Brownies Blog - Author : Adam Brown

Migrated Blog to www.collaborationblueprint.com.au

Adam Brown — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 11:00:03 +1100

This blog has been migrated to http://www.collaborationblueprint.com.au with a brand new design!

CRN LotusLive Article

Adam Brown — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:46:13 +1100

Just found this (http://www.crn.com.au/News/167834,lotuslive-free-for-partners.aspx) article on CRN with a nice mention for ISW.

ISW is creating a service offering around migrating users to LotusLive from competitive offerings. I think one of the biggest challenges for LotusLive is how do we get there and that is what ISW's offering will solve. We are also offering hosting services for Notes/Domino applications to go hand in hand with LotusLive Notes.

Pretty good article but I have to say it is funny how journalists catch onto a couple of points. ISW is an Australian based business partner with offices in NSW, VIC, and Tas (not just a Tasmanian based). I also said that LotusLive fits with both SMB and large enterprises that want to offer services to users (eg factory floor workers) that they otherwise havn't been able to. I guess they need to focus on a couple of key points.

Regardless great to get a mention.

Taking Notes Podcast Episode 113 - All about WildFire!

Adam Brown — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:29:06 +1100

Check out the latest Taking Notes Podcast. Bruce and Julian interviewed myself, Mat Newman, and lead developer Andrew Welch.

http://planetlotus.org/64cea4

Keep a close eye on OpenNTF as well for release 1.3 coming later today.

I will try and put out a new video this weekend as well.

Pre-Populating Lotus Connections Tags - A manual test run!

Adam Brown — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:40:43 +1100

I am working with a client implementing Lotus Connections 2.5 and they want to look at ways of pre-populating some tags for the user profiles. After digging around the database structure you can see there is a table called PEOPLE_TAG. This is the table that stores all of the tags.

The columns are PROF_TAG_ID (This is simply a UUID randomly generated), PROF_SOURCE_KEY (This is the user that created the tag), PROF_TARGET_ID (This is the user that the tag is assigned to), and lastly the PROF_TAG (which is the actual tag itself).

So as a test I used the DB2 Control Centre to create a new row in this table. For the PROF_TAG_ID i used http://www.famkruithof.net/uuid/uuidgen which will generate a random UUID for you (Version 4 is needed for Connections). I then looked up a user in the EMPLOYEE table that will be the source (our Admin user) and used another user for the target. You simply copy their PROF_ID and add it to the appropriate column for the new tag record. And then just enter your tag in lowercase in the PROF_TAG column.

And that is it! Go to your connections, open the target user in Profiles, and they will have the tag.

The next step will be to automatically populate this table using TDI!

Lotus Connections x 4

Adam Brown — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:39:26 +1100

Every now and then I like to set myself and ISW a short term target around specific offerings. In November last year I set a personal target of ISW working with 4 clients to review and decide to implement Connections before Xmas. Well we nearly got there with 3 out of 4 sales completed before xmas. Pretty good but not the 4 out of 4 I was aiming for.

Well I have just found out that we just received the order for the 4th order on Friday so I am wrapped.

The customers come from a range of different industries and each have approached Connections from a different angle:
- First is a large truck company that has a significant investment in Notes/Domino and Portal already. They want to use Connections initially internally to enhance the sharing of Profile/Expertise knowledge as well as the ability to create shared bookmarks. We will be integrating Connections fully with their Portal environment.
- Second is a small business of about 30 users however they are also the largest international racehorse transport company. They operate in offices in the UK, USA, Australia, and New Zealand and use Notes & Domino to co-ordinate the business processes required to move horses from country to country. They are very successful and Notes is a big part of how they do it but that is another story. They are going to implement Sametime and Connections to increase the awareness and collaboration between their sites. They are one team and they want to share their knowledge and make themselves "closer".
- Third is quite interesting. They are part of the Catholic Education Office in Australia and they wanted to provide an online White Pages Directory of up to 70,000 school teachers/staff etc. They have gone with a Connections Extranet server and initially will just implement Profiles however as this grows to the other features I think it is quite exciting.
- Lastly, the 4th is the Australian division of a multinational printer and copier company. They rolled out 20 users a couple of months ago and have found is has spread well. They have now increased their user count by another 50 and plan to let it spread thru out the entire business over time.

So Connections is a very hot product for ISW and IBM. I will be spending plenty of time at the various Connections sessions at Lotusphere to pick up some tips that might help. I wonder what target I should set for other new customers for the next few months!

WildFire! 1.0 Released on OpenNTF

Adam Brown — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:26:18 +1100

How many social networks are you a part of? Got Sametime and Connections? Maybe you have multiple of each. Got Twitter as well? Facebook? Wordpress? Bebo? Tumblr? etc etc etc. I bet you have work related networks, personal networks, Yellowverse networks even!

Well I am very pleased to announce the release of WildFire 1.0 our free Notes 8.5 sidebar plugin just in time for Lotusphere!

Most of us have many social networks that we try and keep up to date but it is getting harder every day with so many networks. Wildfire! allows you to update mulitple communities in one go! You can add all of your networks in the Wildfire application and select which ones to send an update to. You can group them, sort by type, and even view your twitter lifestream from the one interface.

WildFire is a Lotus Notes 8.5 Sidebar Application to Update Status's across a wide range of Social Networks including Bebo, Lotus Sametime Communities, Lotus Connections, Facebook, GTalk, PingFm, Plurk, Sametime, Tumblr, Twitter, Wordpress and more!

You can also have mulitple of each network type!! WildFire! can be downloaded either from OpenNTF - http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/WildFire or the ISW web site - http://www.isw.com.au/wildfire . ISW has decided to contribute back to the Lotus Community so the source code is available on OpenNTF as well. We are hoping this is the first of a few sidebar plugins that we release during 2010!

Congratulations to Andrew Welch and the guys at ISW for their work on this project.

To Mac or not to Mac?

Adam Brown — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:36:21 +1100

So that wonderful time has come, at the end of 3 years, where it is time to get a new laptop. I have stuck with IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads for the last 15 years but here I am considering a change to a Macbook Pro 17 inch. Why am I thinking about changing? To be honest I don't think I have a compelling business reason to do so. Partly it is because I am sick of Vista however I moved to Windows 7 about a month ago and have been pleasantly surprised so that really isn't a reason to move. Partly I see it as an opportunity to present to clients how Notes is supported on the Mac as well. However most of all I think it is probably more just a desire to see what people rave about.

So I am asking those that have done it/tried it should I do it? To Mac or not to Mac? that is the question:)

I have been thru a lot of points in my consideration and nearly came across a few show stoppers. The one that nearly blew the idea all together was my Telstra NextG Wireless card. This wasn't compatible so it was a definite show stopper. However I then received a new NextG 21 USB device and it supports Mac. So we are still on.

What software do I use? Well I have a cross role between business development and technology. In my business development role I use tools like Office (although this might give me the reason to move fully to symphony, MindManager, Notes 8.5.1, our finance system (Not mac compatible so hoping to use VMFusion for this), SnagIT (No mac version unfortunately but rumours of one coming), Camtasia, Adobe CS2, and a range of other bits and pieces. I think in most use cases for business development a Mac should be fine.

In my technology role I use Domino Designer, Lotus Forms Designer, WebSphere Portlet Factory, Rational App Developer, as well as frequently running up VM images with the latest Portal, Connections, etc etc. So these products are probably the most troublesome in that they don't have Mac version. Again I am assuming they would work with VMFusion. Any comments?

So I am interested in hearing your (non-fanboy) opinions. Is Mac worth the switch? Given the above do you think it would work for me?

The last thing I forgot to mention is that I have Dual external screens. This has taken some research in how I would do this with a Macbook Pro. I understand that you can have one external and the Macbook screen at the same time however I still want to have that Dual 24 Inch external screen experience. The only way I can see to do this is the Matrox DualHeadToGo devices. These don't come cheap and considering I will need one for home and one for the office I would love to hear alternate solutions.

Take my To Mac or Not To Mac Doodle Poll (Created from the Notes 8.5.1 Doodle Sidebar!)
http://www.doodle.com/ztcmn8fw6ncktn8n

Real world outcome of Domino Designer becoming Free.

Adam Brown — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:28:07 +1100

I was just working with a client to optimise their IBM software maintenance which is coming up in Dec. Amongst other things they are currently licensed with Lotus Notes Collaboration and Domino Enterprise Servers and also have 4 Domino Designer licenses which were all up for renewal.

I explained to them the recently announced changes with Lotus Notes licensing, in particular that come Feb next year their Lotus Notes Collaboration licenses will convert to Domino Enterprise CALs and that as part of this they get an entitlement for Domino Designer with each license. There instant reaction to this was to ask "So does that mean every one of our users can have Designer?" which off course the answer is yes. They were wrapped with this and said that while they certainly wouldn't give it to every user that it is great that they can enable more people to build apps and don't have to be restricted by their 4 Designer licenses.

This has to be on of the exact outcome IBM is hoping to achieve, encourage organisation to do more with Notes and Domino. Back in the early versions of Notes before Designer came along any user could build basic databases and Notes flourished. Obviously Domino Designer was a great step forward when it was introduced however the cost of the license definitely had a negative impact of preventing that grass roots development occurring from basic users.

So then off course the question is should they renew their existing Domino Designer licenses now? I have suggested probably not. They have current maintenance up until Dec 31 so they are entitled to use Domino Designer 8.5.1 and it is probably unlikely there will be another release between now and Feb when their licenses convert. The only reason they would do it I guess is to have support for Jan but this is not likely to be needed, and also the fact that the Designer licenses will also convert to CAL's which they don't really need. So I guess the short term negative of the change is a small loss in revenue for IBM for clients no longer buying/renewing Designer but this should be insignificant to the positive impact that more people building Notes Apps will have on the usage of Lotus Notes within organisations and hence the ROI they get from the product.

So I say good one IBM, Domino Designer for Free is definitely making a positive impact on our clients usage of Notes & Domino!

Starting up Lotus Connections automatically

Adam Brown — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:32:13 +1100

Having installed Lotus Connections using WAS Network Deployment to start the Lotus Connections servers up I do the following:

restart the server (This also starts the Deployment Manager as a Windows Service)
Start the Node Agent - D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\bin\startNode.bat
Once the Node Agent has started I can start the Connections servers (I have server1, server2, and server3) from the Deployment Manager Integrated Solutions Console.

I want to change this process so that the Node Agent and the Connections server's all start automatically when the server is restarted.

So here's how:

Setting up the WebSphere Node Manager as a Windows service

First, you need to set up the Node Manager on each physical server to run as a service and restart after a reboot:

1. Open a Command Window and go to the ..\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin directory
2. Type in the following command (adjusted for your install paths):

WASService -add "IBM WebSphere Node Agent" -servername nodeagent -profilePath D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01 -wasHome D:\IBM\Websphere\Appserver -logFile D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\logs\nodeagent\startNode.log -logRoot D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\logs\nodeagent -restart true -startType automatic

Setting up the member servers to automatically restart

Once the Node Manager is running as a service, you need to set the individual WebSphere servers to automatically restart using the following steps:

1. Log in to the Integrated Solutions Console
2. Navigate to Servers > Application servers > servername
3. Expand Java and Process Management and click on Monitoring Policy
4. Change the Node restart state to RUNNING
5. Click Apply
6. Click Save to save the master configuration
7. Repeat for each server in the cluster

And that should do it. So when you restart your server the nodeagent should firstly start as a service and then it should monitor the servers and start them automatically.

Connections 2.5 - Step 1 - What you need for install.

Adam Brown — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Ok so I am installing Lotus Connections 2.5 to add to one of our Portal sites.

