Category Archives: Lotus Notes

Recertify expired Notes ID

Lotus Notes September 26, 2016 Leave a comment

Recently few of the lotus notes users were getting the below message on logging to their notes account.

One or more certificate in your notes ID have expired.
Contact your domino administrator.

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By looking into this error we really think that this is something to do with the certificate.
This occurs because user ID’s expiration dates are mentioned for each account on the domino server and after expiration these messages appear.
Usually the values are mentioned as 10 years period or values accordingly set by domino developer during the deployment.
This helps the administrators not to recertify the ID’s frequently.

So basically what we need to do is to extend the expiration dates for these users on their notes ID when we come across this issue.
Inorder to extend the expiration time we need to recertify those ID’s.

The below steps can be performed to recertify the notes ID

Launch the Domino Administrator :

Navigate to People and Groups

domino

Navigate to tools – Select people – and select recertify

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The next step will be prompted for a certifier process.

Here we have 2 options:

1)Supply certifier ID and password
2)Use the CA process

Its better to use the CA process which will allow us to specify a certifier of our own without access to the certifier ID file or the password.

After choosing the above option we will get the below screen of the new certificate expiration date. There is an option to inspect each entry before submitting a request which is good to enable.

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After a successful processing we get the below message which says the request statistics.

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After this dialog box click ok and continue. After the replication interval the user can login and he will not get the certificate expiration message anymore.

Thanks & Regards 
Sathish Veerapandian
MVP- Office Servers & Services

Resolve Frequent Account lockout of Notes ID

Lotus Notes July 28, 2016 Comments: 2

One of the notes user when trying to log in was getting the below message even though recovered and reset new notes ID was given to him from the server.

“Server error: Your password was expired and your account are locked; contact the system administrator to unlock it”
That message sounds more like a Windows lockout ,but the message is actually coming from Lotus Notes.
I was unaware that Notes would give a message like that and i’m seeing this for the first time . I haven’t worked much on  domino other than creating notes ID, recovering ID, creating routing mailboxes , creating new DB’s, copying /moving the DB’s and monitoring the services.

Posting this solution so it may help others if they face this issue.

Solution:

Open Domino Administrator – Go to the users person doc in the names.nsf – Go into edit mode – and then the administrator tab.

Go to Password management section in edit mode
Make sure check password is set to “don’t check password”
Set “Required Change Interval” to 0
Change the “Grace Period” to 0.
Clear the contents of the Password Digest field in the person document in the Domino Directory.

notes

Once above is done replicate notes topology ,replicate names.nsf through Notes Network.
Once after making the above change user is able to login to the notes.
Always make sure the password digest field is removed for any new ID creation as well as for recovered ID files , which will help the user to login in the first attempt itself by the provided recovered notes ID file.

Thanks & Regards
Sathish Veerapandian
MVP – Office Servers and Services

SysTools Export Notes ( Lotus Notes NSF file to PST Converter )

Lotus Notes November 7, 2014 Leave a comment

Recently there are more number of organizations that are moving from lotus notes to Exchange on-premise 2010/2013 or office 365.

After a successful migration we might run into few requirements for export to PST of Notes mail data ( NSF) local archives to PST files in-order to open them with Outlook.

Basically “Archive databases” in Lotus Notes are like “Personal Folders” PST’s in Outlook (local files).
Because they aren’t located in the Domino Server but in the Lotus Notes client folder in each PC. So these files won’t be migrated to Exchange server mailboxes during the period of migration.

We might come across a scenario where we need to move or view files that are already stored in lotus notes archives and find a way to view them or convert them to pst files. There are few numbers of tools which will help us to get this job done.

I just came across this tool SysTools Export Notes for nsf to pst converter and would like to share the product experience.

I found this tool useful and NSF file to PST converter can be used in following scenarios : –

1) If we are doing migration project for a small business with less number of users , with a tight budget for IT tools then we can choose this option SysTools Export Notes.

2) If we are looking out for a solution to migrate the nsf archive databases alone to pst files then this tool might be a good option .

3) If the migration from the notes to exchange has been already completed and if we have few nsf archive databases in users PC which needs to be converted into PST files for accessing them through outlook.

Now let’s have a look into the functionality of this product

The product can be downloaded from the below link

http://www.systoolsgroup.com/export-notes.html

 

Prerequisites – 

This product can be downloaded and installed on the client PC which has the archive databases .

The supported operating systems are Windows 7 & Windows 8.

We need to have Notes Client and Outlook Client installed on the PC to convert this nsf to pst operation.

Lotus Notes Client should not be connected to the Lotus Domino Server.

Apart from the above i’m not able to find any prerequisites for this software.

 

The installation is pretty much straight forward and just navigate next , next and finish.

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Accept the license agreement

 

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Next screen prompts for installation folder, quick launch  and finally finish.

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It opens up a window as below. Now Enter the Lotus Notes Path

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After that it opens up the wizard as below. Now click on export as shown below

 

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Now choose the nsf archive file that needs to be converted as PST file.Also we have an option to choose Migrate notes contacts as well into PST file.

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Now it brings up the next screen as below.

There is an option to choose categories which has mails,contacts,calendars,tasks and journals.

We can see the Email Filters option by which we can choose only emails to be filtered and exported on a particular interval.

There is Advance Settings option as well which has few options as HTML formatting and removing encryption.

Also there is an option for calendar filters to export entries on a particular date

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Once you click on export it asks for the location of the PST file to be saved.Once entered the location it shows the below screen with Current Status and Final report .

 

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The export time from nsf to pst depends upon the items and the size of the nsf file and it may vay accordingly

Cost Factor : –

Systools nsf to pst converter have licensing structure  cost as one time payment 250 USD. There is also a free version of this product which has all the options similar to the full-version except for the factor it is limited to 16 items per folder.

