In Notes 5.x, Calendar & Scheduling issues have presented us with several opportunities to develop workarounds to fix customer issues. One such issue is that the freetime search--checking available time for a person or a resource--doesn't always return the proper data. After troubleshooting these issues for a while, we decided to delete the busytime.nsf database daily, in the middle of the night, and have it recreate itself by stopping and restarting the SCHED server task. This solution has reduced the number of C&S issues we have reported from our clients, and might also work in your environment, but be sure and test it prior to implementation.
Code
No LotusScript was used in this implementation, just simple program documents and a batch file on the Windows NT or 2000 server. For different platforms (such as UNIX or AS/400), you would need to write a simple batch file to accomplish the same tasks as the Windows .bat file.
1) Create a text file with the following content:
del <drive path of Notes Data busytime.nsf>, e.g.
del c:notesdatabusytime.nsf
Save and name the file delbt.bat
2) Copy the file to your Notes Server CODE directory (such as C:NOTES or D:NOTES).
3) Add program documents to accomplish the following tasks (below). In our environment, the tasks run M-F, the first starting at 4:30AM and the rest all 1-2 minutes later (per task).
a. Shutdown calconn (4:30AM): turns off Calendar Connector to prevent access of busytime.nsf from another server:
nserver -c "tell calconn quit"
b. Shutdown sched (4:30AM): turns off the scheduler tasks to free the busytime.nsf database
nserver -c "tell sched quit"
c. Dbcache flush (4:32AM): clears db cache of pending queue to make all databases available, allows database to be deleted
nserver -c "dbcache flush"
d. Create a program document to run the batch file to delete busytime db (4:34AM)
nserver -c "load delbt.bat"
e. Restart calconn: Restarts the Calendar Connector task (4:35AM)
nserver -c "load calconn"
f. Restart sched (4:37AM): Restarts the Scheduler Task--when busytime.nsf isn't found on the server, it automatically creates a new database.
nserver -c "load sched"
That's it! Be sure and test in your environment--if the tasks don't restart properly you may need to adjust the times of the program documents. Enjoy!
