Why Contracting?
Thu, Apr 26th 2012 6:11a Paul Cable I wrote on a forum some advice to a permanent member of staff considering the option of contracting. The question was "How much experience do you need before you go contracting?". My answer was fairly short, but I thought it was interesting enough to make into an article to share with you, especially in a time when contractors are getting a bad press. I left university and after 18 months in two jobs, I went contracting. Not consulting, contracting. I was simply a developer assigned to a pr [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
blogger
consulting
security
136
Is Android too risky for business?
Tue, Mar 27th 2012 6:13a Paul Cable I have both an Android phone and tablet. I actually have the new ASUS Transformer Prime, which is incredible. I like widget and the freedom to place anything on my phone. There are thousands of Apps available in the new Google Play store. However, I attended a Bring Your Own Device event last week which discussed the security implications. One main point that came across was how insecure Android is, for example there was recently an application for a touch (flash light for my friends in [read] Keywords: application
blogger
google
password
security
virus
widget
148
Do you backup?
Sun, Mar 25th 2012 3:11p Paul Cable I provide a solution to backup up to 5 computers automatically in the background. You can access these files from anywhere - via the web, or even on your smart phone. All your music, photos and files accessible anywhere, for just £25 per year. Empachal Backup is for personal and business use. It will allow 5 machines to be backed up for only £25 per year, which is under $40 USD.Imagine the heart ache of losing all your work, your family photos and your music collection. Data backup is ver [read] Keywords: blogger
password
security
135
Excel: Date to DOTW
Mon, Feb 20th 2012 5:13a Paul Cable Here is a quick tip / reference to how to calculate the day of the week from a date. =CHOOSE(WEEKDAY(A1),"Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday") A handy tip ! [read] Keywords: blogger
201
Project Management newsfeed
Tue, Feb 14th 2012 5:13a Paul Cable I have used a site called Planet Lotus for many years, keeping up with all of the blog articles relating to Lotus Notes. This site is a valuable tool in today's busy world as it provides a collection, in date/time order, of all of the blog entries created by people in the Lotus Community. It is a fantastic resource. I am moving more into the Project Management world, I was looking for a similar resource. It does not exist. I am now trying (for free) to get a PM Community together and a col [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
blogger
community
planet lotus
planetlotus
planetlotus.org
218
Visio Mind Map
Mon, Feb 13th 2012 12:10p Paul Cable Today I have been investigating how to communicate a mind full of notes to my project team. Previous companies have allowed the use of mind mapping software, either in house or on-line. My current client is a bank and limits the use of the internet and does not allow users to download software of use various web site, especially web applications. We are a heavy user of the Microsoft Office suite (with the exception of email) and I am limited. I am planning to present my current thoughts o [read] Keywords: notes
applications
blogger
email
microsoft
office
120
Pastures New
Thu, Dec 15th 2011 5:10a Paul Cable It is now time to pack up my desk for the second time in the same year. This is quite strange for me, even through I am a contractor. Usually I will stay with a company for a year or more, meaning that I never pack up my desk more than once. This contract was originally for three months, but has lasted six, with two additional extensions. Yesterday I handed in my notice and have managed to persuade my client to release me tomorrow. This means I can start my new contract on Monday, giving me [read] Keywords: blogger
144
Roaming and ID Vault problems
Wed, Nov 30th 2011 8:11a Paul Cable I have been working on a project for the last 5 months to upgrade users to Notes 8.5.2 FP2 from v7. In addition to this, we are moving people to the ID Vault and applying a Roaming policy. Since I have been here we have noticed that the design of the solution is not fit for purpose for this company, but was fit for purpose for the "other" joint head office. The solution was tested, but not tested enough and the scenarios of the varied working practices were not fully understood. Read mo [read] Keywords: id vault
notes
roaming
blogger
office
76
Thu, Nov 24th 2011 6:09a Paul Cable Wow! I actually did some coding in Lotusscript yesterday. It was actually a pleasure, but not something I would like to do on a daily basis going forward. It is always nice to dust off some old skills and prove that you can still achieve something worth while and in a timely manner. My tasks was to simulate Planet Lotus. As far as I know, there is not a "Planet Project Management" and I would like to collect all of my PM blogs into a single webpage, updated hourly to see the latest blo [read] Keywords: lotus
lotusscript
blogger
google
planet lotus
79
Prince2 eLearning
