ShowTable of Contents
Overview
Feature changes on 4.5 Notes plug-ins
The IBM Connections Plug-ins for IBM Notes is our 4.5 release, aka 4.5 Notes plug-ins. It still has the same set of plug-ins with the 4.0 release, which is named IBM Connections Plug-ins for Lotus Notes, no new features were introduced.
• Activities sidebar
• Business Card integration
• StatusUpdates sidebar
• Files sidebar
However, there are some slight changes.
In Notes 8.5.x, the Activities plug-in AND the BusinessCard integration are part of the Notes, and BusinessCard is one part of the Activities (see the left side of Figure 1). The Notes installer has a 'IBM Connections' checkbox, which would install these 2 pieces. The Connections 4.0 release also has these 2 plug-ins.
Figure 1. Differences between Notes 8.5.x and Notes 9
From Notes 9, the BusinessCard integration is split from Activities, and the Activities plug-in is pulled out of Notes, only the BusinessCard integration remains in Notes (also see Figure 1).
The Activities plug-in is now only available in 4.5 Notes plug-ins (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Two “IBM Connections” entries on shortcut menu
The 4.5 Notes plug-ins installer changes
Comparing with 4.0 plug-ins installer, we made below changes for 4.5 Notes plug-ins installer.
• The product name is updated to 'IBM Connections Plug-ins for IBM Notes'.
• Support for Notes app name changing on MAC.MAC 10.8 introduces it's own app called 'Notes'. Notes team changed the app name from 'Notes' to 'Lotus Notes' (Notes 8.5.3 FP3) / 'IBM Notes' (Notes 9) to avoid the conflict. These changes are reflected in 4.5 Notes plug-ins installer.
• Reflect the change of pulling Activities out of Notes 9 and splitting BusinessCard integration from Activities.
• Optionally provide a signed installer, but didn't post it on catalog.
System Requirements
Supported OSs
• Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows 8
• Mac 10.6 and above
• RHEL6
Supported Notes Version
• Lotus Notes 8.5.2 and above,
Note: support for 8.5.1 FP5 was dropped
Supported Connections Server Version
• IC 3.0.1.1
• IC 4.0
• IC 4.5
Log files
Logs on Windows
The installation log is stored in the %tmp% dir, named as rcp_addon_install.txt.
For example, on Windows 7, the path is:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\rcp_addon_install.txt.
There are also other logs, error log and trace log, you can find in Notes workplace directory which are generated during the provisioning, see Figure 3.
Figure 3 The provisioning logs
For example, on Windows 7, if you installed Notes as single user, the path to logs directory will be similar to this,
C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\Data\workspace\logs.
If you chose the multi-user install, the logs directory path should be:
Logs on Mac
Install/uninstall logs are stored in the tmp dir if the Notes version is lower than 8.5.2. Browse to the tmp dir, look for the below file.
rcp_IBMConnectionsPluginsforLotusNotes_install.log (install log) or
rcp_IBMConnectionsPluginsforLotusNotes_uninstall.log (uninstall log).
Note: Log file will be automatically deleted when the system is restarted.
If the Notes version is 8.5.2 or higher, logs are zipped in the installHistory directory. Browse to, for example, /Application/Lotus Notes.app/Contents/MacOS/rcp/deploy/instalHistory.
Look for the zip file which has the similar name as below:
Notes_8.5.3FP4_ADDON_INSTALL_1311563867253.zip (zipped the install logs) or
Notes_8.5.3FP4_ADDON_UNINSTALL_1311572948964.zip (zipped the uninstall logs).
If you want to take a look at the install logs, extract the zip file for install, (Notes_8.5.3FP4_ADDON_INSTALL_1311563867253.zip), browse to either the
tmp directory,
Notes_8.5.3FP4_ADDON_INSTALL_1311563867253/colutil/tmp, to get the file rcp_IBMConnectionsPluginsforLotusNotes_install.log, or to the
logs directory,
Notes_8.5.3FP4_ADDON_INSTALL_1311563867253/colutil/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data/Expeditor/Applications/logs, to get the provisioning logs.
Known Issues
Now let's take a look at two known issues.
– Activities and Status Update plug-ins not shown issue
– Notes plugin upgrade related issue
Activities and Status Update plug-ins not shown
It is recommended that you install all 4.5 Notes plug-ins by using the installer. However, you can install a subset of the three plug-ins (Activities, Status Update, Files) by editing the install xml (install.addon.xml) in the deploy folder of the installer, see Figure 4.
Figure 4 'install.addon.xml'
But in installing 4.5 Notes plug-ins on a Notes client 9.0, we encountered the issue where two plug-ins are not shown.
Let's explore the environment where this issue is introduced:
Notes 9.0 client was already installed on the Windows 7 32-bit system, and 'IBM Connections' component of the Notes 9.0 client installer wasn't selected, see Figure 5.
Figure 5 'IBM Connections' component on Notes 9 installer
As usual, users can select installing certain features by removing the <installfeature> parts of other features in the “install.addon.xml” of Notes plugin installer. We remove the following part(id: “Activities”, install id: “com.ibm.lconn.client.bizcard.feature”), and reserve the common part of Activities and Status Update parts:
<installfeature id="Activities" mergeaction="add" version="4.5.0.20130224-1730">
<requirements>
...
