Lotus Notes Content Bridge

Building Content

The Lotus Notes Content Bridge reads a Lotus Notes database and, based on the views it is configured to read, iterates through each of the Notes contained in that view. By iterating through the view, the content bridge is able to determine the hierarchical structure of the view and add this structure to the NXT 4 site at an appropriately designated point in the NXT 4 table of contents.

As the content bridge iterates through the view, it retrieves each Note, converts it to an XML representation, and indexes the XML along with any attachments associated with the Note. Every XML representation, attachment, and image is given an internal ID that can be used to retrieve it at a later stage. NXT 4 uses this ID to create the internal association between indexed terms and the documents (Notes) in which they are found, and can be used to link from one document to another. Once the Note has been indexed, users can perform full-text searches against the content from within an NXT 4 site.

Displaying Content

The Lotus Notes Content Bridge indexes and serves the XML content, but to be useful, this content should be rendered in an appropriate fashion on the browser. For this reason, each XML document sent to the browser should contain a reference to an XSL stylesheet that performs the required translation and rendering. Generally, this stylesheet should replicate the look of the Notes Form through which the content is normally displayed.

The Lotus Notes Content Bridge installation provides a generic stylesheet, LNGeneric.xsl (in the NXT 4\Templates directory) that you can use to display all the fields and the corresponding text in a table. Once you are familiar with how the stylesheet works, you can also use it as a guide for creating a stylesheet that is more specific to the form. You can also create your own custom stylesheet for each form in your Notes database, or you can have Rocket Professional Services create stylesheets for you.

To help you create a custom stylesheet, use the LNFormToXSL utility (in the NXT 4\bin directory). This utility can help you begin to create an XSL stylesheet that is appropriate for a form, but you may need to manually edit the resulting stylesheet in order to customize how the documents display in NXT 4.

Configuring the Content Bridge

Configuring the Lotus Notes Content Bridge is quite similar to the File System Content Bridge, since it shares the same content bridge properties. Complete information about configuring and using the Lotus Notes Content Bridge can be found in the Lotus Notes Content Bridge Help file that is installed with the content bridge.