Conclusion : –

Overall Systools nsf to pst converter product is much user friendly and latest version  has much effective cool new features which can be used for nsf to pst migration and suits well for migrating nsf to pst after migration from notes to Exchange on-premise or office 365.

Thanks 

Sathish Veerapandian

MVP – Exchange Server

Migrate from Lotus notes to Office 365 with Quest Co-Existence Manager

Lotus Notes, Office 365 September 12, 2014 Comments: 8

With Microsoft Office 365 becoming the most successful product most of the organizations prefer to move their messaging systems to Office 365 or they prefer to have a coexistence kind of hybrid setup with their on premise.

In this article we will have a look at readiness to prepare  the Lotus Notes environment  for successful migration from lotus notes to Microsoft Office 365.

First we need to prepare the readiness before we move all users to Office 365 cloud since 2 messaging systems are entirely different (Eg: notes uses mailin database ,routing mailboxes and exchange has mailboxes and connectors) and we need to achieve a way so that these 2 different systems can interact until the migration is complete.

We need to have a mediator which will be able to interact with both of these messaging systems. In order to accomplish this we have multiple third party solutions through which we can integrate.

There is Microsoft tool called Microsoft Notes Online Inspector. There is an article written for the same which you can refer below

http://www.v-and-m.com/vmhomepage.nsf/Content/Microsoft’s+%22Secret%22+Mail+Migration+Tool+?OpenDocument

You can do it from below Microsoft recommended  third party migration partners as well

1) Quest Coexistence Manager.

2) Full Armor

3) Binary Tree Co-Existence

4) CASAHL Technology

In this article we will look at the Components, functionality and readiness to migrate with Quest coexistence manager

Overview of Quest Coexistence Manager

Quest Coexistence manager is a product of Quest software used for migrating from lotus notes to Microsoft Messaging platforms and Office 365

What this software does?

This software integrates and creates a pipeline between notes and Microsoft Exchange platform.

By doing the above

  • We can have an effective coexistence between the lotus notes and Exchange platforms
  • We can transfer the messaging system smoothly from lotus notes to Microsoft Messaging Platform without any hassle.

Basically this software consists of 3 roles or we can call it as components as well.

  • Directory Co-Existence.
  • Mail Co-Existence.
  • Free/Busy Co-Existence.

These above components are same as we had these 3 components in Microsoft Exchange Transport Suite which was legacy  tool of Microsoft used to migrate from notes to Exchange 2007.

Below are the functionality of these 3 roles

Directory Coexistence Role:

Updates the directory data between the domino directory and Microsoft Active Directory or Microsoft Azure directory if it’s Office 365 .

This role is used to keep the data in users, Groups located in 2 different directories i.e, Domino directory and Microsoft Active Directory if it’s on premise or Microsoft Azure if its office 365 to be intact. Since in   a organization new people can come and people can resign so these information should be reflected in office 365 Azure directory. So this Directory coexistence role gives a bidirectional update vice versa and keeps the directory information intact.

Mail Co-Existence Role:

This role is used to communicate users between the 2 different messaging platforms.It is used for communication and routing emails between non migrated users mailin database residing in notes database to the mailboxes which are present in the Microsoft Exchange server or office 365 environments.

Free/Busy Co-Existence Role:

This role is used to share the free busy information between notes and Exchange on premise/ Office 365 environment.

QcalCON

There is a separate component called QcalCON component of free/busy co-existence which needs to be installed on any one of the notes server. By using  this component the notes server will route the calendar request that needs to goes to exchange server and vice versa.

Prerequisites:

We need to install these roles separately on hardware’s according to the number of users  and size of environment we have.

If the organization has less number of users we can install all these 3 roles together on a single server.

If the organization has more number of users and domino servers  then we need to install all these roles on separate servers for better synchronization.

These servers(Domino, Mail and Free/Busy) can be installed on minimum Windows server 2003 to Windows server 2008 R2Sp1

Hardware can be planned according to the size of the environment

Minimum Powershell version 2.0 is required on F/B connector

 

Source Servers should be the following:

Supported Domino Server versions

Versions – Minimum 6.5.1 to  to maximum 8.5.3

Supported Notes Server Versions

Versions – Minimum 6.5.1 to  to maximum 8.5.3

 

Target servers should be the following:

Exchange Servers version – Minimum Exchange 2007 RTM to Microsoft Office 365

SQL Servers Required

We need to have SQL server to store all these information as Co-Existence Manager uses SQL server to store the config information.

Licensing Quest Software:

Quest software sells licensing based on number of users present in the environment. They provide a single licensing by which we will be able to put this license on all these roles.

Coexistence between Notes and Office 365

Direct Coexistence between notes and office 365 practically is not possible. In these scenario we need to create a 2 step coexistence for both migration as well as hybrid scenarios

In order to achieve perform the following

  • Create a local AD server to sync the data between domino directory and Microsoft AD locally.
  • At least one local Exchange 2010 server with 3 roles installed which then synchronizes the data to office 365 through ADFS.
  • Create ADFS and Directory Synchronization between local AD server and Microsoft Azure Directory.
  • Configure Hybrid Deployment Wizard on the on premise Exchange server.
  • We need to choose the migration type as IMAP in the Hybrid Configuration Wizard as non Microsoft -Messaging platforms should be done only in IMAP Migration.

Note: Migration from notes to Office 365 will take time more than migration done from on prem exchange to office 365. The reason because since multiple components are involved and the MAPI throttling might take place.

Once we have met the above prerequisites we can  migrate all the users from notes to office 365 with quest software without any issues.

Thanks

Sathish Veerapandian