Enabling RSS feeds for Domino Web Access

[Christopher]

Enabling RSS feeds for Domino Web Access
You can enable RSS feeds for IBM® Lotus® Domino™ Web Access mail. When feeds are enabled, a feeds icon displays in the Inbox. Then, feed readers that are built into browsers or that have browser extensions, automatically detect that a feed link is present from a user's Domino Web Access Inbox. If enabled, users can subscribe to the feed so that the feed reader application detects new mail. Since Domino Web Access mail files are generally not accessible by anonymous users, the feed reader application must support storing authentication information to the mail server to retrieve the latest feed.

You should be aware that HTTP traffic to your IBM® Lotus® Domino™ mail server may increase if many users subscribe to these feeds within external feed readers.

Note External feed readers will not be able to properly authenticate to the Domino server if forms-based authentication is in use. By default, basic authentication is enabled for feed requests. See the section below "Disabling basic authentication for feeds" for additional information.

Use the Notes.ini variables listed below to enable RSS feeds for Domino Web Access mail.

iNotes_WA_Feeds
Use this setting to enable feeds. The default setting is not specified (no feeds are enabled or advertised). Possible values to enable feeds are:


      iNotes_WA_Feeds=rss

      iNotes_WA_Feeds=atom

      iNotes_WA_Feeds=atom,rss


The default URL format to retrieve the feeds are as follows:


      <mailfile>/iNotes/Proxy/?OpenDocument&Form=s_RSS&NKA (for RSS)

      <mailfile>/iNotes/Proxy/?OpenDocument&Form=s_Atom&NKA (for Atom)


iNotes_WA_FeedsSecured
(Optional) Use this setting to enable non-HTTP (non-secure) feeds. By default only secure feeds are enabled to the mail file. This is to avoid insecure authentication occurring as part of a feed retrieval. Use the setting iNotes_WA_FeedsSecured=1 (the default) to allow feeds to be accessed via http rather than https.

iNotes_WA_FeedsProtocol
(Optional) Use this setting to have further control of the feed protocol advertised by the Inbox page. It is applicable only when iNotes_WA_FeedsSecured is disabled (set to 0). The default value for this setting is not specified, which means that advertised feed uses the same protocol as the current page on which the feed advertisement occurs.

Possible values are:


      iNotes_WA_FeedsProtocol=http (http is the default advertising protocol)

      iNotes_WA_FeedsProtocol=https (http is the default advertising protocol)

      iNotes_WA_FeedsProtocol=not specified (default)


Disabling basic authentication for feeds
By default, Domino Web Access forces basic authentication for feeds. You can disable that authentication using the following Notes.ini settings:


      iNotes_WA_DisableForceBasicAuthForFeeds=1 (to disable basic authentication for both Atom and RSS requests)

      iNotes_WA_DisableForceBasicAuthForRSS=1 (to disable basic authentication for RSS requests only)

      iNotes_WA_DisableForceBasicAuthForAtom=1 (to disable basic authentication for Atom requests only)


Note A current listing of Domino Web Access NOTES.INI settings can be found on the Lotus developerWorks Web site at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/notes-ini/.

See also