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HCL Connections – Docs (Proxy) not Working After Installing IFPH63778 IBM WebSphere Application Server Fix  

By Milan Matejic | 2/7/25 2:23 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

If you're like me and want to keep your IBM WebSphere Application Servers up to date with the latest patches, you might want to skip the installation of IFPH63778 for 8.5.5.26 version of WebSphere, or at least exercise caution before doing so. After installing IFPH63778 on my WebSphere servers hosting HCL Connections Docs applications, Docs Proxy application was unable to communicate with the required application servers, effectively breaking my HCL Connections Docs deployment.

HCL Connections – Component Pack Update – MongoDB Security Settings Update Issue  

By Milan Matejic | 2/6/25 3:19 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

During the HCL Connections Component Pack 8.0 CR8 update, some security settings are modified for the MongoDB replica set used by the HCL Connections Component Pack. This is managed by the check-and-update-mongo5-security Kubernetes (K8s) job, which creates the check-and-update-mongo5-security-* pod to change the security settings of the replica set. Once the job completes successfully, the K8s pod and the corresponding job are marked with the status complete(d) However, in one of the HCL Connections environments I am working on, the job didn’t complete successfully. During my initial analysis, I found the following error in the log of the check-and-update-mongo5-security pod....

Source code issue with alternative usage view columns  

By Patrick Kwinten | 2/4/25 5:11 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

In a previous post I demonstrated how you can improve the usability of image resources by switching alias and file name. It works fine until you start synchronizing with your On Disk Project. While a normal image resource contains of the image file and some metadata but when you change the filename with the alias and vice versa Designer no longer detaches the graphical file and only writes the metadata file to the ODP.

How to add a trusted root to Linux  

By Daniel Nashed | 2/3/25 2:57 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

I am still adding custom trusted root support to the Domino container project. You will be able to just specify a trusted root to add to the local Linux trust store. Like other low level functionality this works differently on different Linux flavors. Here is what I am adding for SUSE, for Debian/Ubuntu and basically all the other Redhat/RPM based systems (I rested Rocky, Alma & Co so far).

Do Crazy Innovative Things in the Notes Client  

By Patrick Kwinten | 1/29/25 5:04 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

In February OpenNTF organizes a webinar titled ‘Do crazy innovative things in the Notes client‘. I am sure (from first hand experience) that Bernd Gewehr has pushed his developers to stretch the limits about what is possible to do in the Notes client. Recently I have been doing some development for the Notes client and you an easily bump to the limitations. I will write about some things that I applied to the application that I was working on.

Handling UserAccessException  

By Patrick Kwinten | 1/28/25 2:02 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

The almost standard way to work at the company is to work in a committee. So almost everyone is member of one or more committees for different types of work-areas. Commitees have restricted access and organize agendas and meetings where decisions are made. Agendas, meetings and decisions are shared via mail and these mails are again shared. Curious people try to access the committee documents via URL’s although they have no access to the committee and then the UserAccessException occurs.

Indefinitely growing homepage.sr_index_docs table and forgotten search nodes  

By Christoph Stoettner | 1/24/25 3:17 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

The last weeks I had twice the issue of a huge homepage database with HCL Connections. Both systems weren’t installed by me, but I reviewed them. So I know this issues quite well since I faced it the first time years ago. This always happens when you migrate Connections environments side-by-side, and you forget to remove the old search nodes. sr_index_docs is used to make all search nodes indexing newly upload files. When each search node has indexed the file, the entry gets removed from the database. As the old nodes are no longer running, they can’t index, and so these entries never get deleted. In larger environments the table grows to millions of documents and the database size grows from some GB into the hundreds of GB. You see this growth mainly during database backup, or when you want to move the data to a new machine. So often nobody recognizes the huge waste of space.

Data Access With XPages JEE  

By Jesse Gallagher | 1/17/25 6:25 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Though one day I'd really like to sit down and work on expanding and categorizing the documentation for the XPages JEE project, in the mean time I can at least put together some scattered info in the form of blog posts, webinars, and example apps. Add this post to the pile! Some of it will be a rehash of previous posts, but it doesn't hurt to see it rephrased.

Java != Java on Domino  

By Oliver Busse | 1/9/25 2:26 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Today I again encountered some strange things on different Domino machines. It’s Java again. The other specs are: my local dev box is 12.0.2FP2, running in a container using the HCL image the other machines are natively installed 12.0.2FP2, also Linux there are no language packs installed at all The parts that are used: some Java in an NSF, defined as managed bean (but this doesn’t matter) Java is using ExtLibUtil and java.util.Calendar some XSP in an NSF

Announcing Open Mic with the HCL Developers - A New Monthly Series  

By OpenNTF | 1/8/25 12:25 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse

OpenNTF and HCL announce a new initiative aimed at improving the collaboration between our community and HCL and at giving feedback on their products. Each month, we will host an “Open Mic” session with experts, developers, and PMs from HCL, and everyone will be invited to ask questions on a specific topic for that month. This is an occasion to get in touch directly with the people who build the product and provide answers to your most challenging questions.