Wed, Oct 5th 2011 6:11a Paul Cable Seeing as I have been a Senior Developer / Team Leader / Project Manager for the last 5-6 years, I thought I would try to get a qualification. In June 2011, I decided that I would set myself a four week target to get my Prince2 Foundation exam completed and then set a deadline of just three weeks after my summer holiday for the Practitioner exam. I decided that I would study Monday through Thursday evenings for 1-2 hours per night, once I was home from work. This worked well, as I could happi [read] Keywords: blogger
105
My new on-line backup service
Wed, Sep 14th 2011 6:09a Paul Cable Today our life is saved on a little electronic devise where we hold all our memories, favorite music and copies of all those important documents. Imagine the hard-drive failing and loosing it all... We have a solution for you that will give you peace of mind. We are launching an online back-up service. You will be able to backup all of your data daily and retrieve it anywhere in the world through our web portal, or even through your web enabled mobile phone. There is no need for additional ha [read] Keywords: apple
blogger
mobile
121
Teaching a new dog old tricks
Fri, Jul 29th 2011 6:10a Paul Cable We came across a new problem on my project last night. It seems that the "Preview in Web Browser" menu option is not available to users without the Designer client with version 8.5.2. We have a department who are using a Lotus Notes application for their Content Management System, which must allow the user to review their draft documents in a web browser. I do not recall this menu item missing with previous releases, however, after a little research I have discovered that this menu option [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
application
blogger
93
An update on what I have been doing
Tue, Jul 5th 2011 6:08a Paul Cable I have finally left a company that I had the pleasure of work at for more than three years. As a contractor, that is a long time. It turned out to be 43 months in all, which I really enjoyed. I left at the end of May and moved straight into to a new contract for a large supermarket chain in England. The work is not what I expected. I am tasked with leading a small team to upgrade machines from Lotus Notes v7 to v8.5.1. This was sold to me as a development team leader role, but is in fact [read] Keywords: id vault
lotus
notes
roaming
blogger
database
desktop
development
48
Button to open db on a particular server
Mon, Apr 4th 2011 3:04a Paul Cable We have many servers in our environment and we try to make sure users use their local server for their applications. Below is a simple button to force a user to open an application on a particular server, which will place this replica on top of their replica stack. Read more » [read] Keywords: application
applications
blogger
server
50
Excel formula
Sat, Apr 2nd 2011 4:21a Paul Cable I have a notes application as a replacement for MS Money 2008. Every month I import all of my account transactions into a notes database, via CSV import and it checks previous entries to categorize each transaction. This allows me to see where my wife spends all of my money each month! Occasionally I get lazy and do not download the transactions within the statement period and so the only way to import the transactions is to copy and paste the HTML table from the statement on the scree [read] Keywords: notes
application
blogger
database
216
XML Import / Export for Lotus Notes
Fri, Apr 1st 2011 11:11a Paul Cable Today I have written three small articles
which talk about import and export XML within Lotus Notes. You can
read the first article here.
As you may well know, I have moved my
blog to Google Blogger, so please click here to open the blog. [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
blogger
google
xml
142
XML - Part three - Import
Fri, Apr 1st 2011 10:51a Paul Cable This is the third XML article in this mini series. Please take a look at Part One, which talks about the Script Library and Part Two, which talks about the export agent, if you have not already seen these. The second agent I have written allows a user to import an XML file and replace all of the document fields with the values found in the XML document. My code takes the first "Document" from the "Documents" tree and finds the value, which is used as a key to find the document. With [read] Keywords: agent
script library
blogger
xml
58
XML - Part Two - The Export
Fri, Apr 1st 2011 10:43a Paul Cable This is the second XML article in this mini series. Once you have created the script library in your database (Part One), you can create the first of the two agents. The agent below allows a user to export the selected documents as XML. This creates an XML tree of "Documents", with each "Document" being a node. This code fixes the file destination to "C:TempDocument.xml", so you will have to change this to fit your requirements. I use a view to handle the field names to export, as [read] Keywords: agent
script library
blogger
database
xml
77
XML - Part One - The Script Library
Fri, Apr 1st 2011 10:39a Paul Cable I am going to write a three part post on how to handle the importing and exporting of XML files into Lotus Notes. Recently, I had a requirement to export a number of documents to XML. The file would then be read into a customers helpdesk, which was not Lotus Notes based. I have exported to XML before and have kept a Script Library in my "black box" for this very purpose. I did not write the script library, but I will share the code here. Read more » [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
