With the introduction of Widgets in the Notes 8.0.1 Standard client, it is now easy to display content in the Notes client sidebar. One way to take advantage of this feature is to list the lessons from the TLCC user course in the sidebar so they are always available to your Notes 8 user community. This lets your users easily see the topics from the course and quickly navigate to a topic they might want to learn more about. Below is an image of one of TLCC's user courses available in the Notes sidebar.

A student can click on any lesson title in the sidebar to open the lesson and display its contents in a Notes window tab.

The student can also choose to open the course using the [Open Course] button in the sidebar:

Implementation of this new feature is easy. There is a new view in the design of the Lessons database (schedule.nsf) that is used to create a Widget for each instance of the course you have installed. Once the widget is created it can be deployed automatically to your users by putting the widget in a widget catalog. Then a Domino Desktop settings policy is used to automatically deploy TLCC course widgets to the users assigned to this policy. Follow the steps to implement this feature:

1. Contact TLCC Support to obtain the latest Lessons Template (Sched16H.ntf).
2. Replace the design of your existing Lessons database with this new template (File | Application | Replace Design).
3. Follow the steps in the Course Setup database (where you detached the course from) in Step 1 - Avoiding Execution Security Alerts to sign the databases (this step is not needed if you changed the Execution Control List for all of your users to allow all privileges to */TLCC).
4. Using Notes, open up the Lessons database. You should use a replica copy of the database on the server where the users will access the course. Do not use the replica copy on your local computer.
5. Hold down the SHIFT and CTRL keys at the same time and select View | Go To... from the menu. This opens up the list of all views, including hidden views.
6. Choose the (SideBarView) from the list and click [OK].
   
   
   
   
7. The (SideBarView) will now open in the Notes client.
8. Click on the Configure a Widget icon in the toolbar.
   
   
   
   
   
9. Choose to "Open a Notes view, document, or frameset" and then append the text, "?openview&hidenavigator" to the end of the Notes URL as indicated below. Click [Next] to continue.
   
   
   
   
10. Change the Component name (this is the title that will show in the Sidebar). Choose to 'Display as a sidebar panel' and click [Next] to continue.
    
    
    
    
11. On the last screen click [Finish].
12. The Widget will now open in your sidebar. Test it out before publishing.
13. The next step is to publish the Widget to the catalog. Right click on the Widget in your My Widgets panel and choose the option to Publish to Catalog.
    
    
    
    
14. The Widget will be added to your catalog. Open the Widget catalog by choosing Catalog | Browse from the My Widgets menu.
    
    
    
    
15. You will see the Widget you just created listed in the view. Edit this widget and assign it to one or more categories. In the image below the "Required" category was used, but you can choose any name and can add a new category by using the New keyword option.
    
    
    
    
16. The last step is to create or modify a Desktop policy settings to assign the appropriate Desktop policy to the users who will be taking this course. This step will need to be done in collaboration with your Domino administrator. Below is an image showing the settings that should be set:
    
    
    
    Widget catalog server is the name of the server that hold the widget catalog.
    Widget catalog application name is the filename of the Widget catalog.
    Widget catalog categories to install is the name of the category. All widgets in this category are automatically installed when the users next start their Notes 8 client.