Maximize the

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Maximize the Power of the Admin Client
Rob Axelrod
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What We'll Cover ...

• Walking through the Admin client
• Great features you never noticed In Admin
• Working with little known but really useful
  console commands and techniques
• Finding additional administration tools

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Walking Through the Admin Client
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People and Groups Renaming a Non-Notes User

• The Problem
• AdminP can't be used to update the Readers and
  Authors fields because the user needs to accept
  the name change in their ID
• But, you can "trick" Domino into doing it!

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People and Groups Renaming a Non-Notes User
(cont.)

• Here is the trick
• Create a group by the same name as the person
• Run the Action "Rename Group"
• Force Adminp to process the request -- Issue the
  command "Tell Adminp process all" twice
• Once to process the rename group request, and
  once to process the changes in the Authors and
  Readers fields

Tip
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People and Groups Renaming a Non-Notes User
(cont.)

• Here is the trick (cont.)
• Manually rename the person in the Person Document
• Delete the group

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People and Groups Speeding Up User Registration

• Use 'create file in background' to speed up
  registrations

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People and Groups Speeding Up User Registration
(cont.)

• Take advantage of 'import from text file' to
  register large numbers of users
• Particularly good if you can get human resources
  to dump you a text file of new hires in a format
  that is close to the required format in
  Administrator
• Control separator with ini parameter
  BatchRegSeparator
• See Domino Administrator help for details

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People and Groups Registering Non-Notes Users

• Quick way to register a non-Notes user.
• Uncheck both ID options
• Be sure to change the Mail System from Notes
  anything else
• This will allow you to create a person document
  and mailfile without generating a Notes ID

Secret
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People and Groups Validate Internet Address

• Compares all Internet addresses and looks for
  duplicate addresses
• Will recurse through additional directories that
  are configured in Directory Assistance
• Dumps the output into your local Log.nsf database

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People and Groups Managing Group Membership

• Use the Group Management tool to discover all
  group privileges that an individual has
  regardless of whether they actually appear in the
  group
• From the Groups view open Group Manager and
  select 'Only Member Hierarchies'
• This lets you select an individual and see all of
  the groups they belong to either directly or
  through nesting

Great Feature
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People and Groups Managing Group Membership
(cont.)
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Files Resorting Files without the Directory
Structure

• Awesome for finding files
• Quick way of comparing properties

Good Thing
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Files Managing Files

• Create and delete subdirectories from the files
  tab
• View files other than .nsf and .ntf
• Pretty handy if you don't have easy OS level
  access to the box
• Launch any .nsf or .ntf right from the files tab
  by double clicking on it

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Files Manage ACLs

• Use the ACL Manager in Administrator to add
  entries to multiple databases
• Use the right click in the files tab to copy and
  paste ACLs (This is my favorite feature)

Great
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Server Monitoring Servers

• Configure which servers will be monitored by
  right clicking on the servers list
• Add or remove tasks as needed
• Add or remove statistics
• Select any statistics that are important to your
  environment

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Server Monitoring Servers (cont.)
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Server Broadcasting a Message

• When broadcasting a message, it shows up in the
  status bar
• No one looks at it!
• Broadcast a message with a popup
• From Server Status tab
• Choose the Broadcast Message task
• Just precede the message with a '(!)'

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Server Viewing Statistics

• From the Statistics Tab
• Use F9 to refresh
• Gives the same results that you would get with a
  'Show Stats' but without the info scrolling off
  of the screen

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Messaging Creating Messaging Reports

• You should see the reports database in the
  messaging tab
• If you don't, either you don't have ACL rights to
  it, or it doesn't exist
• Reports.nsf creates great detailed reports on
  messaging usage, but ...
• On a very active server they seem to bring the
  server down after time (assuming they are running
  on the server)
• Uses the MTC task, but this is another server
  killer

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Messaging Tracing Mail Routing

• Mail Trace from messaging tab is nice since it
  doesn't drop an email into the user's mailfile so
  they don't need to know that you are testing mail

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Bookmark Pane -- Favorites Getting Server
Information

• The Server Properties box is an awesome place to
  get quick stats on a server
• Right click on the server name from the Favorites
  pane and choose Properties

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Bookmark Pane -- Favorites Getting Server
Information (cont.)
Use the server properties window to configure
ports on the server too!
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Additional Administrative Tips Directory
Customizations Worth Making

• Adding Views to the Directory
• Modifying the Directory is a pain
• Every time you upgrade you need to worry about
  your design elements being stomped by the
  template
• A concern with adding views is that they will
  degrade server performance
• The following views are really worth having
• You can solve the above problems by creating them
  either as 'Private' or 'Desktop Private on First
  Use'

Issue
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Additional Administrative Tips Directory
Customizations Worth Making (cont.)

