Collaboration University 2009 Day 3 wrap up

Collaboration University 2009 just wrapped up today with three sessions:

• The Future of Lotus Sametime (Rob Ingram, Senior Product manager, IBM Lotus Sametime)
• The Future of Lotus Quickr & Connections (David Kajmo, Senior Product manager, IBM Lotus Quickr)
• Bringing it All Together - Quick recaps from all of the CU speakers

The good news is that the CU crew had gotten permission to show us all of the latest Sametime features and news during the week.  Unfortunately, IBM is keeping other news on Quickr and Connections under wraps so they can make bigger announcements at Lotusphere 2010.  This meant that the two "Future" sessions this morning were more of a summary of the new features from sessions earlier in the week.

Probably the main bit of news was that there is a specific plan to release Sametime client updates for the Notes client which can be installed separately or using integration with the Notes Install Kit.

Two Collaboration University announcements on additional value:

1. There will be ongoing education through the year available to sign up for, free for this year's students and discounted for older alumni.
2. There is an online Collaboration University Campus providing a community of past students coming soon
   

Some folks are staying around for the extra hands on labs for Quickr Administration and Quickr Development, but I am off to catch a flight home.

My sophomore year at Collaboration University has been a great experience.  I have learned a lot, not just from the sessions, but from the ability to network with people and learn from their own experiences with the Lotus collaboration products in various deployment situations.  I look forward to coming again next year and hope to see you there!

Collaboration University 2009 Day 2

Day 2 of Collaboration University was a sprint of 8 back to back sessions.  Here is a summary of what I attended:

Quickr Performance Tips: Getting more from your Server (Warren Elsmore)

Warren gave us lots of good tuning tips, many of which can be found on the SNAPPS team blogs.  I was also on the Lotus Connections beta call going over detailed deployment and performance options and did not take detailed notes during this session.

Quickr Data: In, Out, Everywhere! A Wide Array of Approaches and Tools (Troy Reimer)

• Many issues to consider, including file and folder names and folder level access control
• Documents are easy to move, meta data is not
• Quick and easy: Quickr Connectors or PandaBear
• Use a migration tool such as Casahl ecKnowledge, Lotus Quickr Content Integrator, or DDM migration tool from IIUI/IBM
• Mid-level: ATOM, REST, SOAP, API calls, Feed parsing, Web Services - SOAP calls
• Harder: Native Notes Database Access

Customizing and Extending Sametime Meeting Centers: 8.0 and 8.5 (Carl Tyler)

• The 8.5 Meeting Center is much more extensible than the current version
• 8.0 customization tip: Just use a static HTML page to wrap the STCenter.nsf links
• Avoid direct customization of the STCenter.nsf design
• Sametime Online Meeting Toolkit supports a RESTful interface to create/delete/update meetings
• Meeting Room Client Accessibility Toolkit is a javascript client that allows adding menu items to the Meeting Center and to Sametime Activities
• Sametime 8.5 is based on Websphere/DB2 and meetings are reservationless and not scheduled
• There is a simple web client and a rich client plug in to the Sametime Connect client
• Rich client is required for advanced features like audio/video
• The REST APIs and JSON allow for many ways to do customization and integration of meetings

Going Mobile with Rob Novack


As an extra session over lunch, Rob Novack led a discussion on the Top 5 things users want to do w/Quickr and Connections on mobile devices such as Blackberries and iPhones.  The main requests were for:

1. Approve docs in Quickr
2. Comment on docs
3. Read/update a blog
4. Manage tasks in Quickr and in Connections Activities
5. Add folders/rooms to Quickr places

Rob also shared some secret information with us at the end of the session. (shhh!)


Your First Lotus Connections 2.5 Customizations Made Easy (Mitch Cohen)
Mitch delivered Stuart McIntrye's presentation that he will give at the Collaboration University in London next week. Mitch did a good job impersonating Stuart, except for the English accent.

We covered:
Themes - Look and Feel
Profiles - Changing, adding, and editing fields
Widgets - Extending Connections functionality

Key points:

• Mitch recommends you only change the header and footer on the look and feel unless you have a solid business reason
• Move your theme files to the HTTP server before you modify them
• Use Firebug for easy testing of your changes
• Additional UI changes can be done through JSP changes and iWidgets
• You can now change language resource bundles without rebuilding the internal jar files

Using and Customizing the Sametime 8.5 Web Client (Carl Tyler)

• STProxy is a lightweight Websphere based server that provides the web client and the communications proxy to the Sametime Community Server
• Set up and maintained through the new Sametime Console
• The Browser IM client will use the local Sametime Connect client connection if it is available
• Provides a large subset of the Connect Client functionlity, but not A/V or screen sharing/capture
• Built using the Web Client Toolkit
• Look and feel is easily controlled through CSS files
• Functional changes can be implemented through Javascript/Dojo updates

Sametime Telephony: TCSPI Plugins and Unified Telephony Options (Carl Tyler)

