Agile in Atlanta

Arrived in Orlando on Sunday? Don't miss out on 20% of Lotusphere!

2012-01-15T07:46:00.001-05:00

The big day has come. You talked your boss into letting you go to Lotusphere and you finally made it to the Swan and Dolphin. Good thing you planned some time to relax on Sunday before the Welcome Reception tonight, because you have heard it can be a long week.

Wait. Stop. Lotusphere has already started!!

There is a ton of excellent content and activities going on during the day on Sunday of Lotusphere and you are already missing out. If you have not already - go to registration and get your badge and conference bag. The desk opened at 7 am and are waiting to get you started. Breakfast awaits down in the Dolphin Pacific Hall before the sessions that start at 8 am.

If you just got registered, ignore the bag for now and pull that little booklet out of the back of your badge.

Tip: Unless you go to the official Lotusphere online site or use one of the excellent mobile applications, the Pocket Agenda is the only place you are going to find the times for the sessions.

Open up that Pocket Agenda, turn to page three and pick a session go to in one of the excellent JumpStart or Show-'n-Tell tracks. These are some of the best sessions at Lotusphere because they take the time to really deep dive into how you can use these solutions in your business.

Between sessions, and really all through Lotusphere, remember don't be shy or Unsocial! Say hello to that person next to you and you will be surprised how interesting they are and what great ideas they have.

If you need any assistance, look for people with the blue IBM Champion ribbon on the bottom of their badges or a Team Social pin. We are here to help you get involved with the great Lotusphere community!

Live Blog of the August ATLUG meeting: Archiving and KM

2011-08-18T10:52:00.001-04:00

It's time for another Atlanta Lotus Notes Users group!

This time we have two great speakers:

Reducing the Costs of Explosive Information Growth with a Smarter Approach to Archiving - Presented by Mohan Natraj and Mike Davis

Sharing a Vision: Achieving Understanding, the next step in Knowledge Management? - Presented by John Grinder

Full descriptions of the talks can be found on the ATLUG site: http://208.85.190.73/site.nsf/d6plinks/RDAN-8JBN4A

The live blog will start here around 11:30 am Eastern.

<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=11230138a9" >August ATLUG Meeting: Lowering archiving costs and the next step in KM</a>

May ATLUG: Live blog on XPages - Taking Themes to the Next Level

2011-05-19T10:38:00.000-04:00

Today's Atlanta Lotus Users Group meeting will feature Tim Tripcony will present XPages - Taking Themes to the Next Level. Tim recently presented this at BLUG (Brussels Belgium) and is scheduled to present at UKLUG (Manchester England). This is a perfect follow on to the recent TLCC - XPages Learning Event.

The live blog will start here around 11:30 am, EST.

Topic:
Most XPage developers who have already started working with themes understand they offer a simple way to ensure inclusion of stylesheets and client-side JavaScript libraries, as well as automatic addition of style classes to components that match certain criteria. But themes are so much more powerful than that. This session will teach you how to leverage the full potential of themes to keep your XPage source code lean and tidy, enhance the performance of your applications, maintain device-targeted user interfaces, and even streamline resource management within large development teams. This session might just change the way you think about the very nature of XPages.

<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=cf8d09ca24" >May ATLUG: Live blog on XPages - Taking Themes to the Next Level</a>

February ATLUG - Live blog on Domino support by Michael Lee of the IBM SWAT team

2011-02-17T09:51:00.000-05:00

Today's Atlanta Lotus Users Group meeting will feature Michael Lee of IBM, who is a principal member of IBM's Domino SWAT team. The live blog will start here around 11:30 am, EST.

Topic:
Developers, you know how valuable it is to understand complex administrative issues so don’t feel left out! There
will be value for everyone in Michael’s presentation. Michael's Domino SWAT team routinely deals with the
most complex support issues related to Notes and Domino. Michael will share some of the most challenging
problems his team has faced and how they solved them and will share his insight and experience as a SWAT team
member. There will be lots of time for Q&A!

<p>&amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=b2bdbc1596" &amp;gt;February ATLUG - Live blog on Domino support by Michael Lee of the IBM SWAT team&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</p>

August ATLUG Meeting: Steve Heil on LotusLive and Bob Balaban on Debugging Java Agents

2010-08-26T12:05:00.001-04:00

A little slow on set up, but here is live coverage of the August Atlanta Lotus Notes Users Group meeting.

<p>&amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=557b122520" &amp;gt;August ATLUG Meeting: Steve Heil on LotusLive and Bob Balaban on Debugging Java Agents&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</p>

Update: Bob has posted updated materials from the meeting: Slides and demo code from ATLUG presentation: "Debugging Java Agents for Humans"

Lotusphere Comes to Florida!

