Collaboration University Day 3 recap

Collaboration University day 3 sessions:

The Future of Lotus Sametime (Kim Artlip, Worldwide Sales Leader)
Kim demonstrated the business value of Sametime Advanced, including persistent chat, moderated chats, broadcast tools, instant polls, and more. Next was a review of the 2008/09 roadmap:

Q4 2008: Sametime Advanced initial release, Standard and Entry 8.0.1
H2 2008: Sametime Unified Telephony, Sametime 8.0.2 (Citrix, better codecs, Sharepoint)
H1 2009: Sametime "Next" (Web 2.0 browser integration, enhanced meetings and admin)
H2 2009: Sametime Advanced and SUT "Next"

Sametime Unified Telephony major features include Click-to-call/conference, Embedded softphone, Aggregated telephony/IM presence, Incoming call management, and PBX integration. SUT will integrate with many SIP based and traditional PBX vendors, including support for multiple vendors.

Also look for a new mobile client coming with expanded capabilities including multi-community support. (Yea!)

The Future of Lotus Quickr (Jelan Heidelberg, Lotus Quickr Offering Manager)
Jalan shared some of the ideas and directions for the "Next" versions of Quickr. Look for more solid details in the Lotusphere time frame.

Bringing It All Together (Everyone)
Each presenter gave their best 10 minutes of the conference:

Carl Tyler

• IBM is no longer supporting Sametime servers if you use Remote Desktop.
• Go get the "Sametime Essentials" database from IBM.
• Make sure you change the language version STCenterStrings_EN.properties when changing Sametime static text.
• One last demo of live telephony integration

Troy Reimer

• A quick review of PlaceBots
• Using a c_PlaceBotErrors field to record errors during agent processing
• Calling PlaceBots as if they were web services
• Don't use PlaceBots for large scale deployments - switch to centralized agents
• A review of standard and QuickrTemplates based workflow options
  

Gab Davis

• Choose your Quickr version based on the features you need
• Connectors are identical across all versions of Quickr (Entry, Domino, Portal)
• Mix and match version deployments as needed (the license allows this)
• You can share places across platforms, but they are only visable from the Portal side
• Choose Portal if you don't want Domino or if you already have a Portal infrastructure
• Sametime Advanced requires a large stack of components, including a Sametime Community server
• Do not change the credentials used for the Sametime Advanced services!
  

Viktor Krantz

• Customizing Quickplace redbook is still 78.2% relevant
• In Quickr 8.1, you need to be a little more sophisticated with stylesheets
• Firebug for Firefox is the best thing since sliced bread
• Using JSON and multiple versions of DOJO (0.42 and 1.0) with Quickr
• Using &OutputFormat=JSON for view data
  

Warren Elsmore

• Reviewed all of his slides he gave during the conference (which were few as he built a fully clustered LDAP/Sametime/Quickr environment live during the conference)
  

Overall, this was a great conference. Even though I know a lot about Quickr, Sametime, and Connections, I still learned a lot of good tips and met some great people, both presenters and attendees.

Collaboration University Day 2 recap

Collaboration University day 2 sessions:

Clustering Lotus Quickr for Domino (Warren Elsmore)
Warren gave a hands on demo of clustering Quickr. This is mostly the same as clustering Domino, so no major revelations for me.

Leveraging the Dojo Toolkit, JavaScript and JSON in Quickr (Viktor Krantz)
Viktor showed us in detail how he does much of the amazing stuff in the SNAPPS Quickr Templates. All of the source code is available as an open source download from the templates site. Firebug was the key tool Viktor uses to develop and test his code.

Quickr Workflow: Choosing the Right Approach (Troy Reimer)
Troy discussed the built in workflow options in Quickr 8.1 and walked through using the workflow engine from the SNAPPS Quickr Templates. He also showed how to customize the workflow further by leveraging the SNAPPS engine with new copies of the key PlaceBot agents and extra fields.