Here is the list of everything you need to install Lotus Connections 2.5

Required parts To install Lotus Connections 2.5 on Windows, you need to download the following parts:

Download Number	Part Number	Description
Download 1 of 12	CZ4SHML	Lotus Connections 2.5 for Windows
Download 2 of 12	CZ4SKML	Lotus Connections 2.5 wizards for Windows
Download 3 of 12	C88SPML	IBM WebSphere Application Server V6.1 for Windows 32-bit
Download 4 of 12	C88SWML	WebSphere Application Server V6.1 Supplements for Windows 32-bit
Download 5 of 12	C92MEML	WebSphere Application Server V6.1 for Windows 64-bit
Download 6 of 12	C88TPML	WebSphere Application Server V6.1 Supplements for Windows 64-bit
Download 7 of 12	C14SLML	IBM DB2 Enterprise Server Edition V9.5 for Windows
Download 8 of 12	C9666ML	IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator V6.1.1 for Windows

Optional parts You can also download the following optional parts:

Download Number	Part Number	Description
Download 9 of 12	CZ0LCML	Lotus Connections 2.5 Quick Start Guide for AIX, Linux, and Windows
Download 10 of 12	CT1HZML	Lotus Connections 2.5 License information booklet
Download 11 of 12	CZ4SGML	Lotus Connections 2.5 Pilot installation
Download 12 of 12	CZ0LGML	Lotus Connections 2.5 Pilot License information booklet

You will also need a variety of fix packs and update installers. I will list this at the appropriate steps as I progress.

Connections 2.5 - Step 2 - WASND

Adam Brown — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Installing WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment
Ok. So the first major step to setup Connections 2.5 is to install WebSphere Application Server. In this case I have a relatively small number of users so I plan to install on a single Windows 2003 Standard server. Now IU could just use WAS in a stand-alone deployment however this would make it difficult to later move to a more clustered approach or to have the different Connections services running on different profiles/nodes if needed. So I will go with WAS Network Deployment.

So when you install WAS choose the Network Deployment option. Note that you will need at least Windows Server 2003 SP1. On the server we have SP2 so it gave us a warning that we needed SP1 so I just ignored it and kept going. Also note that at this stage do not Enable Administrative Security. We will be enabling security later.

When you first install WASND from the download it only installs 6.1.0.0. According to the Software Requirements tell us we need 6.1.0.23. The latest fixpack is 6.1.0.27 so I am going to give that a go instead. Go to Fix Central for the fixpack. You will also need to install the Update Installer for WebSphere Software. This is a fairly straight forward process if you follow the instructions.

So now you should be able to start the server and log onto the Integrated Solution Console and see:

Setting up the Application Server for the first node
So now that we have WASND running we need to create a profile for the first node.

From the First Steps screen select Profile Management Tool:

We then choose to create an Application Server. I have chosen the Typical profile creation option. I am not enabling Administrative Security as again we will enable security later. The tool will create new application server called "server1". It is important to note that this server should not be federated with the Deployment Manager as a managed node. You can not install Lotus Connections onto a managed node.

Ok. So we now have WAS Network Deployment Installed, a Deployment Manager, and an Application Server Node (server1). Step 2 is almost complete!

Setting Up Security
For security we are going to use a Federated repository. The Info Centre is pretty good on this topic.

I have setup a Domino LDAP Server as a Federated Repository in our environment.

Now as server1 is not a managed node we need to repeat the security setup for both DMgr and server1. Just make them exactly the same.

Java Heap Size
Lastly we need to expand the Java Heap Side. This is done on the Deployment Manager in order to prevent an out of memory error while installing Lotus Connections. Instructions here.

So that is the WAS server prepared and ready for install of the databases which I will cover next.

Connections 2.5 - Step 3 - Databases

Adam Brown — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +1100

So I am going to use DB2 Enterprise Server that is provided as part of the Connections license. You can install this on the same server as your WAS for a small site however I am going to install onto a separate server.

Now note that the Software Requirements tell us we need either DB2 9.1 FP6 or 9.5 FP3. So once again we go to Fix Central and download the fix pack. Interestingly (as CuriousMitch points out) it seems the FP3 appears to be a full install rather than a fix so I have downloaded this and will start with this.

IBM Db2 Enterprise Server Edn V9.5 for Windows Fix Pack 3 - Download here

Installing DB2 Enterprise Server & Registering the license
The actual install is pretty straight forward so just follow the prompts and choose the options you want for your environment.

Once installed you can either follow the instructions here to install the DB2 restricted license key or you can use the License Centre.

Using the Database Wizard to create the Lotus Connections Database
Next we create a dedicated user for Lotus Connection, lcuser - Doco Here . This user us used by the Lotus Connections database wizard to create all of the databases required.

Once that is all ready make sure the DB2 instance is running (should be set to run as a service already) and run the db wizard - dbWizard.bat (extracted from the 2 of 12 file in downloads). This wizard will run for a while as it creates all of the databases needed for the Connections services. We are only having one DB2 server instance at this point but you can choose to install the databases on separate servers for scaling reasons if needed.

So that is the Database ready to go. Next we will install Tivoli Directory Integrator and populate the Profiles database.

Connections 2.5 - Step 4 - Install TDI

Adam Brown — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +1100

So once the Database server is ready and the Lotus Connections databases created the next step is to populate the Profiles database with your user information. To do this we use Tivoli Directory Integrator and run a the provided TDI script that will pull the data from your ldap directory and populate the Profiles database.

Now the Lotus Connections Info Center tells us that we need at least TDI 6.1.1 with Fix Pack 6. This can again be downloaded from Fix Central. Do a search for the Fix ID "*0006" and download the fix pack.

Once you have installed TDI and the fix pack that is really all you have to do for now specifically on TDI. You can later set TDI up to run the Profiles population script periodically but for now you just need it installed.

So now you need to copy the Lotus Connections Wizards directory (extracted from file download 2 of 12) onto the TDI server and run the populationWizard.bat file. Just follow the prompts and provide the data required about your LDAP server and the location of your database server.

And that is it for this step. We now have a server with WASND (DMgr and unmanaged node server1), Security enabled, DB2 server with databases created and Profiles database populated from the LDAP database.

Finally we are ready for the actual Lotus Connections install! Coming up next....

Connections 2.5 - Step 5 - INSTALL CONNECTIONS!

Adam Brown — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Right so we should have all the pre-install steps completed. WASND installed, Dmgr running, server1 profile created (unmanaged node, not running), security setup (using LDAP federated repository in this case), DB2 installed, databases created, TDI installed, Profiles database populated.

So now we can install Lotus Connections 2.5

But before we do...one more thing. Sometimes when you install Connections we can get a SOAP time out error. In order to avoid this error we need to increate the time that the server allows for a SOAP request. We need to modify the com.ibm.SOAP.requestTimeout property in the install_root/properties/soap.client.props file. Just open this file in Wordpad, search for "soap.request", and change the value to 300 or 600 (I did 600 just to be sure). Detailed instructions are here.

So now that we are really ready we need to make sure the Deployment Manager is running and the Application Server instance we will use to install Connections (server1) is not running.

Then we run the install.bat file from the extract of file 1 of 12 from the downloads. The Info Center is pretty good for these steps so just follow the prompts as per this document. You can choose to install all the Features onto the one server however I decided to split the features across 3 servers just to spread the load. The Lotus Connections install will automatically create the additional server profiles for you if you decide to do this as well. I guess it would be wise to try and spread the estimated load across all 3 of the servers however it is really dependent on your usage plans as to how you do this.

The install takes a good while but you should be able to just let it run. Once the install is complete it will provide you with a list of the URL's to each feature. You just need to start each of the servers (as long as the nodeagent is running you can start the servers from the Dmgr Integrated Solutions Console) and off you go! Be Social, Explore, Collaborate!

There are some post install tasks (such as testing the database connections, more security, configuring IBM HTTP server etc) that are listed in the Info Center but you should have a Connections system up and running.

Recent Contacts View

Adam Brown — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:55:11 +1100

I have had a few customers that have migrated to 8.5 about the fact that contacts seem to be automatically added to their Contacts database. Some people love this feature but others seem to not like it so much.

There is a new view called "Recent Contacts" as per the following screen shot. There is also a view "My Contacts".

Basically the My Contacts view should contain just those people you have actually added yourself to your contacts. The Recent Contacts View will show everyone that you have corresponded with via email/calendar invites etc. The new feature basically automatically adds every person that you email to the Recent Contacts view so that they then appear in your type ahead when sending new emails/calendar invites etc.

I personally quite like this as it means I don't have to add everyone to "My Contacts" in order to then use type ahead for their email. This saves me time in that I don't have to find their email in order to send another email back to them.

However for those that don't like this feature you can stop people being automatically added to your Recent Contacts view thru a user preference. From the Contacts database go to the More-Preferences Action Item (as per following screen shot)

Then untick the following check box:

This will prevent contacts automatically being added to the Recent Contacts view.

Hope that helps.

Customising a WebSphere Portal Theme - Remove Signup and Edit My Profile Link

Adam Brown — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:35:25 +1100

I have recently had the requirement to customise a Portal Theme a couple of times and every time I do it I fall for the same gotcha's so I thought I would document the process so I can remember next time. I recently modified a Theme to remove the Signup and Edit My Profile Links. Dave Hay shows us one way of doing this using XMLAccess however sometimes modifying the theme is required for other reasons as well.

The main reference on how to do this is the Info Center (http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpdoc/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.wp.ent.doc_v6101/dev/dgn_crthm.html) however there are a couple of steps that arn't terribly clear so I have recorded what I did below here.

The easiest way to build a theme is to take an exiting one and modify it.

First copy an existing Theme
Copy the following directories and files contained within -
...\wp_profile\installedApps\portal1\wps.ear\wps.war\themes\dojo
...\wp_profile\installedApps\portal1\wps.ear\wps.war\themes\html\Portal
...\wp_profile\installedApps\portal1\wps.ear\wps.war\themes\html\psw

Then copy all of the tld files from the WEB-INF/tld directory in wps.war into the theme WAR's WEB-INF/tld directory in order to get support for all the custom tags used for themes and skins.

I found the description of the above a little confusing so maybe this screen shot helps to explain what the directory structure of your new theme should be.

Now to modify the Theme (to remove the Self Care links)
Now you can modify the theme quite dramatically but here I just want to remove the selfcare and signup links.

Find banner_toolbar.jspf in the html/MyThemeName directory and edit it. Now basically what we need to do is comment out the appropriate bits. Don't be mislead by the comments in the document as they arn't exactly worded well. Basically you just need to comment out the sections that refer to the selfcare and signup

Now a key step/gotcha in the process is to Edit and Save Default.jsp as well. This updates the timestamp so that Default.jsp will be recompiled with the updated jspf elements. It seems that if you don't do this then it just doesn't work.

Package & Deploy the Theme
This part wasn't so bad. Just follow the doco - http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpdoc/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.wp.ent.doc_v6101/dev/dgn_crthm.html

Importing a Theme
and again this part isn't too bad. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpdoc/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.wp.ent.doc_v6101/dev/dgn_crthm.html

So once all that is done all you do is apply the Theme to your Portal pages. You might need to flush your cache and if you use a Proxy that cache's as well you might need to refresh that.

Your Demoted!

Adam Brown — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:28:37 +1100

It is interesting looking thru some of the voting on the Lotus Knows Ideajam. Having so many ideas come thru is just great but I find it interesting when some ideas that seem to have merit are demoted. I guess everyone has an opinion but I think when someone has made a real effort to explain their idea common decency says that if you demote it then maybe you should leave a comment as to why.

I have no problem with ideas being demoted, as that is the power of the system and how the good ideas rise to the top, but I think the whole process becomes even more valuable if people comment why they have demoted. This feeds the cycle and lets our all learn from others insights.

