03/09/2010

QuickImage Category Quickr
One of the most challenging aspects of software evaluation for any size organization is the initial resourcing of people, skills, training, configuration, learning curve, well...you get the picture. It drains valuable resources, costs real money (hardware, infrastructure changes, software loads) and given the complexities of today's software systems can drag on. And on. And on. Customers barely tolerate them, sales reps really hate them, and frustration levels can run high as the investment in pilot programs sinks deeper and deeper. Running a pilot untrained is like taking your first solo flight over the Bermuda Triangle.

Today, March 9, 2010, we've decided to blow away those barriers to a successful evaluation, starting with something we know and love -- Lotus Quickr services for Domino -- with a new program designed to maximize success, minimize investment, and provide SMB, midmarket and enterprise customers with a professional software evaluation experience.

You've heard of a "POC" or proof of concept. Typically a POC will last a day or two, with a script, designed around a specific customer scenario like records management, workflow, or integration. These are valuable exercises provided by IBM and partners (we've helped with a few!) but have a shelf life and never really dive deep into the product. They require travel - either by IBM sales and technical reps or customers - a difficult proposition and another barrier to success.

When it comes to really piloting something like Quickr with the full range of features, Quickr Connectors, ECM integration (coming soon), templates, administration, free tools like PandaBear or SnappFiles, and training end users, it takes a more lengthy evaluation. And if you're in a competitive evaluation against, say, SharePoint, it is critical that both pilots are performed on optimal systems - designed for performance and ease of use - and professionally managed and supported.

That's why today, I'm announcing SNAPPS Co-Pilot for Lotus Quickr. We now offer a turnkey, 1-to-2-day-turnaround server hosted securely in the cloud for 60 days for your evaluation purposes. And we don't just set up a server and give you a URL. We provide admin training within 2 business days, end user training twice a month, dedicated electronic and telephone support from Quickr experts, access to videos, personal training for qualified executives, and support for the Quickr Connectors and other access methods in addition to the web browser. We have designated a dedicated Program Manager for this new offering.

It makes no sense to try to become an expert Quickr administrator or trainer during a pilot! Now you have an option to hire a Co-Pilot with 50 years' combined experience with Lotus Quickr.

Details are at http://copilot.snapps.com

Don't fly solo.

Posted by Rob Novak At 12:50 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (1)

03/08/2010

QuickImage Category Quickr tips
Recently someone in the Quickr forum at IBM developerworks asked a common question, and the answer is not intuitive - but simple - so I thought I'd share here.

Out of the box, Quickr has a footer with a lot of links in it. Some links are useful - to a point - like the help link. Unfortunately, the UI of the built-in help is from a prior version of QuickPlace, but the information is up to date. Problem is, it's the same for everyone regardless of their role in the place. Meaning, it tells you how to upload custom forms, which is inappropriate help content for a "Reader." Most companies end up writing their own help, or provide training, or just let people figure it out.

Some of the other links are just a geekfest - DeveloperWorks, Wikis, etc. that average users will never need to visit. So a common question, the one that came up on the forums, is how do you hide the footer?

One way is to hack the theme on the file system or in resources.nsf. It's a common mistake to do this, since any hotfix or upgrade will kill your work. Some folks dig into haikucommonforms.ntf, and play with the JavaScript there. That's insanity. There are 535 subforms and 30 forms that make up the DNA of Quickr, and messing with that is a recipe for long maintenance windows for upgrades. I know, I've done it when it was absolutely necessary and a customer had to have changes (in the QuickPlace 7 days) that were impossible in any other way.

Starting with Quickr 8.1, however, there is something called an "extension library," essentially a way to extend to standard themes some functionality just by making changes to one file - which does not get overwritten in an upgrade. We at SNAPPS have used this to do several types of server-wide changes, including the aforementioned hiding of the footer. So as an example, here's how to do that:

Locate and modify the file quickr81_ext.js. This file is in the Domino\Data\Domino\html\qphtml\ins\quickr81\scripts directory

Add this:

var Quickr81LotusFooter = {
    init: function() {
       dojo.addOnLoad(
          function() {
             var el = dojo.byId("lotusFooter");
                 if (el) {
                     el.style.display = "none";
                        }
                 }
             )
        }
 }
Quickr81LotusFooter.init();


That's all there is to it. Once you save that file, the footer is gone, you don't even need to restart the server or http. Of course, it might be cached on a browser so you might need to flush that or restart it. Note that this ONLY works on the standard theme - if you've customized the theme, this file isn't loaded and it will not affect those places.

