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Lotus Notes Client URLs

01/09/2003 12:47 PM by Chris Toohey

Ever wanted to link to a Domino database from your intranet? Easy enough if your intranet is in Domino; but what if it's in ColdFusion or just plain old HTML?!? How do you link to a Domino database and how do you get that link to run in the Lotus Notes client?!? The following tip shows you how!

This should launch your personal address book (names.nsf). The URL for this was simply "Notes:///names.nsf".

The schemes for Lotus Notes client URLs is as follows:
Server Databases

Local Databases

Taking this a step farther, you can also, by using Domino web-URL arguments, do the following:
New Contact

By appending /person?openform to the scheme, I was able to have a user launch their Person or new contact form.

The application of this is endless. You can now use dynamic URLs even for your Notes Applications as I have with framesets pointing to specific user's view in a custom welcome page (hey, it's something that I had to do!). For example, I created a new view in the R5 Mail Template called "Unread Messages" so a user could view all of their Unread Messages directly from the welcome page/splash screen. To make the button dynamic for all users, I used the following:

server := @Subset(@MailDbName;1);

database := @Subset(@MailDbName;-1);



mail := "Unread Messages";

setMail := @Do(@SetTargetFrame("NotesView");

@URLOpen("Notes://" + @Name([CN];server) + "/" + database + 
"/unread?OpenView"));



setMail;

@Command([RefreshHideFormulas])

I placed this formula on a URL hotspot (in the Click Event of the hotspot mind you) - this allowed for all users to click and launch this Notes client-specific URL in a frame in a frameset IN THE NOTES CLIENT!!!

Made me look good anyways!

About the author: Chris Toohey

Thought Leadership, Web & Mobile Application Development, Solutions Integration, Technical Writing & Mentoring

A published developer and webmaster of dominoGuru.com, Chris Toohey specializes in platform application development, solutions integration, and evangelism of platform capabilities and best practices.