• View of People by ID Expiration Date
• People view sorted by a column with the formula
  _at_Certificate( expiration Certificate)
• This gives you the expiration date of each users
  ID

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Additional Administrative Tips Directory
Customizations Worth Making (cont.)

• View of Groups By Member
• Groups view sorted and categorized by the member
  field.

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Additional Administrative Tips Directory
Customizations Worth Making (cont.)

• Accessible View of Users
• Create a copy of the Users view
• Rename the view
• To see what Users looks like hold down
  ctrl-shift while opening names.nsf.

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Additional Administrative Tips Another Trick
People Ask About All the Time

• Creat a replica on a server when you don't have
  network/security access to the server that has a
  copy of the file
• Go to the R4 workspace
• Make sure that no database is selected
• Choose File -- Replication -- New Replica
• Type in the server and file name of the target
  database
• Click select
• Fill in the New Replica dialog as normal

Hidden Bonus
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Working With the Console
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Cool Console Tricks

• Pipe the output from the console to a text file
• show statistics gtstats.txt
• The file name is relative to the Domino program
  directory

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Cool Console Tricks

• You can launch a batch of console commands from a
  batch file that resides on the server
• Great for triggering replication from a hub to a
  large number of servers manually
• Keep text files of the commonly used commands in
  the Domino program directory of the server
• Syntax is gt batchfile.txt

Good Thing
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Cool Console Tricks Great But Seldom Used Commands

• show database dbname.nsf
• Displays the of deletion stubs by Note type and
  the byte size of every view
• Quicker than using NotesPeek when working with
  deletion stubs

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Cool Console Tricks Great But Seldom Used
Commands (cont.)

• show transactions
• Provides detailed statistics on all NRPC
  transactions occurring on the server
• Gives you an idea of what kind of things your
  users do
• Use this data when you want to build benchmarking
  scripts

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Cool Console Tricks Great But Seldom Used
Commands (cont.)

• TRACE servername/org or trace port !!!
  servername/org
• Returns exactly the same information that you get
  from a client network trace in the 'preferences'
  dialog
• Great for confirming connectivity and resolving
  connectivity problems
• Once I discovered this -- I use it almost every
  day

Great Feature
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Finding Other Tools
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Other Tools

• Two options for automating tasks
• Know LotusScript/Java (or have a friend that
  does) and write your own tool anytime you need
  one
• Know where to look for tools that other people
  made (often for free)

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Other Tools www.notes.net

• Iris Sandbox
• If you want to automate a common task, odds are
  you aren't the first to think of it and odds are
  someone posted their cut at it here
• Almost all code is open for you to edit and
  improve and free for your non-commercial use
• Bad news is it is all unsupported and without
  warrantee

Re-use
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Other Tools www.notes.net (cont.)

• Iris Sandbox (cont.)
• Some tools I can't live without from Iris
• NPing/NotesConnect -- This utility tests network
  availability over a specific port
• Antrid -- Allows you to either copy or change
  replica ID's of databases
• Awesome for the standard NTF files as well as for
  building test environments
• NotesPeek -- This is great for looking at the
  guts of an NSF
• It lets you see deletion stubs as well as profile
  documents
• A Domino detective's best friend (When the user
  says "duh, I didn't delete anything)

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Other Tools

• Some 3rd party tools that are helpful for
  administrators and worth a look -- especially for
  large environments
• Percussion ServerAdmin Plus
• ACL Management / User Management / Monitoring and
  Database Management
• GSX Utilities
• Includes all kinds of cool monitoring tools as
  well as an ID management tool
• TeamStudio Delta (The whole TeamStudio suite is
  super)
• Not just for developers, really useful for
  comparing templates to find differences in design
  as well as comparing individual documents
• Useful in making sure that server configurations
  are consistent
• Help Software Power Tools
• This has a bunch of utilities for automating day
  to day admin tasks

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Other Tools

• Tons more tools -- check out
• www.notes411.com
• www.searchdomino.com
• www.lotus.com/partners
• www.dominopower.com

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Questions?
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