Building Sametime Client Plug-ins (Carl Tyler)
Carl walked through the steps of setting up the Eclipse IDE, building a Sametime plug-in, and deploying the plug-in using an update site.

Managing and Administering the Sametime Advanced Servers (Gab Davis)
Most of this session was focused around performing basic WebSphere administration tasks such as view log files, setting up LDAP, etc.

Tips for Performance Tuning and Maintenance in a Quickr World (Gab Davis)
Gab showed us lots of good tips on managing large scale Quickr for Domino deployments. Key tools are using policies to limit sizes and using powerful qptool utilities for finding large places, managing the PlaceCatalog, and cleaning up unused Places. She then wrapped up with some details on Quickr for J2EE administration and clustering of both versions.

Quickr Placebots and Agents for Automation (Troy Reimer)
Troy demonstrated how to develop PlaceBots, using examples from the SNAPPS Quickr Templates. These agents work a little differently from regular Notes agents since they are uploaded through the web interface and you typically do not have access to work with them directly in the Domino Designer. Troy keeps his agents in a separate Notes database or Java IDE for development and then imports them to Quickr.

Tomorrow is a half day focused on the future of Sametime and Quickr. This should play well to the focus of most of the audience, but I would have liked to have seen some Connections futures in there too.

Quickr feature voting at Collaboration University

The Quickr product team came to Collaboration University today to discuss new feature ideas with the attendees and get our vote on which features are important. This is a great move to include the community and gather insight to improve the product.

Here are the top features the Quickr team is considering for future versions:

1. ECM Integration Quickr Domino
2. Automatic Content Scraping (rules for moving Quickr content to ECM backends)
3. Lotus Connections integration for Quickr Domino (Activities and Wiki)
4. Support for Linux (server)
5. Support for Mac (connectors)
6. Support for Linux (connectors)
7. Mobile Support
8. Simplified Check-in/Check-out
9. Improved Versioning
10. Improved Round Trip Editing
11. Improved Rich Text Editor
12. Improved Threaded Discussion
13. Recycle Bin / Soft Deletes
14. Improved Place Listing/Favorites
15. Embedded viewers for documents
16. Single-Sign On
17. Improved Wiki
18. API to Monitor Reads/Writes/Deletions in Connectors
19. Enhanced Lists/Forms
20. Enhanced Workflow
21. Hot fix installed (all platforms)
22. Tools for deploying connectors
23. Multi-lingual server
24. Enhanced QPTools
25. Single Doc Restore

I also asked them to add a catagory for Other, so that people could suggest their own ideas.

If you have votes or ideas, let me know on Twitter or at hcameron@optimussolutions.com and I will pass on your thoughts.

Collaboration University Day 1 recap

Collaboration University kicked off in Chicago yesterday.

Here is a quick summary of the sessions I attended:

Installing Sametime Advanced (Chris Miller)
Chris (a.k.a. IdoNotes) ran through the complex and detailed Sametime Advanced install. It is nice that there is an easy Linux based appliance install to get things running for demos or small to medium deployments. Unfortunately, as soon as you need to separate a component like the database or spread out the components for scalability, you are thrown in a long process of installing the many components individually.

Installing and Configuring Lotus Connections (Mitch Cohen and Chris Miller)
Mitch (a.k.a. CuriousMitch) showed us the details of installing Lotus Connections, including many good tips on deployment and administration best practices. Chris jumped in with a quick course on social networking when a poll showed that many in the audience had not looked beyond Quickr and Sametime yet.

Installing and Configuring the Sametime Gateway (Chris Miller)
Still more Chris (I highly recommend his sessions when you get the chance!) describing the Sametime Gateway business case and showing tips on how to install, including the need to use the default database and ID names and to leave the server running untouched for 4 - 5 days while you wait for your requests to join services such as Google or Yahoo to be processed.

Using the Sametime Toolkits and APIs (Carl Tyler)
Carl gave us a technical demonstration of the toolkits he has used to build Sametime plugins such as Sametime Wallpaper and the BuddyList Admin Tool. He also covered topics such as extending server side functions, including adding features to the Meeting Center and Gateway.

