Custom welcome page deployment

For a consistent, custom appearance across a company or organization, you can create custom welcome pages, and then deploy them to users through policies and desktop settings documents. They can be as simple as a background with a company logo, or sophisticated pages with multiple frames and many different types of content.

About this task

You can create as many welcome pages as you want. However, there is a limit to the number of welcome pages that will display in the Default Welcome Page menu in the desktop settings. This limit is approximately ten pages, depending on the character length of the welcome page titles. The limit only affects how many welcome pages appear in the desktop settings menu. All welcome pages will be deployed to the user's bookmarks, no matter how many there are.

Create and work on your corporate welcome page database locally, and then copy it to the server when you are finished. This keeps users from seeing your changes in progress, ensuring that they only see finished pages.

Designate a default welcome page for individual users by deploying it in an explicit policy, or for entire organizations by using organizational policies.

Note: Images that are added to an Image Resource are not added to a Corporate Welcome Page if the image is added to the Image Resource after the Welcome Page is created, and the Corporate Welcome Page is then pushed to users.

Tip: To ensure that a custom welcome page is available to set as the default for users, create that page first to make sure it will be available for selection on the desktop settings menu.

Creating the welcome page database

Procedure

From the Domino® Administrator, choose File > Application > New.
In the Server field, select Local.
In the Title field, enter the name of the new database. The file name is entered by default, but you can modify it. The file name can be anything except BOOKMARK.NSF.
In the Template Server field select Local.
Click Show advanced templates.
Click the Bookmarks template.
Click OK.

Creating welcome pages

About this task

You create corporate welcome pages the same way you create them in the Notes® client. For even more options and control over your welcome pages, open your welcome page database in the Domino Designer and run the Toggle advanced configuration editor agent.

When you finish working on welcome pages locally, copy the welcome page database to a server to make it available to users.

Enabling the Default Welcome Page field in the Desktop policy settings document

About this task

You need to enable the Default Welcome Page field in the Desktop Policy Settings document in order to select a welcome page. The drop down list that displays the selection of welcome page titles is populated by the NOTES.INI variable $CurrentLayout. The welcome page titles that exist for this variable are listed in the drop down list of the Default Welcome Page field.

There are two ways to add the necessary welcome page information to the $CurrentLayout variable.

Method 1 -- Enable advanced configuration
Enabling the advanced configuration provides an additional page to the welcome page wizard which contains the advanced options. The advanced configuration is set by opening the welcome page database in the Domino Designer and running the Toggle advanced configuration editor agent. When you use this method, the $ is automatically pre-pended to every welcome page name, causing the welcome page to be added to the NOTES.INI setting $CurrentLayout.
Method 2 -- Manually adding the $ to the welcome page name
If you do not need to use any of the options presented on the advanced page in the welcome page wizard, you can manually pre-pend the $ to the welcome page name. Type a $ at the beginning of any welcome page name. The welcome page is then automatically added to the NOTES.INI variable

Deploying welcome pages using desktop settings

Procedure

Open the welcome page database on the server.
From the Domino Administrator click the People & Groups tab.
From the menu, choose Create > Policy Settings > Desktop Settings.
From the Domino Administrator task bar, click the welcome page database and drag it to the Corporate Welcome Pages database field. This creates a database link.
Optional: From the Default Welcome Page menu, select a welcome page to appear automatically when users log in.
Optional: Click Do not allow users to change their home page to prevent users from creating or selecting a home page other than the default.
Click Save and Close.

Results

Implement these desktop settings in one or more policies, and then assign them to users to finish deploying your custom welcome pages. The changes will deploy to users the next time they log in.

Delaying the deployment of welcome pages

Procedure

If you design and create or if you update a Corporate Welcome Page, but you do not immediately deploy it to users, you can use the administration process to deploy it at a later time. The actual update and distribution of the Corporate Welcome Page can be initiated by using the server console command tell adminp p all.

Modifying and redeploying welcome pages

About this task

Keep your local copy of the welcome page database, and use it to work on any changes you might want to make later. Once the changes to the local database are complete, save the database and copy it to the server again.

You will then need to go back into each of the desktop settings documents that point to the welcome page database and create new database links to the new version. Once this is complete, the changes will deploy to users the next time they log in.

Some modifications to welcome pages are deployed to users, while other changes are not:

When deploying welcome pages, changes to the design are not deployed to users.
Only welcome pages created and updated by the administrator (and those whose titles begin with a $) are deployed to users.
Adding a link to the Launcher can only be done locally. Changes to the Launcher are not deployed to users.
Design changes can only be made locally.