This tutorial walks through the steps necessary to crawl Lotus Notes using the Lotus Notes connector.


Before Beginning:

You must have the Domino server URL as well as login credentials linked to an account with at least Admin level privileges.

Step 1: Add a new Lotus Notes Content Source

To specify exactly what Domino server you want to crawl, you will need to create a new "Content Source".

To create a new content source:

  1. From the Aspire 2 Home page, click on "Add Source" button.
  2. Click on "Lotus Notes Connector".

Step 1a: Specify Basic Information

In the "General" tab in the Add New Content Source window, specify basic information for the content source:

  1. Enter a content source name in the "Name" field.

    This is any useful name which you decide is a good name for the source. It will be displayed in the content source page, in error messages, etc.

  2. Click on the "Active?" checkbox to add a checkmark.

    Unchecking the "Active?" option allows you to configure content sources but not have them enabled. This is useful if a Domino server is down, being maintained, etc.

  3. Click on the "Schedule" drop-down list and select one of the following: Manually, Periodically, Daily, or Weekly.

    Aspire can automatically schedule content sources to be crawled on a set schedule, such as once a day, several times a week, or periodically (every N minutes or hours). For the purposes of this tutorial, you may want to select Manually and then set up a regular crawling schedule later.

  4. After selecting a Schedule type, specify the details, if applicable:
    1. Manually: No additional options.
    2. Periodically: Specify the "Run every:" options by entering the number of "hours" and "minutes."
    3. Daily: Specify the "Start time:" by clicking on the hours and minutes drop-down lists and selecting options.
    4. Weekly: Specify the "Start time:" by clicking on the hours and minutes drop-down lists and selecting options, then clicking on the day checkboxes to specify days of the week to run the crawl.
    5. Advance: Enter a custom CRON Expression (e.g. 0 0 0 ? * *)

Step 1b: Specify the Connector Information

In the "Connector" tab, specify the connection information to crawl Lotus Notes.

  1. Enter the Domino host you want to crawl.
  2. Enter the account info for the crawl user (username and password).
  3. Check on the other options as needed:
    1. Index all mail databases: Scan through all mail databases.
    2. Scan Recursively: Scan through container's child nodes.
    3. Index Containers: index sites, lists and folders. If unchecked, only list items will be indexed.
    4. Include/Exclude patterns: Enter regex patterns to include or exclude items.

Step 1c: Specify Workflow Information

In the "Workflow" tab, specify the workflow steps for the jobs that come out of the crawl.

  1. Drag and drop rules to determine which steps should an item follow after being crawled. This rules could be where to publish the document or transformations needed on the data before sending it to a search engine.

After completing this steps click on the Save button and you'll be sent back to the Home Page.

Step 2: Initiate the Full Crawl

Now that the content source is set up, the crawl can be initiated.

  1. Click on the crawl type option to set it as "Full" (is set as "Incremental" by default and the first time it'll work like a full crawl. After the first crawl, set it to "Incremental" to crawl for any changes done in the repository).
  2. Click on the Start button.


During the Crawl

During the crawl, you can do the following:

  • Click on the "Refresh" button on the Content Sources page to view the latest status of the crawl.

    The status will show RUNNING while the crawl is going, and CRAWLED when it is finished.

  • Click on "Complete" to view the number of documents crawled so far, the number of documents submitted, and the number of documents with errors.

If there are errors, you will get a clickable "Error" flag that will take you to a detailed error message page.

Group Expansion

Group expansion configuration is done on the "Advanced Connector Properties" of the Connector tab.

  1. Click on the Advanced Configuration checkbox to enable the advanced properties section.
  2. Scroll down to Group Expansion and click the checkbox.
  3. Set the Domino host.
  4. Set the user name and password of the crawl account.
  5. Add a new source for each database you want to expand groups from.
  6. Set an schedule for group expansion refresh and cleanup.
  7. As an optional setting click on the "Use external Group Expansion" checkbox to select an LDAP Cache component for LDAP group expansion. See more info on the LDAP Cache component on LDAP Cache
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