Appendix A - Technical description of the IBM Lotus Notes integration package
TANDBERG IBM Lotus Notes/Domino v 11.3 - Installation & getting started guide
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Appendix A - Technical description of the IBM
Lotus Notes integration package
Overview
The TMS integration with Lotus Notes allows Lotus Notes Client users connected to a Domino Server
to book, update and delete video conferences directly from within their Lotus Notes client. The
integration is based upon representing each system in TMS as a room in a resource reservation
database in Domino. Video conferences are scheduled by inviting the rooms to a meeting in the
Calendar, or by making reservations directly in the Resource Reservation Database. Notes
functionality such as free-time information and Address Book entries from the Resource Reservation
Database are kept intact, but reservations/cancellations in this database will not be committed until
they have been processed by the TMS server and committed in TMS. The mail template of the Lotus
Notes users can be replaced or updated to allow video conference-specific properties to be specified
when scheduling a meeting with video rooms. The Lotus Notes client will never contact the TMS
server directly.
Synchronizing changes from TMS
The Scheduled Synchronizer Agent is installed on the Domino server and propagates all the
bookings/changes/cancellations performed on the TMS into the Domino Resource Reservation
Database. The Lotus integration package tracks a transaction log kept on the TMS server to make
sure that the database is up to date. The Scheduled Synchronizer Agent polls the TMS server at a
specified time interval to retrieve changes, and updates and processes changes in the Resource
Reservation Database, as required. Activity for the Scheduled Synchronizer Agent can be viewed in
the Domino Server log.
Synchronizing changes to TMS
Bookings and updates from the Lotus Notes clients are delivered by the Domino Mail system to the
Resource Reservation Database and queued. After a request reaches the database, the
AgentManager initiates the Java agent TMSTrigger installed on the Domino Server to process the
request. This agent submits the booking or meeting update to TMS, which in turn tries to commit the
change to the TMS database. After successfully booking in TMS, this process moves the Lotus Notes
client’s request from the pending queue to the Reservations view in the Resource Reservation
Database on the Domino server, and sends a meeting acceptance email to the Notes user who
submitted the reservation, together with the information about the meeting (call route, web conference
details etc.). If the meeting could not be booked in TMS, the agent will send a meeting reject email to
the Lotus Notes user who submitted the reservation
— with the reason why the meeting could not be
booked (system not available, no MCU to host the meeting, no gateway available etc.). Once booked,
the meeting appears in TMS with the owner of the meeting being the TMS Service Account created
during installation. All meetings booked through Lotus are owned by this user account in TMS.
Cancellations from the Lotus Notes c
lient are not queued, but are performed ―on the fly‖. The Lotus
Notes client tries to delete the reservation in the Resource Reservation Database, and this event will
be handled by the compiled TMSEventCatcher.dll on the Domino Server that will start a java agent
that will contact the TMS server and cancel the meeting. If the meeting is active, the video conference
is ended. If the TMS server cannot be contacted, the reservation will not be deleted.
Only Resource Calendars are modified by the Integration package. User Calendars are not modified
by the Integration package and users are responsible for adding/removing changes if they are not the
user who is initiating the meeting change.
