Trial software for Lotus Notes client server scenario - lotus-notes

I'm in a software project and need to take care of a component that connects to a Lotus Notes server in order to create users, assign authorization groups etc.
I would like to configure a basic client / server scenario on my own hardware to familiarize with the Notes technology but I have only found trial versions for client software components like Domino Designer. I would expect that a Domino server is also required.
Does anybody know whether. and if yes, how I can get the required server components? Or is it required to purchase a license?
Many thanks in advance for every reply.

You can download a trial of IBM Domino here:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ls/lsds/

http://dominodeveloper.net offers a free development server option that I have used successfully in the past. Always worked well for me.

Related

Two-factor Authentication for IBM Domino XPages

I am a new Domino XPages developer. Does anyone know of a Two Factor Authentication solution for Xpages.
You don't authenticate with an application on Domino. (That's true whether it's built with XPages or not.) You authenticate with the server. IBM does not support two factor authentication for Domino, but a simple google of "lotus domino two factor authentication" will bring up results that include a few vendors of 3rd party solutions that work with Domino. You will, however, have to approach this as a systems admin issue, not a development problem, so if you have any follow-ups they will belong on ServerFault instead of StackOverflow.
Look at https://www.duosecurity.com/product/applications/api which you could use after user successfully authenticates against Domino server.

sessionAsSignerWithFullAccess in XPiNC (ND9)

I needed to build an XPages to get the users' calendar entries for both public and private. And I could achieve this enhancement with using sessionAsSignerWithFullAccess in SSJS.
However my code doesn't work in XPiNC in Notes/Domino 9. It seems that sessionAsSignerWithFullAccess doesn't work as I expected and access only public documents.
Are there any way to resolve this issue?
Btw, I've also tried to call the Lotusscript agent in beforePageLoad, which is behalf of administrator and web access user, but no luck. Lotusscript also access only public documents.
Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!
Thank you in advance.
I believe it's the case that the sessionAsSigner sessions run as the current user when using XPiNC, rather than the signer of the XPage. Inconvenient as this is, it makes sense from a security perspective: while a Domino server has free reign to act as any name it likes, a Notes client acts solely as the active ID. Normal XPiNC setups run everything from the local client, so, from a security perspective, it's the same as accessing non-XPage elements.
You could double-check to see if my thinking is accurate by outputting sessionAsSignerWithFullAccess.getEffectiveUserName(). If I'm right, it will be the currently-running user, not the signer.
One way around it would be setting the XPiNC apps to execute on the server (new in 9, I believe). It has some caveats (https://frostillic.us/f.nsf/posts/how-i-got-xpinc-run-on-server-with-sso-working), but it has a lot of advantages both from a performance and a predictability perspective: since the app is actually running on the server in basically the same way as it would in a web browser, it (likely) also supports sessionAsSigner.

Microsoft Lync Server integration as a portlet

I came up with an idea to integrate Lync Server as a Java portlet to Liferay environment. What I would like to have is people names, photos, presence information and contact points on a portlet which communicates the data from Lync server.
(With contact point I mean those direct Voip or IM communications integrations that I suppose belong to the Lync concept.)
I don't know if there exist any ready integrations and if not, what material could be found about APIs and stuff like that so that I could probably code one of my own.
Thanks for interest and tips already beforehand!
I'm no Liferay expert, but i'm guessing Web Based Portal - right? If so, then yes, you can do what you need to.
Are you running the Lync client on the machines? if not, then you'll need to build some server infrastructure.
First step would be to download and install the UCMA 3.0 SDK.
At the back end, you would need to build a UCMA application that logs on to your Lync environment - the process of building and deploying is fairly lengthy, but described well here
You'd also need to build in a web service layer, so you can expose methods over the web, e.g. GetContacts, etc. The methods behind your web service would need to call into the UCMA app to fetch the required information.
Then you'd just need to build the necessary html and javascript to call the web services.
There is a codeplex project that does some of this - at the very least, it would be a great starting point
The whole thing is a lot easier if you are running Lync on the client, and if Silverlight is an option.
You'd need to download the Lync SDK. This contains a bunch of Silverlight controls that allow the user to e.g. see contact details, see a contacts availability, click to call etc. It would then just be a case of creating a Silverlight app using the controls, and then wrapping this inside a portlet.
Edit: George Durzi and Michael Greenlee's book is great for getting started with this, whichever route you go down.