Now that I have written this I realise that I have probably done what I have just said we shouldn't. Time to go back and review my Demote Votes and provide some constructive comments why.

Problem. Solution. How? - What is yours? Can we think of 40!!

Adam Brown — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:50:08 +1100

Problem. Solution. How? - Lotus Knows So what are your examples. I would like to build a list of 40 up! [ ]

Productivity Seminar

Adam Brown — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:45:58 +1100

[ ]

Official Lotus Legends Awards

Adam Brown — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:03:49 +1100

IBM should have annual awards for customers. Official Lotus Legends! In addition to Beacon Awards for partners lets have Official Lotus Legends awards for customers that have created amazing solutions with Lotus Technologies. These Awards would promote both organisations and individuals for their success at achieving real business outcomes with Lotus software. Lets make business users proud of their achievements and help them stand out from the crowd. This should be a testimony to the excellence of the organisations and their innovation using Lotus technologies. The awards should be aimed at the business users of the software and help them to promote the success they have brought to their organisations. This is an extension of an idea that Lotus Australia had at last years Lotus Software University where they recognised and awarded industry experts that had been working with Lotus technology for 10+ years. I know that this award increased the loyalty of those people that received one.

Lotus Knows - Market to business users - Business Section of Newspapers

Adam Brown — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:19:17 +1100

[ ]

Lotus Knows - Market to business users - Airport Lounge Showcase

Adam Brown — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:02:39 +1100

[ ]

Lotus Knows - Market to business users - Airport Billboards

Adam Brown — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:57:22 +1100

[ ]

Introducing the Beautiful Molly Jayne

Adam Brown — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:17:04 +1100

I am very proud to announce that at 1.15am on Monday the 23rd Feb our Beautiful Molly Jayne come into the world.

Lotusphere News from a distance

Adam Brown — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:35:30 +1100

Well unfortunately I couldn't make Lotusphere this year as fortunately Jayne is due with our first baby in Feb. A little too close to be on the other side of the world.

So I am watching the news come in from afar and here is the latest news I have been able to find out. ISW has a number of our team at Lotusphere so I am sure we will get more info coming in soon as well.

IBM announces that since Lotus Notes 8 was released they have added 12,236 new customers. From my knowledge there used to be approximately 50,000 so this is a huge increase in new organisations that have adopted Notes & Domino.
Lotusphere is bigger this year. Customer attendance is up 2% on last year.
RIM introduced their first Blackberry 10 years today. Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.16 released to support Domino 8.5 (only 10 days after the release of 8.5).
New Blackberry Client for Lotus Connections 2.0.1 announced for release in early 2009. Supports all Connection services.
New Blackberry client for Sametime as well. Also plans to support Quickr and Lotus Symphony.
Blackberry XPages support in Domino Designer through an Eclipse plugin coming later this year.
Lotus Bluehouse has been renamed Lotus Live - http://www.lotuslive.com
Lotus Symphony for the Mac can be downloaded today including the ODF Toolkit for Open Document workflow
Symphony 1.3 will support Office 2007 file formats.
Lotus Notes is 20 this year.
Quickr is integrated into the iNotes 8.5 client.
XPages is a huge hit in Designer 8.5. This will revolutionise development of Domino Web Applications.
Xpages will be supported in the Notes client in 8.5.1. This is truly a major new capability. Imagine the interfaces we can build for the Notes client now.
LinkedIn Integration via the Notes Sidebar.
Lotus Quickr will offer XPages support
IBM is going to release SmartMarket - ibm.com/smartmarket . An store that partners can promote and distribute applications
IBM and OpenNTF are going to form a partnership. IBM is going to provide more support for OpenNTF.
Domino 8.5 offers 50% reduction in I/O
Lotus Foundations will ship with VMWare support
New release of ST coming in 2009 - ST8.5, including iPhone support
Sametime 8.5 web client - No Java Applets required. You can export recordings of Sametime meetings as Quicktime
Lotus Connections 2.5 - Can customise interface across the product. Profiles will support Microblogging (like twitter and Wall).
Connections will have Widgets to integrate Flickr and Twitter etc. Will also have bi-directional sharing with LinkedIn and more. Connections extended to iPhone. Wiki's can be part of Communities with support for versions and ratings. Lots of new Connections capabilities. New file sharing capability in Connections.
Quickr 8.2 for Domino to ship later this quarter, including LC integration and Domino 8.5 support
Websphere Portal now to include entitlement for ePhox Live rich text editors. This is great news. Portal really needed Ephox for Rich editing of web content.
LotusLive is a portfolio of integrated social software and collaborative services. Seems to be Connections, Sametime, Quickr all rolled into one service.
LotusLive partnerships with Salesforce, LinkedIn and Skype

And that is it for now. More as it comes in.

Exchange to Notes 8 Migration Case Study - Tasmanian Perpetual Trustees Limited

Adam Brown — Tue, 6 Jan 2009 13:27:35 +1100

IBM and ISW has just published a great case study on Tasmanian Perpetual Trustees Limited migrating from Exchange and Outlook 2007 to Notes & Domino 8 as well as their adoption of Workflow-Xpress.

More information here...

TripIT and Lotus Notes 8.5 Federated Calandars

Adam Brown — Fri, 5 Dec 2008 10:55:33 +1100

I have been using the Notes 8.5 beta for a month or so now and one of the best features is the federated calendars.

Essentially this feature allows you to overlay additional calendars with your own. For example you might want to add some of your colleagues calendars or you might have an events calendar for your organisation. Well with Notes 8.5 you can simply select which calendars you want to overlay with your calendar. On the left hand panel of your calendar go to Show Calendars and you can choose to Add a Calendar...

You choose a calendar to add and you have the option of using a user's calendar, Notes Teamroom Calendar, and even a Notes application Calendar. The ability to bring together disparate calendars is awesome. We have been able to look at shared calendars in the past and use Group Calendars to kind of compare different calendars but this is just seamless calendar overlays.

An example of how I am using this new feature is leveraging TripIT. TripIT is a new Web 2.0 type service that enables me to forward all my airline and accommodation bookings to it. When I email a booking to it the clever team at TripIT somehow automagically reads the itinerary and adds it to my TripIT Calendar. Now I can access my TripIT calendar directly via a web browser or via my Blackberry Bold's browser but I can also subscribe to an iCal feed.

So all I do is Add a Calendar, select an iCalendar Feed as the source, enter the URL to my TripIT feed, select a colour, and their you go. Your flights etc are automatically added to your calendar!!

So all I do now is email all my flights to TripIT, there secret sauce reads the document, and they add it to my calendar!! Now there is a reason to upgrade to Notes 8.5 when it arrives!

Video Case Study - Lotus Notes 8 Upgrade

Adam Brown — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:40:33 +1100

Further to the recent release of a case study ISW is pleased to publish (with IBM) this video case study: Please feel free to rank the video well:) []

Anglican Church of Australia - Case Study

Adam Brown — Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:47:55 +1100

ISW has just published a new case study with IBM on the recent Sydney Diocese Secretariat upgrade and migration to Lotus Notes & Domino 8.

Have a read here.....

IceTV Guide Via Notes Sidebar

Adam Brown — Tue, 8 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +1100

I just purchased a BeyonWiz DP-S1 PVR. It is a Dual HD receiver with 250 GB drive, wireless access, etc etc. For those in overseas etc reading this it probably isn't a big deal but PVR's are relatively new devices in Australia. In particular ones with downloaded TV program guides. The great thing about the BeyonWiz is that it supports IceTV's Interactive service which allows you to program the recorder via a web site. The Beyonwiz then periodically connects to the IceTV service and downloads the current schedule of things to record. So for someone that travels as much as I do and constantly rings home to ask for something to be recorded that is just great.

But it gets even better. IceTV have a service for mobile devices at http://remoterecord.com.au that allows me to log on from a Blackberry browser for instance. But even cooler is that using my Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Sidebar I have created a Widget that automatically logs onto the site and shows me the TV Guide. I can simply select what I want recorded from my sidebar and the Beyonwiz is updated!

Now that is a great use of the Notes 8 Sidebar Widgets if you ask me!

Wordle

Adam Brown — Tue, 1 Jul 2008 15:40:54 +1100

The Brown Blog Wordle:

Sametime Status - Invisible

Adam Brown — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 20:41:12 +1100

Just a thought that it would be great to have a sametime status of Invisible for all those times when you still want to log on but don't want people to see you. ie You might want to access a sametime bot or just do some work at night without being hassled.

Idea Jam link

Quickr 8.1 New Features

Adam Brown — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:23:48 +1100

Quickr 8.1 has just been released. The announcement letter is here.

The new features are:

New features in Lotus Quickr Standard 8.1

Usability enhancements to the browser experience:
Improved navigation and breadcrumbs throughout
Streamlined context menus
Simplified check-in/check-out and version control
Single-page member management
Note: These usability enhancements apply to Lotus Quickr services for Domino
Lotus Connections integration:
From a Lotus Quickr place, access an individual's Lotus Connections profile (in place of the "person card")

Lotus Notes 8.0.1 connector:

View and access Lotus Quickr places from the Notes side shelf

Drag and drop attachments and entire e-mail contents

Lotus Symphony connector:

Context menu within editors to contribute and share content in Lotus Quickr places

Microsoft Outlook connectors:

View and access Lotus Quickr places

Drag and drop attachments and entire e-mail contents

Personal file sharing:

Streamlined place for an end user to store important files and share them with others

Available separately (with the Lotus Quickr connectors) as Lotus Quickr Entry

Administrator enhancements:

Policy settings for places (maximum size, days inactive before locking)

Easy-to-use browser interface for administrators with improved reporting

Note: These administrator enhancements apply to Lotus Quickr services for Domino.

New features in Lotus Quickr Entry 8.1:

Simple personal file sharing improves personal productivity and reduces space required for e-mail attachments.

Single personal place for storing and sharing content accessible from any of the Lotus Quickr connectors or a Web browser.

Content moves seamlessly from Lotus Quickr entry places to standard Lotus Quickr team places.

I am particularly looking forward to having the Notes 8.0.1 sidebar connector. I have been using the beta sidebar for a while and it is great but was always a little buggy (which you would expect off course). Now that it is released I will be able to get all our staff using it. I think that this feature alone dramatically increases the usability of the product for file sharing. It is so simple and accessible having Quickr in your sidebar.

The other thing I am interested in understanding better is the Personal File Sharing feature. Not quite sure how this works yet but am interested how easy it is to share files across boundaries. This is where Quickr needs to compete with the ease of say MS Groove file sharing capabilities. The benefit that I see Quickr having over Groove is that Groove requires each user sharing to install Groove whereas Quickr is accessible from the browser.

The Symphony Connectors are also a big step.

Google Charts API & Lotus Notes

Adam Brown — Sat, 8 Mar 2008 23:49:24 +1100

If you havn't seen the Google Charts API then you should have a look. It really is a clever service that enables you for form a simple URL and the service will return a PNG image of the according chart. In forming the URL you simply add a series of parameters to define the chart format, colours, axis titles etc. You also pass your data set in the URL and wammo a cool looking chart is returned.

So I thought this was pretty neat as I was planning on implementing a Performance Scorecard type application in a Lotus Notes database. Basically I wanted to create a chart that a user could use to visually represent a KPI of billable hours vs hours available in a month. I was going to extend this to many more charts for different KPI's and was pretty excited at how easy to use the google charts api is.

However my plan has been thwarted!. Lotus Notes clients do not support png images! Yes I know amazing. You can import a PNG but this seems to convert it to a bmp. You can't refer to a png in an image tag to be viewed in a form or page for instance.