Now - there is a more elegant way of doing it by referencing other files of your own from this one, making Quickr very extensible with various options to change the UI, add or remove features, add in menu items, etc. but this simple example will get you started. I'll post another example soon showing the other method.

Posted by Rob Novak At 1:04 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (3)

03/05/2010

QuickImage Category Collaboration University
Troy and I are delivering a Collaboration University Webinar next Thursday, March 11th, and now that the samples are developed I'll spill the beans.

The Webinar (free to CU 2009 attendees, cheap for everyone else) starts off with the new Quickr hooks APIs in two ways, then we'll explore innovative ideas and take questions. The two samples are:

1) An audit utility to leave a trail of metadata for every document published - whether via a browser, Quickr connectors, PandaBear, SnappFiles, or courier pigeon. The audit data is stored in a separate database (which you can secure).

2) A methodology by which you can finally do - wait for it - room templates. In this demo Troy's taken a popular template from our shelves, QSurvey, and coded a room creation hook to take all the custom design features for something as complex as QSurvey and make them available to new rooms upon creation. But it gets better. Troy has built a "white list" mechanism so the code will only put survey code into rooms in designated places, and it can be turned on and off. And finally, he abstracted it to simple forms and views so you can control it at a granular level, but in a very easy-to-understand way. So bottom line, you can - with this hook - have a place manager call up and say 'Hey, I'd like a Survey Room," then while on the phone you do 2 seconds of work, tell them "Create a new room," and voila, it's a Survey Room. Then you can turn it off for them so other new rooms in the place are normal. Or, you can have one place that's all about Survey Rooms. The developers among you will understand how use the framework Troy has developed to do your own. Non-developers can just use it as is, or have us develop something awesome using the new APIs.

We'll finish up with a review of the API categories, some of our own ideas on what you could do with them (alone and in combination), and the take Q&A and listen to your own ideas.

The Webinar is designed to illustrate CONCEPTS and POSSIBILITIES not just the canned examples, but attendees (only) do get the code. It's worth thousands. So suit up - I mean sign up - because it's going to be legen - wait for it - dary!

Posted by Rob Novak At 10:59 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (0)

03/05/2010

QuickImage Category Quickr Boot Camp iPhone
The Quickr Development Boot Camp http://bootcamp.snapps.com has eight seats left, and the $200 discount (2 nights in the hotel!) expires Monday. So bug the boss. Also, Julian and Viktor will be doing the heavy lifting at our non-Lotus-related-or-specific-we-don't-care-if-you-can't-spell-IBM iPhone Development for Business seminar http://iphone.snapps.com being held on April 16.

Anyone fancy some Kansas City barbecue?

Posted by Rob Novak At 10:44 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (0)

03/01/2010

QuickImage Category Quickr Boot Camp iPhone Training Webinars
With registration open for two business days, we've already signed up two of the twelve available slots for the Quickr Development Boot Camp mentioned below. And, registration for the Collaboration University Webinar on March 11 (Quickr API Development) is almost half full nearing 50 registrants. It seems people really want to learn this stuff!

Speaking of learning, we've decided to offer a non-IBM-specific iPhone Development for Business Seminar one day only, Friday, April 16th. Based partly on the rave reviews received by Julian Robichaux (architect of SnappFiles) at Lotusphere 2010, and the person-year he and Viktor now have in development using web, native, and toolkit technologies, we are offering a full day of "getting started" type training. I expect we'll mostly attract the local developer market for this, but just in case I arranged for a similar $99 deal at the seminar hotel here in Overland Park and will cater lunch. By all means if you're interested in iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad development and don't know where to start, this is a great way to figure it all out.

In one day we will cover introductions to iPhone-friendly web development, XCode and Objective C native development, and a toolkit that accelerates development for non-native-app developers, magically (really, it's magic) transforming high-end JavaScript and CSS into native apps. At the end of the day we'll also role-play all three roles in the iPhone Developer Program and demystify the complexities of the App Store. You'll come away with a good understanding of which methods are best for which apps and skillsets and a clear decision matrix for your boss to help invest in deeper training. More info is at http://iPhone.snapps.com hope to see you there...

Posted by Rob Novak At 6:00 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (0)

02/25/2010

QuickImage Category SNAPPS Quickr Training
For ten years, I've taken the same question about once a week. "Do you guys do training?"

