Notes.ini - do we need it

Notes.ini – do we really need to use it?

If you set NotesDB=MAIL in the *.son file, under the Database section, Notes link will look into c:\windows or c:\winnt for the Notes.ini file. From the Notes.ini it locates the users mail database name, and use this to open the users private mailbox in Notes.

For Notes Link 3.2, the Notes mailbox that's included has both an incoming and outgoing folder. The Notes.ini file then no longer has any functionality that the user really needs. It's used only to open your private mailbox from the button Email in SuperOffice Navigator. The documentation also describes different ways to use this functionality, by e.g. using a template variable to store the users private mailbox name. But, since the Notes.ini is default, this is what most people try to implement.

Details

The Notes.ini file was/is used to find the users Private mailbox in Notes. This was used 3-4 years ago (for the customers who then meant it was enough that you could see that an email was sent, and did not need to know the content of this email). The last two years the common mailbox has been used more and more. Our consultants made a workaround by adding a new outgoing mailbox (if they used the incoming mailbox, there would be incoming and outgoing emails in a big mess).

With the last version of Notes Link 3.2 we have included a mail database who neatly keeps the order of incoming and outgoing emails in the same database, and with this the Notes.ini is actually no longer needed, excepts for one little functionality:

The mail button in the Navigator is changed so it starts the Sololink.exe (Notes link exe file) without parameters. It will read the Notes.ini and look for the tag that defines the users mail database. We take this database, show it and start Notes. It’s the same that happens if you change to the Notes application and click on the email icon there.

In the template named NotesMbx.son (Mail template), you find the tag NotesDB=Mail who is default for version 3.1, but it's changes to NotesDB=SOCONFIG\SoMailArchive.nsf in version 3.2.