There seems to be a few SPR's logged with IBM on this topic:
SPR KSOA4CVSQG states that the Notes Browser does not support PNG files.
SPR MLAT5GSUAK states that a PNG does not display and has been closed as "not a bug".
SPR PBAO65AKFU is an enhancement request asking for future support of the PNG image format. Whenever opening a PMR to ask for PNG support refer to this SPR.

however it seems there is no immediate plan to support PNG.

So I thought I would post an idea on IdeaJam but found it is already there. So if you agree that this would be a good enhancement then please go vote for it.

The idea is here.

The big day!

Adam Brown — Thu, 3 Jan 2008 21:33:22 +1100

Well tomorrow is our big day. Tonight I have had a nice relaxing dinner with family and am now home with the Jessie dog. Jayne is with her family and the next time I see her she will be walking down the aisle. Everything seems organised so hopefully it will all go to plan. Most of all though by late tomorrow afternoon I will be the happiest bloke in town and will be married to a beautiful wife that I love dearly.

We will then be heading off for a couple of weeks on our honeymoon so we will see everyone late January!

Clear Your Desk!

Adam Brown — Tue, 4 Dec 2007 11:29:36 +1100

A few more IBM end user marketing videos. [] [] []

IBM Lotus Sametime 8 Entry and Standard Edn

Adam Brown — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:47:11 +1100

IBM are releasing on 3rd Dec IBM Lotus Sametime Release 8. They now have Standard and an Entry edition.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22698.wss

Notes 8 Video

Adam Brown — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 05:11:38 +1100

IBM seems to have really taken to YouTube for promoting Notes & Domino 8 with another new video. This one is about the Notes 8 client. It is quick but does highlight some of the new features in Notes 8. []

Notes & Domino 8.0.1 Web & Mobile Access

Adam Brown — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:20:25 +1100

Here is a good video showing the new features to be released next year with Domino 8.0.1. Shows the new features of Domino Web Access (and the new Light version) as well as the new Push Email for Windows Mobile Devices. []

Lotus Notes & Domino 8 Testimonial Video

Adam Brown — Thu, 6 Sep 2007 11:35:16 +1100

Here is a great video explaining some of the great new features in Notes 8. []

Blackberry 4 days on.

Adam Brown — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:30:40 +1100

Well I can't say it has been easy but I am very happy with the Blackberry device. Installation of the Blackberry Enterprise Server was fairly easy and configuring it and testing was pretty straight forward as well.

The catch came when I came to activate my Blackberry Pearl! Basically I spent between last Friday until early today trying and trying.........with no luck. The main problem (that I now know) was the fact that when I got the phone from Telstra they enabled the Blackberry Internet Services for my phone number. Alas what I actually needed was Blackberry Enterprise Services. They did not think I was going to use a Blackberry Enterprise Server and hence they enabled BIS which I now understand to be more for a consumer type service that people want to connect to a pop or imap type email account. After a weekend of frustration I finally called them this morning and asked if they had enabled the phone correctly to use BES and off course they hadn't. They then said they would change my account to use BES and within 2 minutes my phone was talking directly to our Blackberry Enterprise Server and pulling down my email, calendar, tasks, and address book. So lesson is if you want to use Blackberry Enterprise Server make sure your provider enables your phone account correctly and you will save a whole lot of hassle.

Other lesson learnt was that initially I have Notes 8 Beta 3 installed and it seems as thought the Blackberry Desktop Software does not like it. I had to re-install Notes 7.0.2 to get it working and once I had activated the phone I was able to go back to Notes 8.

Things I like:
- It is just seemless. Emails & Address book synching without having to even think about it.
- You can do live Address book look ups over the air to your Domino Directory. (I am going to try and see if I can get this connected to our CRM BusinessWorks.
- The calendar is very intuitive. On most smart phones I have never liked the calendars but using the scrolling capabilities of the Pearl is very easy particularly on the 1 week view of the calendar.
- The battery life seems to be great. I connected a bluetooth headset on friday and ran it for 4 days (with fairly heavy use as I was still trying to get it connected) and it didn't need a recharge. On my old phone (O2 Atom) Bluetooth would drain the battery within a day.

Things I am not sure about:
- I am not convinced that I like the 2 letters to a key qwerty keyboard. While it does work well and I would have been happy with it in the past, now that I see how great the email etc is I am sure I will be using it heaps more. So I am going to try out the Blackberry 8800 tomorrow to see if the full qwerty keyboard is worth having a slightly larger device for.

Next up I want to see if I can get Sametime going via the BES server and then I need to figure out what is involved with Synching other Notes databases.

In summary if the ph account had been enabled for BES correctly in the first place I think this would have been a very easy process. For a new Blackberry user I can now understand why people rave. While products like Commontime are excellent as well I think the intuitiveness and seemless synching of the Blackberry is hard to beat. A few years ago the cost was just prohibitive for our business but now it is very reasonable. Already I have a couple of other ISW'ers suggesting they might get one too!

Blackberry Pearl

Adam Brown — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:23:18 +1100

Well it is time to upgrade my phone and after considering the Nokia N95 (which appears to have poor battery performance) I have been convinced to give the Blackberry Pearl a try. There are so many positive reviews on the product that I figured I would give it a go. Fortunately Total Communications has offered to loan me a brand new unit for a week so I can trial the Pearl. It certainly has a great form factor and is very small which I like. The key will be how easy to use the Multi-Tap input is with Suretype. If that works well and I can get used to it then I think I will stick with the Pearl due to it's small size. If I think it is a pain then I will need to consider the Blackberry 8800 with the full qwerty keyboard.

Anyway I have got the Blackberry Enterprise Server software ready to rock so the first step will be to install and set that up. I will update my progress as I go.

Workplace Forms & Workflow-Xpress Demo Site at last!!

Adam Brown — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:10:28 +1100

Well here it is at last. I can't say that it is finished as it seems the more we do the more ideas we come up with to make it better.

Here is a link to the ISW Workplace Forms Demo site. We have a few forms on show however the best area is the Form Gateway. The concept is that organisations can have a Forms Gateway where external (and internal I guess) users can gain access to forms they are allowed to complete. They can fill them in and submit them and they start a Workflow process using Workflow-Xpress. We are pretty happy with the progress however it is really just a proof of concept. The possibilities are great though and it is great to see the products coming together in the exact way we thought they would when we started with Workplace Forms last year.

We have many ideas of what else we can do and essentially I can see this turning into a product offering for organisations that are looking at Workplace Forms and are interested in a Forms Gateway. Feel free to make suggestions/ask questions etc.

Workplace Forms integration with Domino

Adam Brown — Wed, 9 May 2007 16:34:11 +1100

Well I know it has been ages since my last post but wow we have been busy.

I have recently been working on a great Workplace Forms project and we have progressed integration between Domino and Workplace forms dramatically. I know this is a short post but hopefully in the next week I will have an excellent Workplace Forms demo site built that I can show everyone!

DBLookup Tips

Adam Brown — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:34:39 +1100

One of my colleagues pointed me to this DeveloperWorks article on performance tips for DBLookup. Some excellent tips here and I am sure a few of us have made some of these mistakes in the past.

I know I will be checking some of our larger Notes applications for some of these tips.

What a wonderful feeling!

Adam Brown — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:03:46 +1100

Just wanted to say how fantastic it is to be engaged to Jayne. We are progressing our plans, date is set, location is set, invitation list is getting their, engagement party set (even though numbers are getting out of control), Jayne is almost moved in, and the more time I spend with Jayne planning everything the more positive I am that we are going to have a wonderful life. Life doesn't get much better than this.

Double Right Click in Notes 8

Adam Brown — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:55:44 +1100

When I first installed Notes 8 Beta I almost freaked when I realised Double Right Click to close a document/database/view etc was not supported. I searched preferences trying to figure out how to turn it back on. After a while I looked at the Notes 8 Beta discussion forum and found that it wasn't supported but Mary Beth Raven had committed to bringing it back.

But then why wait!!! Nathan Freeman has posted on how to bring it back now! That is what I call a righteous hack! Well done Nathan.

Notes 8 Beta is now available

Adam Brown — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:13:12 +1100

While I am sure many have already realised the Notes 8 beta is now available.

http://www.ibm.com/lotus/getnd8now

While there seemed to be some download problems early on due to the rush it seems to be fairly speedy now. I am off to install the beta now:)

Footy Tipping 2007!!!!

Adam Brown — Fri, 9 Mar 2007 15:35:18 +1100

ISW has just launched their AFL Footy Tipping competition for 2007. Built on Domino off course. Check it out and win an iPod!

http://www.footytipps.com.au/domino/tipping/ISW2007.nsf/pgISW?OpenPage

Big news!!!

Adam Brown — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:55:33 +1100

Well Jayne and I had a wonderful long weekend and we have some big news. On Sunday afternoon I managed to get up the courage to ask Jayne to marry me and the answer was "Yes"!!!! So I am very excited to tell the world that Jayne and I are now engaged to be married. I will be heading out this afternoon with my new fiancee to try and find a ring to make it all official.

You have to love that out of the box experience!

Adam Brown — Mon, 5 Feb 2007 16:52:50 +1100

Well I received a brand new IBM/Lenovo R61p laptop the other day and it is just great.

2 Ghz Core 2 Duo Processor with 2 GB of RAM (upgradable to 4GB), 100 GB, 15.4 Inch wide screen etc etc. All up it is a very nice machine. The out of the box experience has been very smooth. Rather than clutter the machine with software that isn't required IBM/Lenovo are really good at keeping it to a limited number of useful applications within the ThinkVantage range of tools. As a result there was no need to reformat the machine and rebuild it without the rubbish. The only item that isn't really essential that came installed is Google Desktop. I havn't used it before but I am going to leave it and see if it is useful. The other item that seems handy is DiskKeeper lite which seems to work well for defragging the machine however to be really useful I may purchase the upgrade to the Pro version so it can run on a schedule in the background.

I spent a day or so migrating across all of my applications which I have listed here:

Applications	Utilities	Others
IBM Lotus Notes 7.0.2	mNotes	Snood (For my additive gaming)
MindJet MindManager	Tivoli CDP (for backup)	Bejewelled (for more addictive gaming)
IBM Sametime 7.5.1	5 Clicks (neat screen capture tool)
Firefox	Cisco VPN
MS Office 2003	Ultimate Zip
MS Project	Telstra NextG PCMCIA Card Software (for mobile internet)
MS Visio	Logitech Media Centre
Quickbooks Premier	PDF Creator
VMWare Server Console	UltraEdit
Google Earth	UltraVNC
Workplace Forms Viewer 2.6	Citrix Client
Workplace Forms Designer 2.6	Ultramon (used to manage multiple screens)
Microsoft Groove Virtual Office
iTunes
Adobe CS2
Skype
Address-IT
IVR-Xpress Visual Builder
Microsoft IE 7

I think that is about it. All up the new machine is great and I am very pleased with the performance etc. The main application that I noticed a difference with was Groove. I had all but given up on Groove because it seemed to hog a lot of resources however I thought I would try again. I was pleased to see that i hardly noticed when it started and it happily runs in the background. So I guess the extra processing power makes all the difference!

Sametime 7.5.1

Adam Brown — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:06:31 +1100

Sametime moved ahead in leaps and bounds in 2006 and it is good to see this is going to continue in 2007. I know that our organisation is leveraging Sametime 7.5 in many ways and it has now become a core part of our everyday toolset. Some neat new features coming on Sametime 7.5.1 announced at Lotusphere:

Tabbed Chats - How many time do you have 3-4 open chat sessions on the fly. Starts to crowd your screen eh! Well Sametime 7.5.1 has the answer. Tabbed Chats. As you can see from the screenshot you can now consolidate all chat sessions into once window with a convenient photo of each person. Or if you don't use photos it just lists the people on each tab. I will be interested to see how it managed 3+way chat sessions but I think it is a great idea.