Of course we have Collaboration University and the new Webinar Series, UKLUG, IamLUG, TriLUG, MWLUG, NLLUG, ILUG, UG, UG, UG...but while those are (excellent) lecture and demo style training, what these folks want is to have an expert like Viktor, Troy, Jerald, Julian or myself (a stretch, but I do architect great solutions once in a while) come to them and learn from the experts. Side by side, hands on. It's never been our business model. But after ten years and nobody really doing this at the level we know can be done, I am giving in.

SNAPPS will be delivering a Lotus Quickr Development Boot Camp, three full days of hands-on workshop style training for developers of all skill levels but geared to the company running Quickr and wanting to take it from out-of-the-box to the next level and start getting real returns on the investment. We spent the last month developing a syllabus, identifying a local Kansas City venue and have decided to go ahead - for 12 people. TWELVE.

Registration opens today. The Boot Camp is April 12-14, with an optional half day on the 15th. All the details are here. Hope you can make it, as one of the 12. We're buying lunch, the hotel is $99, and if you fill all the slots, I'll buy everyone a nice dinner one of the nights (you heard it here, I'm not making this offer on the site).

If this works, maybe we'll repeat it in another city. We'll see...

I do realize that with only 12, there are excellent jokes about Cylons, disciples, and WW2 movies in there. I'm working on it.


Posted by Rob Novak At 9:17 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (0)

02/19/2010

Category Quickr SnappFiles iPhone iPad MacWorld
Here's the full text of the Press Release we issued earlier today, and is making its way across the Apple and Web-centric online publications. Those who have been following me on Twitter have heard about the soft launch after Lotusphere, this is the official release of SnappFiles, the story of how it was born and an announcement of support for Filenet P8 ECM in addition to both flavors of Lotus Quickr! Oh yeah, and it's free. More coming soon (Monday and Tuesday)...

SNAPPS and IBM Work Together to Bring IBM Lotus Quickr and Enterprise Content Management Products to iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

OVERLAND PARK, Kan., Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- SNAPPS, a long-time IBM Advanced Business Partner and new Apple Development Partner, identified an opportunity for synergy between the enterprise business software giant IBM and the hip, cool consumer-focused Apple and decided to actively link them together. The first offering, SnappFiles, demonstrated by IBM at MacWorld in San Francisco last week, is a free app available on the Apple App Store that delivers secure access to and collaboration on corporate documents stored in IBM Lotus Quickr or Filenet P8 ECM systems. With work underway to support other IBM ECM systems such as IBM Content Manager and Lotus Connections Files next month, SnappFiles is designed to be a single point of entry into corporate document management systems.

"We've designed complex business systems, workflows, and critical customer-facing applications in our tenure working with IBM products," said Rob Novak, president of SNAPPS. "Bringing these processes outside the corporate firewall and into the hands of Apple customers is a natural progression. We have several applications in development, and plan to bring our years of experience to bear on real business solutions for Apple customers."

Inspiration for SnappFiles came from the most unlikely place - unless you happen to have a teenager. Novak explains: "I was helping my 14-year-old son set up his new iPod touch six months ago and noticed he had a mesmerizing game called Paper Toss - the objective of which is to toss a crumpled piece of paper into an office trash bin. It occurred to me that if you could throw away paper on this cool device, why couldn't you retrieve documents securely?" The next day, SNAPPS joined the Apple Developer Program and started work on SnappFiles. Work on an iPad-optimized version is underway, since the form factor of the iPad will, according to Novak, make "corporate document management the killer business app for the iPad."

"SNAPPS' work with our open APIs has produced some very timely and astounding results for the iPhone and iPod touch," said Jeff Schick, Vice President of Social Software, IBM Lotus. "We're convinced that IBM's social software solutions and SNAPPS' innovation will produce some impressive apps for all the Apple devices."

SnappFiles is available now in the Apple App Store, free of charge. A professional version with enhanced capabilities is in the works, as are several other apps linking IBM's Lotus software to Apple devices. SNAPPS also develops custom solutions for Lotus Quickr applications and makes free templates available. For more information about SnappFiles, visit http://snappfiles.snapps.com, and for information about SNAPPS, visit http://www.snapps.com.

