Mitch Cohen Thoughts on Domino, Sametime, Quickr, Messaging, Collaboration and Unified communications. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:12:32 +0000 http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf en CuriousMitch http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/rss.gif http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf Lotus Knows I had the Bus Delivered! http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Curiousmitch/~3/bJoz1am2u_4/MCON-7XHN23 Mitch Cohen http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XHN23 http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XHN23 The Lotus Knows bus tour was nice enough to make a stop at my office today.  Here is the bus arriving on site and being escorted by security to it's reserved parking space.

IMG_9909

and here is the bus parked and ready for the team to come aboard

IMG_9934

sorry Bruce, I got to drive the bus!

IMG_9948

and finally here is the Lotus team demoing Sametime Unified Telephony to the team on the bus

IMG_9969

Thanks to IBM for a great morning on the bus, which is now heading down to Philadelphia, PA this afternoon, before heading down to Baltimore, Washington and Virginia tomorrow.
]]> Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:04:00 +0000 2 lotusknows http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XHN23 Deleting Profile records in Lotus Connections (and yet another reason to love TDI) http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Curiousmitch/~3/2pQfVuKFzjw/MCON-7XGHQH Mitch Cohen http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XGHQH http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XGHQH On rare occasions I am asked to delete a users Profile completely from Lotus Connections, whenever this happens my first stop is over at Marco Ensing's blog where is he is always kind enough to remind me how to format the input file to run the "delete_employee_records" assembly line (which is found in the profiles_tdi.xml file that ships with Lotus Connections) .  The format of the file is like this

$dn:CN=Willis Jackson,OU=TV,o=the80s
uid:Willis Jackson
.
$dn:CN=Arnold Jackson,OU=TV,o=the80s
uid:Arnold Jackson

This is not something I do very often, and it has always been for one or maybe two users so manually creating the import file has never been an issue, yesterday however was a little different there were 100+ records that had to be removed from Profiles (long story for another day).  The first step was to gather up the required information, as seen above it is the UID, and the Distinguished Name for each user to be deleted.  These attributes are both obviously in the Domino Address Book, but they are also in the Lotus Connections Profiles database in the EMPLOYEE Table.  The UID is stored in the PROF_UID column, and the Distinguished Name is in the PROF_SOURCE_UID field.   Since I was able to identify each person to be deleted I ran a query against the DB and exported the results as a CSV file which looks like this (note I made the separator a semi-colon not a comma since the DN contains a comma)

Willis Jackson;CN=Willis Jackson,OU=TV,o=the80s
Arnold Jackson,CN=Arnold Jackson;OU=TV,o=the80s

So now the challenge is getting this data in to the right format for the "delete_employee_records" assembly line, I knew I was not spending the time to change it in to the correct format, and that is when it hit me, why bother, instead of simply changed the TDI script to read the file I had.  Lets take a look.

Here is the assembly line in TDI

A picture named M2

and here is the default parser for reading the input files set to use "ibmdi.simple"

original parser

If we connect to the file and read it in TDI it looks like this

iterate-entries(default)

So the next step is to change the parser from "ibmdi.simple" to "ibmdi:CSV" so that we can read input from a CSV formatted file, the other step is to set the Field Separator (again remembering I used a semi-colon not a comma as to not break up the distinguished names), and add in the field names which are simply the same as they were in the Default Format (UID, and $dn) so it looks like this

revised parser

When we connect to the file and read it in TDI, it looks suspiciously the same as it did above as seen here

iterate-entries(revised)

Once I changed the parser to read the file in the format the way I had it, which took about two minutes I was able to run the assembly line and process the deleted records, much simpler then formatting 100+ records into the originally expected format.

Yet another way you can use TDI to make your life easier.

Additional Information

Lotus Connections InfoCenter Deleting users from the Profiles database
Tivoli Directory Integrator: Part 4: Concepts & Vocabulary (by Marie Scott and Duffbert)
IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator Users Group

]]> Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:41:00 +0000 2 lotusconnections TDI http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XGHQH Has Planet Lotus Jumped the Shark? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Curiousmitch/~3/0bttZmABIDA/MCON-7XDMD8 Mitch Cohen http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XDMD8 http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XDMD8 To the best of my knowledge Ted McGinley has not started blogging on Planet Lotus, but I can't help feeling that Planet Lotus has Jumped the Shark.

Before we get to far in to this, let me say that I have all the respect in the world for Yancy Lent (Creator of Planet Lotus), and in the infancy of my blog back in 2007 Planet Lotus  drove a lot of traffic to my blog (and continues to do so today) which I really appreciate.  2007 was also was before the Twitter explosion.

Using the Blogs by date listed  view  I was able to approximate the number of blogs on Planet Lotus

December 2007 – 124
December 2008 – 277
October 2009 (actual) – 353

There are a number of factors that led to the explosion of blogs (nearly 300% growth) and the blogging explosion has certainly impacted how I view Planet Lotus.  It should also be noted that the list of Planet Lotus blogs is  maintained by Yancy, and blogs are regularly removed from Planet Lotus for a variety of reasons.  You can see a list of unpublished blogs here.