Peer to Peer Video - With Sametime 7.5 we had voice capabilities. Well now there is also Peer to Peer video. There was a great demo of this in the Lotusphere Opening General Session that showed you can have videos of 2 or more people in the conference as well as videos of devices on the network. It just groups the video images at the bottom of the Sametime client. Neat!

Integration with 3rd party vendors - There were a number of 3rd party integrations show such as integration with Cisco kit where you can instantiate phone calls direct from the Sametime client. While we don't have this kind of back end equipment in place I am sure this will be great for large enterprises.

WebSphere Portal Express 6.0

Adam Brown — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:52:48 +1100

A Lotusphere announcement that I missed (thanks Dave) was WebSphere Portal Express 6.0. We have looked at previous versions of Websphere Portal for a number of our clients in Australia in the past however as most of the Australian market is SMB it really was too big. We looked at Workplace Services Express however it didn't quite have the flexibility of the full Portal. So with the announcement of WebSphere Portal Express 6.0 it is great to see IBM continual commitment to the SMB space.

We have already been using IBM Lotus Component Designer (Previously Workplace Designer I think) and it really is a great tool for us Domino developers to move into the Portal space. Maybe a good project for me would be to integrate Workplace Forms with WebSphere Portal Express 6.0!!

Lotusphere Buzz

Adam Brown — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 11:21:37 +1100

While I managed to get to Lotusphere the last 2 years running due to other commitments I couldn't do it this year. It is however fantastic to have so many people blogging about the latest and greatest so you can still get a great feeling for what is going on.

A couple of points I have noted so far:

IBM publically announced that they had a 30% growth in Notes/Domino for 2006. This is a huge figure and certainly lays to bed the comments that Notes is no longer growing.

IBM also started to reveal details about "Domino release beyond 8" which is also very encouraging and shows that they are very committed long term to the product. The one thing IBM has proven time and time again is that you don't need to wait for years for major upgrades to the product.

Ken Bisconti's comment that "Lotus Notes is the 'one and only' strategic e-mail platform for IBM.".

Some product announcements:

Lotus Connections
Lotus Quickr
Lotus Sametime 7.5.1
Lotus Notes/Domino 8
Lotus Component Designer

As I discover more I will mention it.

Blogging Again

Adam Brown — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:40:00 +1100

Well like many others I got bogged down with work and slackend off with the blogging. But I am back. We have had a pretty busy couple of months on a number of fronts.

We have progressed a great deal with Workplace Forms and Workflow-Xpress Integration and now can easily integrate any Lotus Notes database Form with a Workplace Form (More on this later).

We are very close to getting go ahead with a new customer (Can't say who but they are an Australian Public company) to implement Notes & Domino. They use Exchange currently which will be a nice conversion but the best part of it is that they are a clean site without legacy Notes databases etc. We are going to be implementing Workflow-Xpress as the foundation for all Notes applications so it will be great to be able to really leverage the product in this new environment.

I also had a great Xmas of course. Jayne and I spent lots of time with Family & Friends and then spent a week with my family on a P&O Cruise from Brisbane out to Vanuatu and New Caledonia in the Pacific. Very nice. I will upload the photos to Flickr shortly and put up a link.

Anyway just a quick post to get back in the blogging action. With LotusSphere kicking off in the near future I am sure there will be plenty to chat about.

P.S. I have just integrated this blog with Snap to allow the Snap Preview feature. Pretty neat tool where any link to an external site that you mouse over you get a preview load of the site so you can see if it interests you. Great idea and very easy to implement!

ISW Finalist in Tasmanian Export Awards

Adam Brown — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:41:41 +1100

Last friday night I had the pleasure of attending the Tasmanian Export Awards

This prestigious program is recognised as one of the most important events on the business calendar for Tasmanian exporters. It is the State’s highest recognition of excellence for companies exporting goods and services and is held in high regard throughout the world.

I am pleased to say that ISW was selected as finalists for the award (one of only 5 Tasmanian IT companies to be finalists) in 3 categories:

UK Trade & Investment Information and Communications Technology
Caterpillar Underground Mining Small Business Award
AusIndustry Emerging Exporter Award

Being a young company I have to say I was pretty pleased with this result and it reflects the success we have been having with products like IVR-Xpress Visual Builder and Workflow-Xpress in international markets. We really have only just started and I know that we are all very excited about the future of ISW as a company exporting software solutions around the world.

Congrats to the winner of the ICT category - JadeLiquid Software

It really is great to be part of the Tasmanian economy. We live in such a wonderful place with great lifestyles. To be able to do this as well as do business on the World Stage is simply awesome.

Workplace Forms Integrated with Workflow-Xpress on Domino: Part 3

Adam Brown — Mon, 2 Oct 2006 18:54:01 +1100

Well little by little I am progressing. I was having trouble getting the Translator Servlet running on Domino (mainly due to a big lack of documentation showing how to deploy IBM Workplace Forms Server on a servlet container other than IBM Websphere Application Server). So I decided to try it the way it was documented by using WAS 6.0.2.

First I setup another VM-Server running Windows 2003 and applied the appropriate patches etc. I then installed Domino 7.0.1 and the Workplace Forms API and got the Mortgages example working (As this was now the second time it took maybe 1 hr instead of the day that it took the first time). This meant I could use Domino as the storage and data repository for the Mortgages Form using the Workplace Forms Viewer embedded into the browser as an object.

Then in order to get the Workplace Forms Server Translator Servlet operating (This is what renders the XFDL form as HTML) I installed WAS 6.0.0.0 Then upgraded it to WAS 6.0.2.0. The hardest thing here was finding the right files to download from IBM. The documentation seems to indicate that you need to change the Default HTTP Port to be 8085 rather than the preset 9080 for WAS so I did this. I then installed the Workplace Forms Server including the Translator and the sample apps. This seemed to work fine however when I then tried the sample it wouldn't work. After turning off Internet Explorer's "Friendly Error Messages" (NOT) I realised that both the WAS HTTP server and the Translator Service were running on 8085 and hence the conflict. So skip the above step re changing the Port!! Once I changed it back and restarted the services it worked a treat. This all took most of the day as it was a painful process but again I reckon it will only take an hour or so next time.

So now I have Domino acting as the main HTTP server and WAS acting as the servlet container for just the Translator Servlet. Next step is to write a JSP that combines both the Domino integration example and the WAS sample. This should then allow me to use Domino as the Workplace Forms storage of Form templates and have the Mortgages application detect if the user has Workplace Forms Viewer installed. If it does it will load the viewer (as per the Domino Integration example) and if it doesn't it will use the Translator (running on WAS) to render the form as HTML allowing me to still populate the data into the Domino database. Then we are really cooking with gas as they say for all those Domino sites that want to integrate Workplace Forms!!

One good thing about the above is that once you have the Translator installed as a service there is no need to start WAS. You just need to start the Translator service and that seems to work fine. I still believe it will be possible to get the Translator servlet running just on Domino without the need for Tomcat or WAS but I really wanted to get the Translator going first so I went with WAS. Down the track I will try again to get it going just on Domino. An important point that maybe makes it all pointless anyway is that WAS is bundled with Workplace Forms Server anyway (Restricted use license for Workplace Forms only) so that may very well be the way to go regardless.

Workplace Forms Integrated with Workflow-Xpress on Domino: Part 2

Adam Brown — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 13:41:04 +1100

Awesome. I have managed to install Workplace Forms Server API onto a Domino server and have got the Mortgage Form Sample working. At this stage a user can access the Mortgage form from a browser (using the Workplace Forms Viewer at this stage) and enter a customer number. The form is then prepopulated with customer data that is extracted from a Notes database. The user can then complete the form and submit it back to the Notes database. The submit will update any changed customer details and create a new Notes document with the Workplace Form attached. The data from the form is parsed out and populated into the Notes document.

There were a few little tricky bits where the documentation wasn't quite correct (mainly to do with new versions of the API's). Also the setup of the PureEdge configuration needed a little tweaking.

The next step is to modify the Form so that it used the Workplace Forms HTML Translator so that users don't need the Workplace Forms viewer and can have a zero footprint. Once I have that going I plan to integrate the Notes database with Workflow-Xpress so that the submission of the form kicks of a workflow business process to route the form to appropriate people.

Workplace Forms Integrated with Workflow-Xpress on Domino

Adam Brown — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 09:10:21 +1100

I am just starting a project for a client to integrate IBM Workplace Forms with a Lotus Notes/Domino database. We have purchased a nice new IBM X-Series 346 server with plenty of memory & disk. I plan to install Linux as the host operating system and then utilise VMWare Server so that I can run up a few different installation options. At this point the first server will be a Windows Server 2003 Standard Edn.

The plan is to implement Workplace Forms Server Express onto a server running Domino. The Domino server will serve out the clients public web site where customers can fill in a Workplace Form (Loan application for example).

Once the Form has been filled in it would be submitted to the server and saved as an attachment to a Lotus Notes document. I plan to parse the Workplace Form and then populate corresponding fields on the Notes document. Users within the clients Notes environment would then be notified that a client has submitted a form. They would be able to read the details parsed into the Notes document and if they have Workplace Forms Viewer installed they could open the actual form attached. If they don't have workplace Forms Viewer I thought I could add an option to launch the form in a browser via the Workplace Forms Server.

In a step based approach it will work as follows:

The end-user fills in the form, using the Workplace Forms WebForm Server ( Translator ) or the Workplace Forms Viewer, and clicks the [Submit] button

The data within the form -and- the form itself are posted into Domino using a J2EE servlet running on the Domino server

The servlet parses the form, and extracts the data into a NSF.

The servlet also stores the form as an attachment to the Notes document

By integrating ISW's Workflow-Xpress with the NSF, the business-user receives an email notification, advising them of an update ( this is a Domino application trigger driven by Workflow-Xpress)

They navigate to the relevant database, and view the data stored within the database schema

They also choose to open the form by clicking on the attachment; alternatively, they click on a button which invokes the WebForm Server ( Translator ) and passes the form ( as an XFDL file )

and that is basically it.

So as I progress I will update here on.

LinkedIn.com

Adam Brown — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 21:29:32 +1100

You really should have a look at linked in. Another great example of social networking/internet collaboration. With little effort I have created 11 direct connections, 200+ 2nd degree contacts, and over 16300+ 3rd degree connections, and it is pretty early days.

It really is pretty amazing concept. Everytime I get another connection I quickly find that I already know quite a few of the people. Combine this with an expertise capability and it is a powerful tool.

http://www.linkedin.com

Sametime Server on Linux

Adam Brown — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 16:34:10 +1100

IBM has announced that they will soon be porting Sametime server to Linux. So with the release of the Sametime Linux client (due in Sept with Sametime 7.5 and now in beta) and then in the first half of next year, the release of Sametime server on Linux enterprises will be able to adopt a pure linux instant messaging environment if they so choose. I am not aware of any other vendor that has offered IM support on Linux. Choice is such a great thing and definately puts IBM ahead of its competitors.

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;1174295407;fp;8;fpid;0
http://edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/sametime-server-for-linux-being-announced-today

Developing Software in Australia

Adam Brown — Sat, 5 Aug 2006 19:18:47 +1100

I have been thinking recently about how the development and more importantly commercialisation of software in the Australian market has changed in recent years. I have been fortunate enough to spend most of my career working for organisations that have developed software solutions with a view of commercialising them and taking them to market. Some of these products have been very successful and a couple that really havn't amounted to much. I firmly believe that a key success factor (or failure in the case of the not so successful products) has been the market reach of the product and hence the potential customer base. Now I guess this really isn't rocket science and it is pretty obvious when stated simply. In order to succeed with any product (software or otherwise) there needs to be a clear strategy of how to best reach the market and there needs to be a potential customer base large enough to justify investing in the product.