About SNAPPS

SNAPPS, an IBM Business Partner since 1997, has long focused on high-end collaboration strategy, development, and education. The company has advised progressive-thinking enterprises on deployment and design of collaborative business processes. SnappFiles is the first of many planned efforts to empower iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users with access to their business resources.

Posted by Rob Novak At 5:09 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (0)

02/11/2010

QuickImage Category Quickr QuickrTemplates.com QPhotos
As you're aware, SNAPPS developed a series of templates for IBM Lotus Quickr for the initial launch of Quickr 8.0 in 2007, and has maintained and improved on them through the years. We've fixed little bugs, added a feature or two, and even added a template. All for free use by IBM customers - and IBM themselves to help demonstrate the potential of Quickr when a little high-end development work is mixed with the powerful self-service collaboration platform. It's over at QuickrTemplates.com in case you've not been there.

From the first day we've taken feature requests large and small, and implemented many of them in point releases. Some large requests, however, we shied away from due to our own bandwidth, technical challenges, or our standard fallback position, "Hey! They're free!" One of those requests was for one of the more popular templates, QPhotos, and it was to be able to process more than one photo at a time. We understood, really, totally got it. We wanted that too. But the method in place of creating thumbnails on upload was intense. We were afraid - certain - that attempting a multiple-upload facility in ways we've done before would cause all manner of problems with memory, so we collectively said - you guessed it - "Hey! They're free!"

Ring, Ring
That is, until last October 30th. I had just finished a speaking engagement at the Netherlands Lotus User Group meeting and was visiting a client in Rotterdam. I was on the tram to dinner when my phone rang ("Damn! $1.29 a minute" was all I could think...). Jeff Schick, Vice President of Social Software for Lotus was on the line. OK, I'll spend the Euro.

So Jeff had this friend, you see, who would like - you guessed it - to upload multiple photos at once to QPhotos. As I entered my by-then-usual mode of discussing the technical challenges, he told me who the friend was.

Lights. Camera.
OK, got me. I can't decline an IBM exec's request for a celebrity user of Quickr, let alone one of our templates! So, back at the ranch in Kansas, we planned. We rewrote. We kicked things. We achieved room temperature nuclear fission. But we couldn't deal with the memory issue. Then it hit us - could we leverage Viktor's REST API work on PandaBear, the Adobe Air app for Quickr? And we were off. Three weeks later, we produced a solution that lets him upload 100+ photos at a time to QPhotos, with no code changes at all to QPhotos! And any updates to the Air app, of course, are automatically pushed down to the application. Air is like that. It's cool.

Here's how it works:

Viktor created a subset version of PandaBear cleverly named "PhotoLoadr for Lotus Quickr," which has one goal in life. Upload photos to a QPhotos place. Just like PandaBear, it lets you set up a connection to a server, browse places, pick one, then upload. Now - you have to know it's a QPhotos place, we didn't make it idiot-proof. If you upload somewhere else it just, well, uploads. Once all the photos are uploaded (during which time you can go to lunch, get coffee, or play with your Twitter tweets), the PhotoLoadr app makes a silent call to an agent sitting in a new database you place on the server- brain child of SNAPPS' Jerald Mahurin - passing it the name of the place it just uploaded files to. The agent then takes over, processing each found photo one at a time, just like it used to manually, but in a batch mode. After a few seconds, a minute, whatever, you have all your photos uploaded, thumbnails created, and ready for the much faster process of just filling out metadata. That's still one at a time until a future Quickr version which will accept metadata through the REST APIs, but that's another story. Believe me, it makes a major difference in overall time! Our benchmark tests on a crappy server give us 8-10 images processed per second.

Shhhhhhh...
We tested it, fixed a couple bugs, delivered it, and silence ensued. The kind of silence that makes you wonder if you crashed a server, or if everything's just going OK. But it turns out it was just holiday and LS-prep silence. On Tuesday night at Lotusphere I saw Jeff in Kimonos, said hello, and had my answer. The hug and 10x repeated "Thank You!" said it all. He even did the "we're not worthy" bow. How embarrassing. Apparently, it's working great and while we (nervous developers) still have scalability reservations, they've been uploading in batches of more than 100 going gangbusters.

Very pleased that this all worked out, so much so that I'm happy to be placing the code on QuickrTemplates.com for free today, for all to enjoy.

Oh - I almost forgot!

That friend of Jeff's, Notes user, Quickr fan, and QPhotos fan, and who I got permission to reference just today, is radio personality Howard Stern.

Enjoy the code, folks!

