Many Lotus Notes Domino organizations find it useful to parameterize a Lotus Notes view selection to limit its results. The reasons for this are generally twofold:

• Only a portion of all data contained in a view is needed.
• Exporting to other Notes/Domino applications is difficult due to the volume.

Although there's a great need to use parameters to limit the results of the Lotus Notes view, not much has been done because the view is maintained on the server side. This tip explains the methods that one company used to filter Lotus Notes view selections and gives a few real-world examples.

Note: You must have Designer access to accomplish this. Also, make sure that "Create shared folders and views" is enabled on your access control list.

First, create an action button with the following script:

(Click on code for enlarged view and script download.)

Following is an example of the above code in action. The following LotusScript will modify the "view" selection formula to display all documents with the department name specified as "Marketing."

(Click on code for enlarged view and script download.)

This LotusScript code allows you to reset the View to select all documents:

(Click on code for enlarged view and script download.)

Use the following LotusScript to modify the view selection formula so that it displays the documents using the "Prompt" method:

(Click on code for enlarged view and script download.)