Team Mailbox v3.25
Last updated on 2007-12-10

Downloads are available at OpenNTF.org. Please visit the DominoTeamMailbox project page at
http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/DominoTeamMailbox

English, German, Italian, and Dutch translations are available.

What's a Team Mailbox?
Use this mail template to create mailboxes like sales@yourcompany.com, training@yourcompany.com, feedback@yourcompany.com, etc. It's a simple mailbox template. There's no calendar or to-do.

What do you need in a Team Mailbox?

Mail Rules. Chances are you'll be getting a lot of spam at "standard" email addresses like sales@yourcompany.com. Route those messages to a common "team mailbox". Team members can use this common mailbox to receive and reply to those messages. Use mail rules to sort the incoming messages. A doclink will be sent to the team members when there is new mail. Replies will be saved in the mailbox for other users to see.
Memo Clips. Do you have bits of information that you reuse over and over again, and you're frustrated by re-typing it each time? For example entering product information, maps to your office, pre-written response text to emails, etc? Memo Clips are a repository for the content you wish to reuse. When writing a new memo, move your cursor to the desired position, then select Actions > Insert Memo Clip. You will see a dialog box. Choose the document you would like to insert in to your new memo.
Auto Reply. Team Mailboxes are shared among a small group of users. For example, your training department may have a mailbox for training@yourcompany.com. There's always someone in the office who will monitor the new email. However, if they don't reply right away, you'd like to send an automated reply back to the customer. The reply message might say "We received your email. Sorry for the delay. You will receive a personal response soon." It's meant to run continuously and send an automated-reply only if the "team mailbox" users do not reply in a reasonable amount of time.
Instant Messaging. Lotus Notes has integrated instant messaging. If you are logged-in to instant messaging (Sametime), you will see "live names" in all views and folders, and on email messages.
Reply Address. Messages sent from a Team Mailbox will appear to be From that address. The user's personal email address is not shown in the email message. Bounced messages will return to the Team Mailbox.
Other features include: Soft deletions, Follow-up Flags, Internet-style reply, Reply indicator icons, and Colored Inbox.

Lotus Notes and Domino versions

This template was tested with Lotus Notes 7.0.1 clients, on Domino 7.0.1 servers.
Does it work with version 6.0.3 or later? Probably. It was never tested. Lotus Notes 6.x users may wish to use the previous version here.

How to create a new Team Mailbox - Domino Administrators

Download and Sign the template

Download the Lotus Notes Template (NTF) file. It's at the top of this page.
Sign the database template with a trusted ID. This is done from the Domino Administrator client. Adjust the access control list, and give yourself Manager access if needed.
Copy the database template to your Domino mail server. (File > Database > New Copy).

1) Create a new Team Mailbox

Create a new database on your Domino Mail server. (File > Database > New). Select the template named "ALCTeamMailbox NTF".
The title of the database could be the email address, like sales@yourcompany.com, or anything to describe the mailbox.

NOTE: Creating these databases in the Domino server's regular "mail" folder is not recommended. Most administrators prefer that all databases in the "mail" folder use the same template. This allows an administrator to use the "load convert" utility and upgrade all user mailboxes in the "mail" folder to a common template. For this reason, consider creating "team mailboxes" in a different folder, like "teammail".

2) Open the Domino Directory on the mail server. (names.nsf)

3) In the Domino Directory, open the view Configuration > Messaging > Mail-In Databases.

4) Create a new Mail-In Database record in the Domino Directory. Complete the form as follows:

For the "Mail-in name", enter a unique name. This can be anything. My suggestion is to use the prefix "Mailbox-" and then a unique name. Or perhaps, "zzMailbox-". This will prevent Lotus Notes users from accidentally seeing this name when they address a Memo, or use Type-ahead. For example, "zzMailbox-Postmaster". The name can be anything, as long as it is unique in the directory. You could also use a name like "Sales Team". Users could send mail to the Team Mailbox by addressing their message to "Sales Team". However, make sure you don't already have a Group named "Sales Team".
Enter a description of the mailbox if needed.
For the "Internet Address", enter the unique Internet email address for this mailbox. For example, "sales@acme.com".
Set the "Internet message store" to "No Preference". This setting works the best for mailboxes that receive Internet mail.
The "Location" settings should reference the new Team Mailbox (.nsf database) that you created on the Domino server.

