Lotus Rock Star

Category UKLUG Collaboration University


In the months running up to industry events that we produce and organize, it's inevitable that organizers will be very focused on their own events. Take for instance the strangely intertwined lives of myself and Warren Elsmore - Warren has, with the UKLUG team, been putting together a brilliant program for UKLUG, while as expected, I've been focusing on Collaboration University.

Now Warren is one of the partners speaking at CU with four sessions on SSO and Clustering, and in fact I'll be speaking at UKLUG with my session "Lazy Development: One Line Wonders for Domino Applications". And to be honest folks, it's no accident that CU runs Mon-Wed September 15-17 and UKLUG runs Thur-Fri September 18-19! Liz and I are staying over, and Julian will be sticking around as well. After both events, I travel to Miami for LoLA...more on that later.

But here's a wild and crazy idea. If you're coming to CU, tack on a couple days and register (while there's room) for UKLUG! It's free, covers a variety of Lotus-centric topics, and who knows, I might buy you a beer (or two)! And if you're coming to UKLUG and want a deep-dive into Sametime and Quickr, have a look at CU. There's no overlap in the programs, so you can truly make the week of September 15th into a great training experience - with more than 50 sessions between the two events!

Let's make it "Lotus Week in London"...hmmm, I can hear a tune in my head...

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:48 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Collaboration University

These fun interviews were conducted by Scott Treggiari, LotusUserGroup.org Program Director. Thanks very much to LotusUserGroup.org for publishing the interviews!

The podcasts can be accessed here on the LotusUserGroup site, or you can play Carl's below. Chris's was in the previous blog posting.

Carl Tyler, Director, epilio.com Take a few minutes to listen in to this informative conversation. You'll be glad that you did as Carl shares details about how he got his start with Lotus technologies, discusses what project he found most interesting to work on, tells us his favorite session at Collaboration University (and why), and lets you in on one of his newest, favorite software gadgets. Plus, get a sneak peak at tip hell be sharing at the conference that lets you customize the appearance of your Sametime Meeting Center! Oh yeah, also, listen in to find out why we owe Cincinnati an apology...

Posted by Rob Novak At 10:17 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Collaboration University

These fun interviews were conducted by Scott Treggiari, LotusUserGroup.org Program Director. Thanks very much to LotusUserGroup.org for publishing the interviews!

The podcasts can be accessed here on the LotusUserGroup site, or you can play Chris's below. Carl's is in the next blog posting.

Chris Miller, Director of Messaging and Collaboration, Connectria
Listen in to this informative interview with Chris Miller to find out what version of Notes was out when Chris started in the business, hear what collaboration technologies Chris sees as critical for enterprises today, get insight into why he sometimes needs a mute button for his kids when they're in the car, and a lot more. Its a light, fun, and interesting interview. Don't miss it.

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:55 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Collaboration University
One of the new benefits we have this year at Collaboration University is the creation of pre-conference sessions as videos for attendees. They will be posted the week before the conference and range from 20 minutes to an hour in length - whatever the topic dictates. The past couple years, we've noted that coming into CU people have a variety of skill sets and are at different levels of expertise in different subjects. This is to be expected of any group, but with the intense training we tend to put together, it creates a conference producer's dilemma - some people really can use the basics, while some are beyond them and want to dive right into more advanced topics. For instance in 2007, we had a number of people who were new to Sametime, and two from IBM who were responsible for the entire IBM Sametime infrastructure as attendees. See the problem?

Our approach the past two years has been to quickly get the basics out of the way on the first day then progress rapidly into meatier stuff by afternoon. Even so, we'd get a few complaints from those who have more experience, because they already knew all the morning content. That worked "OK", but this year with the delivery of these early sessions outside the confines of the three onsite days, we've found a great solution. Those who need and want the basics get them - and can attend all of these sessions on their own time - and those who don't are not missing anything because we're starting the conference at a higher level.

