This document discusses IBM Lotus Notes client management from setup to ongoing maintenance. It introduces the MarvelClient solution which provides automated configuration and standardization of Notes clients through various modules. The modules can inventory existing client setups, migrate configuration changes, manage plugins and settings, enable intelligent roaming and server connectivity for mobile users, upgrade clients seamlessly, and more. This reduces Notes administration effort and cost while improving the end user experience.
6. The Beginning of the Lotus Notes Client
For brand new users:
• User id is created and exists somewhere
• ID Vault or File Share or Domino Directory
• Notes is installed but not configured
For existing users:
• Notes ID, data, plugins, journal, signatures etc exist and are
located on a previous machine
• OR old data exists but is lost
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7. Traditional Notes Setup
Technician spends 30-60min plus, to configuring new
machines, following a 10-50 page manual
The problem with this method is:
• Error prone, resulting in no real standardization
• Time intensive, making this very expensive
• No way to tell who is setup right or wrong
• Old notes data may not be moved to new machines properly
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8. And to Make Things Worse….
Once users get their hands on Notes, things get changed
resulting in:
• Icons moved out of sights or a wrong one on the top of the
stack
• Wrong location and connection documents, which cause..
• Policies to no longer work
• Replicator page problems causing orphaned replicas
Now the lack of visibility becomes an even greater problem!
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9. The FREE Solution: MarvelClient Analyze
See over 200 configuration points such as:
• How and where Notes client are installed
– Identify missing hotfixes or non-standard
installs
• Mac, Linux, Windows and Citrix machines
• Performance issues and network latency
• Potential security risks
• All icons and bookmarks users have
• Wrong location and connection
documents
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10. The Solution: MarvelClient Manage
• Define “the perfect Notes client” for any user group,
hardware type, Notes version, geography, department etc
• Automatically configure Eclipse plug-ins, widgets, location
and connection documents, notes.ini settings, local
replicas, bookmarks, preferences, profile docs, signatures,
dictionaries, full text indexes, ECLs, toolbars and more
• Makes new or replacement client setups fast, automated
and easy
• 100% reliable and error-free
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11. The Solution: MarvelClient Manage
Since all MarvelClient actions can be set to execute once, a
__ number of times or persistently, not only are Notes
clients deployed perfectly, they remain perfectly
configured, 365 days a year
• Over 80% support call reduction is easily achieved as help desk calls
are prevented entirely
Manage ID files in a reliable and secure way with our “ID
Vault” like storage facility
• ID files, certificates etc are transparently collected, stored
securely, downloaded as needed
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13. The Only Constant is – Everything Changes
Regardless of your IBM Lotus use:
• Server consolidations or decommissions take place
• Impacting workspace, location and connection docs, replicator page entries,
bookmarks, Sametime communities
• Mergers, re-certifications or renames happen
• Affecting all of the above plus ECL’s
• New features get introduced
• Such as Citrix or other virtualization efforts
• Eclipse plugins get (attempted to be) deployed
• Roaming gets introduced to a portion of the company
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14. The Only Constant is – Everything Changes
• Applications get deployed and decommissioned
• Leaving orphaned and wrong info on clients
• Users and apps get moved
• Leading to wrong location docs for mail
• New software is released and client need to be upgraded
• Change from mapped network drive to local installs
• Working directories and Eclipse may change
• Changes in preference from shared client to single user client
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15. The Policy Challenge
• Policies depend on an already functioning/setup client
• In my experience less than 75% of users actually receive policies
• They don’t provide you with any inventory to see clients
• They don’t truly adapt to your users’ unique situation
• LAN vs. VPN, geography, Citrix user, able to deal with things
outside the data directory
• They aren’t predictable, can happen anytime.... or not...
• Most settings cannot be UNset once set
• They typically cannot repeat actions
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16. The Solution: MarvelClient Migrate
Transparently adjusts workspace icons, bookmarks, replicator page entries as well as replication
history to make even the most complex project seamless for end users
Typical MIGRATE Project Most Common Request for MIGRATE
Consolidating Servers
Cleanup of existing, outdated client info
Re-certifying users or servers
Domain mergers
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17. Traditional Notes Roaming
Notes based roaming is:
• Very large at 20 – 150 MB
• Look at the size of your workspace
• Slow – see above
• Network intensive – see above
• Depends on policies and ID Vault
• Not entirely reliable
• Struggles with roaming eclipse components
• Requires additional restarts
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18. The Solution: MarvelClient Roaming
• Just 2 -4 MB network storage required
• One-step upgrades by roaming data from
Notes 6 single-user into Notes 8.5.3 multi-
user clients (for example)
• Issue new machines instantly with all
appropriate client data
• Save up to 95% network traffic and disk
storage while roaming to/from Citrix
• Makes Notes clients with data directory on
network drives efficient and manageable
• Network independent while the Notes client
is running
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19. The Geography Problem
• User in New York
• Sends Doc|DB-Link to user in
California
• Unfortunately, the user in
California does not open the
database from a local server
• ... but from the one in New York
• ... or even Alaska *ouch*
(dang you, Alphabet!)
