Configuring Advanced Traveler 8.5.1 Settings on the iPhone Part 1

Dec's Dom Blog

Monday, August 31, 2009 9:23 AM

So in my last blog entry I mentioned just how simple it was to get up and running with IBM Lotus Traveler on the Apple iPhone. If you just want the basics out of the box with syncing of email, calendar and contacts then you don't really need to read this blog entry, but if you want to learn a few of the secrets of managing the iPhone in an enterprise environment then all is about to be revealed...

When you point your iPhone to the IBM Lotus Traveler URL on your server and get it to provision your iPhone all it is doing is generating a specially crafted XML file and downloading it to the iPhone. The XML file that is generated is based on a template that contains a few keywords that are replaced during runtime with the users name and other details. The XML file that is used is very basic and only contains settings for the ActiveSync settings but it could contain a whole lot more.

Over on the [Apple support website] you can fine the 'iPhone Configuration Utility V2' for both Mac and Windows. This utility will assist in creating a new XML file that you can use as the template that Traveler will use for iPhone users. Download the utility and we'll get started...

Once the application is installed and started we are just going to be interested in the the 'Configuration Profiles' section. Click on this section in the navigator and then click the button to create a new configuration profile.

In the general settings for the configuration profile you will need to provide some basic details. In the screenshot below I have specified the default settings that IBM are using in the XML file that Lotus Traveler is using. Here we come across the first keyword ILNT_User which is replaced by the users name when they provision their device. Personally I have shorten our XML file to just read 'Lotus Notes for ILNT_Users' as I feel that it fits better in the iPhone's mail accounts page. You could also customize the organization name to match your company name.

Also on this page is a section to specify if the end user is allowed to remove the profile from their device or not. The default IBM Lotus Traveler file has this set to always but you could set it up so that the end user cannot remove the profile without wiping the device or that it can only be removed when a password is supplied.

Next we'll configure the settings for 'Microsoft ActiveSync'. Select the Microsoft ActiveSync option on the navigator and click the button to add a ActiveSync config to the file. You'll see a configuration pane similar to the following screenshot. I have filled in most of the default settings that IBM are using in the default traveler files. You can see a few more keywords here, ILNT_HostName, ILNT_HostPath and ILNT_Address. You should be able to figure out what each one is for.

We now have a iPhone configuration profile that matches the one that IBM Lotus Notes Traveler uses out of the box. We can test it by exporting the file by clicking on the export button in the toolbar. Make sure you select the 'None' option when asked about security so that the XML file that is generated will be in plain text.

The file will be saved at whatever location you have specified with the extension .MobileConfig, copy the file and change the entire file name to Apple.xml and then open the file in a standard text editor. There is one small change that needs to be made that can't be done from the iPhone Configuration Utility. In the ActiveSync settings there is an option for SSL, It can be set to either True or False. In the XML file you can replace this with ILNT_HostProtocol and it will automatically be replaced with the correct value when the end user is generating their profile.

Now we put our new APPLE.XML file into the C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Domino\data\traveler\cfg\client directory on our IBM Lotus Notes Traveler server and when users generate profiles for their devices they will start using the new settings.

All we have done here is use the iPhone Configuration Utility to create a profile document that matches the one that IBM supplies out of the box. In the next part we'll have a look at some of the other features that we can use the iPhone Configuration Utility to add to the profile.

IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1 is prerelease software and there are no guarantees from IBM that the functionality presented will be in the final shipping product.

Declan Sciolla-Lynch |

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Monday, August 31, 2009 9:23 AM

Dec's Dom Blog

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