10 Minute Guide to Lotus Notes 4.0

Lesson 13

Managing Databases

In this lesson, you learn about access rights. You also learn to scan a database for unread documents, read those documents, and remove a database.

Understanding Access Rights

Notes enables you to perform certain tasks in a database—such as editing, deleting, and copying—only if you have rights to do so. Either the creator of a database or t he database manager decides and assigns access rights to the users of the database. Some people may be allowed to create documents for the database, and others may be allowed only to read documents from the database.

The manager of a database assigns rights to various people through the access control list. The manager can assign any of seven user access levels, each of which brings with it certain privileges. The following list describes each user access le vel in an access control list:

Manager The manager has the right to perform any and all functions within the database, including assigning access rights to others on the network and deleting the database.
Designer The designer can create, modify, and delete documents, as well as create and modify forms and views.
Editor The editor can create, modify, and delete documents in a database, including documents created by others.
Author The author can create and read documents. An author can modify his or her own documents, but he or she can only read others’ documents.
Reader A reader can only read documents in the database.
Depositor A depositor can only add items to a database.
No Access Prevents the user from performing operations within a document or accessing the document at all.

Forms and Views

Designing and creating forms and views is part of designing your own database, which is beyond the scope o f this book. To learn more about designing your own database, pick up Que’s Special Edition Using Lotus Notes. On the other hand, creating a database and documents is covered in Lesson 16.

Your access rights may vary from one database to another. To find out your access rights in any database, click the Access button on the Status bar (the third button from the right). The Status bar’s message area displays your access level, as sho wn in Figure 13.1. In addition, the Groups and Roles dialog box appears, in which you can view your access level. Click Done to close the dialog box.

Figure 13.1 The Status bar shows your level of access rights.

As you work with databases and documents, remember that you may not have the access you need to perform all procedures you want to perform.

Copying a Database

You can copy a database from your local drive to another folder or drive, or from a server to your local drive. You might want to copy a database for easier access or availability, for example. To c opy a database to another location, follow these steps:

In the open database, choose File, Database, New Copy. The Copy Database dialog box appears (see Figure 13.2).

Figure 13.2 You can copy a database and all of its documents, but not just one or two documents from a database.

In the Server drop-down list, choose either Local or the server to which you want to copy the database.
In the Title text box, use the original title or enter another name for the database.
In the File Name text box, use the default file name or enter a new one. If necessary, click the folder icon to change locations. Notes displays the Choose a folder dialog box shown in Figure 13.3.
Choose a drive and folder in which to place the copied database and click OK.
Click OK again in the Copy Database dialog box, and Notes copies the database. Notes also adds a database icon for the copied database to the active workspace page.

Figure 13.3 Copy the file to your local drive for your own personal use.

Move the Icon

If you want, you can move the copied database icon from one workspace page to another by clicking and dragging the icon to any page tab in your workspace.

Scanning a Database

If your company uses many databases in which documents are added and updated daily, you may want to use the Notes scan feature to locate documents you have not yet read. This saves you from having to wade through each database every day.

Identifying the Databases

Before you can scan databases, you must identify those databases to Notes. Make sure no databases are selected, and then follow these steps:

In your workspace, choose Edit, Unread Marks, Scan Unread. The Scan Unread dialog box appears (see Figure 13.4).
Click the Choose Preferred button. The Scan Unread Preferred Setup dialog box appears (see Figure 13.5).

Figure 13.4 Choose which databases you want to scan for new or updated documents.

Figure 13.5 Scan those databases you use the most.

Select the databases you want to scan. Notes automatically scans any database with a hyphen in front of it.
(Optional) Choose the Start Scanner at Notes startup check box if you want Notes to scan automatically each time you start the program.
Click OK to return to the Scan Unread dialog box. Choose Done.

Scanning and Reading

You can scan one database or multiple databases for new additions. Follow these steps to scan the database.

In the workspace page, choose View, Show Unread. A box appears in each database icon showing the number of unread documents in that database (see Figure 13.6).
To refresh the scanned view at any time, choose View, Refresh Unread Count.

Figure 13.6 Each icon shows the number of unread documents.

To read unread documents in a database, select the database and choose Edit, Unread Marks, Scan Unread. The first document appears for you to read.

SmartIcon Shortcuts

Use the Navigate Next Unread and Navigate Previous Unread SmartIcons as shortcuts for browsing through unread documents.

Close that document, and the next unread document appears.

Repeat step 4 until Notes has displayed all unread documents in the database.

Removing a Database

You can remove any database from a workspace page. To do so, right-click on the database to reveal the shortcut menu, choose Remove from Workspa ce, and choose Yes in the confirmation dialog box. Notes removes the database icon, but the database data remains on the local or network drive.

To remove a database from your local drive, open the Windows Explorer, select the database file you want to remove (look for NSF extensions), and press the Delete key. Confirm the deletion, and then close the Windows Explorer.

Using OS/2…

To delete a file from your hard drive in OS/2, open the OS/2 System folder on your desktop. In the System folder, double-click the Drives icon to open the icon view of your drives. Then double-click on the drive containing the file you want to delete. By default, you see the tree view of this drive. You can double-click on any directory to view its contents. When you find the file you want to delete, right-click on its file icon and select Delete from the shortcut menu. When asked to confirm the deletion, click Yes if you’re certain that yo u really want to delete the file.

In this lesson, you learned about access control. In addition, you learned how to copy a database, scan a database for unread documents, read those documents, and remove a database from a workspace page. In the next lesson, you’ll learn how to joi n a discussion group.