Removing blog themes from Lotus Connections

Today, Stuart McIntyre and I worked together to solve an issue that is not currently documented for Lotus Connections.  We wanted to remove one of the pre-installed blog themes.

The Lotus Connections InfoCenter has instructions on how to make a custom theme available to your users.

While these instructions tell you how to add a page, it does not address how to remove one of the built in themes.

Here is the procedure we worked out to remove an existing theme:

Turn on class reloading for the application on WebSphere

1. Log in to the WebSphere admin console
2. Expand Applications on the left
3. Click on Enterprise Applications
4. Click on the Blogs application
5. Click on Class loading and update detection
6. Check Reload classes when application files are updated
7. Enter a Polling interval for updated files. (I used 30 sec and then turned reload off when I was done.)
8. Click OK
9. Click Save to save your changes to the master configuration

Remove the theme files
Remove the associated theme directory from: /installedApps//Blogs.ear/blogs.war/themes

I suggest you simply move the theme directory to a back up location in case you want to restore it later.

Remove the theme from the Blogs properties files

1. Find the resource file: /installedApps//Blogs.ear/blogs.war/WEB-INF/classes/ApplicationResources.properties. 
2. Locate the #themes section of the file and enter a # in front of the theme directory name in the format: #ventura.theme.yourThemeDirectoryName. For example, ventura.theme.MyTheme=My Theme.
3. Repeat for any ApplicationResources.en_properties and any other relevant language files.

Restart the application

1. Log in to the WebSphere admin console
2. Expand Applications on the left
3. Click on Enterprise Applications
4. Click on the checkbox for the Blogs application
5. Click Stop
6. Click on the checkbox for the Blogs application
7. Click Start
   

Enjoy!

Atlanta WebSphere on Oct 7th: Smart SOA World Tour

In celebration of the WebSphere 10th birthday, the Atlanta WebSphere Users Group is hosting the local edition of the Smart SOA World Tour.  Come join us on October 7th to learn about exciting new announcements for WebSphere and Smart SOA.

Date:      October 7th, 9 - 11 am.
Location:  Optimus Solutions (22 Technology Parkway South, Norcross GA 30092)
Prizes!:   IBM is supplying a variety of door prizes. Learn about SOA and win stuff too!

Speaker: Andrew Sweet, Director of SOA Strategy for IBM

Andrew will be presenting on several topics related to WebSphere, SOA, and key product announcements:

- Connecting your applications in better ways through WebSphere and SOA: We’ll take a look across the entire WebSphere portfolio and dive into how the brand will further its position as the SOA Runtime Platform of Choice looking at the role the hottest new technologies like Web 2.0, Virtualization, and others will play in the future.
- BPM End to End: BPM is a rapidly growing discipline combining software capabilities and business expertise to facilitate business innovation. BPM accelerates process improvement by empowering automated and collaborative interaction between line of business and IT through a flexible architectural style.  We'll provide you with a backstage look at IBM’s comprehensive set of collaborative, role-based capabilities that continuously optimize business processes and adapt them to rapidly changing needs.
- Deep Dive of WebSphere Launch Announcements: A focus on some of the key product announcements in the WebSphere portfolio. 

Customer Speaker: An local Atlanta customer will discuss their specific WebSphere and SOA implementation experiences

Don't miss this great opportunity to not only learn from industry experts and IBM executives, but also to hear how a customer from your city is implementing WebSphere and SOA!

Please register for the meeting at the following link:   http://www.websphere.org/websphere/Site?page=ugdetail&groupId=12
If are having difficulty registering, please send an email to hcameron@optimussolutions.com indicating that you would like to attend this meeting.

Other upcoming Atlanta WebSphere events:
Dec 18th: AWUG Holiday Party

Improving the Lotus Connections InfoCenter with Twitter

Here is a short success story of how Twitter has delivered direct business value for me:

Back at the end of July, I was working on an upgrade of a Lotus Connections system to version 2.0. As I walked through the upgrade steps in the InfoCenter, I encountered several typos and procedural issues. I posted some of my issues on Twitter and the resulting conversations on Twitter and email have resulted in a call this Friday with the Connections InfoCenter team and a few others, including Mitch Cohen, Luis Benetez, and Jon Mell.

We will be discussing ideas for improving and updating the InfoCenter to make it a more powerful reference for installing and maintaining Lotus Connections.

If anyone has any feedback on the InfoCenter, including ideas for missing topics, better procedures, or if you have found errors, please comment here, find me on Twitter, or email me at hcameron@optimussolutions.com and I will pass on your ideas.

Thanks!

Agile Atlanta on October 27th: Hyperproductive Distributed Scrum Teams

Please join us for a special combined meeting of the Agile Atlanta group and the Turner Agile User group. This is a great chance to hear directly from one of the original Agile thought leaders!

Hyperproductive Distributed Scrum Teams
Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum and the Agile Manifesto, will share his experience and insight from helping many companies around the world adopt Scrum and increase the performance of their development teams.

When: Monday, October 27, 6:00PM

Location:
Techwood Campus at Turner
1015 Assembly Room
1050 Techwood Drive N.W.
Atlanta, GA 30318

Pizza and fruit will be provided!

Agenda:
6:00 - 6:30 - Food and networking
6:30 - 6:45 - Announcements
6:45 - 8:00 - Program

IMPORTANT: To attend, we MUST have your name in advance to give to Turner security. Please bring a photo ID (Turner employees bring your badge).

Please visit this link to sign up:
http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/SYHFSSKMCQCMQYVFBVWV/TAUG

Sponsored by the VersionOne and the Turner Agile User Group

Agile Atlanta group on LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&sortCriteria=3&groupFilter=120862

Other upcoming Agile events:
Sept 25-26: The APLN Atlanta Leadership Summit
Oct 27-28: Certified ScrumMaster Training with Jeff Sutherland and Joe Little

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.