• In Sametime 8.5, IBM will be providing better hooks for telephony providers for audio/video/calls
• Client plug-ins give you click to call, voicemail, and presence awareness
• TCSPI is an application layer deployed on the Sametime server can integrate with office integration, Sametime Meetings, and client plug-ins
• Drag and drop to add people to a call is a nice feature
• SUT does not integrate with Sametime Meetings
• SUT is purely a GTS and ISSL play and can not be purchased direct from other partners!!
• SUT requires Websphere and an IBM SAN and provides Click to Call, presence, and office integration
• SUT provides call transfer to another device. This feature is also provided through client plug-ins from some other vendors.
• SUT can also merge active calls to bring together separate calls into a conference
• Most SUT integration and features are also available as TCSPI or client plug-ins from other vendors
  

Deploying Sametime on Linux: The Root of the Problem (Warren Elsmore)

• Sametime on Linux is not hard to do
• Once it is installed and running, it is exactly the same as any other server
• The downside is that many third party tools such as telephony integration are designed for Windows
• Warren prefers Linux for deployments, especially for large scale (>1000 users) systems
• Linux is more scalable than Windows, has no CALs, and will contain only the components you want (no DNS, DHCP, Kerberos, etc.)
  

The Other Side
Once again cloning technology failed me and I had to miss 7 great sessions:

• Sametime 8.5 Administration: Solutions Console and (gulp) Websphere Admin (Chris Miller)
• Alphabet Soup: SSO, LDAP, DNS, LTPA, We Could Go On... (Chris Miller)
• Quickr Themes Part 2: Adding Functionality With JavaScript (Viktor Krantz)
• Sizing for Quickr Servers: Load Testing and Deployment Planning (Warren Elsmore)
• Quickr REST and Web Services APIs for Mere Mortals (Viktor Krantz)
• Quickr & Domino Apps Together: Integration Strategies and Concepts (Troy Reimer)
• Top Quickr Support Issues 2009 (Rob Novak)

Tomorrow we wrap up with sessions direct from IBM on the future directions for Sametime, Quickr, and Connections.

Collaboration University 2009 Day 1, the other side

Collaboration University has two sessions going on in any given time slot, plus a hands-on lab open all day.  While not as bad as Lotusphere, where this year I had an instance of 5 concurrent sessions I wanted to attend, at CU I still find myself wishing I had a clone.

Luckily I got to see last year's version of most of the sessions I missed in Day 1, because it was some great content.  

Here is what I missed:

• Installation and Configuration of Quickr 8.2: Best Practices (Chris Miller)
• Sametime 8 and 8.5 Toolkit Overview (Carl Tyler)
• Development with Quickr: Three Solutions Deconstructed (Troy Reimer)
• Quickr Themes Part 1: Server-Wide Extensions and Custom Themes (Viktor Krantz)
• Using Forms and Placebot: Three Reusable Examples for Quickr (Troy Reimer)

As you can see there is a ton of value in Collaboration University. These guys go into way more depth than you will see in a typical overview session at Lotusphere and they are available to answer questions or go into a detailed discussion.  I saw at least two people get critical issues resolved just by being able to grab an expert between breaks.

Go ahead and start making your CU 2010 plans for next September!

Collaboration University 2009 Day 1

Today I started my sophomore year at Collaboration University in Chicago. This is a conference focused on the advanced collaboration products from Lotus, including Sametime, Quickr, and Connections.

We started the day with a keynote from Louis Richardson, Worldwide Sales Executive for Lotus. Louis is an excellent presenter and covered the reasons why companies need better collaboration tools.

Some key questions:

• How much time can you save with accurate information? (Do you have the current version of the file?)
• Who wrote this, and why should you care - are you using credible resources?
• Accurate, credible, instantaneous - it's about time. Are you waiting & wasting?

You can watch the full keynote right here!
Live video by Ustream
For the most rest of the day, I attended a series of sessions on Sametime 8.5 with Gabriella Davis. We reviewed the new infrastructure, new meeting center, and the new web based 'zero-download' client.

Key points for Sametime 8.5 are:

• Key components are now based on WebSphere, including the all new Meeting Center and the web client proxy.
• The standard IM components are still the traditional Domino based server, including the legacy Meeting Center.
• Full meeting capabilities will now require the Sametime Connect client or the embedded version in the Notes 8.5.1 client.
• Meetings are now persistent and can be used as ongoing team collaboration spaces, with documents, chat, and meeting minutes.
• There is also a Sametime Media Center coming (just released into beta this week) that will provide audio and video capabilities.
• The zero-download client is an AJAX based web client that provides a chat experience very close to the Sametime Connect client.
• Sametime 8.5 is due to ship in Q4, 2009.

I also attended a session with Louis Richardson on Quickr integration with Enterprise Content Management systems such as FileNet or IBM Content Manager. Unlike Sharepoint, where ECM integration is based on using ECM as a one way archiving mechanism, Quickr (for Portal) can be used with ECM documents live in the team places. This feature will be brought to Quickr for Domino next may with Quickr 8.5. Perhaps most exciting is that the Quickr Connectors can be used directly with the ECM system to provide a much cleaner interface for end users to manage their documents, as compared to the native ECM web clients.

Finally, I wrapped up the day with Mitch Cohen covering the install and configuration of Lotus Connections 2.5. Mitch did a great job going through the details you need to follow to install Connections. See his blog for ongoing pointers and details.

Day 1 is ending with a welcome reception and a few beers before diving into the 7 sessions on deck for Day 2. Follow us on Twitter for live updates.

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.