#LotusKnows the plugins that I need for Lotus Connections into Lotus Notes

Having recently switched back to using my Macbook Pro as my primary laptop ( it's so much lighter than the Thinkpad, but I do miss the Ubuntu goodness ! ), there's three particular Notes plugins that I really really missed from the other laptop: -

IBM community newsletter generator plug-in for Lotus Connections 

This plug-in allows you to generate a newsletter for any given Lotus Connections community directly from your Lotus Notes / Sametime / Symphony client.

IBM Lotus Connections alerts plugin for Lotus Notes 

Eclipse plugin for Notes/Sametime that alerts you of the content your colleagues are reading/creating in Lotus Connections.

WildFire for Lotus Notes

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

I've now rectified the situation for the first two plugins, but I seem to be having a problem with WildFire, which seems to cause a few issues on the Mac, even though it works perfectly with Ubuntu.

I'm waiting on the genii, Matt Newman and Adam Brown, at ISW to help resolve it for me :-)

#LotusKnows that techies like jam ... IBM Collaboration UKI TechJams for 2011 - 5th April and 20th May @ IBM Staines

Following my earlier post, Mr Chris Moore Esq has blogged with more details about the upcoming Techjam events.

If you don't yet have these in your diary, then you are missing an opportunity. I'd strongly recommend that you check them out.

Another reason that I wish that I had an Android device ... QuipIM - Lotus Sametime for Mobile

Perhaps the Motorola Xoom for me - when I win the lottery, bingo, pools etc. :-)

Thanks to @ThisWeekInLotus and Henning Schmidt's blog, I now know a lot more about this solution: -

Stay Connected, Securely

QuipIM is the only native Sametime client for the iPhone and Android platforms. Stay connected to your coworkers wherever you go with an innovative user interface that leverages the powerful capabilities of each mobile platform! QuipIM uses your existing data connection to connect you to your company's Sametime community without SMS charges.

Manage your connections to multiple accounts.

Manage your buddy list, including adding and removing buddies and groups.

Easily switch between active conversations using a swipe.

Set your status and a custom status message.

Sounds neat ? Give it a try ... one of my UK colleagues already has it on his HTC Desire, and is very very happy.

#LotusKnows that @LisaDuke knows how to Get Social, Do Business ...

Thanks to Stuart and his most excellent This Week In Lotus podcast, i picked up a link to Lisa Duke's new podcast, Get Social, Do Business.

The brief for this is quite simple: -

Title for podcast came from theme for Lotusphere 2011, IBM's social/cloud/messaging collaboration conference.
The meeting point between social software and the business world.
Discussions should help clients understand what new technologies can mean for business.

Where did "social" come from?
Web 2.0 - the concept that you did not have to be a developer or hire one to put up a website - User Generated content - Web as platform
Web 1.0 is = Encyclopaedia Britannica online, Web 2.0 = Wikipedia

Is this the time for Social Business to be big? Why?

It's aimed at everyone, not just pure geeks like Stuart and Darren and me :-)

Having said that, Episode 002 still managed to get a lot of cool stuff squeezed in 8-)

#LotusKnows BI - Get Social, Do Business Intelligence ....

So I can't lay claim to that moniker, but it sure sounds good.

Whist listening to last week's This Week in Lotus (TWiL) podcast ( Episode 43 ), there was a great session from Tina Groves about the recent integration story about Cognos Business Intelligence integrating with Lotus Connections: -

What is BI?

• Cognos Business Intelligence was started back in the mid-nineties with reporting and interactive analysis delivered by Impromptu and PowerPlay.  Over the past decade, Cognos products evolved to a suite of reporting and analytical capabilities to delivering a complete platform which included metrics and financial performance management to today where it's a system of business analytics.

Why and who uses BI?

• Organizations use Businesss Analytics in order gain insights into their business interactions, develop strategy and manage financial forecasts.  People use Business Analytics to answer questions like how are we doing, why and what should we be doing.

Why Collaboration and Business Intelligence?  

• People today use Facebook, Twitter and other social media to connect with friends in their personal lives.  People are wanting to use these means to find people within their organization and find relevant information in their environment to assist their decision making.  

What does a customer get when they buy Cognos 10? Are there any restrictions on how they use Connections?  

• Cognos customers have full use of Connections with Cognos BI v10.  Users require enhanced consumer role or higher to have entitlement to the Collaboration capabilities from the Business Insight Workspace (yes, fully un-crippled!)

What happens if Connections takes off and they want to get more licenses?  

• Then, a corporate-wide license can be purchased for the employees who do not have a Cognos license.  The Cognos 10 application can be configured to use the corporate-wide Connections application.

Examples and screen captures can be seen in Tina's guest entry on synch.rono.us

What's next for Cognos/Connections?    

• More and more integration!  Cognos is also interested in expanding the BI value to other collaboration tools such as instant messaging and to further the integration on platforms such as mobile and cloud.  Stay tuned!

The Cognos BI page has a great collection of links about this story, including: -

• IBM Cognos Collaboration with Lotus Connections

  Online Demo     
  See how to connect people and insights for better business results.

