A workgroup can use this database to share their thoughts and ideas. Almost any group that has information to share among its members can use a discussion database. An engineering group can discuss the products they are designing. An advertising agency can discuss the ad campaigns they are developing. A special interest group can share ideas and opinions on their common interests.
To get started, a user can simply browse through discussion topics and responses that others have contributed. This is particularly useful for new workgroup members who need to come up to speed on important issues that the group is working on. The history of discussion about these issues is preserved in the group's discussion database.E
A user can also take a more active role in the discussion by composing his/her own responses to others' comments and by proposing new main topics for discussion.O
You can think of a discussion database as an informal meeting place, where the members of a workgroup can share ideas and comments. Like a physical meeting, each member of the workgroup listens to what others have to say and can voice his/her own opinions. However, unlike a physical meeting, the participants do not have to be in the same room at the same time to share information. People can participate when it is convenient for them to do so. And because it is easy for them to share information, they will do so.
Who will use this database?
All the members of a workgroup should use the group's discussion database. Some users will just follow the main topics and responses that other members have contributed. More active users will compose their own main topics and responses.d
When to use this database?
Use the database when you have time: a free moment between meetings, after hours, while traveling.
Where to find more information?
More information can be found in the R4 help database, HELP.NSF.
Access Control:T
The default access of a database created with this template is "Author".
Times New Roman
Using Discussion
To follow a discussion:u
Select the o
All Documents view
to see a chronological listing of main topics for discussion and their responses. Select the
By AuthorT
view to see what individual members of the discussion group have said. Select the
By Categoryt
view to browse the group's discussions by a
categorization of main topics.
To begin a discussion:
From the $
All Documents view
By AuthorT
view or i
By Categorye
view, create a Main Topic $
document to start a new topic for discussion. Be sure to enter a category for the topic (Training, Documentation, Technical Tips, etc.).i
To respond to a main topic or a response document:
Menu
If you want to respond to a main topic, first highlight the main topic document and then select Create, Response. Fill out the response form.
When you are done, press
and answer Yes to save your new document.d
If you want to respond to the message in a response document, highlight the appropriate response document and then select Create, Response to Response. Fill out the response form and then save your changes.P
Actionso
Open the document you wish to respond to and click the Respond action button at the top of the document.
To flag a document as Private:
You can use the "Mark Private" and
"Mark Public" actions in the template to control whether anyone other than yourself can read a specific document. For example, if you have not completed the writing of a particular document, you can click the "Mark Private" action and others will not be able to see the document. When you complete the document, you can click they
"Mark Public"t
action to make it available for others to read.m
To mark a document as expiredT
Use the Action menu item Mark Document Expired to mark a document as obsolete. After a certain number of days (set in the Archive Profile) the obsolete document will be copied to an archive database and deleted from the discussion database.
To set up an Interest Profile:
Use the Action menu item Interest Profile to bring up your personal interest profile document. You can elect to be notified via a newsletter if certain conditions are met. These conditions can include the appearance of your name or phrases that you designate.
To add the current discussion thread to your Interest Profile:
Use the Action menu item Add Current Thread to My Interest Profile add the current discussion thread to the list of items you wish to track via newsletter.
Anonymous responses:
If you wish to respond anonymously to a discussion, highlight the main topic or a response and select Create, Other. Then select either Anonymous Response or Anonymous Response to Response.
Agents & Archiving:
Newsletters
- A user can elect to be notified via e-mail when a new response has been added to certain topic(s) of discussion. These topics are specified in the user's Interest Profile. There are three agents pertaining to newsletters.
Edit Interest Profile:
The Interest Profile contains individual topics, phrases, keywords or categories of interest to the individual. It can be tailored to contain as wide or as narrow a selection of topics as the individual is seeking information on. This document is used by the -
Send Newsletter
and
Add Current Topic to My Interest Profile
agents, described below.t
Add Current Topic to My Interest Profile:s
Allows the user to add new topics of interest to their individual interest profiles. After a new topic has been added, a Notes agent will process this request and notify the user via e-mail whenever new responses to this topic are added to the database. If the error "No thread ID found..." appears, the database manager must run the agent called /
Initialize ThreadIDs
(see description below).t
Send Newsletter:
Reviews the "Interest Profile" of each user who has a profile on a server-based Discussion database. It matches criteria on the profile with any criteria it finds in the topics of the current database. Each match generates a document link, which will become part of the newsletter; that newsletter is then mailed to the subscriber. The agent can be run periodically. Typically this would be on a daily basis.
