From the files of "What Did You Learn in School Today?" I learned more than I cared to about a mechanism that is called Dynamic Client Configuration (DCC). This is a feature that has really been leveraged in Notes 6 and 6.5, but was introduced, AFAIK, in Release 5, that allows the Notes Client to synchronize some information from the users' Person Document when they authenticate to their home mail server. The most noticeable piece of information is the internet address.
Have you ever noticed that after you authenticate to your home mail server, that if you time it right and you edit your Location Document, that the Notes client reports that the Location Document was changed? That was DCC synching some information. Have you noticed that if you do not populate your internet address in the Location Document, automagically you have one? DCC.
What other pieces of information are synched? Policies, Sametime Server name, Roaming User, and if your mail file have been moved (using AdminP). There are probably others, as well.
You can tell if DCC is running properly just by looking in your Clients' Notes Log. Shortly after starting Notes and authenticating to the home mail server, you will see the following entries in the Notes Client Log:
02/15/2007 11:29:59 PM Dynamic
Client Configuration started
02/15/2007 11:29:59 PM Initializing Dynamic Client Configuration
02/15/2007 11:30:01 PM Dynamic Client Configuration updating location
information
02/15/2007 11:30:01 PM Dynamic Client Configuration shutdown
While this shows that DCC ran, how can
you tell if a Policy was applied to the client? Kind of simple: Open the
Personal Address Book, and go to the view $Policies. It will show you what
policies have been applied to this particular user. You can cross check
the Policy by looking at the Administration tab of the Person Document.
As an Administrator, you should be able
to see how to apply this technology. You bring up a Sametime Server. To
rollout the Sametime Server name to your clients, simply populate the IBM
Instant Messaging Server field of the Person Document. The next time the
users authenticate, that field will populate the current Location Document,
and the users should be ready to start chatting. Make changes to internet
addresses? You should be comfortable knowing that the new address will
be pushed down to the user.
Remember, DCC only occurs when the user
authenticates to the home mail server. If you have users that keep their
workstations on, and Lotus Notes active, DCC will not synch until they
restart Notes. So, much like changing your MX record, you may want to consider
applying changes to the Person Documents (like Policies, internet addresses,
and the Sametime Server name) on Friday.
Another thing to know: If you apply
a Policy to a user or to an OU, those policies will over-ride whatever
DCC finds. Example: You populate the Sametime Server field in the Person
Document with the hierarchical name, Sametime/ACME. But you create an Explicit
Desktop Policy to apply to the user with the DNS name of the Sametime server,
sametime.acme.com. When the user authenticates, DCC will see the change,
but the Explicit Policy will push the DNS name to the Location Document.
Here are some links that may help:
Link: Frequently
Asked Questions About Dynamic Client Configuration (DCC)
Link: Known
Policy Issues with Dynamic Client Configuration
Link: Dynamic
Client Configuration Does not Update Sametime Server in Location Doc
Class dismissed.
Technorati tag: Show-n-Tell
Thursday Lotus
Notes Dynamic
Client Configuration
Comment posted by Chris Miller03/22/2007 11:46:51 AM
Homepage: http://www.IdoNotes.com
Yes, DCC was introduced in 5.0. Don't forget to note that Sametime updates are not avaialble natively until 6.5.4
I saw a bunch of incoming links from this blog posting and wondered what you had posted
Comment posted by Gregg Eldred03/22/2007 09:39:33 PM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf
@Chris - Cool! I didn't think that I linked to you in the post. Curious. I think that DCC is responsible for some of the user information on that Administration tab of the Person Document, too. Like the OS, Notes Client Build, and machine name of the workstation. At least that is what it appears to be using to populate those fields.
Thanks for stopping by.
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