Posted by Rob Novak At 3:33 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (5)

02/04/2010

QuickImage Category Quickr QuickrTemplates.com SNAPPS
In the hustle of pre-Lotusphere months, the team at SNAPPS still managed to take some support calls and put in a few fixes to the free templates for Quickr located at QuickrTemplates.com. But each time we rebuilt them, it seems a new hotfix came out that seemed really important, so we held off posting updates. Well the wait is over, as I've just posted updated versions of ten templates based on Quickr 8.1 HF 18 and Quickr 8.2 HF 9. These fix levels seem very stable, and are the latest, so you should update your templates (using the documentation) once you've updated your servers.

The fixes included in today's posting:
1. We have rewritten the enhanced view form to accommodate the xsrf security setting in qpconfig.xml (see comment #7) - meaning, you no longer have to turn it off for the templates to work. We are accessing and passing the security token properly, so the default installation of Quickr does not need to be modified. Once you update your places, you can turn this back on.
2. Same for the blog component in QSite, which experienced the same "you cannot take this action from this URL" issue when xsrf protection was on.
3. Fixed the QPhotos form which was updating the photo date field with each edit. Thanks to Jeff Schick, VP Social Software at IBM for reporting this to me at Lotusphere.
4. Fixed the Enhanced Task form in QProject for a customer-reported issue with LDAP names with a middle initial.
...and some other minor changes and fixes, mostly in QSite.

In addition to the fixes, we have made three changes to the site. First, we retired QActivities. Its functionality was based on Quickr 8.0 integration with Lotus Connections 1.1 - cool at the time, but really no longer relevant. It had some nice extra features like the 3-tab interface on the left, but would have required a lot of work to bring it up to speed. Second, we retired the Quickr 8.0/8.0.0.2 versions of the templates. We're just going to support 8.1 and 8.2 for now, and will make a determination about 8.1 after 8.5 ships in the second quarter, assuming we can update them all for 8.5. Finally, we removed the separate downloads for source code, at least temporarily. All of the design is open and can be accessed from the individual places, and we had a lot of duplication where the same form was used in seven places for instance. We're working on a plan for re-posting the source in a way that is easier to follow.

In the coming days, you can expect some more changes and a new addition (enhancement) to one of the templates based on your feedback and some work we did to enhance it for a celebrity user! As soon as I'm permitted, I will tell you all about it...you will be shocked, to say the least.

Have fun!

Posted by Rob Novak At 8:48 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (0)

02/03/2010

Category Quickr
The latest hotfix for Quickr 8.,2 is available on IBM Fix Central, and while it addresses a small number of issues it's recommended to update right away. If you're using our PandaBear, Flippr, or SnappFiles clients, it's even more important. Here are the included fixes:
BBAR826LEU Via the Rest API, using the pagesize parameter without using the page parameter may crash the Domino Server.
JRIE7YXGDM The Notify context menu option does not work for documents in a workflow.
XHKG7CG5GU After adding a local group to a room’s security, clicking the Member Profile of the group gives an invalid Member Profile.
RALF7ZPQYQ Usage Statistics page does not show all places for a user logged in as a Super User.
KABS7U6VGX Mail not sent to next approver when using a Workflow form from Connectors.



Posted by Rob Novak At 11:28 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (0)

Calendar

Rock On With Me and SNAPPS

Join me and the great team at SNAPPS at these upcoming events:

Collaboration University Webinar: Taking Quickr to the Next Level - March 11 - free for Collab U 2009 Alumni
Lotus Quickr Development Boot Camp - April 12-14, limited to 12
iPhone Development for Business Seminar - April 16, limited to 15, not IBM-specific

These last two new events are very limited capacity, and have discounts expiring March 8. Hope to see you there!

Be With the Band

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On With The Show

Here is a list of the SNAPPS templates for Lotus Quickr and other free resources on QuickrTemplates.com:
Templates:
QContacts
QIdeas
QIssues
QMeeting
QPhotos
QPresent
QProject
QSite
QSurvey

Utilities:
AnyPlace SiteMap
AnyPlace ServerMap
AnyPlace Designer for Dreamweaver

Free Apps:
PandaBear: Cross-Platform File Management
Flippr: Lightweight Quickr Admin Client
SnappFiles: iPhone Client for Quickr, Filenet, ICM...

Downloads: 104,397
Countries: 161
Read about the templates in Intranet Journal

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