Get in there and see how to turn human intelligence into business intelligence ...

IBM - Do Business, Get Social - Get Social Roadshows - UK and Eire

Being able to connect with the right people and build the right relationships to expand your business network can create strategic advantage for you and your company. Being able to "see" more information, data, patterns and trends, makes this collaboration even more useful. Today, a business that relies on these highly interconnected networks, inside and outside of their traditional organisation, stands out. We call this Social Business.

IBM are announcing a series of events around the UK and Ireland

18 April Warwick

4 May Edinburgh

10 May Dublin

18 May London

Want to know more ? Visit this link.

Neat, a key sequence in Lotus Symphony 3 on the Mac about which I did not know :-)

Updating some client documents using Symphony 3fp1 on my Mac, I inadvertently discovered a key sequence that allows one to zoom in and out of the document, from 600% to 20% ( page sorter format ).

Want to know how to do it ?

Simply hold down the Mac's CMD key ( the one with the curly-cornered square symbol on it ), and stroke two fingers down the touch pad ( the same gesture that one uses to scroll up and down a page ).

Easy when you "know" how now :-)

W00t, IBM Collaboration UKI TechJams for Spring 2011 - 5 April / 20 May

Excellent news from Mr Darren Adams Esq

The IBM Collaboration Solutions UKI (that's UK and Ireland) Technical Sales team are hosting a number of events through April and May 2011. The TechJams are focused on covering many parts of the IBM Collaboration Solutions portfolio, including:

• Customising and extending Connections 3
• Cloud-based messaging and collaboration (that'll be LotusLive)
• Exceptional web experiences
• Collaborating using mobile devices
• Unified communications and collaboration

Two dates are set so far, 5th April and 20th May – both in Lotus Park in Staines – but more dates and locations will be added soon. If you'd like to attend, add a comment and I'll give you a contact e-mail address.

If you are an IBM Business Partner we'd love to see you there, but the entry fee is to escort a customer whom you have invited. IBM customers can attend free-of-charge.

Be there or ... be elsewhere :-)

Announced - IBM Lotus Web Content Management Multilingual Solution (MLS)

My IBM colleague, Stuart Crump, alerted me to this new asset yesterday.

The IBM Lotus Web Content Management Multilingual Solution (MLS) offering comprises a set of supported extensions to IBM Lotus Web Content Management (WCM) that make it easier to build, maintain and deliver WCM sites in multiple languages.  The MLS offering also includes a whitepaper, "Multilingual Site Management with Lotus Web Content Management", that describes the framework for managing a multilingual site, the deployment and configuration of the extensions, and examples of their use.

The MLS offering is designed to work specifically in conjunction with IBM Lotus Web Content Management Version 7.0 only.

The set of extensions consist of the following:

• An Authoring Plug-in (aka Custom Fields) to display information about associated language translations;
• A number of Workflow Synchronization Plug-ins (aka Custom Workflow Actions) to automate the creation of translated documents and handle publishing, expiry and delete synchronization of those documents;
• A number of Rendering Plug-ins (aka LRP Context Processor and Servlet JSPs) to enable end-users to see content in the right language and allow switching between languages;
• A Library Copy Portlet to make it easier to deploy new translated versions of existing sites.

Please refer to the included Whitepaper for important capacity planning information (section 'Capacity Planning Advice'). The number of multilingual libraries in combination with the number of concurrent users needs to be considered, and the appropriate capacity planning actions carried out.

It is available in the Lotus Greenhouse here, and there's an active discussion about it on the WCM forum here.

The price ? Oh, as Marie Scott would say, "It's free, free, free" :-)

Wild about WildFire

IBM Training - Introduction to Lotus Domino 8.5 Xpages - 23/24 March 2011

A colleague drew my attention to this upcoming course, running in here in the UK, in Manchester.

Course Title and Description:  D8L55GB Introduction to Lotus Domino 8.5 Xpages
Course Date: 23rd March 2011
Course Duration: 2 Days
Location: Manchester
Price: £995 Plus VAT

Objective

Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

    * Create a new XPage in an application
    * Create a custom control in an application
    * Bind a document in an application as a data source to an XPage
    * Utilize an @Function in an XPage
    * Set Client-side and Server-side validation both at server and application level
    * Given an XPages application that is exhibiting an issue with the display, troubleshoot and resolve the issue with the application

Key topics

    * Create a new XPage in an application.
    * Create a custom control in an application.
    * Bind a document in an application as a data source to an XPage.
    * Utilize an @Function in an XPage.
    * Set Client-side and Server-side validation both at server and application level
    * Given an XPages application that is exhibiting an issue with the display, troubleshoot and resolve the issue with the application.

More details can be found here and, if you're interested, you can also take a look at the IBM Software Group  Training Wiki here.

Webcast: "Running IBM WebSphere Portal and WCM in virtualized environments" - Thursday 24 February 2011 *REPLAY*

Following my earlier post,  I note that the webcast is now available as a replay from here.

This includes the MP3 of the call, the presentation materials, and a link to the WebSphere Portal Forum.

Want to know more ? Check out the replay ...