INSIDE

Lotus Notes R5
Much as I like Lotus Notes, there are features in other systems I have used that I miss.  I know that some of you have longed for some of these features too because you have asked about them.  Lotus has just released its newest version of Lotus Notes, R(elease) 5.  Fortunately, Lotus has listened to users and included several new features.

Signatures         R5 has an easy way to include your "signature" - name, title, phone number, FAX number, and other things at the end of each message.

Calendar/E-MAIL Integration           You can view your calendar and E-mail message at the same time and drag and drop information from one to the other.

Mail Rules            I was used to dumping messages from different listservs into different folders.  R5 has an easy to use rules-based feature that allows you to look for information in a mail header (such as sender or title) so that you can have Notes discard it, drop it in a specified folder, mark it as important, or copy it.  If, for example, you got a lot of E-mail from students, you might have your student always include the name of your class in the subject line, and you can configure Notes to put it in a specified class folder automatically.

Digital Signatures            R5 uses certificates to authenticate users and inter-operates with S/MIME when sending and receiving encrypted Internet mail.  Document Look and Feel R5's client now supports HTML, MIME, Java, and JavaScript so documents in the client look the same as documents on the web.  You will notice less and less distinction between Notes proper and Internet documents.

Directories            You may have used Bigfoot or Infospace on the web to try to locate people and their E-mail addresses.  Whether you are able to find them is another issue.  These directories use a protocol called LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol).  R5 now supports LDAP.  This means that we are now able to do boolean searches from within Notes and more sophisticated address searches.

One of the reasons we selected Notes was that the company had reportedly "got religion" in terms of the Internet.  Though Lotus had its own proprietary client-server system, it was working to incorporate Internet standards into the system.  Time will tell if Lotus has gotten it right, but at least the new version has added a lot of native Internet functionality to the system.  If all goes well, we should have R5 up and running this summer so that we can roll it out in the fall.  We understand that we can use our current clients with the new product, so users can still function during the transition.
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New Modems
If you use a modem to dial in to the FHSU modem pool, you should no longer get any "busy signals."  We have added a net 48 new modems to the pool, increasing it from 96 to 144.  There was obviously a lot of pent-up demand because at about 10:00 in the evening we have noticed times when up to 136 users are on the system at the same time.  Monday nights are peak times, and we conjecture that is because COBOL assignments are due on Tuesday.

Even though our new modems are capable of 56K connection rates, the actual rates will vary.  The speed you receive depends on the state of the phone lines inside your residence, the state of phone lines to your residence, your modem's rated capacity, the protocol used by your modem, and compatibility of your modem's firmware with Cisco V.90 protocol.  Some of you have a modem that requires you to download a software patch from the manufacturer to improve its V.90 compatibility.  In terms of speed, we notice that a few of you are connecting at 50+K speeds, many at 40+K speeds, and others at 33.6K.  We hope that the new modems have made your on-line life easier.  If they have not, call the HelpDesk for assistance.

In times of scarcity many people hoard resources.  Because more modems are now available, average connect times are down.  When there were fewer modems users stayed connected longer because they feared reconnecting would be difficult.  Now that we are "in times of plenty" users no longer fear signing off because they are confident that they can easily reconnect.  There may be other factors too, but we believe that the hoarding factor was present earlier.  See The New Modems Are In! article on page 3 in CTC HelpDesk News section.
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Workflow Progress
Mike Lacy and John Kaba (with input from Darlene Schippers of the Business Office) have nearly completed our first Lotus Notes workflow application, a  travel request application.  Because of this, you will soon be able to process travel requests electronically.  Besides eliminating some paper and some of the delays involved in using campus mail, you will be able to track the progress of your request.  As your travel request is routed to your Department Chair or supervisor, to the Dean or VP, and then to the Business Office, you will know (via E-mail) who has approved it. If all works well, the process should also work more quickly.

There were a number of issues to resolve.   For example, if a Department Chair is gone, may a secretary approve the request?   If so, the program must be capable of routing the request to the secretary or allowing the secretary to log on to the Chair's system.  The program also should have an audit trail of permissions, so approval questions can be resolved later (if there is any question).  Another important question raised by this procedure involves the issue of security and digital signatures.  In this case, we determined that the security built into Lotus Notes was sufficient for the approvals;  requiring encrypted digital signatures was not necessary.

