True Domino Blooper #4: Extended directories or bust!

This Lotus administrator wanted to create a searchable directory so there would be equality for mobile and LAN users on his system. Thanks to some confusing documentation the only equality he achieved was denying e-mail service to both sets of users making them equally grumpy.

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Last year I was experimenting with Extended Directories, a great new type of directory that is used as either a mobile directory or as a cascaded directory. Actually, the reason I was drawn to "Extended Directory" in the first place was to replace the "Light Directories" I had created earlier. You see Lotus allows you to create the "light directory" sortable on Firstname Lastname or Lastname Firstname, but not both!

So a mild hack would need to include two directories that a mobile user would need to allow the same search capabilities (type-ahead) as our LAN users have come to love.

The extended directory was just what the doctor ordered except for its large size, about 80% of the full Domino directory. But who cares, it is one directory that works well, and besides, I see less problems with it, like multiple rep conflicts that were plaguing the "Light Directories."

I created the Extended Directory and used the following command to populate the directory. By the way, this is how the Lotus Admin Help Doc reads:

load Dircat dc.nsf where dc.nsf is the file name of the source directory catalog.

So, thinking that source means Names.nsf, my command was "Load Dircat Names.nsf", Which basically replaced the Names.nsf with the Extended Directory's template, thus removing all server and connection views.

Oops...

Once the router detected a NAB change and reloaded, there were no mail routes defined and mail backed up very quickly.

It was some time later that evening that I got a phone call from our computer operators and discovered the missing views. The design template was a quick and easy fix.

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 Every story in our bloopers series comes to us directly from a SearchDomino.com administrator, developer or consultant. For obvious reasons, some contributors -- including this tale's author -- choose to remain anonymous.

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