It can take hours to process a large collection of databases when running Domino maintenance tasks. And it can be challenging to schedule and optimize the execution of maintenance activities like compacting files, running Fixup to maintain databases, rebuilding views with Updall, and archiving data using the Compact task.

One way to speed up time-consuming maintenance operations is to run multiple tasks simultaneously, using lists in Indirect files (INDs) to process databases as groups. The idea is that you build a text file with an .ind extension that contains the names of files you would like to run maintenance against. IBM did not provide tools for generating these IND files when it introduced the Indirect file feature in Domino 6. However, I wrote an application, called MakeIND, that does just that. It makes my administrative life much easier, and now I’ll share it with you. I’ll also show how you can optimize the number of files it creates for best performance.