LepoLand - A Blog by Alan Lepofsky

Since today is Show-N-Tell Thursday, and I have not blogged yet this week (sorry, working on stuff!) I figured I'd share a tool I wrote a while back with everyone.   It is called File Manager For Lotus Notes, and I've posted it on OpenNTF.  I originally designed this tool many years ago when I was an administrator and wanted to keep track of all the mail files across our many server.  However, I find this tool can be handy for users as well.  For example you can keep track of the Notes databases and templates on your own computer, running a report once a week/month allowing you to keep track of how various databases sizes are changing.

When you open the database you will see that the screen is divided into two sections.   The top section contains the documents with the lists of your files.  The bottom section contains any reports that you have created about these file.



To create a new document, click on the "New File Listing" action button on the top left of the screen.    This composes a new document where you:
- Enter a title for the document:  I use names like "My local databases", or "All mail files on server MAIL01".
- Enter the server name or leave it blank for local.
- Enter a specific path name to search, or leave it blank for all.
- Choose Databases (NSFs), Templates (NTFs), or both.

Next click the button "Press here to list files".   After the results are returned you can then click on the up or down arrows to sort either by title, path, or size.



After creating the File Manager documents, you can select one or more of them and click on the "Create Report" action button.   These provides you the option to create four different report types:  Largest Databases, All over a certain size, # of databases in a certain range, or just a summary of the database information.



Finally, this tools has an additional feature which allows you to compare two lists of databases.   As shown below, you can enter the name of two servers, the paths, and what type of files you want to compare.   For example, say you have MailServerA and MailServerB clustered and you want to make sure all the files in the mail\ directory are on both servers.   Simply enter the two server names, "mail" for the path, and click the buttons for "Directory Listing A" and "Directory Listing B".  Then click "What doesn't List B have" and "What doesn't list A have", and viola, you now know which file you need to add/remove from each server.



So to all you Administrators out there, I hope this tool helps you keep track of the files on your servers!  Play around with the reports, you'll see there are of great benefit, especially when you generate reports on multiple servers.   To all you users, download the tool, give it a try, and it might help keep you more organized, and at a minimum show you how many databases you have on your local computer.

BTW, suggestions for improvement are always welcome!

Alan