Readers and Authors Fields in Code: Document-Level Security You Set with a NotesItem Flag

Domino's document-level access control isn't a special API — it's an ordinary item with a flag. This article covers creating Readers and Authors fields in LotusScript via ReplaceItemValue plus NotesItem.IsReaders / IsAuthors, the security model (no Readers item = everyone; an item with Readers = only those listed), and the lock-out traps: leave yourself and your agents out of the list and you can hide a document from everyone, including the code that made it.

GetAllDocumentsByKey in Multi-Level Categorized Views: Why Your Count Is Silently Wrong

In a single-level categorized view, GetAllDocumentsByKey('Belgien', True) correctly returns the 2 documents under that category. But add a second level of categorization — Form then Country — and GetAllDocumentsByKey('Customer', True) returns 3, not all the documents. It stops at the first sub-category. This article documents the empirically verified trap and the workarounds.

NotesStream and Text Encoding: Charsets, the BOM, and the Byte-vs-Character Trap

NotesStream reads and writes files, but the moment your text isn't plain ASCII, three things bite: which charset you opened with, whether a byte-order mark got written, and the fact that Position is a byte offset with 'no special support for multi-byte characters.' This article covers Open's charset argument, the EOL constants, exactly when WriteText emits a BOM (UTF-16 yes, UTF-8 no), and why Bytes never equals Len().

Attachments in LotusScript: EmbedObject, NotesEmbeddedObject, and the GetAttachment Shortcut

Attaching a file, listing what's attached, extracting it to disk, and removing it — all from code. This article covers NotesRichTextItem.EmbedObject with the EMBED_ATTACHMENT constant, the NotesEmbeddedObject class, ExtractFile, and the two traps that catch people: NotesDocument.EmbeddedObjects does NOT return file attachments (use GetAttachment or the rich-text item), and ExtractFile errors on anything that isn't an attachment.

What HCL Sametime 12.0.3 Added: Read Receipts, Meeting Transcripts, and a Domino Bundle Change

HCL Sametime 12.0.3 — released in 2025 — is a point release worth a look if your shop hasn't upgraded: chat read receipts, mobile chat search, automatic meeting-recording transcripts, a full accessibility pass, and a UI rebuilt on HCL Enchanted + React. The most consequential change for Domino admins isn't a feature at all — it's that premium chat capabilities are now folded into the standard Domino Complete Collaboration Bundle.

The XML Declaration, DTD Nodes, and SAX Errors in LotusScript

The rarely-seen tier of the Domino DOM — the XML declaration, DOCTYPE, processing instructions, notations, entities — plus NotesSAXException on the SAX side. This article covers what each node actually gives you (mostly: not much), the AddXMLDeclNode flag you must set to even see the declaration, and how NotesSAXException is the one place you get rich, line-and-column error data when parsing goes wrong.

The Content-Carrying DOM Nodes: TextNode, AttributeNode, Comment, CDATASection in LotusScript

Once you're walking a parsed DOM, the actual data lives in the content nodes — text, attributes, comments, CDATA. This article covers the inheritance (CharacterData is the base of Text/Comment/CDATA; CDATA derives from Text; AttributeNode stands apart), the CharacterData editing methods, and the single biggest gotcha: the LotusScript binding reads content through NodeValue — there is no W3C-style Data, Length, Name, or Value property.

Walking a Parsed XML DOM in LotusScript: DocumentNode, ElementNode, NodeList, NamedNodeMap

Once NotesDOMParser has parsed your XML, you navigate the result with a family of node classes. This article covers getting the root from domParser.Document, reaching the root element via DocumentElement, querying with GetElementsByTagName (which returns a NotesDOMNodeList), reading attributes through an element's NamedNodeMap, and the LotusScript-specific quirks: 1-based GetItem, no ChildNodes property (walk FirstChild/NextSibling), and no GetItemByName.

NotesRichTextDocLink & NotesRichTextSection: Doclinks and Collapsible Sections in Code

Two rich-text features you'd normally insert by hand in Designer — a doclink that jumps to a database, view, or document, and a collapsible section — are scriptable. But neither class is one you construct: you create the elements through NotesRichTextItem (AppendDocLink, BeginSection/EndSection) and read them back through NotesRichTextNavigator. This article covers that write-vs-read split, the doclink properties, the BeginSection/EndSection rule, and the gotchas.