CODEWITHSUNDEEP
lotus-domino
Matt Smith
Matt Smith

Reputation: 123

Is there a way to add a "no-readers" field to a Lotus Notes document?

In Lotus Notes/Domino, we have the functionality of Readers fields, which I know all about. These say who CAN see a document. I would like to know if there is some way (may be undocumented) where you can have that type of thing that says specifically who CANNOT see a certain document.

We have an application for HR, and some of the documents in there reflect negatively about certain people (complaints, for example) and everyone who has access to the database currently can see every document. I would like to hide this type of document from that specific person. I have not enacted any Readers fields on any documents in question.

It would be really nice to have a way to keep that current setup, but insert a factor of who to HIDE the document from like Readers fields do.

I know there are undocumented features people have learned about over the years, and wondered if anyone knows of such a thing that I can use.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 176

Answers (3)

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz

Reputation: 14628

No, there is no feature that does what you want. Not on a user-by-user basis. You can play with groups and roles, as suggested by Rob Mason, but those groups and roles have to be pre-determined. We asked for Non-Readers fields (at least) 20 years ago so that we could do what you want, but Iris, Lotus, IBM, and HCL never did it. I presume that either (a) it's hard, or (b) there isn't enough demand. Or both.

To hide content from specific people, you can use hide-when formulas within a form. I.e., the hide-when formula on one or more sensitive fields would be set to

@isMember(@UserName; RestrictedUsers)

where RestrictedUsers is a field that contains the list of people who cannot see the data in the fields.

But this is not real security. A user can see the document in views, and can see the hidden fields by bringing up the document properties dialog, or with a tool like NotesPeek. If you're talking about a Domino web app, and users don't have Notes clients and you have strictly-managed desktops so you are sure that is the case+, then it kind of sort of works. Admins and developers, though, would probably have the clients and would be able to see fields in documents that they're not supposed to.

Upvotes: 2

Rob Mason
Rob Mason

Reputation: 1417

Create a role called [ReadAll].

Create a Group called HR Readers and one called HR Restricted.

Add the people who can't read documents to the HR Restricted group. Add all others to HR Readers.

Add these two groups to the ACL and give the HR Readers group the [ReadAll] role.

Add a readers field that is computed to "[ReadAll]" on the documents you want to prevent the people in the "HR Restricted" group to not see.

Upvotes: 2

Matt Smith
Matt Smith

Reputation: 123

I believe if I simply compute a Readers field to say something like:

whoToHideFrom:="John Smith/org"; @Name([ABBREVIATE];@Username) != whoToHideFrom

I will try this and mark this as successful or not successful after I test it

Upvotes: -1

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