There are several things you can do to run programs from the Notes desktop:
1) Use a smarticon or a button to launch a program:
@Command([Execute]; "D:\\dir\\subdir\\executable.EXE"; "parameters")
2) If you are running a program, add this to the PostOpen event of the database script:
Sub Postopen(Source As Notesuidatabase) Dim taskId As Integer taskId% = Shell("CALC.EXE", 1) End Sub
Sub Postopen(Source As Notesuidatabase) Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument Set uidoc = workspace.EditDocument(0) End Sub