5) Open the new database. Click on the "Team Mailbox" logo in the upper-left. Then open the "Mailbox Preferences".

6) Open the Access Control List for the Team Mailbox you created.

Add people/groups that need access to the mailbox.
Grant Editor access, Delete documents, Create shared folders/views, and Replicate or copy documents.

7) Setup is now complete. Notify your users. They can begin using the new mailbox.

8) Please review the features below. You may wish to enable the "new mail reminders", and the "auto reply".

Summary of Team Mailbox preferences

Colors 5 color combinations.
Signature Append a signature to new messages.
New Mail Reminders Send a doclink to users when new mail is received. You may wish to notify people/groups when new mail is received. Select people/groups from your Domino mail server's address book, and enable the agent. The agent should be enabled by an Administrator. If you have a generic "postmaster" ID used for signing agents, I suggest using that ID to enable the agent. A message will be sent to each person/group. They will receive a doclink back to the Team Mailbox.
By default, a "new mail reminder" will be sent for all new messages, except for those delivered to the Junk Mail folder. The reminder will include the sender's name, date, subject, and the Folder where the email was delivered. The addition of the folder name allows team members to create Mail Rules in their own personal mailboxes to sort these "reminder messages".
Auto Reply Team Mailboxes are shared among a small group of users. For example, your training department may have a mailbox for training@yourcompany.com. There's always someone in the office who will monitor the new email. However, if they don't reply right away, you'd like to send an automated reply back to the customer. The reply message might say "We received your email. Sorry for the delay. You will receive a personal response soon." It's meant to run continuously and send an automated-reply only if the "team mailbox" users do not reply in a reasonable amount of time. If you enable the Auto Reply agent, it will run every 2 hours by default. You can change this time interval by editing the Agent properties in Domino Designer. The agent should be enabled by an Administrator. If you have a generic "postmaster" ID used for signing agents, I suggest using that ID to enable the agent. The reply message can be static text, or you can use the @Formula language to create a custom response. If you calculate the Subject or Message using a "formula", make sure your formula syntax is correct. Do not include the following tags in your "message": <html>, <head>, or <body>. Other tags like <table>, <a href..., <b>, <i>, <u>, etc., are good. If you select the HTML format option, you may also enter a Style Sheet.
(see table below)

Auto Reply Options

Setting	Description
Do not reply to mail that has been removed from the Inbox	A mailbox user may have removed the message from the Inbox. AutoReply will skip any messages that are not in the Inbox folder. (see note below)
Do not reply to mail that has already received a normal reply	A mailbox user may have already replied. AutoReply will skip any messages that have already received a reply.
Do not reply to new mail for at least [2] hour(s)	AutoReply will wait until new messages are [2] hour(s) old before it sends a reply. This gives the team mailbox users time to send a normal reply.
Do not reply to the same person for at least [24] hour(s)	AutoReply will keep a history of each person that is sent an automated reply, and will only reply to new messages received from those people after [24] hour(s).
Do not reply to Out Of Office messages	AutoReply will check the message Subject for keywords, like "Out Of Office" and "AutoReply" and skip these messages. It will also check the message for the $AutoForward field, and skip these messages. The $AutoForward field is automatically added by "out of office" agents in Lotus Notes mail. This prevents "out of office" agents from replying to each other. (To my knowledge, Internet-based emails do not have a standard way to help identify "out of office" or "auto reply" messages to other email systems.)
Do not reply to mail from Lotus Notes agents or mail generated from Lotus Notes scripts	AutoReply will check the message for the $AssistMail field, and skip these messages. The $AssistMail field is added by the mail router. It appears in messages that are generated by a background agent, or when a user is working in an application that sends email from a script (like a LotusScript button, or Form event).
Do not reply to mail from Internet addresses	AutoReply will check the message for an SMTP address, and skip these messages.
Save a copy of the reply to the Sent folder	AutoReply will save the reply-message to the Sent folder.
Do not reply to the following people or addresses	This is a list of email addresses. AutoReply will skip any messages From the listed addresses.
Do not reply if formula is true	You can write an @Formula here. AutoReply will evaluate this formula for the new message. If the formula evaluates to True, then the message will be skipped.

Auto Reply - PLEASE NOTE

The following 2 options require that you enable a hidden database property, called "folder references".