As is often the case, the technology is easy (although Mike Lacy and John Kaba might contest this) but the sociology is hard.  Actually, the sociology may not be that hard, just time-consuming because it involves change and user training.  As we become more familiar with the technology, we trust that workflow designers will find ways to simplify the workflow and not just duplicate current processes.

In fact, Phil Toepfer and Kim Herman of Administration and Finance are finding ways to simplify processes while still satisfying the requirements of the state.  They have already resolved a number of workflow issues for us.

The state requires certain elements on specific forms - whether paper or electronic.  For example, there are certain DA numbers and other required elements that must be on certain forms.  Further, the state sometimes requires receipt of or archiving hard copies, but in other cases the electronic versions suffice.

We were pleased to learn from our meetings with Phil and Kim that the state allows free-form electronic (or paper) forms, after they have reviewed and approved them.  This speeds up programming because the paper forms have fine print that does not duplicate well on-screen.  Trying to capture fine print and format it properly was proving very time consuming.  Phil and Kim are also reviewing a number of procedures including approval chains to simply procedures when possible.

May all of your computer systems be user-friendly, responsive, and reliable.  This will be our last newsletter for the spring semester.
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Data Communications News

DialUp Modem Usage
by Dan Pfeifer, Coordinator of Data Communications
For a graphical presentation of DialUp modem usage, you might want to point your browser at http://www2.fhsu.edu/dialup. Each day's usage is presented on an hourly basis from midnight to midnight

The format is a vertical bar for each hour of the day with maximum, minimum, and average ordinates of modem usage. Historical data will be kept for reference. For context, there are one hundred and forty-two modems available.

Thanks go to one of our fine student employees, Andrew Fleming, for putting this graphical presentation together.
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Notes System Backups
by Mark Griffin, Unix Administrator
Starting Friday, March 19, 1999, the Notes Server will be taken down each Friday night at 10:00 PM for a full system backup.  Typically, these backups will take less than two hours to run.  So, Lotus Notes should be available again by midnight each Friday night.

Now, some of you may ask, aren't you doing backups more often than once a week?  The answer is yes, we are.  Every night Monday - Thursday, we do a backup of the Notes Server.  These backups take care of more than 99%  of our Notes files; however, our backup system cannot backup "open Notes databases."

Because our backups run automatically at 3:00am, there are very few open Notes databases.  For additional safety precautions though, we feel that it is worthwhile to take Notes down once a week to make sure that we get "every file" backed up properly.  Normally, Friday evenings will impact the fewest number of users, which is why we are designating that night for the complete system backup.

We have tried a backup product that supposedly would backup "open Notes databases", but to our dismay the product did not support our version of Notes.  This product, as it turned out, supported only up to version 4.5.1 of Notes while we are at 4.6.3.  It is my understanding that there will probably be more Notes backup solutions available after Notes Release 5 comes out.  So, until we find a better solution, we will be taking the system down each Friday evening.

The CTC apologizes for any inconvenience this causes.  If you have questions or concerns about this, feel free to contact me at mgriffin@tiger.fhsu.edu.
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Melissa Virus
by Mark Griffin, Unix Administrator
As many of you are aware, there is a new virus that has recently been released over the Internet.  It is the Melissa virus.

What is the Melissa Virus?  The Melissa Virus is in the form of an E-mail message with an attached Word document.  Analysis of this macro virus indicates that human action (in the form of a user opening an infected Word document) is required for this virus to propagate.  It is possible that this virus could shutdown our mail server, if propagated to enough of our users.  The message has most frequently been reported to contain the following Subject header:

Subject: Important Message From <name>

Where <name> is the full name of the user sending the message.

The attached document was initially reported to be list.doc, but this may change.  It should also be noted that using Microsoft Outlook for E-mail is known to propagate this virus.  Other E-mailers (such as Lotus Notes) have not yet been reported to propagate this virus.

