Connecting

Aside from connecting cables, getting connected to your servers is entirely an exercise in configuring location and connection documents, then choosing the right ones for your situation. Location and connection documents reside in your Personal Directory. Between them (and information stored in your operating system) they provide all the information Notes needs to establish connections to your servers. The location document tells Notes where it is currently located, what servers it should rely on from that location, whether to use local or server-resident databases, and, if local, how often to replicate with the servers. The connection document tells Notes how to connect to the server. The easiest way to configure location and connection documents is, okay, to have your administrator do it. But if you have to do it yourself, you want to set up your location document first, then your connection document.

The Location Document

Notes includes several predefined location documents. Unless your administrator has deleted them you should be able to adapt them to your use. The ones that you will find most useful are those labeled Office, Internet, Home (Network Dialup), and Island (Disconnected). Their characteristics are set forth in Table 17.1.

Table 17.1. Location Documents and their Characteristics

Location Name	Mode of Connection	Location of Mail Database
Office	Local Area Network	On Server
Internet	Local Area Network	Local
Home (Network Connection	Modem Connection to Internet Service Provider or Remote Access Server	Local
Island (Disconnected)	No connection available	Local

The other predefined connection documentsHome (Notes Direct Dialup) and Travel (Notes Direct Dialup) assume you will connect by modem directly to a Domino server. Now that the Internet offers universal connectivity, organizations rarely bother to set up direct modem server connections for their users, so we won't discuss them further.

You can often use these location documents as is. Their best uses are as follows:

• Office Wherever 1) you can connect to your office network or the Internet by Ethernet, Cable Modem, or DSL adapter and 2) you want to work directly in your mail server's copy of your mail database.

• Internet Wherever 1) you can connect to your office network or the Internet by Ethernet, Cable Modem, or DSL adapter and 2) you want to work in your workstation's copy of your mail database.

• Home (Network Connection) Wherever you must use a modem to connect to the Internet.

• Island (Disconnected) Wherever you cannot establish a connection to a Domino server, such as in an airplane.

The above location documents will generally work as is in every situation except when you are away from home and have to use a modem to connect to other computers. For that situation, you may need to create a new location document from scratch or, better yet, adapt the Home (Network Connection) location document.

To adapt the Home (Network Connection) or any other location document, we recommend that you make a copy of it, then edit the copy. To make a copy of a location document, select it in the Locations view of your Personal Directory, then in the menu choose Edit, Copy, then Edit, Paste. The new document will appear just below the original. To edit it, select it, then press Ctrl+E. Edit the Location name field (Basics tab) to give it a new name. Other fields that you as a mobile user may want to edit are listed below:

• Prompt for time/date/phone (Basics tab) Set to Yes for any location document that you plan to use while traveling. Each time you start Notes, you will be prompted for the time, date, and phone number where you are located.

• Server fields (Servers tab) Enter the full name of your home/mail server (e.g., Osprey/Servers/Stillwater) in the Home/Mail server field. The other server fields are optional. If you are working in a copy of an existing location document, these fields may be correctly populated already. But if, say, you intend to use a location document at a branch office of your company thousands of miles from your own office, you may want to repopulate some of these fields with the names of servers local to where you will use this document, rather than those back home. Ask your administrator about this.

• Replication fields (Replication tab) You may want to enable scheduled replication. See Appendix B, "Understanding Replication," for details about this.

• Use operating system's time zone settings (Advanced, Basics tab) You may want to set this to No. If you do, other fields will appear where you can specify the time zone settings that Notes should use when this location document is selected. You may prefer to do this instead of changing the time zone settings in your operating system at travel time.

• Load images (Advanced, Basics tab) You may want to change this to On request to improve download performance when using a modem.

• Network dialup idle time (Advanced, Basics tab) Insert a number of minutes in this field to ensure that you don't rack up huge long distance charges because you forgot to disconnect from the server.