script library
blogger
xml
Google stop me embarrassing myself
Fri, Apr 1st 2011 5:28a Paul Cable I was just sending an important email, with a very important attachment... When I pressed the Send button, it stopped me and warned me that I have written "I have attached", and it then realised that I had forgotten to attach my document. Thank you Google for reminding me to attach my document. [read] Keywords: blogger
email
google
39
Orange HTC Desire and Tethering
Thu, Mar 24th 2011 3:05a Paul Cable Since buying my Archos 101 Tablet, I have not been able to tether it via wireless, bluetooth or USB to my HTC Desire. This morning I came across a solution, so I thought I would share it with you. Read more » [read] Keywords: blogger
wireless
37
Import Excel file
Wed, Mar 23rd 2011 7:43a Paul Cable Here is some sample code to import a Microsoft Excel file, rather than a CSV file. I was looking for some sample code to help release the task on the server. Read more » [read] Keywords: blogger
microsoft
server
Chrome Extensions
Sat, Mar 19th 2011 1:50a Paul Cable As Xpages is heavily presented using JavaScript, we discovered that the fastest browser was Google Chrome. In this article I highlight some of the Extensions that I use to help me with my day to day work with developing web applications and to navigate the web. Read more » [read] Keywords: xpages applications
blogger
google
javascript
52
This blog is moving
Thu, Mar 10th 2011 9:09a Paul Cable I have decided to move this blog from using
the Lotus Notes based blog to using the Google Blogger application. Here
is the new link. http://paul-cable.blogspot.com/
Recently I have been moving more of
"my life" on Google using many of the other apps including Documents,
Calendar, Chrome, Picasa, Blogger, iGoogle and Gmail, all of which work
to some extent on my Google Android mobile phone.
I have sent a mail to "Planet Lotus",
so that my links can be updated.
See y [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
application
blogger
google
mobile
planet lotus
Months as text
Thu, Mar 10th 2011 8:02a Paul Cable Below is some useful code I have used many times. This allows you to take a date field and display the month of the field. I have used this in categorised columns many times for many years. You have to make sure that if the month number is less than 10 that you prepend a "0", otherwise the month of 11 would become "JanuaryJanuary". Read more » [read] Keywords: apple
blogger
Unhide Design
Thu, Mar 10th 2011 8:00a Paul Cable I have a number of templates where a rogue developer has locked the design and has lost the templates (or won't share them). There is a solution to unhide the design. 1. Make a local copy of the database 2. Ensure you have manager or designer rights. 3. Open up the .nsf file in a hexadecimal editor. 4. Change address 000000BC from the hexadecimal code 20 to 00. 5. Save the .nsf file. This does not seem to work with 8.5.1 [read] Keywords: apple
blogger
database
@DBColumn in LotusScript
Thu, Mar 10th 2011 7:46a Paul Cable Function DBColumn (strClass As String, strNoCache As String, strServer As String, strDatabase As String, strView As String, strKey As String) As Variant Dim strFormula As String,quotes As String quotes = Chr(34) strFormula = “@DbColumn(” & quotes & strClass & quotes & “:” & quotes & strNoCache & quotes & “;” & quotes & strServer & quotes & “:” & quotes & strDatabase & quotes & “;” & quotes & strView & [read] Keywords: lotusscript
apple
blogger
33
Xpages Cheatsheet
Thu, Mar 10th 2011 7:42a Paul Cable I read this post on PlanetLotus today. It is a great four page list of Xpages code, which covers all of the common code used when developing. If you have not read this, please follow the link below for the article. I have also added this to my useful documents section. Link [read] Keywords: xpages apple
blogger
planetlotus
30
Split
Thu, Mar 10th 2011 7:40a Paul Cable Today, thanks to this blog, I have discovered a useful script function called "Split". I am sure I have used it before, but it escaped my thoughts yesterday when coding the Excel export function. I know and use Split with JavaScript, but did not remember that it existed in LotusScript. Thanks to a comment from Theo Heselmans, my code is now updated and working better than before. This help and advice is what I love about the Lotus Community. Thank you. [read] Keywords: lotus
lotusscript
apple
blogger
community
javascript
72
Xpages cheatsheet
Fri, Jan 21st 2011 10:13a Paul Cable I read this post on PlanetLotus
today. It is a great four page list of Xpages code, which covers
all of the common code used when developing.
If you have not read this,
please follow the link below for the article. I have also added this
to my useful documents section.
Link [read] Keywords: xpages planetlotus
57
Split
Tue, Dec 21st 2010 4:18a Paul Cable Today, thanks to this blog, I have discovered
a useful script function called "Split". I am sure I have
used it before, but it escaped my thoughts yesterday when coding the Excel
export function. I know and use Split with JavaScript, but did not
remember that it existed in LotusScript.