What Are We Doing?  We have added a filter to our E-mail system in an attempt to block this virus from coming in.  However, this is based on capturing documents with specific header information.  If the header is different than what we are capturing though, it will not block the incoming virus infected documents.

We also recommend that you disable your Word macros. In Word97, you can disable automatic macro execution (click Tools/Options/General then turn on the 'Macro virus protection' check box).  This may have already been done during setup.

For those interested in additional macro virus protection/information refer to the following web sites:

http://www.nai.com/services/support/vr/free.asp
http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/j-037.shtml
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/bulletins/I-023.shtml

Please notify us if you suspect that you have received the Melissa virus;  we would greatly appreciate hearing from you.  Call Micro Computing Services at 4021.  Thank you for your continued support.
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Mail Forwarding Soon Ceasing
by Mark Griffin, Unix Administrator
Time is winding down for getting your E-mail address changed!  We are still planning to discontinue forwarding mail from the old OfficeVision (Profs) system to Lotus Notes (LN) at the end of the Spring 1999 semester.

If you have not told all your friends, family, and colleagues what your new E-mail address is, you better get busy.   Also, those that are on listservs, be sure that you have changed those subscriptions to your new E-mail address.  In some cases you may have to contact the listserv manager to have your subscription changed.  We have set a target date of May 28, 1999, for discontinuance of mail forwarding from the old OV (Profs) system.

Some of you may be asking, why don't we just continue to do the mail forwarding like we have the last six months?  There are a couple of reasons for making this change.

One reason is the additional administration that is involved with our current system.  For every LN E-mail account, we must also maintain an account on a separate unix system (alleycat) and also on the mainframe (fhsuvm).  Alleycat forwards all the mail that is sent to an "fhsu.edu" E-mail address.  The mainframe does forwarding for any E-mail that comes to "fhsuvm.fhsu.edu".   Once we can stop forwarding this E-mail, we only have to maintain one user ID per person for LN E-mail purposes.

The other reason should seem fairly obvious now.  E-mail will run  more efficiently if we can stop all the in-between hops.  This also frees up processor time for those other two systems (alleycat and fhsuvm).  So, please take care of your E-mail address changes.  We do not want to get hundreds of phone calls from users complaining that they are no longer receiving their E-mail because they have not made the necessary changes.

Your current Lotus Notes E-mail address will not change.  You will be able to use either the fhsu.edu or the tiger.fhsu.edu address.  My address, for example, is mgriffin@fhsu.edu or mgriffin@tiger.fhsu.edu; both IDs work.

If you have any general questions about this, feel free to contact me.  If you have complaints or a specific hardship being caused by this change, contact Dr. David Schmidt, Director of Computing and Telecommunication.

We would also like to remind anyone who uses “forms” on the web that require an E-mail response, to please check and make sure that the E-mail address is a current LN address.  Some of your forms may still have the old CMS E-mail address and this needs to be corrected now.

It might be helpful for those offices that have forms which require an E-mail response to get an office ID rather than use the ID of an individual.  Sometimes individuals go on vacation, are on sick leave, move to another department, resign, or retire.  This may cause problems with the electronic responses.

If you would like to have an office ID, keep in mind that there is a length limit of 8 characters for any LN ID.  For security purposes, the password on this ID must be changed whenever anyone with access to it leaves employment with your office.  If you would like an office ID, please submit a Request for Computing Services thru LN.

If you have any questions, contact Mark Griffin at mgriffin@tiger.fhsu.edu or Viv Zimmerman at vzimmerm@tiger.fhsu.edu.
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New Personnel System
In March, Jackie Leikam, Programer/Analyst, trained staff from the Personnel Office, Student Employment Office, and Internal Audit on the use of the new personnel system.  The new personnel system will be used by staff from these offices to update and maintain personnel file records.

The new system will not affect the manner in which time and leave reporting is entered by the timekeepers.
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Information Center

CTC HelpDesk News
by Nancy Geier, CTC HelpDesk Supervisor

The New Modems Are In!
As of 3/31/99, there are now 144 modems available in our Internet dial-up modem pool.  Many thanks for the long hours that Dan Pfeifer and his staff put forth in working with Southwestern Bell and Cisco to coordinate and implement these changes.  As of this writing, we have 96 56K modems operating in V.90 mode, and 48 33.6K modems.  When the final phase of the upgrade project is complete, the 33.6K modems will be replaced with 56K modems and upgraded to V.90.  Thus, in the near future, all 144 modems will be using the 56K V.90 protocol.