--> This also applies to policies
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20. Back-up
The Solution: MarvelClient Realtime
Functions Optimal Server Connectivity
• Optimal server connectivity by Locations of company servers
Locations of a mobile Notes user during travels
automatic and dynamic redirection of
all client pointers to appropriate servers
• Differentiates between LAN, WAN,
VPN; works on the fly without Notes
client restart
With REALTIME, mobile users are
• Redirects icons, bookmarks, location automatically connected/redirected to
the right servers to optimize connection
and connection documents, replicator speed.
entries Without REALTIME,
Notes automatically connects the the
• Dynamic restriction of database user to his home server, no matter
creation or deletion where the user is
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22. Traditional Notes Upgrades – Coming 360
• We’re back to the “setting up new users” topic
• Solving a problem starts with understanding it
– How do you upgrade or standardize clients you cant see
• IT is forced to guess, making this VERY frustrating and
expensive
– Who is installed in a non-standard way
– Who has data on network drives
– Who has the Admin and Developer clients installed
– Who doesn’t have sufficient memory/disk space
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23. The Depth of Notes 8.x
17‘000 files in Notes Program directory in 1‘800
subdirectories
• 7‘500 (largely undocumented) .properties files, 1‘500 jar files,
1‘200 HTML files
3‘000 files in Notes Dataworkspace directory in 2‘400
subdirectories, out of which 1‘850 are empty
• 900 (largely undocumented) XML files and 100+ (largely
undocumented) properties files
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24. The Depth of Notes 8.x
In total, that is
• 20‘000 files in 4‘600 subdirectories
• 8‘500+ largely undocumented files
• Many (many many) subdirectories are plain empty,
especially in Dataworkspace
• ... and around 100 NSFs/NTF‘s
• ... and the good old notes.ini file
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25. Add to that over 80 Preference Dialogs
Approximately 12‘000 settings across the:
• local address book
• notes.ini
• XML files7‘500
Which does not include any plugins,
widgets, addons, that you or your
users may have installed.
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26. Back-up
The Solution: MarvelClient Upgrade
• Is Notes aware, knows the client setup
and mis-configuration to begin with
• Transparently deploy upgrade packages
in a network-friendly, throttled way
• Upgrade Notes clients, Sametime,
eclipse components, hotfixes etc
• Once all components are available
locally, the user is presented with the
choice to upgrade or delay
• Allows for touchless upgrades while
properly standardizing all users
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27. Traditional Eclipse Management
• Requires trusted and signed plugins
– Complex and time intensive setup
• The way Eclipse is managed constantly changes
– Even if you figured out how to edit plugin_customization.ini or
others, won’t help
• Is a complex framework
– Dealing with instances and defaults for users
• Great functionality but difficult to implement
– Also difficult to roam and support
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28. The Solution: MarvelClient Eclipse
Reliably manage Eclipse components or preferences such as:
• Change, add, query or delete
• Dock the open launcher
• Set the embedded browser
• Hide the feedreader
Deploy or un-deploy plugins
• Usually, without a required restart
• To anyone based on any condition – no widget catalog required
Manage Sametime Communities and settings
• Add, change, merge or delete
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30. MarvelClient Overview
Single .dll or .so or .dylib
deployed via built-in mail function, mail postopen script, Altiris, SMS, ZENWorks etc
Two Notes.ini entries
EXTMGR_ADDINS=mc.dll
MC_DB=%notes_homeserver%!!...
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31. MarvelClient Modules Significantly Reduce Notes TCO …
... typically leading to payback period of 2-6 months while improving end users experience
Module Function Benefit
Inventory of current issues, impact
Analyze Gaining Insight into your Notes client infrastructure
assessment for new projects
Migrate Mass Changes for consolidations, cleanup, mergers Automatically redirects all client pointers
Manage Client configuration and Eclipse management Up to 80% fewer helpdesk calls
Intelligent server connectivity for travelling users, Citrix Increased end user satisfaction with
Realtime users and consolidated environments „Notes just works“
80-90% smaller client profiles
Roaming Full client roaming with 90% less data requirement
80-90% less network & server load
„Throttled“ package deployment and automated client Touchless and intelligent upgrades while
Upgrade upgrade, including of components also standardizing client installs
Deploy and un-deploy plugins, configure Sametime, Seamless Eclipse setup, standardization,
Eclipse setup embedded browser and more full control over Sametime
Zip/Unzip 25% smaller mail files
Automatic attachment compression and file blocking
File Blocking 40% less network load
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32. MarvelClient Benefits
Administration Effort
Initial Notes setup - Change of department – User and app moves
App and Server decomissioning – Application Deployment
Project Duration and Effort
Migrations - Upgrades – Consolidations - Re-certifications - Mergers
Cost of Data Storage and Transfer
Automatic attachment compression - Intelligent restrictions for sending
attachments - Efficient Notes client roaming
End User Experience
„Self Healing“ clients - Willingness to invest in other IBM offerings
further - Less down time and frustration - Up to 70% faster Notes
startup times
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33. MarvelClient in Summary
Granting companies complete power over the Notes client setups, therefore reducing
Notes TCO while enabling investment in new IBM software, features and versions.
Fastest client management tool 100% successful initial setups and
change up to 10,500 links per second ongoing client configurations
What other products do in minutes, we do in 95% less network load compared to
seconds Notes Data on network drives
Most used & proven
70% faster Notes client startup times
Based on longest client management 80% less help desk calls
experience in the market
70% shorter projects for migration,
4.4 million licensed modules
consolidation and recertification on
Large consolidation and migration projects
clients
• 120,000 users; 200,000 replicas from 200
40 Domino servers 50% less mail network traffic
• 140,000 users; 250,000 replicas from 1,300
25% less disk space for mailfiles
90 Domino servers
(40% smaller DAOS footprint)
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34. Questions?
Francie Tanner
Technical Director, Americas
panagenda Inc – Client Management, Server Monitoring & more
60 State Street, Suite 700 Boston, MA 02109 (USA)
Skype: francietanner Cell: +1 264 584 1060
Fax: +1 415 449 5940 E-Mail: francie.tanner@panagenda.com
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