Of course the side benefit is that instead of 30 sessions, we are delivering nearly 40. More work for us, more content for you. We decided to do the following sessions as pre-conference videos (subject to change), and I'm considering adding one more myself...you'll not the conspicuous absence of my name here...

- Basics of the Dojo Toolkit (Viktor)
- Using DDM in your Sametime and Quickr Environment (Gab)
- Installing Sametime Standard Server (Chris)
- Domino Reporting & SNMP Traps (Warren)
- Installing and Configuring Eclipse for Sametime Plug-in Development (Carl)
- REST for the Lazy Developer (Julian)
- Fundamentals of Quickr Development: Forms, Themes, and Placebots (Jerald)
- Deconstructing Quickr: Understanding Quickr Behind the Scenes (Troy)

As an example, Carl Tyler put together this 5-minute segment of his pre-conference video on Installing and Configuring Eclipse for Sametime Plug-in Development. It is the prerequisite session for his live session on creating Sametime plug-ins (makes sense), and in the full session you can follow along and prepare your own machine to be ready to use those live materials. Enjoy!

Posted by Rob Novak At 5:21 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Collaboration University QuickrTemplates.com SnappShot

With 3 weeks remaining before Collaboration University's biggest events yet, we're almost all heads-down working on completing client projects and writing demos and presentations. I say almost because Julian has hit the ground running and taken charge of a long-awaited update to our QuickrTemplates.com site where soon we will make several announcements and unveil enhancements to further template development and support for the Quickr community.

We're also working on a SnappShot 8 upgrade, working with some of the newer features in the DDA API. Hey, that sounds like I know something! Seriously, I don't. But we're running debug code on the Sametime dev server this week and hope to wrap it up before leaving on what for me will be a whirlwind tour of D.C.->Chicago->Naples->Miami->London->Miami->Home over 22 days.

As if this weren't enough, we have a client whose legal requirements for engaging with us involves the procurement of our resumes. Of the seven requested, we had four very out of date, two new ones, and well...I last wrote a resume in 1993 using PFS: First Choice on the laptop provided for my first Masters' degree. So I have some work to do!

Posted by Rob Novak At 12:12 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Collaboration University

I can't begin to explain how cool this is.

We have a very different approach to our keynote address for Collaboration University in Chicago this year. With so many high-level IBMers already helping out, I thought it would be an interesting and exciting change to invite someone whose experience with collaboration and teamwork extends beyond office walls, beyond mobile devices, beyond laptops. Someone whose work in this area REALLY COUNTS.

Colonel Ed Hackett, USMC (Ret.), now president of EH-Group, Inc. has agreed to be our keynote speaker at Collaboration University 2008 in Chicago. I have had the pleasure of working with Ed for nearly a year in the advanced collaboration space and am thrilled that he is available to join us. The topic of his keynote address is "Collaboration when it Counts", and will represent quite a different "30,000 foot overview" than you're used to at our industry events!

Here is a little more about our guest speaker:

Ed Hackett is the President of EH-Group, Inc. a consulting firm specializing in the national defense and homeland security arena.  His company supports several strategic level projects on Maritime Security and Maritime Domain Awareness for the federal government. Ed is a retired Marine Colonel, a fighter pilot, and test pilot.  In his twenty-five year career as a Marine, Ed's journeys provided an extensive exposure to the many diverse and exciting cultures around the globe.  His last military assignment was on the Joint Staff, at the Pentagon, where he focused on global security engagement. Ed is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, The United States Naval Test Pilot School, and the United States Air Force Air War College.

So please join me in welcoming Ed to Chicago! And yes, he probably will get there a lot faster than any of us...

Posted by Rob Novak At 1:35 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category SNAPPS Quickr Templates


The SNAPPS Quickr Templates at QuickrTemplates.com have been updated with various fixes and a new feature I'll describe here. But first, a note on versions.

