Staying within policy

March 23 2006

I met with a group of Lotus customers yesterday in Kansas City.  One surprise to me was the answer to one of my usual questions -- how many of you are using policies to manage your Domino environment?  The answer -- none.

Polices in Notes/Domino 6.x were a good first step.  The problem, though, is that they weren't lockable -- users could, essentially, override policy settings pushed down to their Notes client.  In Notes/Domino 7, policies are substantially improved.  First, more user settings are configurable by policy, and second, they can be locked down to prevent user modification.

In today's Show-and-Tell Thursday, my colleague Kathleen McGivney covers how to modify user settings such as location documents, preferences, and notes.ini settings via customized settings documents.  With all the improvements in policies in ND7, hopefully tips such as Kathleen's will help you make the best use of this TCO-reducing feature in your environment.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes/Domino 7  Add/View Comments [12]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Simon Barratt http://apps.fmc.com/blog.nsf | 3/23/2006 5:02:58 PM

    Regardless of whether you can lock them down in 6.x, they are still a great feature. Certainly worth the effort. Just a registration policy alone, working with the CA process makes life so much easier. Specifying mail templates, adding users to certain groups, it makes user registration a breeze compared to previous versions.

  1. 2  Paul Gagnon www.nortonlamb.com | 3/23/2006 6:41:22 PM

    I'd have to agree 100% Simon. There isn't an upgraded or new Domino customer that I do not include an Org level registration policy. It's quick and it is easy. A Reg setting applied to an Org Policy makes life so much easier for training the power-user at the company who will be registering new users. Like Simon says, :) [nopun] after your CA is setup, you can register a new user from anywhere with Domino Web Admin very quickly and easily.

    My latest fun with explicit policies was a desktop policy I used on everyone at the office to get them upgraded from 6.5.4 clients to 7.0.1. Policies combined with Smart Upgrade is an administrator's best friend. I also included the setting in that policy to force the "Autosave every 15 minutes" onto users. Not that it was really needed, but I felt it was an important new setting that users should have after moving to 7.

    I had a customer (couple hundred users) who had a portal application that needed to open MSIE from url's emailed in Notes mail and we used an explicit policy to push that setting to users. Super-quick and easy. No need to visit users workstations.

    Another situation where policies work well is a security policy that keeps the internet password in the person document in the domino directory synchronized with the Notes password. Users change their password at the office in Notes, and when they get home and check their mail with DWA, their password is the same. Users love that.

    Settings and Policies are extremely granular and a very powerful tool in the Domino Administrator's toolbox.

    I highly recommend that all Domino Admins check into it, you'll find that you can automate, streamline, and simplify your Domino Admin world.

  1. 3  Jack Dausman http://www.leadershipbynumbers.com | 3/23/2006 8:16:54 PM

    I have no idea or explanation of why so many Domino sites go with plain whitebread configurations. I'm starting to get comfortable with "10%" as the range of admins who go with Sametime integration (free) or Policy/Settings or using the Java Console or . . .

  1. 4  Mike "5 Things Wrong with SharePoint" Drips http://forevervoyaging.blogspot.com | 3/23/2006 10:11:54 PM

    You found living breathing Lotus Notes customers alive and well in Kansas City? Ah, it must have been at 20th Century Mutual Funds, because Hallmark Cards and Sprint don't use Notes. Otherwise who else in KC is big enough to even consider Notes? I've got nothing (much) against Notes, but I have yet to be in an enterprise where it was used for anything but e-mail.

  1. 5  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/23/2006 10:18:31 PM

    Actually, it was a number of customers...30-ish people in the room total. And if you haven't found an enterprise where it was used for anything but e-mail, you haven't been in about 80% of Notes customers. See { Link } for hundreds of examples.

  1. 6  Major Sanders  | 3/23/2006 11:08:23 PM

    One frustration... we just finished pilot and are about to rollout 7.0.1 firmwide. One nice new feature is the message marking 'circles', and it is a nice visual cue to the user that something is new here. BUT, there is not one to activate it in the template or via poloicy. User's have to click through preferences and tabs and do it themselves... ouch... any hacks to do this?

  1. 7  Clay Goforth www.wr.com | 3/24/2006 12:03:08 AM

    We were in the KC meeting. KC area has lots of Lotus customers and business partners.

    We are going to use policies in ND 7.

    Thanks for coming to KC! Clay

  1. 8  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/24/2006 12:17:41 AM

    Actually one other point on #4 -- Over half of all Notes customers are companies with less than 5000 employees. The Express offerings specifically target companies with less than 1000 employees. Some of the reference stories on the link I posted above are companies as small as five or ten employees. It's not just for big companies.

  1. 9  Stefan Klein  | 3/24/2006 12:39:58 AM

    Major, I think I know how to fix it. Can you follow up in email? Your mail address bounces.

  1. 10  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 3/24/2006 9:59:24 AM

    I've been using policies since day 1 with 6.0. They have always worked pretty well. Registration, security, and setup settings are great to have for new user configurations. Especially if you have multiple domains. Just specifiy the domain in the internet address field for the Registration policy and you're set! Rolling out bookmarks for subsets of users is fairly simple with the desktop settings, and the new mail settings with Domino 7 are very welcome (especially the disclaimers). From an admin's point of view, policies have been a huge time saver!

    @Jack - we're using IM integration in Notes/DWA and I'm getting on the Java Console bandwagon too. =)

  1. 11  Mike "5 Things Wrong with SharePoint" Drips http://forevervoyaging.blogspot.com | 3/24/2006 3:37:25 PM

    I'm not anti-Notes, I've consulted at many companies and while I can appreciate all of the features of Notes, I find that enterprises are too cheap to train and educate their end users on the capabilities of Notes.

    One enterprise I was at stated that they used Notes because they felt Notes was less likeley to bring in an email virus. Uh, right.

    Oh yeah I forgot about Applebee's, Yellow and Cerner being HQed in KC as well. So glad I left KC a few years ago although I do miss Bryant's and Gates (Ollie, not Bill) BBQ.

  1. 12  Charles Robinson  | 3/31/2006 4:03:12 PM

    I haven't rolled out R7 yet but in R6 I have found them to be unreliable at best. In early versions they plain didn't work, and in later versions they sometimes do and sometimes don't. Search notes.net and you'll find plenty of people having problems with them. They work often enough to be useful, but I'm hoping they're seriously improved in R7.