Archiving Documentsh
- This is a process by which certain documents are removed from the current database and stored in a different database. This keeps the discussion up-to-date with only the latest topics. Most of the Archiving activities take place from the "Archiving" view. You must switch to this view in order to initiate archiving on a discussion database.i
To set up archiving on any discussion database, switch to the Archiving view and click the action called "Setup Archive". The Archive Profile appears. This document contains criteria that the user specifies for archiving topics in a discussion (e.g., inactive after 'x' days, or expired after 'x' days). The archive database is automatically created when the Profile is saved. The archival database filename is also specified in the Archive Profile; the title of the archive will be the title of the Discussion database followed by "(Archived)". After the archive criteria have been specified in the Archive Profile, other agents run on the database to move the document(s). #
Mark/Unmark Document as Expired:
Marks a topic as "expired". If the Archive Profile specifies that #
expired
topics should be archived, the document(s) marked with this agent would fall into that criterion. If a document is already marked as expired, this agent tells the user what the expire date was, and will ask if the user wants to un-expire it.
Periodic Archive:
Reviews the Archive Profile and moves documents which meet the archive criteria into the archive database. This agent is run automatically on the server; the schedule is set by the database manager/designer.
Redesigning R3 Discussion databases
- The R4 discussion template is fully backward-compatible with R3 discussion databases; therefore, these databases can be redesigned to use the R4 template/features. The R4 template has new agents (described above), one of which uses something called a ThreadID (also a new feature in the R4 template) to generate newsletters. The agent
Initialize ThreadIDs
must be run on a redesigned database if users wish to use the new "Newsletter" agents.
Initialize ThreadIDs:i
Using @Unique, sets a common "id" to a discussion thread (main topic and all its responses). This agent runs on all documents in a database; it is recommended that it be run on any R3 Discussion database that is redesigned using the R4 Discussion template. The agent only needs to be run once.
By default this agent is hidden. The database designer/manager should un-hide the agent by editing it and selecting "Manually from Menu" as when the agent should run. The agent should then be hidden again to avoid accidental re-running.
NewDocTitle
New Response to "
OriginalSubject
OriginalSubject
Subject
1S2S3S4S11S13S15S16S
StandardTitle
Response to "
OriginalSubject
0R1S2S3S4S5S6S
NewDocTitle
StandardTitle
0R4S6S
"Small Fonts
Times New Roman
Response
FromAuthor of this document
Shared Response Header
Begin Hidden Fields
-----------------------------
Readers
OriginalSubject
OriginalSubject
Subject
7S9S
OriginalSubject
Subject
ImmediateParentSubject
Hidden fields to store the subject of this document's ancestors.
ParentForm
Hidden field to store type of form that is the parent document. Used in Preview Parent action.
ThreadId
ThreadId
Used to maintain thread integrity. Inherited from parent.
Subject
(Response to: ""
OriginalSubject
1S2S3S4S5S6S
NewsLetterSubject
Used as caption in newsletter that is sent based on user's interest profile
End Hidden Fields
-----------------------------
readers
1S2S
readers
1S2S
Subject
0S0E
SubjectEnter a short description of this response.