• Secondary TCP/IP Notes name server (Advanced, Secondary Servers tab) You can enter the name of a Domino server will act as a backup name, home, and mail server should your primary home server become unavailable. This might be especially useful if you travel internationally. Ask your administrator about setting this field.

• Secondary TCP/IP host name or address (Advanced, Secondary Servers tab) If you set the previously listed field, you will want to enter that server's hostname or IP address in this field.

After you have saved your new location document, you can select it (or any other) at any time in either of two ways. In the menu you can choose File, Mobile, Choose Current Location, then choose it from the list. Or, with your mouse, you can choose it from the Location list in the bottom right corner of your Notes window.

The Connection Document

The connection document holds the information Notes needs to complete a connection to a particular Domino server. You won't always need a connection document to connect to a given server. On the other hand, for a given server you might find you need multiple connection documents, one for each location document.

The connection document is a companion document to the location document and a good way to create one is to use the Connection Configuration Wizard. Follow these steps:

1.	Open your Personal Directory and navigate to the Advanced, Locations view.
2.	Open the location document that needs the new connection document, then click the Connection Configuration Wizard action button.
3.	Fill in the fields as prompted, then click Finish. The information you will be prompted for include things like the Domino name and hostname of the destination server, or the phone number that connects you to your ISP. When you click Finish, the wizard will create your connection document.

You can also create a connection document from scratch by clicking the New action button, visible from any view in your Personal Directory, and choosing Server Connection. You might prefer to do this if the connection document will be used with more than one location document. Most likely, you will only ever have to create two kinds of connection document: Local Area Network or Network Dialup. If you ever have to use one of the other kinds, your administrator will undoubtedly create it for you.

To create a connection document for use with a Local Area Network type of location document (for example, Office and Internet), follow these steps:

1.	In your Personal Directory, click the New Action button and choose Server Connection.
2.	On the Basics tab, set the fields as follows: Connection type Select Local Area Network. Use LAN port Select TCP/IP. (Your TCP/IP port might have a different name, but it should be obvious that it is a TCP/IP port. Don't choose a port that isn't obviously a TCP/IP port.) Server name Enter the full name of the server to which you want to connect.
3.	On the Comments tab, enter any text that will help you, years from now, to remember why you created this document.
4.	On the Advanced tab, set the fields as follows: Only from Location(s) Select one or more location documents that this connection will be used with. The default is all location documents. Only for user Select one or more users for which the location document will be available. The default is all users of the machine. Usage priority Select Normal. Destination server address Enter the server's hostname or IP address.
5.	Save and close the document. It will appear in the Connections view of your Personal Directory.

To create a connection document for use with a Network Dialup type of location document (for example, Home [Network Dialup]), follow the same steps as above, but with three changes:

• Before you create this connection document, create a dialup network connection in your computer's operating system. If you have already created one that you can use with this connection, write down its name. To create a new dialup network connection record in Windows, open the Control Panel, choose Network Connections, and choose Create a new connection under Network Tasks or select New Connection in the File menu. The New Connection Wizard will appear. There you can choose Connect to the Internet, then choose Set up my connection manually, and finally choose Connect using a dial-up modem. From that point forward, you'll be prompted to enter your account name at your ISP, your password with the ISP, and a phone number provided by your ISP or your Domino administrator. Record the name of this connection; you will need it when setting up your Notes connection document.

• In the Notes connection document, under the Basics tab, in the Connection type field, select Network Dialup. When you do, another tab will appear, labeled Network Dialup.

• In the Notes connection document, on the Network Dialup tab, in the Choose a server type field, choose the server type for your operating system. For Windows, choose Microsoft Dial-Up Networking. Then click the Edit Configuration button. In the dialog box that appears, enter the name of the dialup connection you created in your computer's operating system. You can enter data in the other fields, too, but you don't have to re-enter any data that you entered in the dialup connection you created in the operating system. Click OK when finished.