Lotus Notes 8.5 Basic client logs onto Sametime Entry 8.5.1 but still shows status as Disconnected

We were trying to get a customer configured to use his Lotus Notes Basic 8.5 client to connect to his newly installed Lotus Sametime Entry 8.5.1 server on Microsoft Windows 2008. When the customer tried to log in, he seemed to login successfully. However, even though the Lotus Notes Basic Client status bar would show “Logged on to Instant Messaging”, his Instant Messaging status showed as “Disconnected”. When opening up his Notes mail there was no awareness showing up at all. If he had logged on successfully he should show “I’m Active” as the Instant Messaging status.

When we attempted the same process with the Lotus Notes Standard client, he was able to login to Sametime Entry server without a problem and awareness was fine as well. So we knew the problem was the user’s account or the configuration of the Sametime Server.

We did a search on the Internet for a possible solution without much success at first. However, eventually we found the following post that was extremely helpful. Although the nature of the problem described in the post linked below is different from the problem we were experiencing, it turns out that the fix was the same.

http://www.zarazaga.net/mangelcalvo/blog/home.nsf/dx/sametime-8.5.1-doesnt-like-lotus-notes-basic

As the post above states, the fix is to simply lower the number in the Sametime Entry Server’s Sametime.ini for the parameter VP_SECURITY_LEVEL from the default of 7000 to a something like 25 and restart the Domino server.

So instead of:
VP_SECURITY_LEVEL=7000

You should have:
VP_SECURITY_LEVEL=25

The reason for the value change is also explained in the above post as follows: the Lotus Notes 8.5 Basic client comes with the Sametime 6.5 Client. The VP_SECURITY_LEVEL is set too high to allow such an old version of the Sametime client to login. By lowering the value you are, thereby, lowering the threshold for what clients can access the server allowing the Lotus Notes Basic 8.5 Client the ability to login.

After changing the value and restarting the Sametime Entry Server, when our customer attempted to login again he got the “I’m Active” as his Instant Messaging status and all appeared to be working just fine.

I hope that this helps someone else experiencing the same issue.