If you want to convert existing documents such that they are identified as threads, run this once against all documents.EHCN=Catherine Duffy/OU=NAHQ/O=Lotus4
Set item = New NotesItem(profile, "Readers", ReaderNames, READERS)
item.IsSummary = True
Else
Set item = profile.GetFirstItem("ProfileThreads")
If item.Contains(ThreadId(0)) Then
Messagebox "This topic is already in your Interest Profile.", 64, "Add Thread"
Exit Sub
Else
item.AppendToTextList(ThreadId(0))
Set item = profile.GetFirstItem("ProfileThreadSubjects")
item.AppendToTextList(ThreadSubject)
End If
End If
profile.Save True, True
Messagebox "The current topic has been added to your Interest Profile. You will be notified by mail when new responses appear in this topic.", 0 + 64, "Add Thread"
End Sub
LocalDomainServers
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Lotus Notes
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PURSAF
TS3+v
$TITLE
$AssistType
$AssistLastRun
$AssistDocCount
$AssistFlags
$MachineName
$AssistInfo
$AssistQuery
$AssistAction
$AssistAction_Ex
$UpdatedBy
$Flags
'++LotusScript Development Environment:2:5:(Options):0:66
Option Public
'++LotusScript Development Environment:2:5:(Forward):0:1
Declare Sub Initialize
'++LotusScript Development Environment:2:5:(Declarations):0:10
Dim s As NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim view As NotesView
Dim note As NotesDocument
Dim parent As NotesDocument
'++LotusScript Development Environment:2:2:Initialize:1:10
Sub Initialize
Set s = New NotesSession
Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
Set view = db.GetView("($All)")
Set note = view.GetFirstDocument
Do Until note Is Nothing
FormName = note.Form
Subject = note.Subject
Select Case FormName(0)
Case "MainTopic", "Main Topic"
note.NewsLetterSubject = Subject(0)
Case "Response", "AnonymousResponse", "Response (Anonymous)"
SubjectEnter a short description of this main topic.
0S0E
tmpFrom
DateComposedDate this document was composed
timeComposed
Categories
1S2S3S4S
Category:
CategoriesPress ENTER for list of keywords or to add a new keyword.
In the case of reading an existing document, it is not necessary to do the @DbColumn because we don't support the use of Keyword Synonyms in this application, and thus translation doesn't need to be done.
By Category
0R4S5S7S9S13S15S17S
ExpireDate
1S2S
The document and its responses will be deleted
on a schedule determined by the Archive Profile
This document was marked expired on
ExpireDate
ExpireDateDisplay
BodyEnter your comments, questions, ideas for discussion.
Closee
0S0E
Save
0S0E
Categori_ze
_Edit Document
0S0E
Send Docu_ment
_Forward
Forward As Bookmark
Bookmark
4S6S
Response,
Response
0S0E
Mark Private:
readers
readers
0S0E
Mark Public
readers
readers
0S0E
_Move to Folder...
_Remove from Folder
'++LotusScript Development Environment:2:5:(Options):0:74
Option Public
'++LotusScript Development Environment:2:5:(Forward):0:1
Declare Sub Initialize
Declare Sub DoFTSearch
Declare Sub DoFormulaSearch
Declare Sub BuildTextList(n As Variant)
Declare Sub BuildTotalQuery
Declare Sub Terminate
'++LotusScript Development Environment:2:5:(Declarations):0:10
Dim s As NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim view As NotesView
Dim note As NotesDocument
Dim profile As NotesDocument
Dim newnote As NotesDocument
Dim newsletter As NotesNewsLetter
Dim collection As NotesDocumentCollection
Dim pPersonName As Variant
Dim pCategories As Variant
Dim pAuthors As Variant
Dim pStrings As Variant
Dim pMyName As Variant
Dim pThreads As Variant
Dim searchtype As String
Dim query As String
Dim textlist As String
Dim totalquery As String
'++LotusScript Development Environment:2:2:Initialize:1:10
Sub Initialize
Set s = New NotesSession
Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
Set view = db.GetView("($Profiles)")
Set profile = view.GetFirstDocument
If profile Is Nothing Then Exit Sub
FormName = profile.Form
If FormName(0) <> "Interest Profile" Then Set profile = view.GetNextDocument(profile)
Do Until profile Is Nothing
FormName = profile.Form
pPersonName = profile.PersonName
pCategories = profile.ProfileCategories
pAuthors = profile.ProfileAuthors
pStrings = profile.ProfileStrings
pMyName = profile.ProfileMyName
pThreads = profile.ProfileThreads
If db.IsFTIndexed = True Then
DoFTSearch
Else
DoFormulaSearch
End If
If collection.Count > 0 Then
Set newsletter = New NotesNewsletter(collection)
newsletter.DoSubject = True
newsletter.SubjectItemName = "NewsLetterSubject"
Set newnote = newsletter.FormatMsgWithDoclinks(db)
newnote.Form = "Memo"
newnote.SendTo = pPersonName(0)
newnote.Subject = "Documents you requested from " & db.Title
newnote.Send True
End If
Set profile = view.GetNextDocument(profile)
Loop
End Sub
'++LotusScript Development Environment:2:2:DoFTSearch:1:8
(.txt)