<feature action="install" id="com.ibm.lconn.client.bizcard.feature" match="greaterOrEqual" shared="true" url="jar:${installer.root}/updateSite.zip!/" version="4.5.0.20130224-1730"/>
</requirements>
</installfeature>
After the installation completed, when the Notes 9.0 client is launched, you will find only Files plug-in showed in the right side bar. The Activities and Status Update plug-in are not displayed, see Figure 6.
However, we confirmed that the plugins were installed by accessing 'Help -> About IBM Notes -> Plug-in Details'. Activities and Status Update were installed well and detailed plug-ins list are shown well there.
Figure 6 Plug-in on Notes side bar
The issue is caused by the new change of the 4.5 Notes plug-ins whereby Activities and Status Update partially depends on bizcard feature, and as noted above, the bizcard feature was commented out of the installation.
To resolve this issue, you can enable this part again and reinstall the 4.5 Notes plug-ins. The three plug-ins should be shown in Notes client. In the other way, if you select the 'IBM Connections' component in Notes 9.0 installer, this issue can be avoided as well.
Also, you may encounter the same issue of installing the 4.5 Notes plug-ins on Notes client 8.5.*, if you comment out the bizcard part in the install xml of the plug-in installer.
Notes plugin upgrade related issues
Upgrade Notes 8.5.3 with the 4.5 Notes plug-ins installed to Notes 9.0
This upgrade case is very common. We can encounter a similar plug-ins not shown issue as above in the case, and it can happen in all the supported platforms.4.5 plug-ins
Let's explore the use case where this issue occurs:
There is Notes client 8.5.3 installed with all the three 4.5 Notes plug-ins. We upgraded it using Notes 9.0 client installer. In the Notes 9.0 upgrade panel, we didn't select “IBM Connections” component. After Notes upgrade completed, we found there is only Files plug-in shown in the Notes client right side bar. However, there are three 4.5 plug-ins installed on the past Notes 8.5.3.
We checked the Notes client plug-ins list, the Activities and Status Update plug-ins were still in the list, but the bizcard feature was removed. This is the reason that Activities and Status Update weren't shown, as discussed in the first issue. In this case, “IBM Connections” component was not selected, Notes 9.0 client may handle it as uninstall signal. In Notes 9.0, the “IBM Connections” component contains mainly the bizcard feature, other than Activities in the previous releases. So the bizcard feature was removed.
To resolve the issue, you can reinstall 4.5 Notes plug-ins again, all the plug-ins should work well, or get 'IBM Connections' component selected while upgrading the Notes client.
Upgrade Notes 8.5 with 4.0 Notes plug-ins installed to Notes 8.5.3
In the 4.0 version of Notes plug-ins, we can encounter another failure in upgrading Notes client. In this case, Notes client 8.5 was installed with 4.0 Notes plug-ins and all the feature plug-ins were installed. Then we launched Notes client 8.5.3 in order to upgrade the Notes client. The “Lotus Connections” component was selected, but the installation was blocked by an error prompt, see Figure 7.
Figure 7 The popped up error during Notes upgrading
The reason is that Activities plug-in in 4.0 Notes plug-in conflicts with “Lotus Connections”component in Notes 8.5.3 client. To avoid this issue, you need to deselect the “Lotus Connections” component in Notes client when upgrading Notes or remove Activities from Notes 8.5.3 kit before upgrading. Please refer to
this article for more information about 4.0 Notes plug-ins.
However, the above Notes 8.5.3 and plugin 4.0 known issue has been resolved in Notes client 9.0 installer and the 4.5 Notes plug-in. You can select to install 'IBM Connections' and no matter 4.5 Notes plug-ins is installed or not now.
Conclusion
This article introduces the feature and installer changes, supported platforms, log files, and two actual cases of the IBM Connections Plug-ins for IBM Notes. So, You should have a better understand on how to troubleshoot the deployment of this product.
Resources
• Product documentation:
• https://idoc2.swg.usma.ibm.com/connections/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.lotus.connections.connectors.doc/admin/files_plugin_install_overview.html
• Introducing the IBM Connections 4 plug-ins installer for IBM Lotus Notes
• http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/Introducing_the_IBM_Connections_4_plug-ins_installer_for_IBM_Lotus_Notes
About the authors
Hai Yang Liu is an IBM Software Developer based at IBM's Shanghai, China, facility where he works on the IBM Connections Linked Valued team. He responsible for install development since IBM Connections Plug-ins for Microsoft Windows 3.0.1.1 and IBM Connections Plug-ins for IBM Notes 4.0. You can reach him at
liuhyang@cn.ibm.com.
Fan Xiang Jun is an IBM Software Engineer based at IBM's Shanghai, China, facility where he works as a Tester on the IBM Connections Linked Valued team, before this he worked on IBM Connections server deployment and migration. You can reach him at
xjfanxj@cn.ibm.com.