Nice Notes 8.5.2 feature – policy control for access settings for Lotus Connections

Disclaimer: The following is from the release notes of Notes 8.5.2 so I don’t take credit for writing this. Lotus Notes 8.5.2 is in beta and there are no guarantees that the features described here will be in the final product that IBM ships.

From Notes 8.5.2 administrators can now define the Lotus Connections server to which the sidebar should connect by adding the following properties to the plugin_customization.ini file located in the <Notes>/framework/rcp directory. Modify this file within the installation package prior to distributing it to end users. If you are installing this code drop for the server as well, use the new policies to manage the accounts instead.

com.ibm.lconn.client.base/server=<server_URL>
com.ibm.lconn.client.base/authtype=<authentication_method>
com.ibm.lconn.client.base/authserver=
     <server_URL>:443/activities/j_security_check

where

  • <server_URL> is the full Web address of the Activities feature on the Lotus Connections server including the protocol. Add a backslash before each colon. For example: http://enterprise.example.com/activities
  • <authentication_method> is one of the following values:
    • J2EE-FORM: Form based authentication, default
    • TAM-FORM: Tivoli Access Manager Form authentication
    • SM-FORM: Siteminder Form authentication

    The port number might need to be changed from the default of 443 depending on your deployment.

To tell the Notes client where to read the server information from, add the following property to the plugin_customization.ini file:

com.ibm.lconn.client.base/policy-mode=<mode>

where <<mode> is one of the following values:

  • DEFAULT: Allows users to modify the server URL. This is how the client behaves by default.
  • FORCED: Prevents users from being able to edit the Server URL field in the Activities preferences page.
  • OVERWRITE: Overwrites the server URL that was specified in the preferences page with the one specified in the com.ibm.lconn.client.base/server property. Use this setting if you change deployments and want to force users to switch from accessing one server to accessing another.

If you choose to specify the server using the plugin_customization.ini file, keep these things in mind:

  • When you define the Lotus Connections server to connect to using the plugin_customization.ini file, be sure to specify the full URL of the Activities feature.
  • Tell users to access the Activities sidebar before opening the Connections preferences page when starting the Notes client for the first time. Accessing the sidebar is what triggers Notes to pull the server information from the plugin_customization.ini file.
  • If the server information displayed in the server URL field of the Connections properties page is not the information specified in the plugin_customization.ini file, click Restore Defaults, provide your log in credentials, and then click OK.

One thought on “Nice Notes 8.5.2 feature – policy control for access settings for Lotus Connections”

  1. This was available in 8.5(.1?) through the Lotus Connections settings document that you can add to policies. Maybe they just added the ability to push this down via managed settings, but I would much rather use the Connections settings document that has pretty much the same options. Actually, I already use this internally for our LC environment.

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