2010-06-03T13:27:00.001-04:00

OK, so Lotusphere was already in Florida for the big show back in January, but that's ancient history. If you missed out on the fun or just want to learn how to achieve better business results with Lotus solutions, now is your chance.

Next week, there are two separate Lotusphere Comes to You events happening in Florida!

Hear about the latest technologies that are shaping business today, and how you can leverage these assets in your environment to remain agile and competitive in the market place without ripping and replacing your existing investments!
See first hand how our solutions seamlessly integrate not only with each other, but with our competitors solutions as well in our Collaboration without Boundaries live demonstration!
Discover how to leverage the power of Unified Communications & Collaboration across your enterprise to improve employee efficiency and drive down costs!
Learn how Collaboration in the Cloud can compliment your existing infrastructure to deliver collaboration capabilities that fit the needs of your users at a price that fits your budget!

The events are free to attend, but we do ask that you register so we can ensure we have enough space and food.

June 8th: Jacksonville (click here to register)
June 9th: Miami (click here to register)
June 10th: Boca Raton (click here to register) Update: The Boca event has merged with Miami.

Don't miss out. Your next chance at Lotusphere in Florida is not until next January!

Live Blog of May ATLUG Meeting: Bruce Elgort on XPages and Richard Sharpe on Teamstudio Unplugged

2010-05-20T10:55:00.000-04:00

Contingent on getting connected at IBM's Atlanta TEC Center today, I will be live blogging the Atlanta Lotus User Group meeting featuring Bruce Elgort and Richard Sharpe.

Tune in here at 11:30 am Eastern!

The agenda is:

Bruce Elgort, president and CEO of Elguji Software, noted speaker, and co-producer of the Taking Notes
Podcasts will be doing a technical presentation on programming with XPages!

Also, Richard Sharpe of Teamstudio® will present
Teamstudio® UnpluggedTM - Mobilize your Lotus® Notes® applications
• Extend the power and reach of your Notes® applications
• Store data locally on your BlackBerry® with a lightweight Notes client
• Work remotely, with or without Internet connectivity
• Mobilize your existing applications fast, using drag-and-drop XPage technology

May ATLUG Meeting: Bruce Elgort on XPages and Richard Sharpe on Teamstudio Unplugged

Ports used by Lotus Sametime 8.5 servers

2010-03-18T09:14:00.000-04:00

With the addition of the Sametime System Console, Meeting, Media, and Proxy servers in Sametime 8.5, the configuration has gotten a little more complex. If you have these servers running in different parts of your network, you may need to configure firewall ports to allow proper communications between the components.

Details on the port configuration is in the Sametime InfoCenter, but searches will usually lead you to a document that is specific to the Community server and does not address the new components.

The topic you want is in the Planning section: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sametime/v8r5/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.sametime.v85.doc/plan/plan_ports.html

Live Blog content fixed and a tip on CoverItLive

2009-10-15T12:42:00.000-04:00

I did my first live blog yesterday covering Luis Benitez and David Rosenfeld's session on Lotus Connections and WebSphere Portal integration at the Portal Excellence Conference.

My experience with CoverItLive was very good, with one issue: During the session Luis talked about using an iFrame tag to embed Lotus Connections. When I typed the tag, including the HTML brackets < >, CoverItLive did not encode the tag as text, sending it back as a real HTML tag. This had the effect of starting, but not ending an iFrame in the middle of my session notes, and cutting off all notes after that point. The iFrame tag also broke the edit capabilities in CoverItLive, so I was not able to correct the issue my self.

I emailed the support people at CoverItLive and they were able to resolve my issue quickly.

Here's the tip: When live blogging with CoverItLive, be very careful of typing in text that would resolve as HTML.

Side note for Blogger users: I just found out Blogger has the same issue in their rich text editor. :-)

Live Blog: Luis Benitez on Integrating Lotus Connections and WebSphere Portal

2009-10-14T17:29:00.001-04:00

I am at the Portal Excellence Conference this week and will be live blogging Luis Benitez and David Rosenfeld's session on Lotus Connections and WebSphere Portal integration.

Luis Benitez: Integrating Lotus Connections 2.5 and WebSphere Portal 6.1

Collaboration University 2009 Day 3 wrap up

2009-09-16T13:46:00.001-04:00

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:

There will be ongoing education through the year available to sign up for, free for this year's students and discounted for older alumni.
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

2009-09-15T18:47:00.000-04:00

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:

Approve docs in Quickr
Comment on docs
Read/update a blog
Manage tasks in Quickr and in Connections Activities
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

2009-09-15T08:08:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-14T16:58:00.005-04:00

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.

