Using the LinkedIn Contact Importer for Lotus Notes

tarix	24.06.2016
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Using the LinkedIn Contact Importer for Lotus Notes

A free tool from Acadia Services & Solutions, LLC

http://www.acadiasolutions.com

This tool was designed to ease the integration of contacts/connections made on the LinkedIn Social Networking website and the Lotus Notes Personal Address Book. With this integration it is possible to leverage the contacts/connections you have made, and keep the information up to date. In order to use the tool, you must copy the provided ImporterOnly.nsf (available for download at the following web address, and after a short registration. http://www.acadiasolutions.com/A55937/website.nsf/SlikToolHome.html?OpenPage&LIReqNB).
Once the NSF is on your system open Lotus Notes, and then open the NSF you just downloaded and copied somewhere on your system. In order to do this, go to the File Menu, then choose Database, and then choose Open. If you copied the file to a folder in your Lotus Notes data directory, then it will appear in the provided list, it should look something like this:

If you cannot locate from this initial window, you can access any file using the Browse button in the lower right hand corner of the FileDatabaseOpen window (shown above). From there you can locate the file anywhere on your system. Once the file is located and selected, click the Open button in the upper right corner of the FileDatabaseOpen dialog box (shown above).
When the database opens for the first time, you will see a brief “About Database” document that has some licensing information, in essence you can use this for yourself or distribute it freely to others, but it may not be sold or repackaged for sale in any way, with out an agreement with Acadia Services & Solutions, LLC. After reading the “About Document” you can close the window and you will be in the application – you are ready to begin importing your LinkedIn contacts and synchronizing them with your Lotus Notes Personal Address Book.

As you can see from the image above, there are a few areas of configuration that are associated to each import. The next few points will break down each in a logical way. First, note the path next to the “CSV of LinkedIn Contacts” at the top. You will not see a path there in your application until you complete an import successfully. Yours will be blank at this time.
The first thing that must be done before using the import tool is to go to LinkedIn and download your contacts in a CSV format that is compatible with this tool. Currently three (3) of the CSV formats provided by LinkedIn are supported. MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express, and Yahoo!. Choose any of those three formats and export your contacts. In order to do this, use the following link to get to the CSV export from LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/addressBookExport
Once the CSV is created, use the Browse button in the Contact Importer (shown above) to select the CSV you just downloaded from LinkedIn.

Next, you need to make some decisions about this import, for example, do you only want it to update the Address Book, or are you an iNotes/DWA user and you want these contacts to be available from the web? Or do you only want new contacts added, but no other updates to be made? Or are there contacts with certain internet addresses you want to exclude from importing? The details to these decisions follow.
Just the Address Book, or iNotes/DWA as well
If you use your mail file thru a browser and you use the iNotes or DWA template to do so, then you have the option to have your contacts synchronize with your mail file so that the contacts are available from the web. In Notes 6 and 7 this is a manual process which you may or may not already do regularly. Either way, if you want this import process to update the address book and then synchronize with your iNotes/DWA mail file, choose the check box labeled ‘Synch with iNotes’ (shown below)

If the ‘Synch With iNotes’ is checked, then after the import is run, then the agent used to synchronize the contacts into the iNotes/DWA mail file will be triggered and start the synchronization so you don’t have to.
Update all or just add new contacts
Most of the time, I think users will use the update feature of this tool, as it adds any new contacts, but also updates information for any existing contact already added. However, you may have many contacts with just a few additions, so you could choose to just add the new contacts and do nothing with the existing ones. That is where the following radio buttons come in

Choosing the Update option (which is also the default) will, as the text explains in the above screen shot, update existing contacts and add any new ones. If you only want to add the new contacts in the CSV file, choose the “No Change” option.
Skipping contacts by domain
There may be times where you have contacts in LinkedIn that you don’t want to import into your Lotus Notes Address Book. For example, if you have a contact in LinkedIn that works for your company. Having them in the Domino Directory and Personal Address Book can cause some addressing issues. Since they are in the Domino Directory anyway, you don’t need them in the Personal Address Book, so you can choose to “skip” those contacts by their domain name. The ‘Add Mine’ button (shown below) will add the internet domain you are a member of, but you can add whatever domain names you choose. For example, IBM has ‘us.ibm.com’ and others like ‘dk.ibm.com’. The skip domain feature eliminates based on the entire domain after an @ sign. So, in the case of the ‘ibm.com’ domain, a user would need to enter all of the domains to eliminate them all, using ibm.com will not suffice.

The Import
Once done making all your settings, click the ‘Import’ button near the lower right and an import/synch will occur. There are some items during the import you should be aware of.

If your personal address book is not located in the data directory an called “names.nsf” the tool should still locate it using the required Notes.INI variable. If more than one local address book is configured, you will be prompted to supply which Personal Address Book you want this synchronization to occur with.
During the import a status is updated on the status bar, but also when the import is complete and message box displays with the results. If you “eliminated” LinkedIn contacts, the tool will recognize that those contact(s) are no longer in the CSV but they are in your Personal Address Book. The final status message will inform you of possible deletions, but in addition, a new section will appear listing the possible deletions and giving you a tool to delete them all or be selective about which ones you will delete.

Getting Help
Since the tool is fairly straight forward, there is not much help. Below the import tool interface there are two (2) sections with help information. One is on using the tool, the other detailing common error messages.