Openoffice.org as integrated format in Lotus Notes

Yesterday and the day before I have been writing about how we have implemented OpenOffice.org text documents in our product eOffice.

Today we did the same in Symfoni QMS Quality Manager.

http://www.symfonisoftware.com/symfoniweb/sym010.nsf/pages/produktspek.html?open&prodkey=reportingofaccidents/deviations

So far we have implemented the document format successfully in the editorial process but there is still a few problems when publishing to public. I expect that we will finish this by tomorrow.

Successfully mailmerge

Yesterday I got our mailmerge template ready. Today I found some additional issues, thus I needed to find out if my colleges could find out how to use it.

I found out that IBM made a serious mistake when they first implemented ODF file format in Lotus Notes. I hope to see 8.01 tomorrow.

The problem is, that if you ever try to open any ODF document with Lotus Notes (productivity tool or Lotus Symphony), the Eclipse framework takes over all (amd I meen all) the ODF file types. It's easy to change this back, by selecting the file, right-click, and select open with etc. So far it's all right. But it took me some time to figure out that Lotus Notes also takes the ODB (Database) file type as hostage. You must remember, that IBM has nothing to do with such file, because there is no ODB database thing in the application.

So, in case the user has ever opened a ODF file with Lotus Notes (approx: 100%), the mailmerge didn't work, because the mail merge wizard creates an ODB file to hold the connection from Lotus Notes to OpenOffice.org.

But Lotus Notes couldn't create such file, because the file type registration was corrupted - byt Lotus Notes.

Well, I learned that lesson today.

The result ?

I made a mailmerge letter based on a search query (32.000 adresses). Search time was about 20 minutes and the merge it self was about the double.

Busy monday

First day at the office after a week on vacation. And a busy day too.

My company has decided to introduce common layout on our letter stationaries. Huh ?

So my job was to consolidate all the individual letter templates, contract templates etc. to a common company layout. Fantastic decision. The rest of the world did this in the late 80's I think.

OK now, we are using Lotus Notes in several versions and OpenOffice.org. We have decided to use the Swing Integrator from Swing Software (http://swingsoftware.com) and I can only recommend this solution.

Well, I started out making the blank letter template and decided to do some house keeping also, so I cleared all the data fields that was transfered, but not in use. Fascinating how little effort it takes to speed up a computer system. I also decided to improve the layout by removing (hiding) the field labels in case the field doesn't receive any data.

After that i was asked to look into the mail merge template to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it. I found out, that the data exchange wasn't very accurate, because about half the mapped data fields actually missed the target. No wonder why it didn't work. Ok, now it actually works, but I still have an error message on the screen, but I don't have the right (skills) to debug the thing.

I actually made it work, and tomorrow I'll try to run a massive test and see if its possible to mail merge several hundred (or 1,000) letters.

Se how easy it is to set up the field mapping (from Notes field to OpenOffice.org field):