Lotus Notes Application, Web Based Converting

Does anyone have tips or an ebook that can give me a good foundation on how to create applications in lotus notes using web browsers instead of clients. Links or tips are much appreciated.
Thanks!
Books are a good starter. But you'll find there is alot more to it than you see in books. So, here is a quick list of places to look.
Books
You've got these options for books (all downloadable as eBooks to)
Classic Web development prior to Notes 8.5 -- Reviews here and here
Latest Web stuff with Xpages if you have Notes 8.5+ (kindle/paper)
There are IBM wiki's (html). But have found the IBM wiki experience underwhelming. (The adjectives "half-ar$ed" and "piece-meal" comes to mind alot when reading these.)
IBM's redbook site (pdf/html) has better produced content than the wiki's.
Sites
One of the best web development tip/technique sites for the trickier problems is codestore.net and nsftools.com
OpenNtf a well used site for free code and solutions written by alot of smart people.
Quite a few good bloggers have "coagulated" on planetLotus
Try Searching for XPages in Google. Or start here
If you enable http on the server, you should be able to see your domino applications from the web. You then need to modify them to make them a bit more web friendly. The basic technique for this is to have 2 design elements with the same alias, hide one from notes and the other from the web. This will make it a bit easier to make it functional from both the client and the web browser.
Other functionality which makes this a bit easier would be 'Pass through HTML', the Domino CGI Variables and the 'WebQueryOpen' and 'WebQuerySave' events. As Jasper points out, XPages is the new sparkling way to do this, but it might not be an option for existing systems (It requires the latest version of Domino server). Good Luck!
What version of Domino are you running? If it's an 8.5 variant, I would suggest you use XPages to bring your old client apps to the web (XPages are not an option in releases prior to 8.5).
As to how you go about this, that's well beyond the scope of an answer on Stack Overflow: it's a book in and of itself! To learn about web development with XPages, I suggest visiting some of the well-known sites out there, and perhaps picking up a course or two. Here are some links:
http://xpages101.net
http://www.qtzar.com/blogs/qtzar.nsf/htdocs/LearningXPages.htm
http://notesin9.com/
(Also, IBM publish a book on XPages development, although I've not read it).
With regards "classic" Domino development, your best bet is to view your existing Notes app in a web browser and then start hacking on the default HTML generated (which is nasty). The best single resource out there for classic Domino web development tips and hacks is Jake Howlett's Codestore
Start small, build yourself a small database with a subset of data and explore what you can do. I've been a notes client developer for 10+ years and doing domino web work for last three or four years and still on steep learning curve. Its a very powerful platform but you also need to know html as on many occasions the html that you see in the browser helped me pin down the faults in my application code.

Integrating Instant Messaging into SharePoint!

Maybe this is a dumb question!
I'm just wandering is there any way/web part integrating with SharePoint, by which I can communicate with others instantly.
The reason behind this requirement is that I still have not found any workaround to communicate with my colleagues instantly, like MSN, in SharePoint.
P.s If I start building one, where should I get started!
Thanks for your input and forgive me if my question is stupid!
You can integrate Microsoft Office Communcations Server into SharePoint apparently. Gives you access to MSN Messenger internally to your enterprise, among other things.
Users who run Windows Live Messenger will get a precense icon for all user lookups when their email settings are configured properly. It requires all users to add each other to their live accounts, so it might not be the solution you are looking for. Another way to get the precense icon is by using Microsoft Office Communications Server as Moo suggested.
This also integrates well into Outlook and is the way Microsoft decided to implement communication in the Office suit.
Check out chatterbox:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/05/15/chatterbox-persistent-chat-session-for-sharepoint.aspx
Here is another open source feature I have been working on.
EDIT: The name of the feature is Sharepoint Messenger. You can find it either google search, codeplex or the link below.
https://sharepointmessenger.codeplex.com/

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