A picture of the final solution
I always like to give a big picture of the final solution before going into details about how I did it. In Figure A, you can see a screen shot of how the Address Book Creator application looks on the Web.

FIGURE A


Here's a picture of how the Address Book Creator application looks on the Web Roll over picture for a larger image.

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You can download a Notes database containing all of the elements of the solution at http://dan.velasco.com. You can also find all of the LotusScript code listed there as well. I won't go over every element of the solution here, but will instead focus on the key parts that were difficult to figure out so you will have an easier time creating similar applications.

I do want to emphasize here that you can adapt this application for many similar uses. Don't be limited by the fact that the solution I've outlined here exports information from Notes for import into handheld devices. You can import information into any application that accepts CSV-formatted files.

The five hurdles
Here are the five hurdles to creating the application that you should know about:

• Overcoming the lack of native multiple-item selection on the Web;

• Using the DocumentContext property of the NotesSession class;

• Properly signing the agent so it has sufficient rights;

• Figuring out the correct file structure of the server so you can temporarily place a file there;

• Deleting the file off of the server once it has been created.

Let's go through these hurdles individually and I'll detail how to overcome them.

Enabling multiple-item selection on the Web
Fortunately for me, this was a fairly easy problem to solve, courtesy of Steve Devoll of Workflow Designs in Dallas (the Top Gun class people). He had given a presentation at Advisor DevCon in October 1998 that outlined the solution to exactly this problem. What you do is to mix a little old-fashioned HTML and Posting commands into your view and view template and then use a "catcher" form to basically can get a handle on multiple items by their UNIDs.

You can see how you can put checkboxes onto the page that will calculate to the UNID of the document in Figure B.

FIGURE B


The User Information View on the Web uses HTML to capture the UNID via a checkbox. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The other essential component for making the multiple-item selection work is the $$ViewTemplate for the User Information Web View. You can see how this form looks in Figure C.

FIGURE C


Here you can see the $$ViewTemplate form for the User Information Web View. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The key part of this form is the line of HTML that tells the browser to send all of the UNIDs of all of the documents selected to the "CreateAddressBookForm" and then tells the browser to create a new document. Here's the code that makes this happen: