IBM WebSphere Portal and Web Content Manager - Sneak Peak of a New UI Design

Thanks to a Tweet from Raul Munoz, I popped over to the Australia Development Lab ( sadly only virtually, not in person ) to pick up on an update from John James, showing a preview of a new UX design that the team are working on: -

There's much more detail, including a nice 5-minute video, here in the Greenhouse.

IBM Connections on the Apple iOS devices ( should that be iConnections now ? )

W00t, anyone with an iShiny mobile device ( iPhone, iPad or, iGuess, an iTouch ) should know about this.

The IBM Connections app for iOS devices is now available in iTunes for free download.

IBM Connections is social software for business. It enables you to build a network of colleagues and subject matter experts, and then leverage that network to further your business goals. With its integrated suite of tools, you can share and discuss ideas, work collaboratively on presentations or proposals, plan and track project tasks, and much more. IBM Connections is a web application that is deployed on a company intranet to promote collaboration within the company. The IBM Connections mobile application extends access to company data to employees who are on the go. 

Use the mobile application to perform common IBM Connections tasks with a minimal number of steps. If IBM Connections is deployed in your company, you can download this application and log in using the same credentials as always. (The server must be running version 3.0.1 plus the July 2011 mobile update or higher and the mobile application must be installed on it. Check with your IT administrator if you aren't sure.) If you do not have IBM Connections deployed in your company, but want to try it out, log into a deployment hosted on Lotus Greenhouse, which is an IBM product trial site. Just register with Lotus Greenhouse to create a user name and password. Download the application, and when prompted for the Connections server URL to connect to, specify https://greenhouse.lotus.com/mobile.  Use the credentials that were created when you registered to log in. 

Go here for the link and get going …

PS Thanks to @CuriousMitch for the link to the Mobile Update

IBM Collaboration QuickStart for Social Business

Saw this on my "River of News" this morning, whilst browsing IBM Connections.

Welcome to IBM Collaboration QuickStart for Social Business on the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise - your instant access to three leading products in social software - IBM Connections, IBM Lotus Domino, and IBM Sametime.

Designed for ease of use and minimal administration, this IBM SmartCloud image is preinstalled with 85 user profiles, including names, email addresses, user photos, and more. The goal is to get you up and working quickly without any installation, hardware, or maintenance. All you need is access to the system and some time to start seeing the benefits of a truly social business.

 You can use the image for: 

Profiles. Quickly find the people and expertise you need.
Activities. Organize your work and tap your professional network.
Files. Post, share, and discover documents, presentations, images, and more.
Communities. Work with people who share common interests and expertise.
Blogs. Present your ideas in weblogs and get feedback from others.
Bookmarks. Save, organize, and share bookmarks.
Wikis. Create web content together.
Chat. Locate and instantly connect with others via presence awareness, business cards, and instant messaging.
Mail. Manage your inbox with full-text search, delegation, mail filtering and sorting, conversation views, and flags.

Social businesses are more successful because they focus on the energy, creativity, and decision making of their people. People can find what they need more quickly, solve problems faster, and discover valuable expertise and information in ways they were not even expecting. 

Looks good, looks very very good :-)

Are you DB2LOOKing at me ?

One of my friends pointed out an easy way to extract the underlying design etc. of a DB2 database schema.

I'd previously suggested that he use db2 describe select * from … but he rightly pointed out that db2look is far more useful.

As an example, this is the command as used for a Property Extension database underlying WebSphere Portal v7

$ db2look -d PROPEXT -e -t LABLOBPROP  > /tmp/petables/LABLOBPROP.txt

For further information on DB2LOOK, check out the Information Centre here: -

db2look - DB2 statistics and DDL extraction tool command

LotusLive Symphony - Presenting Itself Nicely

Following my earlier post, I noticed this from Ed Brill 

The third tech preview for LotusLive Symphony is now out on Lotus Greenhouse. The new update provides presentations support in addition to documents and spreadsheets. As we have been demonstrating with the previous tech preview releases, our focus in LotusLive Symphony is on collaborative documents, including real-time co-editing, tasks and assignments, sectioning, and versioning. 

For those involved with Greenhouse, please check out the new tech preview and let us know what you think.

Want to have a play ? Then go here and enjoy

IBM Connections - Widgets A-Wonder ...

One of my ISSL chums alerted me to this - it's definitely worth a look ...

Modify Reporting Chain Widget

The reporting chain is very powerful concept within Lotus Connections, the issue with it can be that the organizational view of the structure can be either dated or non-existant. Until now, organizations have been forced to do without this important component of Lotus Connections if they didn't have an accurate structure.

JustNudge Software has released a widget that allows for the organizational reporting chain to be modified from within the application itself using a bottom up approach – that is where a person selects their manager. This allows the structure to be developed organically without the need for a large IT project to update the structure if it doesn't exist accurately at the moment, thereby making Lotus Connections implementations just that little bit easier.

Updating your reporting structure is as easy as navigating to your manager and clicking a button!

Alternate Reporting Chain Widget

IBM Connections assumes a single reporting line, but in many organisations there can be multiple reporting lines that need to be captured in a user's profile. This widget allows for the population of multiple reporting lines and displays this information on the user's profile.

The widget is simple to use and can be modified either "top-down" – where a manager chooses profiles that report to them, or "bottom-up" – where a person chooses their alternate manager. This is done by finding the appropriate profile and selecting the button in the widget:

Profile Progress

A good IBM Connections installation is dependent on a well populated profile and a vibrant profile community. A well populated user profile allows people to find and collaborate with people more quickly and easily.

Our profile progress widget provides visual feedback and tips to help the user populate their profile using a visual feedback mechanism similar to that provided on LinkedIn. This feedback allows the system to be populated according to the requirements of your organisation, for example, if there is a particular field within the profile that is valuable from an organisation perspective then the profile weighting can be adjusted to both advise and reward the user to populate that field.

IBM's Louis Richardson talks about "3 keys to consider for social business"

Thanks to Jon Mell for drawing my attention to this on YouTube

As you look at vendors and solutions to help you become a social business, there are some specific areas you should consider. We've listed 3 that we've seen as we've worked with companies around the globe.

Enjoy