Without going through all of it, basically this formula populates the column with a variety of content from the documents selected into the view, so creating an entry in the view for anything that might be used in a mail address. Note that this is a sorted and categorised column, so it creates a view entry for every value that the formula returns.

That means that each person record will appear several times in the view, making matching on various parts of the name easier for the router to accomplish. Remember, the ultimate aim is to identify a document that might contain delivery point information -- a person document, a group, or a mail-in database. For a person, that means it contains an entry for:

• firstname
• lastname
• common name
• all values in the Shortname field
• all values in the Fullname field, represented as both common names and abbreviated names. That's the User Name field on the person form. Common and Abbreviated names are based on the canonical form of the name -- that's the one like CN=Mick Moignard/OU=Group/O=Unipart. Abbreviated that's Mick Moignard/Group/Unipart, and the common name is Mick Moignard. Do make sure always that the first name in your Fullname fields is the full, canonical, form of the person's name.
• Soundex of the last name. That's the M256 entry. The Soundex value is a "sounds like", so it identifies similar sounding last names. It makes Smith and Smythe look similar, so simple misspellings of names can be handled. This also drives the ambiguous names dialog that you sometime see in the Notes client.
• the Alternate name field. This is used where other character sets are used, so that the same name can be represented in, say, both Chinese characters and the western, English, form of the name.
• the Internet address
• and lastly the network user name, used for sync with NT networks.

And similarly for Groups, Mail-In databases, and so on. None of this is hugely new. ($Users) has looked like this since 4.6 and earlier. It's one reason why Notes mail is so powerful, and sometimes so painful.

It enables you to place personal nicknames in the person document Fullname field, and they will work for mail delivery. Similarly you can have multiple Internet addresses for people. Place them in Shortname or Fullname, and they work. Note also how Notes places both old and new versions of names in the Fullname field during name-change processing, so mail will deliver correctly whichever name version is used.

If your first name is unique in the address book, you can mail to first names, or last names. Some spammers take advantage of this. The Soundex value even allows a match on something that isn't in the address book, but which will Soundex to a value that is (Moignard is M256, and so is Moygnard and Mognard). Means you can mis-spell my name, and still get delivered (unless I have the setting to require exact matches turned on). Remember, though, that if there are multiple matches, Domino won't deliver the mail. That's why there are so many different values included -- it gives Domino the maximum chance of a unique match, that will enable it to deliver the mail.

So, you can see, there's a wee bit more to ($Users) than first appears. Oh, and the brackets () round the name mean it's a hidden view. Come full circle. Hold down Ctrl-Shift while selecting View/GoTo, and Notes shows all the hidden views as well.

Steve Niles is Senior Editor for ZATZ Publishing. He is also an independent filmmaker and freelance writer. For more information, visit http://www.sn-films.com.