I am developing a database on Lotus Designer 8.5 environment with LotusScript and LotusFormula.
Is there any possibilities on get a list of recently opened documents (for example last five) in a Lotus Notes database ? My purpose is to provide an embedded view showing the recent documents opened by current user on the current database, which will act like some kind of history view.
Please advise
Use a folder categorized by username. Add the current document in PostOpen event to folder with document.PutInFolder(folderName) and remove the oldest document from folder with document.RemoveFromFolder(folderName)
This way you don't need to edit the documents and can show the last visited documents for a user in an embedded view.
As an alternative you can use user specific folders with option "Shared, private on first use".
I have that functionality in one of my databases.
I just added some code in the QueryOpen event of the form to store the UNID of the document in a profile document linked to the specific user. The values are stored in a multi value field, and my code removes the oldest entry when the number of entries I want to store is exceeded.
The user can actually set that number themselves in teh applications settings, 5 is default but they can make it more or less.
I built a class for this, makes it very easy to modify later, and to implement it in different forms, for different document types.
I then built a method to expose the last documents to the user, using a dropdown box as you can see below. Since you only wwant/need the five (or perhas ten) last documents, no need to use a view.
Related
I have an xpage that allows the user to choose a customer and then order products for that customer. It's not a simple xpage that created a document, uses a view control to view it and re-edits it. It will be used on the web and in the client. How do I fill in all the data for the various fields when the user wants to look at their order for a company since there are multiple documents that make up that xpage? Is there automatic processes or do I need to do it manually?
The best method is to use multiple datasources (the Notes documents) each with a different datasource name. When saved, be sure to save each of the datasources that have a change. Also, it is helpful to mark to "ignoreRequestParameters", so each one acts independently.
I have found that using the dynamic content control useful when doing things like this, it seems to reduce the number of replication/save conflicts.
I have a SharePoint document library I am working on. It has a list of document sets. Each document set has a few fields that are marked as "Shared" so that they can be inherited by the documents inside.
When I upload a document inside a form opens and all the fields on the form are pre-filled with the shared values of the corresponding columns. But when I use create document from template, it opens the template in the corresponding Office application but the document property fields are empty and not read-only which is against the requirements of this project. I require them to be synced and filled exactly like when a document is uploaded.
There is one thing though. The user can fill any value he wants in those fields and they will still be saved a synced copy from parent in the library discarding what the user filled in, which is good, but why not show those values up in the document in the first place?
Anyone has experience in handling this please help. I have searched a lot on the internet but either my keywords are wrong or no one has had this problem before.
SharePoint version: 2010 Server
Office version: 2010 Professional
It sounds like you need a simple event reciever, which fire on itemadded. It would then go back up the tree to find the document set. Capture which properties are marked as shared. Adjust the item that is being added to force the values.
Probably 8 lines of code
I have an embedded view in a main form (same database) with a single category of a client code that is custom generated. The view displays all other documents that have that main document's client code in a hidden field.
This works perfectly, except for one user where the embedded view is blank, and the message "category not found" is displayed. This happens for all documents viewed. Anyone else that opens the exact same main documents can see the correct list in the embedded view. The documents are definitely there.
I've pressed F9 a few times, and the "category not found" keeps coming up. I've also shutdown Notes and deleted the cache file, and restarted. There have been no changes to the database for a long time, and this started for this one user a few days ago.
I have no idea whats causing this.
Check readers/authors fields in documents that should be displayed in your embedded view. May be that user just can't see them.
Before I get too stressed, I generally try this:
Remove the database from the user's workspace
Compact the workspace (2nd tab of workspace properties)
Close Notes
Delete cache.ndk
Restart Notes
If that doesn't work, I'd check that the user can see the documents in another way (i.e. if you send a doclink to the user, can the user open it (alternatively, try opening the embedded view directly through View - Goto. Don't forget to use CTRL-SHIFT at the same time if the view is hidden)? If not, the user may have lost a role, or dropped out of a group that provides access.
¿The view is "shared" and not "shared, private at first view"? In that case, you have to delete de "private version" of the view for that user
¿The embedded view is calculated, and show one view for a group of users and a second view for another group? Maybe you're searching the problem in the wrong view
¿The single category is based on a formula or on a calculated field? In that case, the formula calculates a different value for that user
I am doing "traditional" lotus notes programming (same since R5) and need to implement linking between 2 document types (forms) residing in different databases.
Document of type (A) in database (A) can reference several documents of type (B) in database (B).
And document (B) should also display its relationships with document (A), as document (B) can be related to different documents (A).
We have Many to Many relationship.
At the moment it is implemented on one side only (one to many):
Form of Document (A) contains embedded view of special
"link" documents residing in database A. This link documents are created by lotusScript when user selects documents from database (B). When user clicks on an item in this embedded view, it opens document (B).
Client wants to be able to edit this relationship on any side, so that if he edits it in form (A), form (B) is updated.
Form (B) is supposed to have the same kind of embedded view or a list of associated documents of type (A)
What is the best way to implement it?
Client's infrastracture is Lotus Domino 8.5.2 + Lotus Notes 8.5.2, so theoretically, composite applications approach may be an option.
The reason why I ask this question is that as far as I understand there is no good way in Notes to embed a view from another database.
The requirement is that the database should be present on workspace to be displayed in some sort of dodgy list.
It would be great to be able to specify target database for embedded view by server and replicaID, but instead we have a weird list of random workspace databases.
