Start Your Notes App the SuperNTF Way

Starting Your Application the SuperNTF Way Kevin Pettitt

Your Host for Today’s Session … Kevin Pettitt President LotusGuru Consulting Independent Consultant Developer, Admin, Architect Blog: www.lotusguru.com 2

What Is SuperNTF?  Generic starter application template that isn’t “-blank-”  Notes Client application framework designed for easy understanding to encourage wide adoption  Built from the ground up with the goal of making development best practice easy for even novice Notes developers  Fusion of many other open source projects 3

Agenda…  A brief history of File – Database – New  Overview of standards and frameworks  SuperNTF feature walkthrough  What’s under the hood  Creating a new application  Overhauling an existing application  Final Word 4

In the Beginning, There Was -Blank-  And it really was “blank”  Next step - Doc Library or Discussion template – Just to have some code to start  Advanced developers created their own “common design elements” – Great for reusing code among many applications – Problem: Only they understood how it worked 5

Agenda…  A brief history of File – Database – New  Overview of standards and frameworks  SuperNTF feature walkthrough  What’s under the hood  Creating a new application  Overhauling an existing application  Final Word 6

Design Standards – Huh?  Notes is a very “approachable” development platform – Any decent spreadsheet jock can whip up a Notes database  limited skills hinder code standardization efforts  It takes time and effort to enforce standards  Only way way to achieve some level of coding standards for novice developers – Make it EASY to do things “right” without thinking 7

Key Benefits of Standardized Code  No more reinventing the wheel – Unless it’s a better wheel  Commonly used routines are readily available  Easier to troubleshoot, maintain, and enhance – Especially when the standard code has been more rigorously tested than any one application  The next developer to touch the app won't curse your name 8

What Is an Application Framework?  A basic template for jumpstarting a new application  A collection of generic design elements useful in any kind of application  A way to standardize the “plumbing” of all your custom Notes applications  Everything *except* what makes the application unique 9

Framework Pitfalls  Often developed organically over time by single developer – Thoughts of having others use the framework may not take hold until after most of it is built – Only that developer understands the “quirks” – Steep learning curve for others without that developer on the team  Tendency toward complexity – Time spent “improving” the framework may actually detract from others’ ability to maintain code later – The more tightly integrated it gets the easier it is to break 10

What Makes SuperNTF Different?  Conceived with ease of understanding in mind – Novices can create nice looking applications without \"breaking\" something  Design goal: Make it easy to follow and thereby gain wide adoption – Low learning curve also helps intermediate and advanced developers ability to customize and extend more easily – Code is written for readability – elegance over complexity  Designed to facilitate \"cherry picking\" code – Many individual pieces can be copied and reused in other applications and still work – Copying elements with their dependencies will be made easier in the future 11

Meet the SuperNTF Team  Head of R&D: Kevin Pettitt – aka \"Robbery and Deployment\"  With contributions from: The Domino community – No one has a monopoly on best practice ideas – Most borrowed code reworked significantly to adhere to SuperNTF simplicity standards  New \"volunteers\" all the time as more great ideas appear 12

So How Simple Is “Simple”?  Simple doesn’t mean boring – There are still lots of cool features, as you will see – Significant attention was paid to offering an attractive default UI design  Many advanced functions are “black boxed” – Eliminates the need to manipulate truly complex code (although you still can if you want) – High degree of configurability further minimizes need to touch code 13

Agenda …  A brief history of File – Database – New  Overview of standards and frameworks  SuperNTF feature walkthrough  What’s under the hood  Creating a new application  Overhauling an existing application  Final Word 14

Key Navigation Elements  Separate frameset for normal use… 15

Key Navigation Elements  …and for administrative functions 16

Key Navigation Elements  Standard action bar in separate frame – Eliminates need for most typical view actions – Leaves room for a descriptive view title – Actions show only when appropriate (e.g., “Search” only visible if database is full-text indexed)  Administration panel logically organized – Configuration – Logging – Cool Design Views – Utility views (e.g., Design element views, All Documents) 17

Alternate “Dashboard” Interface  Content of each tab is configurable  Double-clicking on preview opens document fully 18

Centralized Form Configuration 19

Centralized Form Configuration (cont.)  Each application-specific form has its own “configuration” document  Controls which form features are enabled – Shared Actions – (e.g., Edit, Save & Close, etc.) – Validation – edit a form-wide formula right on the form config. – User Activity Tracking – who read/edited what and when – Field Change History – what did they change and when – Comments – user feedback mechanism 20

View Configuration  Set the View “Header Title”  Configure “Help” and “New Document” behavior 21