Now I also believe that here in lied the primary challenge for Australian software companies of the past (ie 2-3+ years ago). For an Australian company the potential target market used to pretty much be Australia. As little as a few years ago the reality was that for a small company that wanted to develop software in Australia the market was pretty much 20 million people (the population of Australia). For companies based in the Europe or America the market was much larger (American Population ~295 million people). So what does this mean? Well for a software company building a very niche product the market in Australia is probably pretty small. Whereas American and UK software companies have a much larger audience for niche products simply due to their populations. The reality was that unless you had some significant backing (ie $$$) it was very difficult to promote, sell, distribute, and support software overseas.

A good example of this is ISW's Address-IT software suite. Address-IT was developed specifically for the Australian market to barcode mail as part of the Australia Post AMAS program. We have been pretty successful with the product over the last 7 or 8 years it has been in the market. We have a good client base that is continuing to grow and the product provides a good return for the investment made. In real terms the product employs 3-4 people and has enabled us to invest further in our software business. We are pretty proud of what we have acheived with the product. The reality is though that the product is only designed for the Australian market and hence the potential growth into the future is limited.

Now as a comparison, ISW partners with a company in the US (based in Seattle), Satori Software. Satori develops a product called Mail Room Toolkit. The product is essentially the same as Address-IT in that it enables American companies to barcode their mail under the equivalent American postal programs. Now Satori have also been pretty successful with what is pretty much the same niche software product (there are a few differences but the underlying purpose of the products are the same). The difference is off course is that their product is aimed at the American market (295 million people). So their potential customer base is simply huge compared to that of Address-IT. As a result Satori now employ something like 85 people and are focused primarily on this one product!! That is a pretty amazing difference to Address-IT and makes our success look humble in comparison.

There are of course may be a number of difference but I am pretty sure the market size is the key factor here differing the growth of two products.

So what is the point of all of this. Well the natural extension of this is that if Australian software companies want to grow to significant businesses they really needs to have a broader focus than just the Australian market. The great thing is that the world has changed even just in the last few years. I believe that the internet phenonemon has truely taken hold and companies are in no way restricted by their geographic locations. Google, Yahoo , etc....Web Conferences, Web Demos, VOIP, and real time collaboration over the net have enabled us to reach these remote locations like they are down the road. Sure you may need to get up at 2am for the occasional meeting but I am happy to sleep in after those meetings. Companies, and more importantly the people making the buying decisions understand now that geographic location isn't really a big deal. Small IT companies have had true world wide success with niche products. Companies all around the world now have the entire world as their potential market without having to spend heaps of $$$ to do so. Setup a good web presence and off you go.

ISW has invested a lot of time and effort into ensuring the products that we are now taking to market have broader market reach and potential. We are pretty excited about a few of our products such as IVR-Xpress Visual builder (we have sold more licenses overseas than we have in Australia and fully expect this trend to continue and grow). Our IBM Lotus Notes & Domino products such as Workflow-Xpress and BusinessWorks have a potential audience of 125 million users around the world and thru clever use of google etc we have successfully penetrated both the American and European markets as well off course the Australian market.

I believe that an important factor in successful software development is that software isn't all about the code. The greatest code in the world won't alone make for a successful product. I might chat about that next. If anyone has want to comment what they think are the keys to commercialising software around the world I would be keen to hear from you.

Screen Resolutions? What size fits most

Adam Brown — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 15:13:06 +1100

Just a question for everyone. I am in the process of redesigning the layout of our standard look and feel for most of our Lotus Notes applications. What resolution do you think can be accepted as the normal? We used to design for 800x600 but I think that going up to 1024x1280 is probably reasonable nowadays. However I would probably like to go to a higher resolution again but that might be pushing it. Anyway if you have any thoughts on what should be the average resolution I would appreciate it.

Lotus Notes on Linux

Adam Brown — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:27:19 +1100

IBM have just announced the release of Lotus Notes 7.0.1 for Linux. This offers a real alternative for those sites that use Windows only because they want the Notes client. I know of a couple of clients that have wanted to do this for many years so it is great news.The software will be downloadable via Passport Advantage starting on July 24, 2006. Those organisations already licensed for a Lotus Notes client get it for free. Another exampe of IBM adding real value with Notes 7.

Some more info:
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/n/nhan6rfrrb?OpenDocument&Site=software
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6091872.html
http://crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=190301221

New SMB/Express pricing for IBM Workplace Forms

Adam Brown — Sat, 8 Jul 2006 13:58:56 +1100

This is great news. IBM Workplace Forms now has an Express pricing model for SMB business. We have been looking at Workplace Forms with a number of clients but the licensing has been a little on the steep side for a couple of them. Well the new express pricing should make it an acceptable proposition.

IBM Workplace Forms Express
http://www-142.ibm.com/software/workplace/products/product5.nsf/wdocs/formsexpress

IBM Workplace Forms Express V2.6 enables small and medium businesses to create electronic forms using open standards and local language support
http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/2/897/ENUS206-152/ENUS206-152.PDF

Product overview: IBM Workplace Forms Express eForms made "eZ"
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/tividd/software/saleskits/N473098Y88475O65/KEY_36.html

There are a number of different options, including: -
D59APLL                IBM Workplace Forms Viewer Express Authorized User License plus Software Maintenance for 12 Months        USD99
D59AVLL                IBM Workplace Forms Viewer Express 25 Pages License and SW Maintenance 12 Months                             USD25,000
D59ARLL                IBM Workplace Forms Server Express Processor License plus Software Maintenance for 12 Months                USD10,000
D56EFLL                IBM Workplace Forms Designer Registered User License plus Software Maintenance for 12 Months                 USD649

I have been distracted for the last couple of weeks but I am planning on spending a few days over the next week or so working on the integration of Workplace Forms with ISW's Workflow-Xpress. These two platforms integrated together will make an awesome package.

More Sametime 7.5 tidbits. This time with Microsoft in mind

Adam Brown — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:25:15 +1100

IBM have just announced some more great features for Sametime 7.5.

In particular "by providing integration with Microsoft Outlook, Office and SharePoint applications". This includes integration into Outlook's calendar for scheduling Sametime Conferences, presence awareness within Outlook, being able to send an IM, initiate a VoIP call, or share the current application from within Microsoft Office.

Also stressed again is the fact that Sametime 7.5 is built on the Eclipse Framework (as is Hannover - next version of the Notes client) which means that third parties, such as us, can built plugins and extensions for the Sametime 7.5 client. I am very excited about this possiblity we have a few ideas for extensions that will make the sametime client awesome.

Are you a Lotus Notes Nomad?

Adam Brown — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 16:59:13 +1100

Are you one of these users that wants to access Lotus Notes from everywhere? Don't like the browser interface to your Notes Apps and would much rather use a Notes client when on the road. End up lugging around your Laptop when on holidays so you can still access Notes?

Well here is a great innovation from IBM with Lotus Notes 7.0.2. Notes on a USB memory stick install . With Notes installed onto your USB memory stick you can just plug it into a computer and wammo you have Notes. When you leave that machine you take everything with you.

This would be great when travelling, in lets say Phuket Thailand. Simply get into an internet cafe at 1 Baht per minute (28 Bahts is about $1AUD), plug in your USB memory stick and off you go.

Or maybe you are travelling thru an airport, quick jump on that PC, plug in the USB stick, and off you go. Full Notes access.

This is a great innovation from IBM and I can see many of our clients making great use of it.

Sametime 7.5 Beta Demo Site

Adam Brown — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 12:22:20 +1100

Have a look at the Sametime 7.5 Beta Demo Site. IBM have put up a demo server so you can look at the new features on Sametime 7.5 web conferencing. Note that it is a Beta and has a list of known limitations. Also IBM have stated that features may change/be added/be removed as it is still in Beta.

I for one am looking forward to upgrading our Sametime server.

Sametime 7.5 Podcast

Adam Brown — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:14:30 +1100

Still awaiting with much anticipation the release of Sametime 7.5. Since Lotusphere in Jan we have grand plans for developing plugins for Sametime 7.5 so are very keen to get our hands on it.

Anyway here is some more tidbits of information. Get the podcast here.

Blog Spam

Adam Brown — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 09:28:56 +1100

You probably havn't noticed as I was keeping on top of it most days but my blog has been suffering from a bad case on Blog Spam. I have been deleting the spam everyday for the last month or 2 since it started. Well good news, I upgraded to Blogsphere V2.5.5 a couple of days ago and one of the fixes/enhancements was improvements to how it handles spam. It seems to be working great, not a single spam since the upgrade. Well done to the blogsphere team.

Back from Phuket

Adam Brown — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:34:18 +1100

Alas I am back at work from Phuket. We had the most fantastic time. Great resort, great weather, awesome food, shopping (wow did we shop!! The MBK Centre in Bangkok was covered inch by inch). Daily routine was along the lines of get up around 8:30am for a dip in the pool, huge breakfast, walk along beach, looking around Patong, markets etc, massage, beer on the beach, little lunch maybe, relax by the pool in afternoon heat, nap a little, read a little, head out for dinner and some night life, and then do it all again.

Some key highlights - Elephant Trek, the Novotel Resort in phuket is just fantastic, the Thai people are just the nicest people I have ever met.

Of course spending plenty of time with Jayne was great as well.

1 tip for people visiting, the Fantasea show is pretty good but don't be tricked into going early. We were told we had to leave at 5:30pm for the show and then arrived at 6pm. The show didn't start until 9pm so we were stuck in a tourist trap for 3 hours!! The show is good by the surrounding theme park is sooooo tacky. Was fun anyway.

Off to Phuket!

Adam Brown — Tue, 30 May 2006 10:43:44 +1100

Well I have been a bit slack over the last week with the blog. I have been pretty busy trying to close off a heap of work before having a break. We are off for a couple of weeks in Phucket. Warmer weather, cocktails by the pool, daily massages, bit of shopping, and a heap of relaxing. So that is it for the next 2 weeks for me!!!

Home Working

Adam Brown — Thu, 18 May 2006 21:19:31 +1100

I try to work at home at least 1 or 2 days a week. I find that I have a real productivity boost when working at home in particular when doing tasks that need concentrated effort. Even though I normally divert my office phone to home, I seem to find that I get less distracted or if I do receive a call I get back to what I was doing quicker. When I am in the office (which I do need to at least a few days a week) I find that I have many more interuptions. I guess these interuptions are an important part of what I do as well though so its not that I mind. I tend to try and spend at least 5-10 minutes talking with each member of the team just catching up with where they are at and providing input where I see it is necessary. I am a bit of a believer in the One Minute Manager management book and take a lot of my approach for management of the team from this.

As far as working from home though I see there being many advantages:

1) You can skip out on that drive to work. It isn't like it is long (20 mins each way) but by the time you have parked the car etc and got the laptop fired up in the office I have probably wasted an hr. This hr can either be more time for work or more time for me.
2) Ability to focus without distraction. It seems to be way to easy to get distracted in the office.
3) I can spread my day out better. The commute to my home office is obviously less than a minute to walk from say the kitchen to my office. I can also fit in a few personal tasks throughout the day when I feel like a break. Then when I want to get back into it I just start working again. I can easily get 8-12 hours of work out of a solid day at home.
4) My dog Jess just loves it when I work at home. She mainly sleeps at my feet. I also think this is good for my state of mind.
5) I am more relaxed.

One of the key things when you do work at home though is making sure you don't let the work invade on your home time. It is so easy just to keep working. I tend to manage this by keeping it to my office. When I am there I am working, when I am upstairs I am relaxing (although I tend to slip on this sometimes like right now. Doing this in front of the TV).

As far as clients are concerned it really has no effect where I am. They ring(Skype or Phone), I answer. They email, I answer. Office or home is pretty irrelevant. Of course when I have face to face meetings I normally go to the office that day or just meet at the clients office.

