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Coexistence Manager for Notes 3.8.4 - Quick Start Guide

About the CMN documentation suite

The documentation for Quest Coexistence Manager for Notes (CMN) includes:

Release Notes (printable PDF): Describes the current CMN release—any new and enhanced features, resolved issues, and known issues. Also documents minimum installation requirements, and provides Quest contact information.
Quick-Start Guide (printable PDF): An orientation to the product's basic purposes, features and capabilities, with a case study showing how its primary components are most commonly used within a typical coexistence scenario. Also explains how to download and install the software.
CMN User Guide (printable PDF): Comprehensive documentation of CMN's three primary components: Directory Connector, Mail Connector and Free/Busy Connector. Describes component capabilities, deployment considerations, configuration instructions and tips, and application notes and screen-by-screen field notes for CMN's Management Console software tools.
FBC Scenarios Guide (printable PDF): Provides process instructions and application notes for installing and configuring CMN’s Free/Busy Connector (FBC) in a variety of Exchange-side scenarios.
CMN Program Parameters Reference (printable PDF): Listing of all CMN program parameters that are not associated with UI fields in CMN’s Management Console, with descriptions and default values and usage/application notes. (Parameters associated with UI fields do appear in the Configuration.xml files, but should not be edited manually.)
Management Console Online Help (three compiled Windows Help files, one for each CMN component): Field notes and application notes for the screens and features of CMN’s Management Console.

All CMN documentation is intended for network administrators, consultants, analysts, and any other IT professionals who will install or use the product components, or who may help plan for their use in a coexistence scenario. All of these documents, including the online Help, are bundled and installed with the product, and all except the Help files are also available separately at Quest's Support Portal.

Where To Look in the CMN Documentation

This table shows where you can find particular types of information about particular CMN components:

 

for Dir Connector & Mail Connector

for Free/Busy Connector

Introduction and orientation:

— — CMN Quick-Start Guide and User Guide — —

System requirements:

— — CMN Release Notes — —

Installation instructions:

— — CMN Quick-Start Guide — —

Configuration instructions:

CMN User Guide

CMN FBC Scenarios Guide

Operating instructions:

— — CMN User Guide — —

Troubleshooting info:

CMN User Guide

CMN FBC Scenarios Guide

The CMN application Help files contain the same information as the User Guide, but make the information available on-screen at a single keystroke (from the CMN Management Console).

All CMN documentation is intended for network administrators, consultants, analysts, and any other IT professionals who will install or use the product components, or who may help plan for their use in a coexistence scenario. All of these documents, including the online Help, are bundled and installed with the product, and all except the Help files are also available separately at Quest's Support Portal.

Product overview

Coexistence is the state of two or more independent servers when all are serving the same organization at the same time. For example, when a company using a particular brand of email and calendar applications acquires another company that uses a different brand, the new company may decide to let everyone continue using their familiar tools. The company then must find a way for people in both groups to be able to communicate and collaborate effectively, and uneventfully, with everyone else in the new company. They should be able to email one another without knowing or caring which server serves which users, and messages should be received on all servers with the same attributes and functionality and attachments they had when they left their senders. Moreover, people should be able to send meeting invitations that ping the invitees’ calendars and notify them of any conflicts, again without regard to which servers host which users’ free/busy data. And of course the company will want some way to coordinate the two independent directories of the two environments.

Coexistence also becomes useful—or necessary—when a single organization decides to migrate from one server brand to another, and must therefore endure a transition period when some users have already migrated to the new server, while others remain on the old server, awaiting migration. The coexistence period for a migration scenario like this may be only temporary, but it can last weeks or even months for larger organizations. In any case, a good coexistence strategy is critical for a smooth transition.

The challenges of a Notes–Exchange coexistence

The Notes/Domino and Outlook/Exchange environments offer most of the same email, calendar and directory capabilities, but the two different brands implement many of these features differently. As such, Outlook cannot make sense of certain message types that originate in Notes, and vice versa. Often the recipient application can display the pertinent information correctly, but cannot then perform the calendar updates that would have been automatic if the recipient and sender were using the same email client. Or sometimes the receiving client can perform automatic calendar updates, but introduces errors—missing dates, or extraneous meeting instances, etc.—and will not report or even detect the errors. Meanwhile, each environment is virtually blind to the free/busy status of the other side’s users.

An effective coexistence between the Notes and Exchange environments will address these three primary concerns:

Directory coexistence: Most organizations routinely experience staff additions, departures and transfers. These staff changes introduce data inconsistencies between the two environments’ directories. A directory update reconciles these differences by updating the contents of one directory to match the contents of another. A bidirectional update ensures that both directories contain all of the organization’s users, resources and groups.
Mail coexistence: Simple, direct SMTP mail routing is easy to configure, but does not preserve or compensate for substantial cross-platform losses in the fidelity of message contents: attributes, attachments, calendar data, and so forth. Notes and Exchange environments offer similar email and calendar capabilities, but implement many features differently. Outlook therefore does not handle certain message types that originate in Notes, and vice versa. Often the recipient client can display the pertinent information correctly, but cannot perform the calendar updates that would have been automatic if the recipient and sender were using the same email system. Or sometimes the receiving client can perform automatic calendar updates, but introduces errors— incorrect times, missing dates, or extraneous meetings, etc.
Free/Busy coexistence: The Notes and Exchange environments implement calendar free/busy queries differently, making each side blind to the availability status of users on the other systems. The calendar applications on both sides need some mechanism to determine the free/busy status of users within the other environment.
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