iNotes, GZIP and Home PCs

One thing that running Domino Web Access, nee iNotes, has helped me realize is how great the "standardized" desktop is. When you have thousands of PCs and laptops out and you know what the software is and what patches are on it - and have methods for installing the patches - it makes the job of troubleshooting issues so much easier.

On the other side is the remote user on their home PC. We had been getting loads of support calls from users at home getting messages like "Error encountered fetching data" or "Error encountered retrieving data" when a user opened their Inbox or tried to read a message. After consulting the Lotus KB it appeared to be an issue with IE and certain patches that were necessary for it to work. The underlying issue was related to GZIP and iNotes5 templates which we are still using as we go through our upgrade to 6.5, but we were hopeful that the users would read the home page we have for iNotes and use the links to update their systems.

OK - stop laughing - I know you're just rolling on the floor, but I had a short moment when I believed, mistakenly, that the user would take the initiative and "fix" their own problem. O how wrong I was!!

After getting still more calls about the same issue, we finally decided to just pull the plug on GZIP until we can get more iNotes users moved over to the 6.5 template. How do you disable GZIP, with a notes.ini setting of course! And it is:

iNotes_wa_GZIP_Disable=1

And of course you're going to use your server configuration document to apply that, right??