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music2myear
Asked: 2011-08-30 07:35:10 +0800 CST

Lotus Domino/Notes R6: How do I bulk change Categories in Discussion Group?

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Running Domino/Notes R6 (Yes, I know I'm in the 3rd of Dante's rings running Notes).

We've got a discussion group database (I think it's running the version 4 template of the Discussion Group) and somewhere along the line someone created duplicate categories (keywords, tags) for one of the standard reports we run and post daily, so some days the reports end up in one category and and others days they end up in the other.

It has fallen to me to migrate nearly 700 topics in the incorrect category to the correct one and to remove the incorrect category so as to preven this issue going forward.

However, I'm not finding any admin panel or tool that will allow me to either bulk edit all the topics posted in this category or to merge the two categories, or however Notes developers conceived to do such a thing, if indeed they did.

I have admin account access and access to the Domino Administrator in addition to the Notes client, the console, and all other standard notes admin tool thingies.

What do I do?

UPDATE response to two answers below:

OK, looks like I'll have to read up on @Formula and LotusScript. I'll do a bit of self-education and then get back with the results or further questions (more likely the latter).

UPDATE for Ken's solution below:

So, using the Domino Designer, I've created a new agent in the desired Discussion database, set it to run when I select it from the menu on all selected documents. It runs the formula:

FIELD Category := "05. JCG Daily Loan Report";
SELECT @All

The SELECT @ALL was added by the designer automatically.

I select a few of the desired documents, go to Actions and select my agent "Change Category", a process status window shows briefly the status and goes away once complete. However, the documents are not changed.

In the Designer, the Change Category agent has a check in the No Refresh column. Thinking I had to refresh the database view manually, I pressed F9 in the discussion group after running the agent, but this made no difference.

Right-clicking on the agent in the Designer window, I select Log... and it tells me the agent has never been run.

Where have I gone wrong?

UPDATE further information:

Closing and reopening the Designer I not get a log. It reports that of the 6 documents I'd selected, it modified all 6. However, the documents still have the incorrect category.

Looking through the New Main Topic form, I find in Reference both Categories and Category. Should I be running this script against the Categories?

lotus-notes ibm-domino

3 Answers

  1. You can also write a simple Notes Agent using @Formulas. Here's the code:

    FIELD Category := "Your new category";

    Set the agent to run on selected documents. Then just select the documents and run the agent on them.

    If your category field has multiple values, you can replace values using the @Replace formula:

    FIELD Category := @Replace(Category; "OldCategoryValue"; "NewCategoryValue");
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  2. You can write a Lotusscript Agent to iterate over all documents, read the category field, consolidate the categories and write them back into the document. There is no admin-function for this.

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  3. Best Answer

    I found there was already an Agent in the discussion group database called Categorize. I do not know if this is default or if it was added in our specific implementation. It appears to be default based on how it is referenced throughout the database design and the author name.

    This Categorize agent acts upon all selected documents, opens the Select Categories dialog, and allows you to add or remove category assignments.

    Beyond that, though, struggling with this question gave me a basic familiarity with much of the management and design side of Notes I'd never (had to) look(ed) at before.

    Thank you for your assistance and information.

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