Creating Proper Bookmark Actions

Creating a bookmark to an HCL Notes database seems like a simple thing to do. In the HCL Notes client you can choose one of the following options:

1. Choose the menu option File – Open – HCL Notes Application (or press Control-O), and from the Open Application dialog click the Bookmark... button
2. Right-click a database on the workspace and choose Application – Bookmark...
3. Open a database, right-click the tab on the workspace, and choose Create Bookmark...

However, if you do the first two things and bookmark a database directly, you might find that clicking your new bookmark while the database is already open on the workspace will open the database multiple times instead of reusing the already open tab.

You can normally avoid this problem by choosing option 3, creating a database from an open tab. This way if the database opens to a frameset or other design element, you can be sure that the bookmark also points specifically to that design element.

In MarvelClient, there are also multiple ways to create a bookmark for a database. The Bookmark Action supports creation of bookmarks from database links, formulas, and even URLs. But when you create a Bookmark Action using a database link you might run into the same multiple tab problem mentioned above.

Here are some steps to create a "proper" bookmark (one that the Notes client likes) in this case:

Step 1

Make sure MarvelClient is installed and running on your HCL Notes client. You should have at least a MarvelClient Basic license (which is required to use a Bookmark Action anyway).

Step 2

Open the database you want to create a bookmark for in the Notes client by double-clicking its icon on the workspace, and then right-clicking the open tab and choosing Create Bookmark...

Give the bookmark a unique name that will be easy to find in the next step.

Step 3

Close your Notes client. Open the bookmark.xml file in the "Temp" folder of your MarvelClient working directory (if you're not sure where that is, see the article Changing the MarvelClient Working Directory).

Find the bookmark you just created in the bookmark.xml file. It might look similar to this:

<notelink>
 <title>MY NEW DATABASE LINK</title>
 <id>196</id>
 <alias></alias>
 <hidewhenset>false</hidewhenset>
 <hidewhenformula></hidewhenformula>
 <flags>00000000</flags>
 <position>0</position>
 <image><![CDATA[AQD2/ycAAAAAAAMACAAFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG8PFwAneCXBJEljb24=]]></image>
 <openmode>relative</openmode>
 <replicaid>C1257827:00170F6F</replicaid>
 <location></location>
 <unid_view>00000000:00000000:00000000:00000000</unid_view>
 <unid_note>00000000:00000000:00000000:00000000</unid_note>
 <name></name>
 <class>0005</class>
</notelink>

or this:

<namedelement>
 <title>MY NEW DATABASE LINK 2</title>
 <id>200</id>
 <alias></alias>
 <hidewhenset>false</hidewhenset>
 <hidewhenformula></hidewhenformula>
 <flags>00000000</flags>
 <position>0</position>
 <image><![CDATA[AQD2/ycAAAAAAAMACAAFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG8PFwAneCXBJEljb24=]]></image>
 <openmode>relative</openmode>
 <replicaid>C1257827:00170F6F</replicaid>
 <location></location>
 <name>frmmain2</name>
 <class>0006</class>
</namedelement>

Step 4

In the MarvelClient Config database, create a new Bookmark Action.

If your bookmark.xml entry looked like the first example above – with only a <replicaid> entry and a <class> entry of 0005 – you can create a Bookmark Action with a Target-type of "Database" like this:

Note that the ":" was removed from the <replicaid> entry when it was put in the MarvelClient action.

If your bookmark.xml entry looked like the second example above – with a <replicaid> entry and a <name> entry – you can create a Bookmark Action with a Target-type of "Named Element" like this:

Note that the Name(d Elem) item came from the <name> entry in the bookmark.xml and the Class item came from the <class> entry (without the leading zeros).