New Mail Reminders > Options > Do not send reminder when message is delivered to these folders
Auto Reply > Options > Do not reply to mail that has been removed from the Inbox

If you would like to use these options, you must enable a hidden database property. This must be done for each database you create. The property can not be set from the template.
Open a Team Mailbox. You must have Designer or Manager access. From the menu select Actions > Administration > Enable/Disable folder references ...
You will see the following message.

Select "yes" to enable the folder references.
Next, open the Team Mailbox preferences dialog box. You may now enable the AutoReply option "Do not reply to mail that has been removed from the Inbox".

NOTE: Old messages in the mailbox will not have any folder references. These folder references are added by the mail router, and therefore, will only apply to new messages. For more information, read the Domino Designer Help entry for NotesDatabase.FolderReferencesEnabled.

New Mail Reminder Agent - PLEASE NOTE

Q. My mail agents don't run. Can I use Notes.ini to fix this?

OK, so no one really asked us this question. But it's such a useful topic, Professor INI decided to briefly mention it anyway. Agents set to execute after new mail has arrived are designed to run on the home mail server of the signer. However, these agents may end up on some other server (for example, through replication). When you try to execute the mail agent in this case, it checks to see whether the current server is your home server, discovers it isn't, and stops running. You can suppress the check for the home mail server by adding AMgr_DisableMailLookup =1 to the server's Notes.ini file

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-agent_ini_variable/index.html

How to Upgrade

Delete the old template from your Domino server. The current template is teambox3.ntf. If you have an old template named teambox2.ntf, or alcsbox.ntf, you must delete it.
Download the new template.
Sign the new template with a trusted ID. This is done from the Domino Administrator client.
Copy the template to your Domino server.
From the server console, type "load design". This will update any existing Team Mailboxes with the new template design.

For each existing mailbox, you may wish to open the mailbox, and click Actions > Upgrade Folder Design. This will replace each folder's design, so that the folder resembles the Inbox. Don't worry, as this will not empty your existing folders.
You may also need to edit the Team Mailbox preferences, and re-enable the New Mail Reminder agent, and AutoReply agent.

Memo Clips

Memo Clips are based on Alan Lepofsky's "Paste Information Application".
http://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf/dx/paste-information-application

Developer's Tip: Your team can store Memo Clips in their Team Mailbox, and paste them in other applications. Here's how: Create a button/action in a database form, or as a custom toolbar icon. Use the following script, and change the settings for mailboxFilePath and mailboxServer.

Mail Rules

Mail Rules are found on the Tools menu. Here are some additional tips concerning Mail Rules:

Never "paste" a Mail Rule from one mailbox to another. This will not work because Mail Rules are compiled and stored in a special "CalendarProfile" that is specific to each mailbox. Furthermore, each Mail Rule document contains database-specific information when calculating the rule; such as a Folder's Universal ID, instead of the Folder's name.
If you're having trouble with Mail Rules, open the Team Mailbox and select Actions > Administration > Disable and Cleanup Mail Rules. This action will delete the special "CalendarProfile" document, and disable all the Mail Rules in the mailbox.

Optional - How to define Archive Settings

Domino Mail servers can automatically archive documents that are "expired". This is done with the "compact -A" program on the server. Documents are copied to an archive database, and removed from the Team Mailbox. The archive database can be on a different Domino server if needed.

Users can mark documents as "expired" by selecting Actions > Mark Selected Document(s) as Expired.

Follow these steps to enable "Server to Server" archiving for a Team Mailbox.

1. Open the database properties for a Team Mailbox. Click on the "Archive Settings".

2. On the Basics tab, set the options for "Domino server to Domino server" archiving.

3. Open the Criteria tab, and create/edit a criteria.

The criteria options looks like this. Click on the "Selection Criteria", and choose the option "with expiration date older than" and select "1 days".

4. Save your changes to the archive settings.

5. To manually run the compact task, type the following at the Domino Server Console:
load compact -A folder\filename.nsf
(NOTE: The "A" must be capitalized.)

This will execute the archive settings for the database folder/filename.nsf on the server.

To run this task automatically, you would create a "program" document in the Domino Directory. Here's how:

Open your Domino Directory. Open the "Programs" view. This is located under Configuration > Servers > Programs.
Create a new "program" document. Here is an example:

This will run the "compact" task every Thursday at 9pm.
It checks all databases in the TeamMail folder.
Only databases where you have completed the "archive settings" will be processed.