As with any hardware upgrade of this nature, we normally expect to experience a few problems of compatibility with older technology.  To date, the CTC HelpDesk has received calls from seven people who have experienced compatibility problems, but so far this amounts to less than 1% of our total accounts (there are currently 1,263 dial-up customers).

The modems seem to be handling the load well.  We have had reports that a few people are achieving connection speeds in the 44K to 48K range.  Please note that using a 56K modem does not guarantee a 56K connection.  Many factors (see related article on page 1, New Modems), including the quality of telephone lines, affect the final connection speed achieved.  We already have seen as many as 132 concurrent users connected during the busiest hours of operation.  Thus, here's another opportunity for our standard public service announcement:  Because the system is a shared resource, please remember to be courteous and disconnect when you are finished using your connection so that another user may dial in - Thanks!  We will continue to plan ahead for the installation of additional modems in the future.  Future upgrades will occur in increments of 96 modems.

While we expected a possibility of compatibility problems for those who have 56K X2 modems, this has not been the case.  Virtually all of the problems we know about are related to 56K Flex modems.  If you have a compatibility conflict, the solution is to check the web site of your modem manufacturer and see if an upgrade to 56K V.90 is available for your model.  Upgrades can be downloaded free from most manufacturers' sites.  One very useful web site to check is http://www.56k.com.  Click on the V.90 Upgrades link to find a nice list of links to modem manufacturer and upgrade sites.

If you experience problems dialing in, give us a call at the CTC HelpDesk at 5276 to let us know.  We have compiled a list of known problem modems and the web sites for their manufacturers.  This will also assist us when we receive questions about what types of modems to purchase.  The information on our list will be published on our web site in the near future.  You can visit our CTC HelpDesk home page at http://www.fhsu.edu/ctc/helpdesk/.

A nice feature that is now available as a result of the recent upgrade is the availability of new statistics about dial-up activity.  Our data communications staff are compiling some of this data and are making it available on a web site (see the DialUp Modem Usage article on page 2).  We are now able to view hourly data showing the minimum, maximum, and average number of connections that are active during each hour.  Watch for a link to this site, coming soon from our home page.

As always, we welcome feedback from our customers.  If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to call or stop by.  We are located in Tomanek Hall, Room 113.  You can also complete a survey online from our home page.
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Special Hours Announced
Please let your students know about our special HelpDesk and CTC lab hours.

End-of-semester Hours
Office hours will be extended until midnight on Sundays - Thursdays from May 2 - May 14, 1999:
Sunday 5/2   1pm -Midnight
Mon-Thurs 5/3- 5/6   8am - Midnight
Friday 5/7   8am - 6pm
Saturday 5/8   12noon - 6pm
Sunday 5/9    1pm-Midnight
Mon-Thurs 5/10 - 5/13    8am - Midnight
Friday 5/14     8am- 6pm

Semester Interim Hours
Effective May 15, 1999 through June 7, 1999 (Summer Enrollment is Monday, June 7):
Mon -Thurs    8am - 5pm
Fridays     8am - 12noon
Weekends    CLOSED
Memorial Day, 5/31/99   CLOSED

Summer Semester Hours
Effective June 8, 1999 through July 30, 1999:
Mon -Thurs    8am - 10:00pm
Fridays     8am - 12noon
Weekends    CLOSED
Independence Day    CLOSED
(Observed 7/5/99)
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More Lotus Notes Hints
by Viv Zimmerman, User Services

Another Application Ready
The FHSU Warehouse Request application on Lotus Notes is now ready.  If you would like to add this database icon to your LN workspace, follow the instructions at this web site: http://www.fhsu.edu/ctc/helpdesk/lnfaq.html or contact the CTC HelpDesk at 5276.

Creating Links in Notes
You can create a link hotspot within a note by selecting the area of your note to put the URL -- the hotspot must always be in a rich text field [within the red brackets].  Key in the complete URL, such as your own web page, that of the University, or any other web site, select the URL text, then choose Create, Hotspot, URL Link.

