Widget Credentials -- Not Poor Man's Afterall

One of my favorite features of the Notes client is the ability to create widgets.  In some of my previous posts, I've shown how simple it is to use this capability to create custom UC widgets for things like click-to-call or access to voicemail. 

A feature of widgets is the ability to store and pass credentials. 

When I first experimented with widgets, I'm not certain if I was doing something incorrectly or not, but I found that widgets I created with authentication did not work when given to another user.  That's part of the reason why I called some of my earlier widgets "Poor Man's" widgets, because of the administrative overhead in having users create them on their own rather than being able to create a single widget and deploy it to everyone.

Well, either I was always wrong (wouldn't be the first time), or something changed along the way, because now you CAN effectively distribute these widgets.  When you create a widget with an account as illustrated above, a new account is created and stored in the Notes preferences.

If you then install that widget in another client that does not have that account setup, and then launch the widget, you will be prompted to create a new account by that name and enter the credentials.

Once the user enters their credentials, a new account is setup in Notes and the credentials are stored.  The next time the widget is launched, the credentials will be passed automatically.  Enjoy!