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Change Manager 3.0 Ready for R8!
View a Flash Demo Change Control, Management and Auditing for Domino Servers

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The Change Manager for Domino provides change control,
management and auditing for ALL Domino Server R6+
Download Directory
configuration and security settings (including Policies and
Templates
Groups), as well as allowing Benchmarking, Server
Configuration comparisons and Directory validation.
Testimonials
This proactively assists ITIL and Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance,
Licensing
Problem Solving and Quality Assurance of changes, especially if
servers in your environment are maintained by multiple
Administrators.
For example, if John in London wants to disable mail routing,
then Mary in New York can decline the change before it's
implemented. She can also approve it, return it for more
information etc. Even if you choose not to enforce Change
Control, Mary can still be alerted to the change and revert it
before it causes any problems. If John later uses an agent to
set FormulaTimeout=0.1, Mary is alerted to an unauthorised
change, and can also easily see that this change caused all her
agents to stop working.
The Change Manager differs from the native Domino Domain
Monitoring (which reports on the availability and performance
of server tasks, and differences in security settings), by
reporting on ANY change to Server configurations for R6 and
above, including Policies and Groups. All configuration &
security settings in the NOTES.INI file and Directory can be
subject to change control, change reporting, benchmarking and
comparisons, including ACL, NOTES.INIs and Administration
Groups.
You can also monitor individual Servers, Server Groups (i.e. 'All
Mail Servers'), and/or entire Domains.
"The software is really doing it's job for us. We
used to have lots of unidentified/unexplained
changes, now we have none." - Walter Pidwarko,
Lotus Notes Administrator, Hastings Deering
(Australia) Ltd.
"With such a large domain to keep track of, it
has eased the ability to see when changes are
made and what they have affected, and who the
changes have been made by. Very easy to
implement too, which was encouraging. Highly
recommended." - Rachael Trudgeon, Domino
Administrator, New Zealand Ministry of Health.
"I like the change logging. Now when something
doesn't work and a programmer asks what
changed, I can show them. It is also nice to see
what is different in the INI file when setting up a
new server." - Norman Sprunger, Mennonite
Mutual Aid, US.
"An excellent tool to monitor and follow all
security-relevant issues like Administration
groups and security settings in the server
documents." - Sascha Witt, Olympus Europe,
Germany.
"One of the best products I have tested for Lotus
Domino." - Ingo Kloos, Computerservice Kloos,
Germany.

NEW! White Paper on ITIL/SOX compliance for Domino Servers

Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance
The Change Manager is the only currently available product that controls changes to Domino Server configurations -
thus complementing your Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Specifically, the Change Manager can help you provide;

Risk Assessment. IT Management need to understand how your Domino system is being used, including the
current level and accuracy of existing documentation. The Change Manager automatically provides this by
recording all aspects of your Server Configurations in one place, including such diverse elements as Group
Server configurations, NOTES.INI files, Administrator Groups, User Policies, and Web configurations. This
results in a real-time and historical record of all configuration elements, including all changes (i.e. what
changed, who made the change, when, and why).
Control Activities. The Change Manager provides automatic Control activities to ensure that the necessary
actions are taken to address risks when undertaking changes to your environment. The out-of-the-box
functions of the Change Manager include Approvals/Authorisations, verification, reconciliation, security of
assets and the segregation of duties. For example, you can assign a local expert responsibility for verifying and
approving changes to the Web environment for a single server (or a group of servers), and another expert
responsibility for the User Policy environment.
Monitoring. The Change Manager automatically monitors the configuration of your Domino servers, alerting
specified people to both authorised and unauthorised changes. This automatic auditing can be performed as
often as every 15 minutes. Historical configurations and changes are retained and available.
Information and Communication. Automatic notification of changes to your Domino Server environment
allows Administrators an accurate, easy way to pro-actively identify and address areas of risk, as well as
providing a 'heads-up' for interested parties. This ensures there are no surprises, and appropriate staff can
react to issues as they occur. This also demonstrates to management Domino compliance with your
Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.
Material Events. Customisable, automatic notifications of configuration changes assists Administrators to
monitor Material Events that may have a negative impact on the Server environment, and/or otherwise go
unnoticed.

The ITIL Framework

The ability to understand the configuration of your environment, and changes to it, are a key part of the ITIL
Framework. The Change Manager is the only currently available product that controls changes to Domino Server

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configurations - thereby supporting the ITIL Framework.