The main problem is that Notes wasn't designed to handle relationships like that between databases (nor anything besides parent child relationships for that matter). So the solution will have to be a creative one.
A couple of (off-the wall, potentially awful) ideas come to mind. One is to store the references in the documents themselves, and update them whenever the document is saved. That could all be done in LotusScript, and would require searching through the other database's documents to update their references.
Upside is that the performance when reading the documents would be excellent. There'd be no issues while reading Database A if Database B was unavailable. It keeps data local to each database. The downsides include the likelihood of save conflicts and the danger that references could get out of sync if documents aren't "saved" but instead are updated via agents, etc.
Another thought is to use agents to manage the links on a scheduled basis. If you don't need real-time up-to-date references, you could run an agent that scans Database B and updates the references in Database A. With this method you could choose either to update the Database A documents themselves - or - as it sounds like you've already done, create a set of link documents that show up in an embedded view. The latter eliminates the save conflict problem.
One more idea is to hide any references when you open a document in Database A, but provide a button to "show" or "update" references. When you click that button, it fires off LotusScript to search Database B and build a list on the fly. This would probably work quickly with less than 10,000 documents. That function could update the link documents you store on the same database which feed the embedded view.
Hope this helps!
What is the best way to implement it?
As you mention creating a composite application may allow you to do this, but would be restricted to windows rather then design level in the form.
eg.
[Window A] --- trigger ---> [Window B]
If you are not familiar with this system I did a tutorial which explains the basics.
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/compappwiki.nsf/dx/ibm-my-first-wire
Although the tutorial calls back to the same database, it is easy enough to point to a different one.
Personally I'd do it through XPages. I personally find it much easier to implement then through classic style notes design/comp apps. It will also allow you to display design elements within the same screen area.
As you've already heard, Lotus Notes has no referential integrity constraints built-in, you have to do it yourself.
I wouldn't be relying on document links as they're geared around UNID's which can change if you cut and paste the same document, thus losing the link. Try this,
1/ Create an "ID" field on each document. You can populate it by using #Unique in a computed field to generate an ID, and save that to the documents in both databases. You can create an agent to do this in lotusScript (LS), or formula. (Consider using the evaluate statement if doing in LS)
2/ Create a lookup view in each database that lists the documents by the new ID (don't forget to set the "sort order" of the ID column.
3/ Using an action button that can be configured for both databases, you can create a LS function that will open the the opposing databases view and return the ID field. (NotesUIWorkspace.pickliststrings would be the simplest way to pick the documents, otherwise you could build a dialogbox. Store the list of results in a field called "linkedID" as multi-value list.
4/ There may be more info that you want to store like document title or author, so you'll need to then get a handle to those documents using getdocumentbykey and then interrogating the fields you'll need to display information on screen.
5/ You can then also add a new field on the target documents you're referring to, call it "referrerID", which is a list of documents that reference the current document. This will maintain the two-way relationship.
The field that stores links must be a multi-valued field, otherwise it gets quite cumbersome to loop through list of linked document ID's and manage them.
This approach uses a static key so you can copy databases around without losing the relationships between documents the user has invested time in producing. You can (and probably will) lose those relationships if you rely on document universal ID's (described well in the #documentUniqueID documentation), if you cut and paste the document, or copy the database somewhere else they become new documents despite copying the same fields, and will be assigned a new universal ID, any document links for the old document will be invalid.
If the information you're displaying from the other database changes, you'll need to be able to refresh that data regularly, so consider writing a scheduled agent that can do the look up and refresh the relevant fields.
If the user intends to un-link or change the relationships between documents, then you'll need to add functions that loop through the key fields and keep the lists consistent with what the user is doing. So, like I said, Lotus Notes' flat data structure requires you manage all integrity constraints yourself.
If you want to get a little fancy you can use embedded views as they do support references from another database on the same server. Some tips about handling it in LotusScript here. And use an additional view that categorises your data by the referring ID. Embedded views are ok, as long as the view they're based on is not too big, otherwise it may affect the performance of the form that it is embedded into.
I am using the Lotus Notes 6.5.1 Java API to read an .nsf file. Every document in the .nsf file has multiple document history. While traversing through the documents in the .nsf file using the Lotus Notes Java API I am getting all the document versions as separate documents.
How do I ensure only the latest version of each document is retrieved by Lotus Notes? Is there a way to uniquely identify a document and all its version history as its children?
There is a built in feature for versioning documents in Notes Domino. Depending on hows it's configured in the database design (and assuming the database developer didn't roll their own) the versions will either be responses to an original parent, or the other way round, where new versions become the parent, with older versions being responses.
All this does however is to set up a response hierarchy in the database for you automatically when you edit the documents. How the rest of the database design interacts with this hierarchy is up to the developer.
What you probably want to do is create a view that only shows documents at the top of the response hierarchy. You can then traverse that view and know that the documents you get from it are the latest versions.
So if you have documents created with a form "Article" the view selection formula would be.
SELECT form*="Article" & !#IsAvailable($ref)
This selects all Article documents that are not responses. Now in code you can simply open the view and traverse it.
Once you have a handle on a document you can get its immediate child responses through
doc.getResponses()
This returns a DocumentCollection that you can recurse down finding responses to responses. You can't get a parent document directly. You first need to get its id with doc.getParentDocumentUNID() and then call db.getDocumentByUNID(). Of course you can combine that:
db.getDocumentByUNID(doc.getParentDocumentUNID())
In any case, you will have to look at what your database is actually doing, how it was originally designed and fit in with that.