Top 10 Quickr Support Issues 2008 (Jerald Mahurin)
Jerald covered performance and troubleshooting tips for supporting Quickr on Domino. Some key things to look for are the indexer eating disk I/O and ram and and large numbers of places or concurrent users.

Keynote (Ed Hackett, Colonel, USMC (ret), President, EH Group)
Col. Hackett provided some good insight on the importance of proper information and social connections for teams to be effective. This was an inspiring talk covering his experience leading a fighter squadron, delivering humanitarian aid in Somalia, and running the Joint Chief's planning group. In all cases, social awareness was the critical component for the teams to get their jobs done. (See Julian's post on the keynote here)

The day wrapped up with a nice reception, giving everyone a chance to compare notes and experiences. Day 2 is already shaping up to be a similar set of great sessions.

New Lotus product wikis encourage a better community

As Ed Brill just pointed out, the Lotus DeveloperWorks team just changed all of the product wikis from the previous Confluence based engine to a new Domino-based platform. You can read details of all of the new features here.

This is really a great step forward for the Lotus wikis. The previous implementation for the Lotus wikis was locked down pretty tight, did not do much to make the layout pretty or easy to read, and generally seemed pretty disorganized.

In this new platform, Lotus and the community realize several benefits:

• The look and feel is very pretty and matches the new Quickr / Connections / Sametime UIs.
• Better navigation, tag clouds, RSS feeds, and search capabilities make the content of the wikis much more accessible.
• Most importantly, all of the content is now editable using your regular IBM/Lotus web login (assuming you can find the right one). There is even a $25 incentive for the first 50 new, significant articles by external people.
  
• The wiki is using Lotus technology*, which is good considering they sell a product with a wiki.

Perhaps the only drawback I see so far is that the article editing is just a simple rich text field and misses the one key feature that makes a wiki a wiki, which is auto-linking to existing and future content. I'll talk more on that in a future post ...


*Don't get me wrong - I love Confluence. It and its sister product,
JIRA, are two of the best Java applications I have had the pleasure to
work with (and I spent 7 years running Java development teams)
including feature capabilities, deployment, administration, and an easy
to manage plug-in environment with a strong community. Features like
proper forward linking to new documents, auto save, and great
extensions like the charting plug-in make Confluence a great tool to
work in. Quickr, Sharepoint, and many others have a long way to go in
understanding that a wiki is more than just an editable rich text field!

IBM shows Microsoft that social computing is about the people

This morning, IBM and Microsoft presented Lotus Connections and Sharepoint in a head-to-head demo of social networking platforms. Of course, the play by play got published instantly on the public social networks.

Apparently Microsoft focused on email and document management, which did not wow the crowd. IBM got points for talking about how social networking is about the people. Quotes included "MS failing dismally at showing off Sharepoint collab tools. IBM totally ate their lunch.".

A few blog posts on the session:

IBM wins round 1 against Microsoft!
Enterprise 2.0 Conference - Social Computing Platforms: IBM and Microsoft
Social Computing Platforms: IBM & Microsoft Part 1
Social Computing Platforms: IBM & Microsoft Part 2

Finally, the conference has a social page devoted to the session:
Social Computing Platforms: IBM and Microsoft

Dan Reeves Comes to You

The Atlanta Lotusphere Comes to You Event has landed legendary NFL coach Dan Reeves as the keynote speaker!

I remember being at Lotusphere in 1999 watching the Falcons seal their trip to the Super Bowl.

Coach Reeves record speaks for itself:

• Was an All-Pro player for Dallas immortal Tom Landry.
• Led the Falcons to the playoffs (twice) and the Super Bowl, and became the NFL’s most successful coach with 167 wins.
  
• Won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 1993 (Atlanta) and 1998 (New York).
• Coached the Denver Broncos to five divisional titles and three Super Bowls.

For the keynote, he will deliver an inspiring talk on teamwork. Not only that, but he'll be on hand for photos and autographs.