SSL Certifier is not trusted  

By Fredrik Norling | 1/8/25 12:30 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Root cert not trusted when getting SSL encrypted data using XPages or Domino agents I have seen a problem with getting data using XPages or agents from Amazon hosted services because they now are using a Amazon Trusted Root. But it can be others poping up also in the future.

Creating an IBM HTTP Server key db from a .pfx file   

By Martijn de Jong | 1/7/25 2:41 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

It’s a question that I get quite often. “Can you create a IHS key database for me from this pfx certificate”? Multiple of our customers use IBM HTTP Server. Either for HCL Connections, but also as a reverse proxy for other services. Most of those customers use a wildcard certificate for their IHS server that has to be renewed each year. As I hate this kind of repetitive work, I created a script to do it for me. As it could be of use to others, I decided to create a blog article about it.

DBMT tool enhancements in Domino 14.5 EA2   

By Daniel Nashed | 1/7/25 2:39 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Sometimes small changes open many new possibilities. The following DBMT tool command line options are added to DBMT in Domino 14.5 EA2: -systemDbs (-sd for short) Allows compact to process system dbs, which are usually ignored), as well as databases listed in the dbmt_compact_filter.ind file. -regex (-re for short) Now a database name can be specified using regular expressions. If an .ind file is specified, the database names listed in the .ind file can be regular expressions. -validateDbs (-vd for short) Does not execute the updall or compacts, but outputs the list of databases that could be affected by the DBMT command (mainly to validate -regex inputs). Can be used in combination with -sd

Notes Timedate explained  

By Daniel Nashed | 1/7/25 2:38 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

There have been a couple of partner blog posts speculating about the background of the recent Domino 13.12.2024 problem, which might be a bit misleading. For the background of what happened in detail and how HCL addressed the problem please wait for the official technote update. But what I can tell is that HCL fixed it on a lower level function addressing all functionality in Domino and business partner applications using the effected functionality. This means the only safe way is to apply the Interim fix provided by HCL for all supported releases including the extended support versions! What I also can state is that all Notes TIMEDATE functionality is working as intended and are designed to handle date times from 1.1.1 to the end of all times.

Domino Router bug - seems to also affect server availability index  

By Darren Duke | 1/7/25 2:36 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

I was waiting for the other shoe to drop for this bug. Surely the errant code wasn't only in the router task. Well, it seems that it's NOT only the router. After working with a customer on fail-over issues in a cluster we came across this interesting availability index "issue". On a server patched for the router bug (or that is un-patched server that has not been rebooted) the "show ai" command behaves as expected, the XF, Hits and AI min and max are populated However, on a rebooted, un-patched server AI is completely and utterly blank

A little Domino container story  

By Martijn de Jong | 1/3/25 7:05 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

If you’re active in the Domino world, it’s unlikely that you missed that we had a little problem 2½ weeks ago.... This blog post is not about this problem itself, but this problem caused many servers with outdated Domino versions to urgently need an update, and this is a little story about one of those servers.

New project Domino Download Server  

By Daniel Nashed | 12/30/24 7:11 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Over the x-mas I had a bit of time to work on an idea I had already a while ago. Some customers can't directly connect to the internet. Not even with a proxy. Domino AutoUpdate and also the Domino Download script both support proxy environments including authenticated proxies. The Domino Download script leverages the curl command-line which is very flexible. But also Domino AutoUpdate has full proxy support. Still some environments can' download anything from the internet. Some are even air gapped. The idea was to come up with a NGINX based service which could be the source for all your Notes/Domino downloads. I wanted it to work in different environments.

Useful Notes SmartIcons: Reformat text is my favorite  

By Daniel Nashed | 12/30/24 7:09 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Notes formula are one of the lost arts. I am a big fan and have started to work with Notes at a time where we had no Lotus Script nor Java. Today formula language is still very powerful. I am using it in many ways including C-API and Lotus script. There are many @Commands for UI automation available. But there are also Lotus Script UI classes. The really cool part of formula language is that you can use the commands in SmartIcons. The following command selects the body text and sets the text to Default Sans Serif with 10pt. --- @Command([EditGotoField];"Body"); @Command([EditSelectAll]); @Command([TextSetFontFace];@GetMachineInfo ([EnvVariable];"NAMEDSTYLE1_FACE")); @Command([TextSetFontSize]; "10"); @Command([EditDeselectAll]); --- But there are more SmartIcons I use every day... .

