Using Working Sets in Domino Designer in Eclipse (DDE)

02/09/2009 04:13 PM by Chris Toohey

I came to a realization today that I'm doing it wrong!

I've been using Domino Designer in Eclipse for a while now - both in pre-release as a Design Partner and the Public Beta, and as my primary development environment for the past few weeks... and I've been using it how I've been using Domino Designer for years now. In fact, I had been using the Lotus Notes 8.5 client the same way that I have for the past few years. That is, I've been relying on the Workspace as my Home Page, right-click Open in Designer... as needed, and keeping my Lotus Notes and Domino applications grouped in Workspace via tabs with even further visual segregation of the chicklets through use of whitespace. And this worked for me! I was able to quickly get to any of the applications I was working on, that I needed to work in, and I had it down to a science! That is until my laptop's hard drive decided to die on me!

Now, don't worry - I was able to recover all of my data (thankfully), but I vowed from that point onward to force myself to use the latest features within the applications that I spend the majority of my life in... and to start that bold new venture, I went with a fresh installation of the Lotus Notes 8.5 client.

After the initial setup, I fought the urge to set the Workspace as my Home Page and went with "Basic". Doing so, I found a new trick for non-Notebook users who blog, and I found myself becoming more and more comfortable with this entry point into the Lotus Notes client. I did, however, have some frustrations with the DDE client - specifically the time it took to launch a given Notes Application. This is the real subject of this post - and only several paragraphs in! - and something that I would urge all of you to check out.

See, prior to about 30 minutes ago... I would open a Notes Application in Domino Designer as needed. When I was done with whatever I was doing in that given application, I'd remove the application from the Domino Designer bookmarks. Sound familiar?

Well, if you try to do this in DDE, pack a sandwhich! Each time you do this, DDE builds out the project... and you wait.

It got to the point that opted to run Domino Designer 8.0 on another laptop instead of dealing with this apparent lag.

I see now that I was being a stupid end user. I wasn't using the DDE client as designed! I wasn't using the features that would alleviate my problems, because I was stuck in the past usage experiences. I was using the Workspace all over again...

So what do I recommend? Well, try this out. Open in Designer a Notes Application in DDE. Now exit the DDE client. Now open the DDE client directly - from either the DDE launcher in the Open menu or from your system's DDE Shortcut. Faster huh? So the answer is to leave all Notes Applications in DDE. Every. Single. One. But that could very well make the DDE client unusable... or at least the Applications Navigator Pane.

The answer is to manage your Notes Application into Working Sets!

What's a Working Set? From Lotus Domino Designer 8.5 Help:

When working with applications, you may wish to group several applications together as a "working set." The Applications Navigator can use working sets to restrict the sets of applications that are displayed. If a working set is selected in the Applications Navigator, only resources, children of resources, and parents of resources contained in the working set are shown.

From here, you can create, edit, and even delete Working Sets.

You can easily select the Notes Applications you wish to include in a given Working Set.

Now, you can apply load your chosen Working Sets at will - allowing you to filter what Notes Applications are displayed in the Application Navigator Pane in DDE.

Pretty simple, yet allows you to not only alleviate the aforementioned lag when opening a Notes Application in Domino Designer in Eclipse for the first time, but this new evolution in the Domino Designer allows you to better categorize and structure you work. See, it's faster and smarter!

I feel like I'm growing as a person...