All up I would encourage anyone to give it a go. If you do the type of work that where you are doesn't really matter then why not work from home a bit. I know I think it is great.

Lotus Notes Hannover (Notes 8) to include Word Processor, Spreadsheet, & Presentation Tool, based on Open Document Format

Adam Brown — Tue, 16 May 2006 11:56:24 +1100

A huge announcement from Mike Rhodin while demonstrating Notes "Hannover" at DNUG/IBM Lotus Technical Conference keynote- The Notes "Hannover" release will include spreadsheet/presentation/word processing productivity tools supporting the newly ratified Open Document Format . "We are going to provide an open alternative". Here is a screen shot of this in action (More work to be done to UI apparently):

This is pretty exciting stuff. While I am sure they won't have the full functionality of Microsoft Word 2007 etc, I am also sure it will probably suffice for 90% of users. We have had many clients wishing this kind of functionality will be added to Notes so that their users can drop Word etc.

Here is some more info.

Google Trends

Adam Brown — Mon, 15 May 2006 00:00:00 +1100

Google have in beta a tool called Google Trends that allows you to look at trend history for search terms. You can also compare the history of multiple search terms. It is really interesting to see the increase in some search terms:

blog wiki - Just shows how the awareness of blogs and wiki's has gone thru the roof.

lotus notes microsoft exchange - Lotus Notes is Seached for more than Microsoft Exchange however both have declined.

asterisk - This is interesting in that we have been running up Asterisk servers etc.

Pretty interesting stuff.

More Sametime 7.5 features

Adam Brown — Mon, 15 May 2006 12:37:25 +1100

The more I see the more I want it.

Ted Stanton has continued his Sametime Sunday posts showing the great new features. Here are his two latest:

Sametime Meeting Screen Sharing - This is essentially the same as past verison of Sametime however the interface for doing so is more usable and makes more sense. One of the problems in the past of the Screen Frame and the Entire Screen options was the fact that your Sametime Chat screen might pop up while you are in the meeting and if you have friends like mine it might not be very appropriate. In Sametime 7.5 however when you are in a meeting you can have your status automatically change which will prevent this from happening.

Location Awareness - There are many new improvements relating to location awareness. This is a neat feature for me as I tend to work from many different locations. This will mean that other users will know where I am rather than having to ask all the time. Also means I will know where other people are so that if I do want to call them or meet face to face (this does happen sometimes:).

Air Hockey over the net!

Adam Brown — Tue, 9 May 2006 11:20:12 +1100

The CSIRO has an impressive setup with many interesting research projects etc but the real crowd puller is the Air Hockey over the net. They have 1/2 an air hockey table setup with a projector displaying the other virtual half of the table that is setup on the other side of the room with a projector as well. Players just play like normal but the direction and speed of the puck is sent over the net to the other half of the table and out comes the puck! Pretty neat.

CEBIT 2006

Adam Brown — Tue, 9 May 2006 09:06:36 +1100

I am working at CEBIT for the next 3 days out of the Sydney Convention Centre. Started the day with breakfast in a nice little cafe just near the centre and are now setting up our stand at the show. This year we have joined the Tasmanian Govt Department of Economic Development stand so we have some good company. Viewbuild and the etechgroup as well as DED are sharing the stand with us. The exhibition seems to take up about 5 of the halls but I will need to have a look around shortly. Immediately it was obvious VOIP has many stands but I will work out the other main trends over the 3 days.

We have on show our suite of ISW and IBM software including IVR-Xpress Visual Builder as a core product to display. Ian has brought up an IBM xSeries server running Asterisk Virtual PABX that is tunneling thru the net to another Asterisk server in Hobart. We will be able to show people how it can then make long distance calls to Hobart at the cost of local calls. We also have a number of soft phones installed as a demo of what could be done in a call centre environment.

We have our ISW Solutions That Work software catalogue on the stand as well so we will be able to present on our range of products as required.

I will go have a look around and see what else I can find. Will be interesting to see how much IBM and Microsoft software is on display and from which partners.

50 years of play doh

Adam Brown — Thu, 4 May 2006 15:53:25 +1100

XBox, Playstation, iPods, electric this, computerised that, I still think the best toys are those that were invented years ago and will stay around for ever.

You know things like Lego. Things were you use your imagination and make something. I burnt many hours playing lego as a kid. And mum never had to say turn that thing off!

Well one of the greatest has just turned 50. Play-Doh. So come on which of you didn't have play-doh when you were a kid? Not many I would suggest. And still most kids nowadays get some play-doh at some point.

from the article:
In 1965, U.S. Patent No. 3,167,440 was granted to Noah McVicker and Joseph McVicker for a “plastic modeling composition”, (which was originally intended to be a wallpaper cleaner) now called Play-Doh. Little did they know that they had created the substance of childhood memories as well as many a childhood meal, unfortunately.

Play-Doh persists as one of the most well known and popular childrens “toys” with over 2 billion cans sold since its invention in 1956. As you attempt to clean your children’s Play-Doh out of the carpet, the car, and the bathtub; take a look back with us at how it all got started.

Taking a tour of the new features and technology in IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5

Adam Brown — Wed, 3 May 2006 13:44:26 +1100

Here is some more on Sametime 7.5

Australia Postal Address File Statistics

Adam Brown — Tue, 2 May 2006 10:50:14 +1100

Each quarter we receive the updated Postal Address File (PAF) from the Australia Post AMAS program for distribution to our Address-IT clients. We basically take this database and run it thru a bit of software that we call the PAFinator. The PAFinator builds our version of the PAF file for inclusion with Address-IT. We then distribute the latest release of the Address-IT products a month prior to the expiration date (end of each quarter) for the previous verison. This gives our clients at least a month to then upgrade to the latest version.

Each time we receive the PAF we also receive a summary of the latest PAF statistics. It is always pretty interesting to see where the growth is from previous months.

Here is a summary of how many delivery points there are in the PAF.

	AAT	ACT	NSW	NT	QLD	SA	TAS	VIC	WA	Total
Lots	0	5	29,759	277	35,183	11,245	469	11,655	36,116	124,709
Ranged	0	4,299	267,320	1,476	83,438	14,718	5,224	90,737	21,143	488,355
Single	0	145,905	2,841,702	57,364	1,742,368	683,489	247,481	2,252,762	962,472	8,933,543
Total	0	150209	3138781	59117	1860989	709452	253174	2355154	1019731	9,546,607
Postal Delivery Type	4	37,529	575,165	40,196	400,582	157,518	46,583	401,322	188,517	1,847,416
Grand Total	4	187,738	3,713,946	99,313	2,261,571	866,970	299,757	2,756,476	1,208,248	11,394,023

I have also included the rest of the PAF stats such as how many postcodes are there, localities, etc.

SkypeIn now available in Australia

Adam Brown — Mon, 1 May 2006 15:07:20 +1100

After many months of waiting SkypeIn is now available in Australia. At a cost of approx $AUD50 (€30) per year or $AUD16 (€10) for a 3 month trial you can now get you very own Australian phone number that will connect thru to your Skype softphone.

I am a big user of Skype. Between our offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, (and I guess my home office), skype is always my first means of calling someone. If I can't get them then I resort back to a normal call. This has resulted in about 80-90% of my intercompany phone calls becoming Skype calls. 3-4 others in the business are also heavy users of Skype and as a result we have noticed about a 50% drop in our monthly phone bill which is a whole lot of beer money!! I also use it extensively for those clients that are also on Skype. The awareness capability of knowing if they are available for a call is a great feature. The fact that you can see them online also seems to help develop a closer working relationship.

This ability to have a SkypeIn number means that our clients can also have a local number to call me on. I will need to test it out and see what sort of quality the calls are but if it works well then I may as well have a local number in each State rather than clients calling a number that is diverted to my mobile when I am out of the office. For that matter I probably should consider a number in the UK for all of our IVR-Xpress Visual Builder clients to call me on rather than international calls. Again I will need to test the quality of audio to make sure it is up to scratch.

Sametime 7.5 Feature Blog

Adam Brown — Mon, 1 May 2006 11:44:32 +1100

There is a neat Sametime 7.5 blog running over at IBM developerWorks. Ted Stanton has been posting Sametime Sunday (I am guessing this in on the same theme as Show N Tell Thursday). There is some great insites into some of the new features coming in Sametime 7.5.

I particularly like the Click to Talk (VOIP), and the automatic changing of your status depending on what you are currently doing is also neat. An example is Can't Chat Now, In a Meeting. When you are in a meeting it automatically changes your status to match. This is great as how many times does it happen that you are in a Sametime Conference and hence online, but as you are in a meeting you actually want to have a status of Busy.

Using a Wiki for Workflow

Adam Brown — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 10:15:05 +1100

searchSMB has an interesting article on using Wiki's for tasks that used to be done using basic workflow.

Wiki's are becoming far more common place and organisations are starting to accept them for corporate applications. An example given is the instance of a group meeting where notes are taken which are then sent around everyone in the meeting for approval/correction. With 4-5 people this might take a few days with normal sequential workflow. Put it in a wiki and everyone can update it when they want with an automatic history of what has changed.

Off course this could be done using a smarter workflow process in Lotus Notes. Using our workflow engine you would just set this up as parallel workflow rather than sequential. Off course there are complications to deal with such as replication conflicts but there are ways to manage this (another topic). I guess the point is though that a Wiki can be used for this purpose without the complexity of extensive workflow.

The one thing that seems to worry a lot of our clients regarding Wiki's is that anyone can modify anything. The point here of course is that there is a detailed history of changes automatically generated. Hence there is full visibility of what has been done by whom.

Two Heads are better than one, Three is even better!!

Adam Brown — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:16:14 +1100

Steve Richards posted about his setup with 3 monitors. 3 x 19 Inch monitors that is. Here I am working on my one screen makes me very jealous. I have been thinking about spending some time and money on my home office setup and this is probably a part of that.....at least 2 screens anyway. I can understand the productivity gains. For me when I am coding it would be great to have the development tool on one screen and then run the applicaiton on the other screen. Or have the tech doco (MSDN, Domino Designer Help etc) open on the second screen while I code.

The idea of having the distractions on one screen, ie Instant Messaging, is also attractive. I often do web demos and the problem them is always that when I share part of my screen or an application I don't have enough screen real estate to then make notes as well as I go. Two screens would fix this.

Microsoft Research also have an interesting article on using more than 1 screen.

I wonder if there is a point where more screens is too many. Would 4 just get out of hand?

Workplace Services Express 2.6 due out late May

Adam Brown — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:30:46 +1100

I read in the blogosphere that IBM is releasing WSE 2.6 in May. Key benefits of the upgrade are:

Greater Capacity. I guess this means more users and the ability to have more Applications running.
DB2 Express included
Workplace Designer included. This is just about the first time I have heard about Workplace Designer somewhere other than LotusSphere. We have been working with Workplace Designer since Nov 2006. It really is an essential part of WSE as the out of the box application templates are somewhat limited. Great as examples but you really need to be able to create your own to get true value out of WSE. Kind of like Notes without Domino Designer. The good news is that for Notes developers Workplace Designer is a very freindly environment that most developers should be comfortable with. Just need to brush up on that Javascript code.
Domino 7 support. I have to admit I wasn't aware Domino 7 wasn't supported before. We have been using Domino 7 with WSE for LDAP and Email/Calendars etc since WSE 2.5 but I guess it just means more support.
Exchange 2003 support. This is great as it means that the traditional Microsoft sites can still use WSE. It positions WSE directly against Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server.
Upgrade tools for 2.5 versions. Great. Should be a straightforward upgrade then.
Pricing and licensing looks the same. The pricing for WSE is really not too bad. As it is under the Express Pricing it is just a per user cost.

