Origina Solves HCL Domino Defect: Independent Solution Rolled Out Regardless of Version or Support Level

THE SOLUTION

INDEPENDENT SUPPORT STEPS UP TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM

HCL’s official stance on the Domino bug was that any businesses affected would have to download their fix pack to address the issue and even went so far as to say that  ‘”No TPSS [third-party software support] can fix the issue or mitigate with a work-around.”  

We here at Origina took this claim as a challenge and quickly got to work on a fix for all our Domino customers who were affected. 

We compiled a list of Origina’s current Domino customers and their contacts who have access to our self-service portal (SSP), and a communication was sent advising them not to restart servers or router tasks and, if impacted, to open a support ticket with Origina. Our Domino global independent experts (GIEs) immediately began work on understanding the issue and investigating any potential work-arounds in advance of tickets being logged.  

The issue appeared to only impact Notes Remote Procedure Calls (NRPC) mail routing.  Additionally, it seemed to only affect servers that were routing to another server via an intermediary server.  

If the customer environment was impacted, initial options considered were to either create direct connections between all mail servers or to update the configuration so that all mail routing would be updated to Simple Message Transport Protocol (SMTP). 

Since those two configuration changes would be too significant of a change to a customer’s existing environment, Origina product experts opted for a work-around that implemented changes to hold undeliverable messages within the mail.box.  

This meant a new agent within the mail checker database could monitor the contents of the mail.box and update the hop count of held messages then correctly route them. This solution provided a mail rules agent to fix the router issue related to mail rules along with a mailbox checker agent to resolve the mail routing issue caused by the HCL Domino product defect. 

Origina illustrates the power of independent support 

Origina product experts assisted customers with several different variations of the HCL Domino issue. Here are a few examples. 

• Issue: Message routing in the mail.box is not processed by the mail rules established on a server level.  

• Solution: Origina provided a script in an agent trigger before email arrives, which processes the message and applies the message. 

• Issue: Message routing in the mail files is not processed by the mail rules established on a mail file level (user level). 

• Solution: Origina created a script in an agent trigger before email arrives, which processes the message and applies the message. 

• Issue: Message routing in the mail in database is not processed by the mail rules established on a mail file level with a third-party mail rule database configuration. 

• Solution: Origina developed a script in an agent trigger before email arrives, which processes the message and applies the message. 

Applying these solutions, the issue was fixed by Origina via a work-around, and emails were again being successfully sent and received by the businesses. 

By HCL’s own admission, this problem was a date/time issue in the IBM source code dating back 30 years. This led to HCL’s Global Director of Strategy Uffe Sorensen to comment that “no provider of third-party software support (TPSS) would be able to fix the issue or mitigate it with a work-around.”  

Origina’s GIEs, utilizing their deep knowledge, successfully mitigated the issue without access to the source code and proved HCL wrong.  

This was a huge win for independent software maintenance and support providers and proof that Origina supports our customers above all else, no matter the issue.