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PRODUCT REVIEW
Four years later: are Ytria's tools still pretty good?
By Mick Moignard
Back in 2003, Benoit Dubuc reviewed Ytria's set of Lotus Notes tools, and liked what he saw. Like Benoit, I'm a developer, but I also spend time as an administrator, do application support, and work as a Lotus Notes consultant.
Decent tools in either Admin or Dev spheres that save time and make things easier are valuable to me. And like Benoit, I have ways of working and likes and dislikes with tools. I'd heard of Ytria's tools, but had never played with them before they asked me to do another review. That means that this review is largely first impressions: do these tools grab me as something that will save me time, are they easy to use and will they be worth the purchase price?
ScanEZ NSF viewer tool
ScanEZ is the the flagship tool in the pack. You could say that this is like NotesPeek on speed and with the ability (in the paid-for version) to write back changes to the Notes database. Once it's installed you get a toolbar icon installed, along with one for each of the other tools that you've installed.
You select a Notes database from bookmark or workspace, or have one open, and click the toolbar icon. First time through you have to go through a somewhat convoluted license validation process (requiring an internet connection), and then you get the main screen, as shown in Figure A.
FIGURE A
 
Here's the ScanEz opening screen on my mail file. Roll over picture for a larger image.
Before we look at what ScanEz allows you to do with the database, let me just tell you about one feature, now. Check the toolbar icons in Figure A, and look for the yellow circle with INI on it.
That's a Notes.INI editor, as shown in Figure B -- and it's in the free version too.
FIGURE B
 
ScanEz's got a Notes.INI editor. Roll over picture for a larger image.
This allows you to scan your Notes.INI and make changes to it, which are saved back to the file as the Notes client is running. Neat, and simple to use. Not completely worth the price of admission, but if your application uses environment variables, this will help with testing.
No, the power if this tool is in exploring Notes databases, and being able to change things. Not just documents, but design elements too -- so clearly care required here!
Figure C shows the editing of a database ACL with ScanEz.
FIGURE C
 
You can see ScanEz's ACL panel, showing Roles. Roll over picture for a larger image.
Note at the top right that you can see the flags or roles listed against all the entries, and also note how the type and access level can be edited right in the display. Add to that all the copy, paste and export buttons on the bottom and you'll start to see the power of ScanEz.
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