If a Properties for: URL Link Object dialog box appears, click on the x  in the upper right corner of the properties dialog box.  You will immediately return to your note and see that the URL will be automatically bolded and underlined.  When the person who receives the note points and clicks on the URL address, he will be taken to that web page.  To avoid confusion, please make sure that the URL is correct.

Note:  If you try to access the URL within your note, it will not work as a web page for you; it will only work for the recipients of your note.  The first time you try adding an URL to a note, you might want to send yourself a bcc (blind carbon copy) of the note just to see how it looks and works.

Another method, is Copy and Paste.  Highlight the URL in Netscape, and then choose Edit, Copy.  Then toggle back into LN, and click in the rich text field [red brackets] where you’d like to place the link and choose Edit, Paste.  The URL will show up in your note.  Either method works well.
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CTC Newsletters on the Web
For your convenience, we have started posting  the CTC Newsletters on the our web site at this address: http://www.fhsu.edu/ctc/newsletters/news.html.  We have already posted several newsletters and are working on posting more.  This is a handy reference for those of you who wish to refer to an article at a later date or print a copy in case you’ve lost your original.

At the top of each newsletter is a table with a table of contents listing the titles of all the articles included in that issue.

Click on any title to go directly to that article.  When finished reading any of the articles, the reader has the option to click on [Back to Top] to go back to the table of contents at the top of the newsletter or they may scroll up or down with the scroll bar and continue reading.
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Terminated Employees
Please notify Viv Zimmerman at vzimmerm@tiger.fhsu.edu when faculty, staff, or student employees terminate employment with your office so that we can remove all of their IDs and update our group mailing lists and security tables.

Keep this in mind as the end of the semester is almost here and some of your staff may be leaving.

If you need assistance or have questions, contact Viv at 4031 or Jane at 5819.
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Help Us Help You
It would be very helpful if the departmental secretaries would send a Lotus Notes Request for Computing Services when requesting user IDs for Lotus Notes, CICS, Bigcat, Scatcat, or any other systems for new faculty, staff, or student employees within their offices or departments.

Please include the following information: name of employee, SSN, department, title, indicate whether the new employee is faculty, staff, or student employee, office location and office phone number.  This would help us tremendously in processing your requests more efficiently.

If you need assistance, contact Viv Zimmerman at vzimmerm@tiger.fhsu.edu or  call 4031.
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Where Do I Get LN Help??
If you encounter a problem when using Lotus Notes and you still need assistance after you have checked your training manual, the Lotus Notes 4.5 for Dummies book, and/or the LN on-line Help, call the CTC HelpDesk at 5276.

One of the staff will help you and if they cannot take care of the problem, your call will be routed to the appropriate CTC staff member.
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Registration Training Completed
Luci Williams, Judy Channel, LuAnn Pfeifer and Viv Zimmerman held on-line registration training in March.  Several advisors completed the training.  We will not be able to offer this training again until August.

If you are interested in registering your advisees, contact Jane at 5819 or Viv at 4031.  We will send you the security form.
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Congratulations...

Congratulations to Alvin (Computer Operations Supervisor) and Tracey Hearne on the birth of their first grandchild, Chantz Travis Brungardt.

He was born April 6, 1999 at Hays Medical Center to Chris and Robyn Brungardt of Hays.  He tipped the scales at 8 pounds 4 ½ ounces and was 21 inches long.
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In the Spotlight...
In this issue of the CTC Newsletter, we’d like to feature Robert Rajewski, Installation and Service Technician in the Telecommunication Services section of the CTC.

Bob has worked at FHSU  for the past 15 years.  Prior to joining the CTC staff, Bob worked in the Grounds Department.

He earned a B.S. in Industrial Education in Spring, 1983 from Fort Hays State University.

Bob grew up on a small farm near Vincent, Kansas, a little community 7 miles southeast of Victoria.  He is one of eight children, all graduates of FHSU.  He is single and farms in his spare time.

Lotus Notes R5 is coming this summer !

© 1999
Computing and Telecommunication Center
Fort Hays State University