Linking to Lotus Notes DB from within SharePoint

Strange, for years I managed to stay away from Lotus Notes... but lately I'm being sucked in to the vortex.

Biggest thing which annoys me, is that it's not that easy to link to a Lotus Notes DB from within SharePoint. Take following example;

• a customer comes to you and says: "hey, I don't like Notes anymore... give me some SharePoint"
• you're like "ok, with pleasure"
• and then you realize that it will take some time to get everything over to SharePoint... so you'll need a way to create links between the two platforms.

What's the main problem here? Well, SharePoint only likes the default prefixes in URL's; such as HTTP, FTP, ... nowhere in the list you'll find 'notes://'. If you're like me, then you've already tried to enter the notes-link no matter what SharePoint is telling you... and you'll have noticed that it doesn't work (you'll get an 'invalid URL' message).

Luckily, there is a way to get around this (there are a couple of them... but this is the easiest one IMHO):
You will need:

• a link to a notes-DB
• a page in your site (web part page)

Follow these steps:

• go to your web part page
• add a 'content editor' web part
• edit the content editor web part and select the 'Source' option (not the RTF-editor!)
• paste following in the editor:

<A href="link to your notes-DB" target=_blank>Link to my notes location</A>

• then save and click OK in your web part tool pane

Congratz... you've got yourself a link to a Notes DB (that works and isn't that hard to create).

For those looking for a more development angle for creating notes-links in lists; check this link.