Each Lotus Notes has this desktopX.ndk (X - is number of version of LN) file into Data folder. On of his function is to keep workspace tabs and icons for user. So if you want to have empty workspace, close Lotus Notes and move desktopX.ndk to temporary place and run LN again, yep, workspace will be empty.
It has one ugly behaviour from my point of view I discovered couple years ago and faced up yesterday again. This file keeps some information about database-icons (f.x. server, replica and filepath). Each user in our company when run Lotus Notes see Start-Up page, all required links are there. Links are managed, so each link is simply Title, and Server+Replica, that's all, and that's enough to open application.
Due to some reasons we changed location for couple applications (actually we moved 2 applications to another folder). We MOVED applications so Server and ReplicaID did not change.
After that all users were not able to open applications we moved (I mean they were not able to open from startup page). Good thing - I known what to do just of previous experience... It looks when user tries to open application using Server/Replica Lotus Notes looks into dekstop.ndk first and if it find will use Server/Filepath to open application, but as I told Filepath has been changed for some applications, so the dialog about wrong filepath name will appear.
So what we did - removed desktopX.ndk for each user (good new we have ~15 users only, so it was not a huge task).
2 comments :
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Your situation is actually quite common. Notes is the most finicky app you're likely to see. Ever.
You can try backing up the user's Desktop database file, use a generic Desktop Template file, then touch up any personal details.
First try using the server's IP address in place of the server name. Then ping the server from a command prompt window (Start, Run, cmd, OK). Try ping -a IP.Address to retrieve a domain/server name/, which can be different from what you expect.
Next, there's a tool under File / Tools-Preferences that tries to ping the server from inside Notes using Notes' own tools. If that fails . . .
Sometimes Notes likes Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN), so use \\uscorp01\michigan\detroit\server01 instead of just \server01
Some places Notes likes UNIX-style forward slashes instead of Microsoft-style backslashes. Sometimes a leading backslash, sometimes not. No rules here.
Sometimes a Notes Admin will have to update the Global Address Book entry for that server and wait for it to replicate across all Notes servers, even if the data is identical.
Sometimes you can move the user's Notes.ini file and start all over, setting up as a new user and trying various options for server name, IP, FQDN, etc. If that works, you can try copying a known-good version of a user's Notes.ini and comparing it to bad versions, ignoring the user's personal details (assuming you only have one Notes server).
If that still doesn't do it, post to some Notes forums. Experienced tech's for Notes are hard to find, and they've all been shown a few tricks that aren't documented anywhere.
Best question of all: with only 15 users, are you sure you need Notes at all? The only advantage I've noticed with Notes is that a database owner or Notes admin can easily add new users to a secured database (instead of needing a LAN admin to add user access to a folder). There are some programming tricks that simplify complex tasks, but only for a trained programmer and unusual needs (admins have about 15 crucial steps just to add a new user -- before he even arrives). The Help screens are for programmers, not users (that may explain a lot). Notes requires its own admins that have rare, detailed skills and has nothing to do with LAN administration. Notes admins loathe documenting their procedures because that secret knowledge is what makes them $$valuable$$ to your competitors when they hire them away from you. High-school kids learn Windows, but not Notes, because they have no way to install and learn it. All training is usually on-the-job from a well-trained leader, so if you've only got one guy, he has no one to learn from. Good database geeks are hard enough to find, and Notes is chock-full of specialized gibberish. Licensing costs are extremely high.
Outside of that, Notes is a dinosaur and a nightmare to administer properly. It's not even an email platform (so it doesn't handle outside emails properly), but simply "shares part of my mail database with your mail database." Unless you have some extraordinary need, consider porting your data to a file server. Notes admins and techs are very pricey, and good ones are very hard to find. Large corporations are the typical Notes installations, enabling users across many different offices to easily share multiple databases that are all open at once. How many offices do you have? How many people change database info at the same time?
In case you're wondering why it's so complex, know that it was originally written over 20 years ago to meet security specifications from the U.S. Government, and then was ported over from IBM's (now defunct) OS/2 operating system about 10 years ago. 'Nuff said.
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