Go here to see a detailed agenda and to register.

Upgrading Lotus Connections Profiles to 1.0.2, take 2

I posted previously on how to update the Lotus Connections database schema from version 1.0.1 to 1.0.2.

Over on the Lotus Connections Forums, Henry Walther posted that he found the original files in the TDI directories. For others, here is the location of the files:

C:\Program Files\IBM\TDI\V6.1\tdisol\TDI\database\db2

I did a comparison between my version and this one and the EMPLOYEE columns are the same. Interestingly, the Lotus version does not include expanding the description and experience columns in the EMP_DRAFT table:

ALTER TABLE EMPINST.EMP_DRAFT
ALTER COLUMN PROF_DESCRIPTION SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 )
ALTER COLUMN PROF_EXPERIENCE SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 );

There are a couple of other useful files in the \TDI\database\db2 directory. Look for the runstats.bat batch file, which will help DB2 run faster on the Profiles tables.

Good find Henry!

Lotusphere Comes to You, Atlanta

This year's Lotusphere included many exciting announcements from IBM and Lotus. Several years of work integrating SOA and the Eclipse platform into the Lotus products has opened up many new possibilities for delivering greater business value through social networking and composite applications (think business mashups).

If you couldn't make it to Orlando, Optimus Solutions is hosting the Atlanta Lotusphere Comes to You on March 4th at the Crown Plaza Ravinia.

Join us and you will hear:

• IBM experts delivering the Lotus Software strategy and roadmap for 2008
• The business value of Web 2.0: How IBM Lotus® solutions accelerate your organization's ability to tap into new trends in collaboration, innovation and the changing workforce
• An Optimus Solutions customer discuss their decision to implement IBM Lotus® Connections™ in their global infrastructure
• Unified communications and collaboration: the present, the future, the possibilities
• Extending your IBM Lotus investment with the Desktop of the Future, composite applications and open standards development

Go here to see a detailed agenda and to register.

Upgrading Lotus Connections Profiles to 1.0.2

Update: We found the original update files!

In the last week, I've been upgrading several Lotus Connections 1.0.1 installations to version 1.0.2.

As part of this process, there is a missing sql script needed to upgrade the Profiles database to include a few column changes and updates. The only script that is provided by the update is peopledb.db2, which is used to create a whole new Profiles schema using create table and related statements. This script will not work to update existing data tables since you would have to drop your tables before running peopledb.db2.

I resolved this issue by comparing the new table definitions in peopledb.db2 to the existing Lotus Connections 1.0.1 tables.

I have listed below a simple version of my script. The full upgrade102.sql also includes the index and other updates to the EMPLOYEE and EMP_DRAFT tables to make sure we get anything added in 1.0.2.

CONNECT TO PEOPLEDB;

SET INTEGRITY FOR EMPINST.EMPLOYEE OFF;

ALTER TABLE EMPINST.EMPLOYEE
ADD COLUMN PROF_UID_LOWER VARCHAR (36) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (LOWER(PROF_UID))
ALTER COLUMN PROF_DESCRIPTION SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 )
ALTER COLUMN PROF_EXPERIENCE SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 )
ADD COLUMN PROF_GW_EMAIL_LOWER VARCHAR (128) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (LOWER(PROF_GROUPWARE_EMAIL))
ADD COLUMN PROF_LOGIN VARCHAR (36)
ADD COLUMN PROF_LOGIN_LOWER VARCHAR (36) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (LOWER(PROF_LOGIN))
ADD COLUMN PROF_GIVEN_NAME VARCHAR (128) ADD COLUMN PROF_SURNAME VARCHAR (128) ;

SET INTEGRITY FOR EMPINST.EMPLOYEE IMMEDIATE CHECKED FORCE GENERATED;

ALTER TABLE EMPINST.EMP_DRAFT
ALTER COLUMN PROF_DESCRIPTION SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 )
ALTER COLUMN PROF_EXPERIENCE SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 );

COMMIT WORK;

CONNECT RESET;

TERMINATE;