With 124 blogs a blog post would stay on the top half of the screen for a good part of any given day, the content was enough to speak for itself, at 353 blogs the shelf life is much shorter, which has lead to blog posts with spectacular titles that don't accurately reflect the substance of the post, but are designed to generate clicks and secure a coveted spot in the “What's Hot” section (by no means am I saying that every post that makes it to What's Hot is as a result of an ASW title, but we all know there have been many).

Another factor in looking at numbers on Planet Lotus is that there is no consistent approach to the use of Planet Lotus links.  Some bloggers choose to manually tweet their posts using a Planet Lotus link which adds to the hit count each time the post is used from Twitter.  Other bloggers choose to use services like Twitterfeed to automate the tweeting of their posts and track hit counts using URL shortening services like bit.ly, other bloggers might not tweet their blog posts (or gasp not Tweet at all).

I also wonder about the calculation of Hot Blogs, it seems to me that if I put enough content out on Planet Lotus in any given five day period it can result in a hot blog slot, so in a sense it rewards quantity not quality.

Please don't get me wrong having Planet Lotus is a terrific community resource, I just wonder if it needs some Tweaks to make it more relevant in a world where Twitter has become so prevalent.  I am not sure I have the answer but figured I would share my thoughts on the subject and see what others are thinking, you know where to find the comment button.
]]> Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:25:00 +0000 21 blogging Miscellaneous http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XDMD8 IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 Support Statement - Some Good News http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Curiousmitch/~3/ohFzOcQCjr4/MCON-7XD2LD Mitch Cohen http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XD2LD http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XD2LD This is a very interesting and positive Technote on Support for Lotus Connections

Lotus Connections requires the use of several collateral products for its normal operations. In particular, it requires IBM WebSphere Application Server, a database, a repository for user information (typically an LDAP repository), and other products depending on specific customer requirements.


Because the list of "Supported Products" cannot reasonably describe all possible configurations that a customer may need to use, some customers have voiced concerns about the level of support that will be provided for configurations that are not specifically designated as "Supported."


The Technote goes on to break down three categories of support

1. Supported Product - these are the documented LDAP, Database, Browsers, etc...
2. Newer Versions and Releases of Supported Products -  These are fix packs and updates to supported products which do not make substantial changes, (with a few exceptions)
3. Unsupported Product - these are the exceptions, and while subject to change any time it currently had three items on the exclusion list

The following are restricted products where IBM Lotus Connections team has a specific reason for supporting an exact match or for not supporting the product. This list may change, as our product and customer experiences continue to grow:
- Exact match for supporting: IBM WebSphere Application Server 6.1.0.23
- Exact match for supporting: IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator 6.1.1 FP6
- Not currently supported: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8; native model

The Technote then continues with a specific statement regarding LDAP Servers

LDAP support spans two (2) categories. These are "Fully tested and supported LDAP servers" and "Untested LDAP servers." The support statement for each category follows:


No big news on the Fully Tests and Supported LDAP servers, but the Untested LDAP Server provides the following

In general, Lotus Connections Support makes a commercially reasonable effort to support directory servers that have not been tested with Lotus Connections. This includes version numbers that differ from what is listed as tested in Lotus Connections 2.5 System Requirements


Support accepts problem reports for the appropriate Lotus Connections releases using untested directory servers. If Support can recreate the reported problem using a tested LDAP server, staff will attempt to fix the problem.


This is good news for organizations that have an LDAP directory running a release not specified in the list of supported LDAP servers, if the problem is reproducible IBM support will work to fix the issue.

Now I know that the restriction on the WAS version is one of the bigger issues raised with Lotus Connections, and these changes do not address that specific issue.  It would be nice to have WAS listed as a minimum required version with higher revisions supported, but it will obviously take more time to get there.  Over all this is a very positive change and statement adding some flexibility to components that will be supported running Lotus Connections.

IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 Support Statement
]]> Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:29:20 +0000 0 lotusconnections http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XD2LD We Just Call it Tri State LUG but really........ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Curiousmitch/~3/WLL8_jIIXhg/MCON-7XBFNL Mitch Cohen http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XBFNL http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XBFNL Last night I was thinking about the speakers and the agenda for our upcoming event in NYC on November 9.  When we formed this group earlier this year we wanted to cover what is known as the Tri State Region (New York, NJ and Connecticut).  With just over a week to go until the event we have attendees registered from at least four (the three mentioned and Pennsylvania)  maybe  five states  and Speakers coming from 2 Countries, 8 States, and 1 US Territory.  So whatever state, country, or territory you happen to live in you are welcome to join us, but if you don't want to be waitlisted you need to register now!

Here is a a map showing where the speakers are coming from

tri-state-speakers


]]> Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:38:31 +0000 1 tristatelug http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-7XBFNL