although
you still can if you want)
– High degree of configurability further minimizes need to touch
code
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14. Agenda …
 A brief history of File – Database – New
 Overview of standards and frameworks
 SuperNTF feature walkthrough
 What’s under the hood
 Creating a new application
 Overhauling an existing application
 Final Word
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15. Key Navigation Elements
 Separate frameset for normal use…
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16. Key Navigation Elements
 …and for administrative functions
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17. Key Navigation Elements
 Standard action bar in separate frame
– Eliminates need for most typical view actions
– Leaves room for a descriptive view title
– Actions show only when appropriate (e.g., “Search” only visible
if database is full-text indexed)
 Administration panel logically organized
– Configuration
– Logging
– Cool Design Views
– Utility views (e.g., Design element views, All Documents)
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18. Alternate “Dashboard” Interface
 Content of each tab is configurable
 Double-clicking on preview opens document
fully
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19. Centralized Form Configuration
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20. Centralized Form Configuration (cont.)
 Each application-specific form has its own
“configuration” document
 Controls which form features are enabled
– Shared Actions – (e.g., Edit, Save & Close, etc.)
– Validation – edit a form-wide formula right on the form config.
– User Activity Tracking – who read/edited what and when
– Field Change History – what did they change and when
– Comments – user feedback mechanism
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21. View Configuration
 Set the View “Header Title”
 Configure “Help” and “New Document”
behavior
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22. User Activity Tracking – Summary
 Keeps a running history of every time a
document is READ or EDITED
 Saves each record as a separate document
– Can be easily tabulated and sorted in views
– Allows user to “jump” directly to the source document
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23. User Activity Tracking
 Consolidated Activity History
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24. User Activity Tracking
 Current Document
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25. User Activity Tracking – Dashboard Reports
 At-a-glance view to most active users and
documents
 Apply custom filters to highlight the specific
information you want
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26. Field Change History
 Form config specifies which form fields to track
– Also assign user-friendly field labels
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27. Field Change History (cont.)
 All changes to target fields are recorded in a
single rich-text field
– Change history dialog accessed via action button
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28. OpenLog Used for Error and Event Logging
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29. Integrated Help
 Create help documents within the application
 Link them to specific forms and views via configuration
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30. Integrated Help (cont.)
 Press F1 to pull up the relevant help document
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31. Exporting Data – The Quick and Simple Way
 View actions export all or selected docs
 Use column naming “trick” to …
– Get categorized column titles to appear
– Omit specific columns from export
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32. Exporting Data – The Structured and
Repeatable Way
 Integrated with the OpenNTF ASND Export
Facility
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33. Soft Deletions Work!
 No matter how you delete a document
– Press <Delete> key at document or view level
– Cut document(s) from a view
– Drag to Trash
– From “Delete” action in document or view
 Confirmation warning always appears
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34. Soft Deletions Work! (cont.)
 Easily restore some or all deleted documents
 Configure deletion purge interval in main DB
configuration
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35. Design Views
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36. Design Views (cont.)
 Yes, that’s right, you’re seeing design
elements in regular views!
– Made possible via the $FormulaClass “hack”
– Allows ALL design elements to appear in a single view
– Includes action button to “clean” the design elements (i.e.,
remove old $UpdatedBy entries and re-sign them)
 Other variations show
– All image resources with image preview
– All fields and subforms listed by form(s) where they appear
 Views can be copied to any other database to
provide instant value
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37. Icons, Icons, Everywhere
 Outline entry and action icons used throughout to
provide visual cues to associated function
 Many include mouse-over animations
– Further improves visual cue of mouse position
– Injects a little fun into the application, which users love
 All images can be previewed in the “Images Preview”
design element view
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38. All Documents View
 Shows all docs in the database grouped by form name
 Useful for finding “lost” docs, the “last” one edited, or the
300 customer documents you accidentally pasted
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39. Agenda…
 A brief history of File – Database – New
 Overview of standards and frameworks
 SuperNTF feature walkthrough
 What’s under the hood
 Creating a new application
 Overhauling an existing application
 Final Word
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39

40. So What’s It Look Like Under the Hood?
 It’s not a Ferrari, but then you wouldn’t let
your rookie mechanic work on it if it were that
complicated
 It is, however …
– Cleanly designed
– Easy to work on without
“breaking” anything
– Individual parts are
clearly identifiable
– Yet still highly functional
with lots of cool features
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41. A Code Tour of SuperNTF
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42. Agenda…
 A brief history of File – Database – New
 Overview of standards and frameworks
 SuperNTF feature walkthrough
 What’s under the hood
 Creating a new application
 Overhauling an existing application
 Final Word
42
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43. Creating a “SuperNTF” View
 Shortcut: create a new view based on one of
the demo views
– Easy way to get actions that are the “hooks” into the view
configuration
 Customize columns, row colors, etc., as desired
 Display view into the outline and open it
 Click
– Any guesses what that does ?
 Fill out the view configuration
– You may need to come back after creating a form to change the
“New Document” behavior
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44. Creating a “SuperNTF” Form
 All the “hooks” into the configuration are
encapsulated in two subforms
– SYSTEM - Standard Hidden Form Header
– SYSTEM - Standard Hidden Form Footer
 Just a few other details
– “Form” field – set to form alias
– Window title: @If(@IsNewDoc; quot;New Documentquot;;
WindowTitle)
– Turn off the create menu – PLEASE!
 Tie the form into one or more views
 Compose a document and click
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45. Agenda…
 A brief history of File – Database – New
 Overview of standards and frameworks
 SuperNTF feature walkthrough
 What’s under the hood
 Creating a new application
 Overhauling an existing application
 Final Word
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45

46. Basics of Overhauling Existing Application
 Add SuperNTF design elements to existing
application
– Or for very simple examples, copy the key elements into a
“blank” SuperNTF database
 Migrate views to new design
– Remove unnecessary actions
– Add Standard SuperNTF Actions
– Update column fonts
– Ytria Tools make this dead easy
 Add standard SuperNTF subforms to key
forms
– Configure the enabled features for each form
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47. Agenda…
 A brief history of File – Database – New
 Overview of standards and frameworks
 SuperNTF feature walkthrough
 What’s under the hood
 Creating a new application
 Overhauling an existing application
 Final Word
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48. Resources
 Download SuperNTF
– www.superntf.org
 My Blog: www.lotusguru.com
– Includes many articles pertaining to SuperNTF, including
upcoming features
 SuperNTF IdeaJam?
– Stay tuned 
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49. Parting Thoughts
 Coding standards will only gain wide adoption
if they are easy to learn and use
– And what use is a “standard” no one uses?
– Even experienced developers will appreciate the freedom to
focus on application logic
 Cool things to do with SuperNTF
– Give power users more power without giving yourself more
headache
– Give older apps a professional facelift
 Sharing is good!
– Please share your good ideas and useful SuperNTF
customizations
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50. Sharing is Good
 Sharing is good!
– Please share your good ideas and useful SuperNTF
customizations
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