IBM Expands Cloud-based Product Offerings

2009-04-30T13:32:00.002-04:00

In the lead up to the Impact 2009 conference next week in Las Vegas, IBM is announcing several new products for running software in private and public clouds.

WebSphere Cloudburst

An appliance that allows you to host your own, private, cloud environment. This will be GA in 2Q and will provide access to software virtual images and patterns that can be used as is or easily customized, and then securely deployed, managed and maintained in a private cloud. A new version of IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition will be included, optimized to run in virtualized hardware server environments.

Amazon EC2 support expanded

IBM is adding availability of IBM Mashup Center and Lotus Forms Turbo for development and test use in Amazon EC2, and intends to add WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere eXtreme Scale to these offerings.

IBM BPM Blueworks

BPM Blueworks brings strategy and business process modeling tools into the cloud and integrates social collaboration technologies borrowed from LotusLive and Lotus Connections. BlueWorks provides business users with the collateral they need to implement business strategies within their organizations based on industry-proven business process management techniques.

BPM Blueworks builds an entire community around BPM, allowing you to use design tools to build your process models, capacity maps, and strategy maps and to collaborate with people inside your company, with your partners, or with the larger Blueworks community. This will allow you to share insight around a particular process, such as order to cash. IBM SMEs will also be joining the community to add advice and share best practices.

Look for a press release this afternoon from IBM.

My podcast on integrating Lotus Quick, Connections, and Sametime

2009-01-13T10:46:00.000-05:00

In December, I recorded a podcast for Innovations with Collaboration from IBM Lotus software

In the podcast, I discuss some experiences we have had working with clients to integration Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections, and Lotus Sametime. The combination of these three products really deliver great business value for collaboration and enterprise social networking.

Click here to download the mp3 file.

Enjoy!

Removing blog themes from Lotus Connections

2008-10-20T13:43:00.000-04:00

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

Log in to the WebSphere admin console
Expand Applications on the left
Click on Enterprise Applications
Click on the Blogs application
Click on Class loading and update detection
Check Reload classes when application files are updated
Enter a Polling interval for updated files. (I used 30 sec and then turned reload off when I was done.)
Click OK
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

Find the resource file: /installedApps//Blogs.ear/blogs.war/WEB-INF/classes/ApplicationResources.properties.
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.
Repeat for any ApplicationResources.en_properties and any other relevant language files.

Restart the application

Log in to the WebSphere admin console
Expand Applications on the left
Click on Enterprise Applications
Click on the checkbox for the Blogs application
Click Stop
Click on the checkbox for the Blogs application
Click Start

Enjoy!

Atlanta WebSphere on Oct 7th: Smart SOA World Tour

2008-09-25T08:36:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-23T09:28:00.003-04:00

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

2008-09-19T14:12:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-10T10:18:00.002-04:00

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

2008-09-09T16:43:00.003-04:00

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

2008-09-09T12:44:00.004-04:00

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:

ECM Integration Quickr Domino
Automatic Content Scraping (rules for moving Quickr content to ECM backends)
Lotus Connections integration for Quickr Domino (Activities and Wiki)
Support for Linux (server)
Support for Mac (connectors)
Support for Linux (connectors)
Mobile Support
Simplified Check-in/Check-out
Improved Versioning
Improved Round Trip Editing
Improved Rich Text Editor
Improved Threaded Discussion
Recycle Bin / Soft Deletes
Improved Place Listing/Favorites
Embedded viewers for documents
Single-Sign On
Improved Wiki
API to Monitor Reads/Writes/Deletions in Connectors
Enhanced Lists/Forms
Enhanced Workflow
Hot fix installed (all platforms)
Tools for deploying connectors
Multi-lingual server
Enhanced QPTools
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

2008-09-09T11:42:00.006-04:00

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.

Agile Atlanta on September 9th: Agile Metrics and Measurement

2008-09-04T11:34:00.001-04:00

What better way to wrap up the Summer by coming to Agile Atlanta to hear Mike Cottmeyer help you learn how to use metrics and measurements with your Agile projects?

Agile Metrics and Measurement

Speaker: Mike Cottmeyer, leader of the APLN Atlanta group
Date: September 9th, 6:45 PM
Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328)

Agile delivers value through iteration and inspection. Agile reporting is the key that will unlock that value and make your projects manageable again. This presentation will explore how agile teams estimate and plan, what these teams measure, and how these metrics can be used to manage project performance. The talk will cover four key agile concepts: story points, velocity, defect trend, and burndown and how these measurements can be used to deliver graphically rich, accurate, and timely project reporting.

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 14th: Monthly Agile Atlanta meeting (topic TBA)
Oct 27-28: Agile 201: Winning with Scrum with Jeff Sutherland and Joe Little