Thanks to a comment from Theo Heselmans,
my code is now updated and working better than before. This help
and advice is what I love about the Lotus Community. Thank you. [read] Keywords: lotus
lotusscript
community
javascript
96
A simple GetFormattedName function
Tue, Dec 21st 2010 4:18a Paul Cable A simple function I came across going through
some old code.
This code accepts a string and turns
it into a names field, from which you can send a parameter to get the different
types of name, such as Common, Canonical and Abbreviated.
Function
GetFormattedName(strName As
String,
param As
String)
As
String
Dim
n As
New
notesname(strName )
Select
Case
param
Case
"CN"
GetFormattedName= n.common
Case
"Canonicalize [read] Keywords: lotusscript
148
Export Field Revisions to Excel
Mon, Dec 20th 2010 1:13p Paul Cable At home today, due to being snowed in.
I like working from home as it keeps all the banter, telephone calls
and meetings to a minimum and when I am coding I like peace and quiet.
I know the developers I work with listen to music, but I don't really
like doing that.
Today I wrote a nice piece of script
to export document history to Excel. The document contains around
14 fields that are stamped when a history snap shot is taken. These
could be dates, text, names and number (no ric [read] Keywords: acl
lotusscript
rich text
80
Android apps
Tue, Nov 30th 2010 2:17p Paul Cable In recent times, many companies are providing
iPhone applications for their customers. I have an Android phone
and thought I would share the list of applications that I use on a daily,
if not, weekly basis. I am interested to hear of other useful applications
you use.
Mail
I actually have three email accounts
for different purposes. I have a gmail, Hotmail and a Lotus Notes
email account.
On my Android I use the native email
client for my Hotmail, which seems to work wel [read] Keywords: connections
lotus
notes
traveler
application
applications
email
facebook
google
iphone
mobile
server
skype
twitter
wireless
95
Useful code snippets
Tue, Nov 23rd 2010 11:13a Paul Cable When I add some code the "Useful Code"
section of this blog, I never blog about it. I use it myself to collect
a number of useful functions and code snippets, ready for reuse anytime,
anywhere. So, I thought I would write this quick post to bring it
to your attention.
Today, I added some code given to me
a while ago, which I add into a button on a mail for users who need a connection
document created in their local name and address book. A useful piece
of code, but there are als [read] Keywords: lotusscript
archive
60
Let the games begin
Sat, Nov 6th 2010 8:14p Paul Cable Today is the start of a four match series
for the England rugby team. I am a huge fan and have been a regular
player at Tring
Rugby Club for the last 6 seasons.
I have never played rugby before and only started playing at the
age of 29.
Today we are playing the world's number
one team - The All Blacks. They are consistently winning and playing
excellent, exciting, open, running rugby. Last week however, Australia
beat them in Hong Kong.
New Zealand are also famous for peak [read] Keywords:
Second in the World
Mon, Nov 1st 2010 8:25p Paul Cable I read in the news today that Google Android
is now ranked as the number two mobile operating system used globally with
a 17% share. Symbian is still the number one with 37%. This
surprised me, even though I am an Android advocate, I feel that I am under
constant bombardment from the iPhone users around me. Even my wife
has an iPhone.
I have never been a fan of the iPhone,
or the Apple brand for that matter. I have always seen it as being
a fashion accessory and felt that the spe [read] Keywords: ibm
apple
application
applications
google
interface
iphone
ipod
mobile
76
Xpages Charting Choices
Sun, Sep 12th 2010 7:26a Paul Cable I am in the process of deciding which standard
for Xpages charting my client should use across EMEA. I would like
to use a simple option for now, one that is cheap, or free, and one that
all of the developers will be able to use.
I have looked into AMCharts, Google
Charts, Fusion Charts, JCharts and the standard charting option for Xpages,
Dojo charts.
I think the Google Charts were very
nice and had many options and themes, however, I am quite scared to use
Google, as they see [read] Keywords: domino
xpages applications
community
development
dojo
firefox
google
javascript
server
63
Lotusscript Map
Fri, Sep 3rd 2010 2:26p Paul Cable Funny how things happen. I was teaching
a guy at work today the basics of Lotusscript and I wanted to refer to
the classic map that used to be visible when you open the designer client.
This map is a clickable map, which allows
you to understand the relationships between the different classes within
the Lotusscript object model.
Thankfully I came home today, read a
bit on
PlanetLotus and found this map,
thanks to Mat
Newman [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
lotusscript
planetlotus
planetlotus.org