Limitations - technical information

There is no option to "Automatically check mail messages for misspellings before sending". This causes problems when sending mail. The form events required to send with an alternate From address also prevent the spell checking options.
The mailing option "send only" does not work. All messages must be saved to the Team Mailbox, before they can be copied to the server's outgoing mailbox.
There is no option to Sign/Encrypt new messages. These options simply don't work when the user's personal email address is not the "From" address. Therefore, they can't be used in a Team Mailbox.
Messages can be viewed in a browser, however, there is no "web mail" capability in this template. There are no plans to add DWA "web mail" capabilities to the template. If you need a web mail template, you should be using the standard mail template from Lotus.
If you send mail from a server replica of the Team Mailbox, the "from" address will be the Team Mailbox address. However, if you send mail from a local replica, the user's personal email address will be in the SMTP header. Reason: Mail sent from a local replica is added to the user's local mail.box file. Messages in this local mail.box file will not replicate back to the server when the "from" address is different than the Lotus Notes user's name. For this reason, messages added to the local mail.box file will be stamped as "from" the current user.

Optional - Tool for Administrators

Do you have many Team Mailboxes? Download "teammailadmin.ntf" located at the top of this page. Create a new database from this template on your local computer, or on a server.
Open the database, and click the "Refresh" button. It will search for Team Mailboxes in your Directory Catalog (catalog.nsf). It provides quick access to the Mailbox Preferences for each mailbox. You can see:

Agents that are enabled
People/groups that will be notified of new mail
Quick access to the Mailbox Preferences and ACL for each Team Mailbox
Checks your Mailbox Preferences for any errors, including @Formula errors in your Auto Reply agent.

NOTE: You may need to update the Directory Catalog on your Domino mail server. From the server console, type "load catalog".

Revision History - YYYY-MM-DD

2007-12-10 - Version 3.25 posted.

New Mail Reminder. You may now include a short abstract in the reminder/link message. This should help Blackberry users. (by Bruce Currier)
Agents. The reminder and autoreply agents now use Script Libraries. This allows you to modify the library without re-resigning the agents.
Fixed a bug when choosing the "from display title".
Fixed a bug in the Memo Clip form in the non-English templates. It will now copy the correct rich text to the clipboard.
Small font change in the upper-left showing the database title.
Reminders will use the sender's abbreviated name. This fixes a problem with mail rules.
There are no folder design changes in this template.
There are no changes to the Admin Tools.

2007-09-19 - Version 3.24 posted.

Admin Tools database. When refreshing the list of Team Mailboxes in your Admin Tools database, you will see the Template Design Version of each mailbox. It will recognize Team Mailboxes with the 3.24 template design, or later. Earlier versions do not show a version number.
Hide "Mailbox Preferences" from users. This action appears when clicking the "Team Mailbox" logo in the upper-left. You may wish to hide this action from some users. Here's how: 1) Add a new role to the database access control list, named [HideConfig]. 2) Assign this role to specific users or groups.
Forward message text header. When forwarding a message the "forwarded by ..." text is the team mailbox name, instead of the user's name. It uses the "from display title" database setting.
German translation updated.
There are no folder design changes in this template.

2007-08-14 - Version 3.23 posted.

Dutch translation by Fred Janssen. Thanks!
Bug Fix: When tabbing in to the Body field after a Signature was added, the cursor would appear below the signature. The cursor is now at the top.
Posted new Admin Tools template v1.08. Minor change. There's a new option under the Tools button to "upgrade folder design". It will simply open the selected database, and invoke the "upgrade folder design" agent. This will save a few clicks. NOTE: The target Team Mailbox must be version 3.23.
New Feature: A new signature option for inserting the Author's name. (Juergen Klepatzki)
There are no folder design changes in this template.

2007-04-04 - Version 3.22 posted.

New Feature: Actions > Add Sender to Address Book
Italian translation by Davide Bortolini. Thanks!
It's now easier to control who can edit the AutoReply settings.
Please Note: The template names are unique for each language. English is "ALCTeamMailbox". German is "ALCTeamMailboxDE". Italian is "ALCTeamMailboxIT". Dutch is "ALCTeamMailboxNL".

2007-03-01 - Version 3.19 posted.