My Machine

Adam Brown — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 12:17:06 +1100

Every now and then I think most IT types decide it is time to rebuild their PC's/Laptops. I find that this comes for me about every 18 months or so. When I first do it I am always very disciplined as to what goes where, organising it all, etc. Then over time I end up installing, uninstalling, reinstalling, various different products for testing and evaluation. I might need a certain version of a certain product etc or I might just want to evaluate something new. I try and make sure I use VMWare Workstation for stuff that I am just playing with so that I can just dump it later without it effecting my primary install. However sometimes I get slack and just install software to play with it. Over time my nice tidy setup becomes cluttered and messy, and eventually I come to the point of saying bugger it, I will rebuild.

Well that time is getting close for me again. I always start by documenting what I have installed. This time I thought why not bang out a MindMap listing all of the key bits of software. I am sure I have missed a couple of minor things as I always do. Those little things that you only think of on the off chance you need them. The map pretty much shows my setup though.

The other thing I always forget is to copy my bookmarks!! Always need to get these off the backup.

Ivory Fields Spa Retreat East Coast Tasmania

Adam Brown — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:21:28 +1100

Back at work from Easter. We spent the weekend at a wonderful place on the East Coast of Tasmania, the Ivory Fields Spa Retreat. This place is simply a little piece of paradise. The web site just doesn't do it justice. Every little detail was just great. The accomodation was this great chalet looking over a herb farm surrounded by bushland. It was far more than your standard B&B. Great friendly service where nothing was too much trouble. We spent lots of time just relaxing, went for a few walks along the east coast beaches, a few spa's, and went on the Fairy Penguin tour at Bicheno (cute little buggers). All round an great way to spend easter.

So if you happen to be in Tasmania and head up the East Coast this is the place to stay.

Lotus Notes Integration with MindManager

Adam Brown — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:09:03 +1100

Just noted on Bruce Elgort's blog that MindManager 6 SP1 now has doclink integration with Lotus Notes. By all accounts Eric Mack is responsible for this effort. We have been talking about this for a while. When we saw the MindManager had integration with SalesForce.com a few months back, we considered doing a similar thing for our Lotus Notes CRM BusinessWorks. The idea would be to use MindManager to diagramatically show all of those relationship links/grey links between various people and organisations. Now that this doclink integration is available we might just have to bring this up the priority list as I think it adds a lot of value.

Collaboration, even simple collaboration, seems to make people feel closer

Adam Brown — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 13:11:27 +1100

We have a Aussie Rules Footy tipping competition running for the company. The system is a Domino database that allows our customers to register for the competition (the prize is an iPod) and then tip on a weekly basis. Each week reminder emails are automatically sent out and people need to submit their weekly tips before the cut off date and time. They can then see what everyone else has tiped and where they are on the ladder etc. It is a pretty simple system that was just whacked together but it does a really good job.

It is really pretty cool and we have developed quite a following of customers and friends that tip every week. The competition is hotly contested and monday morning conversations are often about who tiped the best this round. It is pretty exciting. Many emails and messages bounce around with people braging or commenting that they pipped someone on the tipping.

An interesting thing that I have noticed is how the whole process seems to bring us all closer, customers, our staff, and friends. This simple bit of collaboration means that we all have more in common. My sister Georgi lives interstate and while we are still very close we don't get to see each other often enough. We are also pretty slack on the phone calls and even emails updating each other. So this year Georgi joined the tipping competition (she wants the iPod bad.) and while I am sure I will beat her (she is ahead at the moment but it is early season yet) the great thing is that it is encouraging us to chat more. Even just that simple email saying "good tipping" seems to make it feel as though we are closer and that being interstate isn't really an issue. Our Dad has joined the competition as well which is great. (P.S. To Georgi... You still owe me that money for the shoes;)

Extend this simple collaboration to how we work with people and collaborate every day. Products like Sametime and Groove mean that we have an awareness of who is online. We can see where they are (in the office, at home, on the road etc) and we can instantly interact with them. We can connect to people far easier than we ever have before, share resources, work together and generally collaborate. Even though they maybe 1000's of miles away they seem to be closer. I have experienced this feeling with many people around the world now, many of whom I have never actually met face to face. Even though I still consider them good friends. I think that if organisations can take advantage of this capability it can only encourage greater collaboration and teamwork across teams and boundaries. This can only be for the better.

Sametime 7.5 New Features Tour

Adam Brown — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:34:33 +1100

I just can't wait for Sametime 7.5 to be released. Since IBM announced the new features etc at Lotusphere in Orlando this year I have been looking forward to the beta release. As soon as it is available we will be into it.

As well as the 100's of new features the most exciting news is the fact that it is built on the Eclipse Framework. As such the Sametime client will be extensible. In simple terms this means that 3rd parties, such as us, will be able to build plugins for the product and extend its capability. We have some ideas floating around that I don't really want to give away but essentially it is about leverage the real time capability of sametime into other applications such as MS Office. The potential for collaboration tools is just awesome.

Summary of the new features:

Brand New modern user interface with great new features.
Place Awareness. ie When I am logged on at home people will know where I am.
Emoticons, Spell Check, Time Stamps. Maybe these are little but they add a lot to the experience.
Apparently it is brandable. I have yet to see this though.
Fantastic improvements to the web conferencing. I was playing with Microsoft's Live Meeting Server the other day and was very impressed in that it was far more user friendly than Sametime Web Conferencing. However I think IBM will trump Microsoft again with Sametime Web Conferecing 7.5
Streamlined meeting startup. This has always been a sore point with Sametime particularly when having external parties join the meetings. Hopefully all the JVM compatability issues will be resolved.
Integration with VOIP & telephone vendors.

Anyway have a look at the tour of the new release and let me know what you think.

Quality of Wiki contents

Adam Brown — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:55:29 +1100

An often asked question regarding Wiki's is:

"So if anyone can update the content what stops people putting up misleading comments or incorrect information on a topic?".

It is a really good question that I also thought about. Today I noticed a great example of what prevents this kind of abuse happening. On wikipedia.org there is a topic about Lotus Notes. It has heaps of info on the history, use, and future of the product. It was noted however that some people had been rather negative and opinionated on the entry rather than objectively explaining the products (good and bad of it). While this did happen the interesting result was that before long many other people had read the entry and it was very quickly corrected with more factual and accurate information.

So the answer to the question is in fact the real power of the Wiki concept. A Wiki allows people to correct others errors. Off course there may be some disputes but these seem to work themselves out pretty quickly when people start being objective rather than expressing personal opinion.

Your personal DNA Report

Adam Brown — Fri, 7 Apr 2006 12:11:22 +1100

I came across this web site that will analyse your personal DNA (character I guess). Only takes about 5 minutes.

Apparently I am an Animated Leader that should consider taking some more time to day dream. I think I will leave day dreaming for when I am old!

My Personal Dna Report

Check it out and analyse yourself.

Mind Mapping

Adam Brown — Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:52:33 +1100

I regularly use a product called MindJet MindManager. I think this tool is simply awesome. My typical use is for writing proposals and performing requirements analysis but it can equally be used for brain storming and strategic planning etc. The tool enables you to very quickly flesh out a framework for the document you are creating and then you basically fill in the gaps.

I was using it this morning with a colleague to prepare a proposal for a Lotus Notes development. Tim basically drafted the MindMap up with his thoughts on the project. You basically create blobs of information and then link them together into some structure. How often when writing a document do you think of another area that you need to document but then forget to add it later. With a mind map you just create the blob, give it a title, and then later on you drag it into the appropriate place in the document.

Here is an example of what I mean:

Each blob (node might be a better term I guess) represents a heading in the document. You then add Notes to each node and your document takes shape. If you want to change the structure you just drag the nodes around the screen. Once you are happy you just export it as a Word document and you are done.

You can use MindMaps for far more than just what I use it for. Steve Richards (which is where I first came across the product) uses it for book reviews amongst other things.

Now the ultimate feature for this product would be to enable 2 or more users to update the MindMap in real time over a network or the net. We typically send the map back and forth in an asynchronous manner. We use Groove Virtual office to do this which is probably another discussion on another day.

A blog? Did you say wiki? Is that something to do with Cricket?

Adam Brown — Thu, 6 Apr 2006 10:59:36 +1100

I was chatting to a good friend last night and mentioned that I had started bloging. I was chatting away talking about what I was doing and then realised that there was a look of "what the hell is a blog?" on my friends face. I guess I was initially surprised but then after thinking about it realised that in Australia bloging really hasn't taken off yet. I guess in IT circles it is becoming well know but it certainly isn't mainstream yet.

So anyway I went on to explain the concept of a blog and why I would bother doing it. I think she thought I was nuts and that I was just spending time posting stuff that nobody was reading (which is probably right at the moment to some degree). I explained that I wanted to try and communicate better to a broader audience of our clients and other interested people. That it is just another way to be more open about what we have been doing with our products and our thoughts on emerging stuff. While I received a degree of understanding I think there was still that look of "Are you nuts or what?".

After getting past the blog stuff I then (probably a mistake) mentioned Wiki's. Now this concept just went way over the top. Why on earth would people spend time posting information? and bothering to correct others? Is it anonymous? Can anyone change anyone's posts?

I explained how sites like wikipedia.org had reached a critical mass where thousands of people were contributing and now it is this awesome site with a wealth of info. I explained that while you could post anything, and that it isn't peer reviewed, the sheer fact that people can correct errors and ommisions has meant that wikipedia.org is actually a pretty good reference.

Still I got an amazed look. I am sure she thought I was nuts. My friend is a teacher so I suggested wouldn't it be awesome to create a wiki with teaching resources. Teachers seem to be creating ideas for teaching aids etc all the time and if they had someway to share these wouldn't that be great. I suggested that she could just start by creating wiki entries for projects she had prepared. It could simply start as a repository for what she is doing and then that way she would have her own reference library for future years. Then I suggested why not make this available to other colleagues over the web. They might just use what she had posted, but some of them might think of posting their own. After a while the resources would start to build up and the word might spread. Before you know it you might have thousands of teachers around the world contributing resources to the site.....wouldn't that be awesome!!!..........I got that look again.

I guess the thing with bloging and wiki's is that they have to start somewhere. With any luck and a bit of consistent work the blog or wiki might generate some interest. I think there must be a point that a ground swell just reaches a level where it ends up having a life of its own. The question is how to start that ground swell. Any ideas?

Well here we go....

Adam Brown — Tue, 4 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +1100

Well after trawling many blogs for the last few months I have decided to jump on the bandwagon and give blogging a go. Even just making the decision to blog has been an interesting experience.

We discussed things such as what should the blog be about? Should it be a corporate type blog from ISW or should it be just me? Should we make it personal or should the opinions be that of the company?

At the end of it all we have decided that it should be my blog, hence the name Brownie's blog. That off course it would discuss topics that relate to what ISW is doing, which is obviously a big part of most of my days, but that I should also just blog about what interests me. And that if I want to express opinions that arn't necessarily that of the company then so be it!

So after having made these decisions the next step off course was getting on with it. I have adopted the BlogSphere template from the guys at BlogSphere and off course OpenNTF based on Domino which is simply brilliant. Setup was pretty easy once I got my head around the database and modifying the css etc. Just then a matter of deciding what features I wanted and the general layout of the blog and wammo. Here it is. The only part that I don't seem to have working just yet is the Web Poll. But alas I should have expected at least 1 challenge otherwise it wouldn't be any fun.

So today I start my side life of blogging. No more just trawling others. Time to contribute myself.

Obviously it will take some time to build the content up here, and off course I don't expect the flood of readers to come along. But if you do happen across the blog please get involved and make a comment. At the very least it will provide me some encouragement to keep on blogging.