Template Design Inheritance Gotchas

Time to update our highly customized mail template from 8.5.1 to 8.5.3. No problem as I had meticulously documented all the changes put onto the 8.5.1 template and half of the customizations were included in the 8.5.3 template provided to me. Yeah!

I had also stored a number of customized common elements for the mail file in a separate template.

After getting all the changes into our 8.5.3 template I was ready to apply the template to my own mail file. I noticed a number of changes not being applied. Thanks to my handy dandy Ytria designPropEZ tool in addition to DDE I found my mail file still had the design inheritance from the 8.5.1 template's individual elements. What??

After digging around I found this helpful documentation:

Components that are not replaced when replacing application design:

• Individual elements whose template is inherited (that is, if Inherit from the design template is selected by the designer on the Design tab of the Design Properties box for the element)

Caution An element with inheritance set is not replaced even if its design is not protected from updates (that is, if Prohibit design refresh or replace to modify is not selected by the designer).

Puh, now what? I can clear the design easily with the Ytria tool, but what about all the other users? Time to write a script for the 8.5.1 template to clear the design inheritance not only on the template, but also for the mail files. So using a NotesNoteCollection I searched for all the design elements with $Class populated, removed the field, signed and saved the design element. (Of course, being careful to run the agent as the full rights administrator.)

Then when the new 8.5.3 template is applied the design is clear and ready to accept all the new template features.