User Activity Tracking – Summary  Keeps a running history of every time a document is READ or EDITED  Saves each record as a separate document – Can be easily tabulated and sorted in views – Allows user to “jump” directly to the source document 22

User Activity Tracking  Consolidated Activity History 23

User Activity Tracking  Current Document 24

User Activity Tracking – Dashboard Reports  At-a-glance view to most active users and documents  Apply custom filters to highlight the specific information you want 25

Field Change History  Form config specifies which form fields to track – Also assign user-friendly field labels 26

Field Change History (cont.)  All changes to target fields are recorded in a single rich-text field – Change history dialog accessed via action button 27

OpenLog Used for Error and Event Logging 28

Integrated Help  Create help documents within the application  Link them to specific forms and views via configuration 29

Integrated Help (cont.)  Press F1 to pull up the relevant help document 30

Exporting Data – The Quick and Simple Way  View actions export all or selected docs  Use column naming “trick” to … – Get categorized column titles to appear – Omit specific columns from export 31

Exporting Data – The Structured and Repeatable Way  Integrated with the OpenNTF ASND Export Facility 32

Soft Deletions Work!  No matter how you delete a document – Press <Delete> key at document or view level – Cut document(s) from a view – Drag to Trash – From “Delete” action in document or view  Confirmation warning always appears 33

Soft Deletions Work! (cont.)  Easily restore some or all deleted documents  Configure deletion purge interval in main DB configuration 34

Design Views 35

Design Views (cont.)  Yes, that’s right, you’re seeing design elements in regular views! – Made possible via the $FormulaClass “hack” – Allows ALL design elements to appear in a single view – Includes action button to “clean” the design elements (i.e., remove old $UpdatedBy entries and re-sign them)  Other variations show – All image resources with image preview – All fields and subforms listed by form(s) where they appear  Views can be copied to any other database to provide instant value 36

Icons, Icons, Everywhere  Outline entry and action icons used throughout to provide visual cues to associated function  Many include mouse-over animations – Further improves visual cue of mouse position – Injects a little fun into the application, which users love  All images can be previewed in the “Images Preview” design element view 37

All Documents View  Shows all docs in the database grouped by form name  Useful for finding “lost” docs, the “last” one edited, or the 300 customer documents you accidentally pasted 38

Agenda…  A brief history of File – Database – New  Overview of standards and frameworks  SuperNTF feature walkthrough  What’s under the hood  Creating a new application  Overhauling an existing application  Final Word 39 39

So What’s It Look Like Under the Hood?  It’s not a Ferrari, but then you wouldn’t let your rookie mechanic work on it if it were that complicated  It is, however … – Cleanly designed – Easy to work on without “breaking” anything – Individual parts are clearly identifiable – Yet still highly functional with lots of cool features 40

A Code Tour of SuperNTF 41

Creating a “SuperNTF” View  Shortcut: create a new view based on one of the demo views – Easy way to get actions that are the “hooks” into the view configuration  Customize columns, row colors, etc., as desired  Display view into the outline and open it  Click – Any guesses what that does ?  Fill out the view configuration – You may need to come back after creating a form to change the “New Document” behavior 43

Creating a “SuperNTF” Form  All the “hooks” into the configuration are encapsulated in two subforms – SYSTEM - Standard Hidden Form Header – SYSTEM - Standard Hidden Form Footer  Just a few other details – “Form” field – set to form alias – Window title: @If(@IsNewDoc; \"New Document\"; WindowTitle) – Turn off the create menu – PLEASE!  Tie the form into one or more views  Compose a document and click 44

Basics of Overhauling Existing Application  Add SuperNTF design elements to existing application – Or for very simple examples, copy the key elements into a “blank” SuperNTF database  Migrate views to new design – Remove unnecessary actions – Add Standard SuperNTF Actions – Update column fonts – Ytria Tools make this dead easy  Add standard SuperNTF subforms to key forms – Configure the enabled features for each form 46

Resources  Download SuperNTF – www.superntf.org  My Blog: www.lotusguru.com – Includes many articles pertaining to SuperNTF, including upcoming features  SuperNTF IdeaJam? – Stay tuned  48 48

Parting Thoughts  Coding standards will only gain wide adoption if they are easy to learn and use – And what use is a “standard” no one uses? – Even experienced developers will appreciate the freedom to focus on application logic  Cool things to do with SuperNTF – Give power users more power without giving yourself more headache – Give older apps a professional facelift  Sharing is good! – Please share your good ideas and useful SuperNTF customizations 49

Sharing is Good  Sharing is good! – Please share your good ideas and useful SuperNTF customizations 50

Start Your Notes App the SuperNTF Way

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