I’ve recently been tasked with adding bookmarks to the workspace and/or a folder on the far left of the Lotus Notes window with links to people’s old archive files. I’ve come to the conclusion that Lotus must not have intended us as developers to mess with this. But the flow should go something like this:

1. In LotusScript I need to get all the user’s current archive filenames from their home directory
2. Add bookmarks for the archive files that are being moved to an archive server to the user’s bookmark bar on the far left of the Lotus Notes window

Now, the problems I’m running into are this:

1. Formula language provides a means for adding bookmarks to the bookmark bar with an @command but doesn’t provide a means to get all the filenames from the user’s home directory
2. LotusScript provides a means for getting the filenames but doesn’t provide a way to place bookmarks in the bookmark bar in a particular location

So, I’ve come to the following {hopeful} solution. Create a database to record the filenames/replica IDs in for each user. Do a @DbLookup to that database to get those replica IDs and loop through the replica IDs and add the bookmarks. This will require the user to click 2 buttons in order to accomplish the desired result. Hopefully that won’t be that big of an issue but it still isn’t very elegant but if it works and is within the required time frame then so be it.

As I do more and more development work I find that the code I’m writing is getting simpler and simpler, which I think is a good thing and makes more time to provide an elegant solution instead of a clunky one, which makes everyone happy and keeps a good light on Lotus Notes as a whole.

Keith