ISG Blog

Did you know that according to The Salvation Army's Year Book, our territory has close on 3,000 people employed.  That does not count the hundreds of volunteers.  Trying to stay on top of what needs to be done when replacing a staff member, or training a new volunteer can be exhausting, and there are ways a manager can minimise all the 'added extras' that come up as you train a new person at your centre.

For example, most managers know what access a user requires on their servers, and all the applications of Lotus Notes.

From an ISG perspective, completing the EDP3 form (found under ISG forms on the intranet) gives us all the information we need to ensure users have the right access, but you as the manager can make the process easier during the induction by creating an "Induction email" template.  (Lotus Notes 8.5 Series - part 1: Mail (Stationery)).  In this induction email you could add the links to the various mail files they need access to, and the databases as well (Giving access to your Lotus Notes Mail and/or Calendar to others).

You might even want to provide them a link to this blog (https://intranet.sarmy.net.nz/index.php/departments-a-services/isg-help-desk/isg-blog/latest) so they can search the various tips and tricks available here, and suggest they subscribe.  

And when you have a new staff member or volunteer arrive, once their account has been created, you simply need to go to your saved stationery and send them a copy.  In one quick method, you can inform them of a bunch of links, which they can study at their leisure and the various links provided will add them to their workspace ready for future use.

Do you access any Policy Manuals or similar from your Lotus Notes workspace?

Did you realise that these can ALSO be accessed inside a standard web browser (Chrome, Internet Explorer etc), AND you can have a link inside your Webmail "links"?

The hardest part of this process is finding the full address to the Lotus Notes database/manual/resource.

There are several ways of finding the "full link" to the address of the LN database/manual - here follows the most reliable.

From your Lotus Notes workspace, click the Left-Hand panel Open > Applications > Search for an Application...

The Application Catalog Search page should open:

Type part of the application name you hope to find.

In the example below, I was looking for a Policy Manual which pertained to the Supportive Accommodation, but I didn't know its name.

Searching for "manual" would return far too many results, as would searching for "policy" - there are hundreds.

Instead I searched for "supportive", here are the results:

The one I was after is the "Addiction & Supportive Accommodation Services Policy Manual".

Notice, there are three different links for this manual, on different Servers: NZFBCM1, SANZF13 and SANZF14.

In general you should always choose the link on either SANZF14 or the one on NZFWeb1, the others are backups.

Hover your mouse pointer over the blue link on the correct line.

Right-mouse click on the link icon and choose from the popup menu: "Link Properties"

Again using my example, I get a page looking like this:

Using your mouse, highlight and copy the info from the "Link Description" field, in my case this would be:

            apps/nzft/manuals/a_sasapm.nsf

To arrive at the full "web" address, add the following onto the start of the above:

https://sanzf14.sarmy.net.nz/

The end result should look similar to this:

https://sanzf14.sarmy.net.nz/apps/nzft/manuals/a_sasapm.nsf

Test that full URL in your web browser, by pasting it (CTRL-V) into the browser address bar.

If it doesn't work, ensure the slashes and dots are in the correct places, like the example above.

Then, try another server, eg NZFWeb1;

https://nzfweb1.sarmy.net.nz/apps/nzft/manuals/a_sasapm.nsf

If you're already signed into webmail the link will directly open the manual/database immediately, if not you will need to provide your Lotus Notes username/password to access it.

Once you've proven the full URL works, you can save this to your browser favorites/bookmarks.

This full URL works from any computer on the internet, so you can email it to yourself or others to use.

You can also add the same link "inside" webmail under "Personal Links":

Log into webmail

On the webmail "workspace" middle section, click "configure these links":

Under Personal links, using the next available (empty) line, give it a friendly name in the "Name" box eg for the example given here I used ASAS Policy Manual

Copy & Paste the link address you figured out above into the corresponding "url" box, might look like:

Click Save Settings button

You now have a link in your webmail "workspace" for your desired manual/database, which will appear on any computer when you log into webmail.