| IBM Lotus Support Engineers and Development hosted a Support Technical Exchange Open Mic conference call with customers on the topic of Calendaring & Scheduling Best Practices using the Resource Reservation database.
You can find questions and answers that were posted prior to the call in the Notes/Domino 8 forum: Open Mic call on "Calendar & Scheduling Best Practices using Lotus Domino Resource Reservations database" September 10th 2009.
Visit the Lotus support Open Mic tech exchange landing page for a list of calls and events.
Questions and Answers:
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10:09:54
Q: When are you going to add a rename Site button to rename all Resource Reservation entries?
A: Large scale Site renames are not currently on our list to do but we will take that as a request for a future release.
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10:10:40
Q: Regarding repeating meetings, is there any code to check for all to see for failures?
A: We have added some repeating meeting repair code to Domino 8.5 which will detect and repair some
kinds of damaged repeating entries. As we find more cases to address, we will update the code to cover those issues.
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10:16:03
Q: When upgrading from Domino 7 to 8.5, is it required to upgrade the Resource Reservations database at the same time?
A: It is strongly recommended that the template and Rooms and Resource Manager be of the same version.
That way, any fixes or updates (or new features) that may fall into both template and code will work properly.
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10:17:53
Q: Can we modify existing meetings? If so, will this work when we upgrade to 8.5?
A: You can modify R7 or later existing reservations. You cannot modify pre R7 reservations because they are stored in a different format on disk.
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10:22:04
Q: Renamed resources renames meetings but users cannot use them.
A: We are looking at improving the rename feature in an upcoming release.
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10:24:11
Q: Our users import Holidays from the Name and Address Book. Many documents are imported. However, for the Past 5 years users do not remember to import the Holidays again. Can we auto display Holidays on users calendars?
A: Calendar control belongs to the owning user and they can be very protective of their calendar and its contents. We do not have any plans to push content into a calendar without user interaction or knowledge.
There was at least one import Holiday issue that has been resolved in 8.5.1. So for those sites that use Holidays heavily, it may be another good reason to upgrade to 8.5.1. Holiday Sets can be extended by simply adding new entries to them. When users re-import the Holiday Set, they will get the new entries.
Sites should not edit Holiday Sets in an effort to reuse them. If they do, users will lose the older data when they import the "new" set. Instead, create a new Holiday Set and add the new entries.
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10:27:42
Q: How can we make sure we are on an 8.5 template before we roll out the 8.5 code reservation?
A: It is best to keep the template and code in sync in case there are fixes or features that are shared between the two. When a server is upgraded,
replace the design of the Resource Reservations database with the latest template on the server. Do not forget to re-enable the four system agents in the Resource Reservations database or else those features they rely on will stop working.
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10:29:29
Q: We have a Domino 7.0.3 resource reservations code. We are seeing bogus entries such as the same name, one resource, and one room.
A: When users enter a room name on the Resource item of the request they send from their calendar, it will show up in the Resource Reservations
database views as "(Resource)" and the inverse is also true of a resource. This has no impact on double booking, it only affects the view contents.
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10:35:29
Q: With renamed resources, we are seeing a problem where preferred rooms are not updated.
A: This issue was reported to Lotus Quality Engineering. We are looking at addressing this in an upcoming release.
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10:37:17
Q: Some of our sites are not receiving messages when using auto-reminders.
A: Make sure that the four system agents are enabled and running. In particular, the Autoreminder agent which normally is scheduled to run at 1AM.
If the agent is enabled, you can also check the console logs for the scheduled time to see if anything is being sent by the router. If you see nothing,
try running the agent manually and see if notices get sent or not. If you still have problems, contact Lotus Technical Support for further assistance.
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Q: 10:40:18
We have a user on a Notes 7 template who sends an invitation to a recipient using Notes 8. When the sender adds the meeting agenda,
the Notes 8 recipient sees that indentation is lost.
A: This issue has been reported to Lotus Quality Engineering.
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10:52:42
Q: We are looking for a room for a capacity of 35. Is it possible to split rooms?
A: This ability is not currently in the product. We have had this request before and will add another check mark to the request on our list.
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10:55:35
Q: Is there a way to assign a reservation to another user if an admin leaves the company?
A: The ability to change the owner of a reservation is partly there now. It can be done for directly booked reservations (and we have improved that
ability in 8.5.1), but it cannot be done at this time for reservations booked from a users calendar. We have had that request before and will add another
check mark to the request on our list.
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10:58:01
Q: When we create a new meeting invitation and use the Tab key in the description area, it tabs to the same field.
A: This looks like an issue with the Editor rather than a template or Resource Reservation specific issue. It also happens on meeting documents in a
user's calendar. We will take this back to the other relevant development team for further investigation.
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11:02:23
Q: A Blackberry user sends an invitation to multiple users. When opening the calendar invitation on a Blackberry device, and changing the time and saving,
we get a prompt to send an update to invitees. Users get email from the update user appearing as the Chairperson.
A: This appears to be an issue with the Blackberry device. We have had at least one similar report recently and are pursuing the issue with RIM's help.
Note: It has been suggested that if users use the Desktop Manager to sync their device to their Notes Calendar, it could possibly interfere with the entry. Customers who experience this are strongly encouraged to open a ticket with RIM Technical Support so that RIM can gather the data they need to resolve
the issue.
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11:06:05
Q: Are there any plans to better encapsulate resource reservation documents for use programmatically?
A: We are currently updating the C&S Schema document. As part of the update, we are adding a lot of information related to
Resource Reservations which somehow got overlooked in the initial release of the schema document.
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11:12:04
Q: Is there any API documentation regarding creating reservations from other systems? Specifically, Time zone handling?
A: All dates/times should be in UTC and not the local time zone. In addition, an R&R request should look identical to one that users get.
There is nothing extra special an Resource and Reservation request compared to one that users get. There have been some updates to the C&S Schema doc in this area too so look for that to be released sometime later this year.
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11:15:34
Q: Can you have multiple names when creating a resource with the owner's name?
A: A room or resource can have multiple owners.
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11:26:23
Q: Can we restrict how many instances when purging repeating meetings?
A: Repeating entries are only purged out once an instance is 2 days in the past. This is controlled by one of the four agents that were mentioned before.
If you want to preserve reservations longer, you can edit the agent.
Pre R7 repeating reservations are stored using the R5 compact format; one document can represent several instances.
As such, these older reservations will be present in the views until the last instance the document represents has past and the
Purge agent purges it out. R7 and later repeating entries use a one document per repeat instance format so entries will purge out as they age.
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11:27:50
Q: When saving resources, if a user in the owner's field has left the company, we have to remove the user name. Are there any plans to address this?
A: Currently, there is no easy way to make this change short of writing a custom agent to modify the documents in the Resource Reservations database.
We are looking at better ways in a future release to handle renames and control changes such as users leaving.
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11:28:26
Q: Are there any plans to present all users who need to be removed instead of one at a time?
A: We are looking at improving how the AdminP process handles user renames and deletions when dealing with calendar and Resource Reservation
entries in a future release.
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11:30:37
End of call
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Due to a technical issue, this call was not recorded. |
