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bennyboy76

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GroupWise 6.5 Calendar in multiuser view displays duplicate user.

Hi Experts,

I have Novell Netware 6.0SP5 network, 80-ish users runnning Novell NW Client 4.91SP2 and GW Client 6.5 SP4 on Win2K SP4 OS's. Th GW server is 6.5SP2. A couple of my heavier users of GW calendars eg. secretaries/PA's use multiview calendar quite a lot, mainly in 7 day/week view and selecting well over 10 usernames. They are getting users appearing twice when accessing the multi-user list to select which calendars they want to view simultaneously. The duplicate users are appearing in the multiuser list like so:

Username                  Address

Firstname Surname    surnamef.context.GroupWiseDomain
Firstname Surname    firstname.surname@***.gov.uk

Before I started with the company, the email address naming convention was changed from "surnamef@..." to "firstname.surname@...", Netware usernames are "surnamef", and therefore NDS GW objects are "surnamef".

By and large, the information within the users calendar displays correctly, but this duplication, when viewing many calendars at once, is leading to errors and some of our PA's are struggling and leaning on me to find a fix. I have passified them for now, and am encouraging them as much as possible to use the far easier Busy Search function for finding diary space, but I would be interested to know the cause, and fix if there is one. I have been through the supporting docs for GW admin/client 6.5 SP5 and SP6 and can find no mention of a specific fix for this problem.

Thanks loads in advance
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PsiCop
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Hmmm....interesting.

I think what's happening is that the client is becoming confused on which name associated to the user to retrieve.

I'd open up the Address Book, and look at Name Completion Search Order. Make the GroupWise Address Book the first entry, not the user's Personal Address book or (even worse) Frequent Contacts.

Despite the fact the specific issue is not mentioned in the SP5 docs, it's definitely worth your time to update the affected users to SP5. And you really should update the server components to SP5 as well. SP5 has been out for awhile, I'm not aware of any real issues with it from either the client or server perspective.

I'll note in passing that NetWare v6.0 has been EOLed. SP5 is the last Support Pack for that version of NetWare. There have been some post-SP5 patches. If you are not going to upgrade to NetWare v6.5, or to OES, soon, then I'd suggest applying the Post-SP5 patches to your NetWare v6.0 installation, if you haven't already done so. Optimally, you'd upgrade to either OES or NetWare v6.5.
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bennyboy76

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Many thanks for your advice,

I have applied that change to the affected users and will monitor them closely and demand regular feedback. Is it okay to leave this question open for a couple of days to see what happens?

I know I am a little out of date on both servers and clients. The IT powers that be have been planning to use, but were recently denied, additional budgetary funding to rip everything out and install a new, totally MS environment, which is why I have not carried out any major upgrades recently. I have given them an alternative, and much cheaper, solution based on some new clustered hardware, with OES and GW7. I think that which way we go will depend on who stamps their feet loudest, politics....!

Thanks again for all your advice, I will certainly apply the Post SP5 patches in the mean time.
Sure, leave it open, no problem.

Good to hear that wiser heads prevailed RE: ripping out reliable, cost-effective solutions and replacing them with expensive, insecure bloatware.

And kudos for pointing out that novell's products are multi-platform and come with basic clustering capability included. Hopefully you also pointed out that Novell's licensing is strictly per-user, with no additional per-server or per-CPU charges.
Thanks,

One of the main winners in my "ball-park figure" quote for remaining with Novell was the huge difference in licensing costs. We already pay a shed-load to MS for OS's, Office Suite, Project, Visio blah blah blah, because they are products that users are familiar with. Very much hoping we stick with what we have and develop it.

Without wanting to steal too much of your valuable time, do you have a brief opinion of offering users the Outlook client on GW back end? I know it is possible, but I wondered if it was "real world" possible or the quickest way to a big headache.

Thanks
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PsiCop
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Cool, thanks for that. In all honesty I don't want to go anywhere near it, I just wanted an expert to confirm my niggling suspicion/overall skepticism re OL. From what I know of GW7.0 client it is not exactly lagging behind on the functionality front anyway.

You have been a great help, and its much appreciated.