Change Management. By using the automated Change Manager Approval Process, you can easily apply
standardised methods, approvers and procedures to control potentially high-risk changes to your environment.
For instance, Administrator A might approve all Policy Changes for the 'Application Servers' group, whereas
Administrator B approves all Web changes for the ACMEWEB Domain. This Change Approval process is highly
customisable, for example to include multiple Approvers for certain requests, or include Courtesy emails.
Configuration Management. The Change Manager acts as a CMDB for Domino Servers configurations, by
recording all current and historic Configuration Items, the relationship between them, and any changes to them
(including who changed them, when and why). This means you can also examine different server
configurations (for example NOTES.INI files line-by-line), to see how your environment matches up.
Problem and Incident Management. The in-built Approval Process will prevent Incidents and Problems
related to configuration changes before they occur. However if you choose not to use it, you can still get
advance warning of potential Incidents by being alerted to configuration changes made by others, and quickly
resolve known Incidents by checking for related configuration changes.
Security Management. The same Notification and Approval processes mentioned above also relate to
security. For instance the Approval Process would normally stop Administrator A from adding * to the 'Full
Access Administrators' field, but even if you choose not to use it, you can quickly advise the right person
automatically to any otherwise unrecorded security breach.
Service Delivery. Ensure efficient Service Delivery by using the Change Managers' Capacity Management
tools: These include Benchmarking, Server Comparisons, NOTES.INI Comparisons, and Directory Validation to
measure the differences in your environment, identify possible bottlenecks, and ensure Servers conform to a
known standard.

Also, by using our Workflow and Approval functions, you can set up processes and procedures (including multiple
Approvers) for certain requests. This allows greater accuracy in determining SLA's, OLA's, and KPI's.

Change Manager Features

Enhances the security of your Domino environment by applying Change Control to Server Configurations,
Policies and Groups.
Alerts you to any changes made to the configuration and security settings of Domino servers, authorised or
unauthorised.
Provides Quality Control by allowing you to verify configuration changes being made by other Administrators.
Retains a history of changes to allow you to keep an audit trail of changes to your environment.
Allows you to measure server configurations against benchmarks, regardless of Domain.
Allows you to compare the configurations of different servers, regardless of Domain.
Allows you to compare Server NOTES.INIs line-by-line.
Allows you to validate Hub-Spoke topologies, e.g. ensure the Directory is the same on all servers.
Alerts you when servers are unavailable.
Automatically installs and removes itself on remote servers.
Logs all successful actions and errors.
Can be reset at any time.

Change Manager Process

An agent in the Change Manager database contacts each server that you want to process (e.g. that you list in
each Server Monitor document).
This agent creates a Reflect database on the remote server if it does not exist already.
The Server Monitor document is copied to the Reflect database.
An agent in the Reflect database reads this document and emails the required configuration elements back to
the Change Manager database (note that the design of this agent is unhidden in the demo version so that you
can verify it's function).
Further agents in the Change Manager database then process the returned information.

By using this process the resource requirements are very low on the remote servers.

Change Manager Functions

Specify which configuration elements to monitor, i.e. Server Documents, Server Configuration Documents (incl.
Mail Rules), Program Documents, Policies, Web Configuration Documents, Administrator Groups, Directory ACL,
Connection Documents, Domain Documents and Server NOTES.INIs.
Apply Change Control to these elements, including different Approvers per element, Approve/Decline/Return
for More Information, allow Approvers to edit without Change Controls, do/don't log authorised changes etc.
Automatically create Change Reports and email specific people when any configuration element is added,
removed or changed, including what changed, when and by whom. Opening a Change Report takes the user to
the reporting document with the change highlighted.
Allow validation of Spoke Server configurations against the configuration described on the Hub - e.g. show that
Spoke X has or has not got a correct replica of the directory from Hub Y.
Email a list of people if a server cannot be contacted. This allows you to easily monitor which servers are
available (for example first thing in the morning).
Automatically create a Change Request or edit the Directory document on the correct server.
Select how often the Change Manager runs, per Monitor, and how long Server Reports and Change Reports are
retained.
Create Benchmarks and Benchmark Comparisons. This allows you to turn any configuration element into a
Benchmark and compare other servers against it.
Create dynamic Comparison Tables. These are tables of configuration settings for a range of servers across
Domains, so that Server configurations (e.g. for all mail servers) can be compared in one place.
Compare the NOTES.INI files line-by-line from different servers, showing what is different, missing, and the
same.

Comparing server configurations allows you to easily see where improvements could be made, e.g. that all Mail
servers (regardless of what Domain they are in) have the same settings for MailTimeoutMinutes in the NOTES.INI, the

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same number of mailboxes (from the Server Configuration Document) and the same Mail tasks (from the Server
Document).

For more information, please;

View a Flash Demo

Download a Demonstration Copy
See our Licensing details
Contact us

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