New Feature: You can now send a "memo clip" as the AutoReply message.
New Feature: You can now use *wildca?ds (wildcards) in the AutoReply filter.
Updated the delivery failure report form
German translation by Tom Herling, ito consult GmbH

2006-07-14 - Version 3.14 posted.

New Feature: Mark Selected documents as Expired. This allows an administrator to use the "compact -A" command and archive expired documents. For more information, see the documentation above.
An archive link will appear under the "tools" menu, if the mailbox has server-based archiving defined.
Added the option "SMTP Outbound Controls" to the Team Mailbox Preferences. This setting is only required if your Domino Mail server uses SMTP Outbound Controls to restrict who may send mail to the Internet.
NEW! Team Mailbox Administration Panel database.

2006-06-01 - Version 3.11 posted.

New Mail Reminder Agent - The option "Do not send reminder for these message types" can now exclude "Out Of Office" reply messages.
New Mail Reminder Agent - Fixed a problem where this agent could see very old documents as unprocessed.
Sending Mail - Fixed a problem where names in the Local Address Book would not resolve if the form had not already optimized the name fields.
Updated the Admin Documentation found in the template.

2006-05-24 - Version 3.9 posted.

Added the "Show Thread" feature found in Notes7 mail.

2006-05-09 - Version 3.8 posted.

This corrects a bug when mail is sent from a local replica.
Posted a German version of the template. Special thanks goes to Tom Herling, ito consult GmbH.

2006-04-11 - Version 3.7 posted.

New Feature: Do not send reminder for these message types. This is found in the options for "new mail reminder".
New Feature: Actions > Forward As RFC-822. This allows you to save a message as an RFC-822 attachment. The script was copied from the OpenNTF mail template.
Corrected a bug in the "new mail reminder" agent. (session.UpdateProcessedDoc does not work as expected).
Corrected a display problem on the Return Receipt form.

2006-04-07 - Version 3.6 posted

New Feature: Added the option "do not send reminder when message is delivered to these folders".
New Feature: Added an "agent logging" options for the "new mail reminder" agent.
Created a better "new mail reminder" agent.

2006-03-31 - Version 2.16 posted.

Added a new preference. When deleting documents from the Sent view, user can choose to delete the document, or remove it from the view. The default behavior is set in the Mailbox Preferences.
Added an example script to paste Memo Clips in to other database applications (see the attachment above MemoClipExampleScript.txt).
Added mail rules.
Corrected a problem with "reply to all".
Added "junk mail" folder.
Added "discover folders" action, and some right-click actions.

2006-01-16 - Version 2.11 posted.

The Auto Reply agent can record history to an Agent Log, a Notes Log, and now to OpenNTF's OpenLog database (created by Julian Robichaux).

2005-12-22 - Version 2.9 posted.

Auto Reply. You can now format the reply message as Plain Text, or in HTML format. If you select the HTML option, you may also enter a Style Sheet. Do not include the <html>, <head>, or <body> tags in your message. Other tags like <table>, <a href..., <b>, <i>, <u>, etc., are ok.

2005-09-07 - Version 2.8 posted.

Added the new "memo clips" feature. Memo Clips are based on Alan Lepofsky's "Paste Information Application"

_____________________________________________________
The ALCTeamMailbox template was created by
Brian Green - Automated Logic Corporation
Lotus Domino Designer 7.0.2

see also: OpenNTF Application Catalog

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Copyright (C) 2008 Automated Logic Corporation
1150 Roberts Blvd., Kennesaw, Georgia 30144 USA

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
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as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
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Team Mailbox v3.25Last updated on 2007-12-10

Downloads are available at OpenNTF.org. Please visit the DominoTeamMailbox project page at http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/DominoTeamMailbox English, German, Italian, and Dutch translations are available.

How to create a new Team Mailbox - Domino Administrators

Summary of Team Mailbox preferences

Auto Reply Options

Auto Reply - PLEASE NOTE

New Mail Reminder Agent - PLEASE NOTE

How to Upgrade

Memo Clips

Mail Rules

Optional - How to define Archive Settings

Limitations - technical information

Optional - Tool for Administrators

Revision History - YYYY-MM-DD

Team Mailbox v3.25
Last updated on 2007-12-10

Downloads are available at OpenNTF.org. Please visit the DominoTeamMailbox project page at
http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/DominoTeamMailbox

English, German, Italian, and Dutch translations are available.