New Release: XPages Jakarta EE 3.3.0  

By Jesse Gallagher | 12/23/24 1:57 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

As part of finishing my holiday gift shopping, I published version 3.3.0 of the XPages Jakarta EE project today. This release contains a number of bug fixes to do with asynchronous and scheduled tasks based on some edge-case and intermittent trouble I ran into while developing some apps with it. Additionally, it has some consistency fixes for the Jakarta NoSQL support - in particular, it improves mapping of object properties to columns, matching the item names case-insensitively and matching special fields like FIELD_CDATE to matching columns with formulas like @Created.

Improving the usability of the view column icon – Kwintessential Notes  

By Patrick Kwinten | 12/17/24 2:54 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

IIcons are a great way to let certain document information standout in a view with minimal space. I assume you know you can add icons to a Notes view , right? Although the icons are out of date , limited and don’t support accessibility much, there is a way to add show them in a view with some added value. How? I will show you…

PSA: XPages CSS Changes in 14.0 FP3  

By Jesse Gallagher | 12/17/24 2:52 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Fix Pack 3 for Domino 14.0 came out last week and, in addition to the usual spate of fixes you'd expect from an FP, it brought a potentially-significant and -breaking change to the way XPages handles style attributes for components. This is presumably in the interest of supporting the pathological strictures of Content-Security-Policy, but it applies whether or not you have taken any other steps to implement CSP. The specific change is that the XPages renderers will now take the style attribute, externalize it to a class, and then make a <style> block for it.

Thomas Hampel  

By Thomas Hampel | 12/13/24 5:35 PM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Oliver Busse

*** ALERT *** Development team just identified a new issue which will affect ALL Domino server versions as of TODAY ( 13th of December 2024 ) Starting as of today, if you restart your Domino server, a router error will result in delivery failures due to a routing loop. Mail rules will also start failing. It is a date/time issue in our code. We will of course provide a fix as soon as possible for all Domino versions that are in support. Furthermore for older versions in extended support, customers with an extended support agreement will be provided with a fix as well.

ForAll Loops and Type Mismatches  

By Paul Withers | 12/13/24 9:05 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

There are always challenges when moving from something familiar to something similar but different. When you've been working with that "something familiar" for a very long time, some things become second nature. But when you move to "something similar but different", sooner or later you hit an error and become convinced it's not working like it used to.

Lotus Script - Check if a file or folder exists  

By Daniel Nashed | 12/13/24 9:01 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

There isn't a direct function in Lotus Script to check if files exist. Most of us have written a function like this multiple times as a helper. I am working on an application which will be available as open source soon and I needed one again... Here is a version of a check function, which should cover all cases and might be useful for you too. It doesn't handle hidden files -- I know. But I didn't want to add that logic.

Getting column colouring out of the view design   

By Patrick Kwinten | 12/12/24 12:13 PM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

In Notes you can define the row color in a view programmatically. In the example you still hard-code the colors (and conditions) in the column, and so the design of the view. So if you want to change the colors and conditions you need to change the design. In an environment with restricted access to Production or CICD processes in place this takes a long time and it includes the intervention of a developer. I am not sure when but somewhere in time the “User definable” option for the column value was introduced.....

Quick Tip: using an object as custom property  

By Oliver Busse | 12/12/24 7:14 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Just for my own record because I always forget: If you ever need to pass any object data to a custom control, use this as the property data type: com.ibm.jscript.std.ObjectObject or com.ibm.jscript.std.ArrayObject depending on if you just need one or more objects.

Another dev attempt comes to an end – row coloring  

By Patrick Kwinten | 12/6/24 7:30 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

For an application I want to be the row colourings in the Notes client manageable, from a (profile) document or something similar. I chose a profile document instead of a named document since the named document lacks methods to access via @formula and if you want to open a document from a outline entry you only have the @formula option…

Disable PDF Export in HCL Connections 8  

By Christoph Stoettner | 12/3/24 7:47 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

PDF Export sometimes uses a lot of resources and disabling helps to stabilize the environment I had some issues with PDF export functionality in HCL Connections the last weeks. The server became unresponsive multiple times due to high load from PDF exports. To quickly address the issue, the simplest solution is to disable the PDF export feature by configuring the icxt.pdfexport.access.requiredrole property in the Resource Environment Entries.

Changing the file size limit for a community  

By Martijn de Jong | 11/30/24 3:27 AM | Infrastructure - Connections | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

By default, a HCL Connections community can contain 500 MB of files in the Files widget. Depending on what kind of content is posted in the community, that might not be enough. It’s possible to change the file limit, both for communities and for personal files.

Show/Hide column in a NotesView  

By Patrick Kwinten | 11/30/24 3:25 AM | Development - Notes / Domino | Added by Roberto Boccadoro

Most applications have different types of users. Some are normal users, some are power-users and some are administrators for the application. Mostly we provide different sets of views for these user categories and to optimize performance and indexing these users sometimes share the same views. But the information in that view is not always useful all types of users.