We elected to match version numbers with Quickr when 8.1 shipped, so 90 days ago when they were posted, our versions revved to 8.1. Now we also have fixes to the templates unrelated to the Quickr version number or hotfix level, so have taken our versioning out two decimal points - the new version is 8.1.0.1. If we have another release before IBM revs to 8.1.1 (or whatever's next), our version will be 8.1.0.2. Clear? Good.

Fixes in 8.1.0.1:
1. Various UI fixes in QSurvey and QIssues to align the preview of questions, and to drop the secondary information (description, explanatory text or translation) about the question to the line below the question. This was caused by CSS changes in Quickr 8.1.

2. A fix to QProject - only Managers could see content in Firefox, and IE threw an error. The link to create a new Enhanced Task was in a section of the page that was not visible to Authors or Editors, causing an error - and in Firefox, the error stopped processing of further JavaScript (the Gantt chart). The link has been moved to use a standard Enhanced View Form.

New feature:
The Enhanced View Form in 8.1 had a selector to show a particular default form as a link - similar to Quickr Folders. New in 8.1.0.1, you can decide which level of access is required in order for a user to see the link. For instance, in QSurvey, you may want only Editors to create a new survey, while all Authors can complete the survey (and specific to QSurvey, this is now the default). This is now possible. In order to use the new feature this way in other templates or in your own applications, you'll want to hide the form in Customization-Forms so people don't create new documents using the "New Page or Folder" link and selecting it from the list.

Here's how it works:


Once you're in edit mode, about halfway down the form you can choose the default form, then the new feature:



The end result:


But only for Editors. Authors and Readers can't see the link.

Now for the less than perfect bit. If you're upgrading, due to a bug in Quickr that's been around since the dawn of time (but is being fixed now), you'll need to re-save the Enhanced View Forms in your templates and places. Quickr doesn't like forms being imported with new fields if them if documents without those fields already exist. So it's a one-time inconvenience. We've written agents to update these in the past, but figured that was a little too technical for many of the template users. It's all in the documentation.

Enjoy!

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:13 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (1)

Category Collaboration University Quickr Sametime Connections Domino

The Collaboration University website was updated last night to include a "Web 2.0" agenda and an updated speakers page...all with dynamic links to sessions and speakers. This falls under the category of "what do you get when you put together Domino, JSON, Dojo or your favorite toolkit, Photoshop, Viktor and too much Red Bull"?

Sexy. Very sexy.

Not Carl specifically, I won't say that. Even if he does.

So go on over to the site, have a look at the agenda and speakers pages - roll over things, change days, play around - it's a very cool data-driven Domino application and handy to boot!

Don't forget, if you're coming to CU this year you also get some sessions before the conference, all available online.

Posted by Rob Novak At 11:07 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Networking Email Etiquette

Often when you send a message to a sales@ or info@ or support@ address of a large company, you receive an automated response indicating that they received your message (which is a lie anyway, it just means that the Internet ain't broke). Somehow that makes people feel good. "Yay! My email made it there! Now we're cooking with gas!".

This was so funny I had to take a picture. I want information from Netgear about their VPN client licenses. Apparently instead of using a proper autoresponder, sales@netgear.com is just "out of the office". Oh, and...it may take 2 days for sales to get back to me. What if I were interested in $100,000 of managed switches?

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:55 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Quickr Notes Domino

In case you don't get my newsletter, here is the notes.ini tip I wrote last week.

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By the time I installed Quickr 8.1, there were a myriad of configuration places, settings, and knobs and dials on the Quickr server. We have notes.ini, qpconfig.xml, the admin screens, server documents, web configuration documents - let's just say it's enough to make your head spin! The good news is that if you're running a single server for standard Quickr activities, using Domino LDAP, there really isn't much to change. But if you have a busy server...

While there isn't room here for a complete server health checklist, I do have a recommendation on the use of notes.ini. This configuration file, as you know, has been with Notes since the days of yore. While it goes largely unmodified in the field, there are actually quite a few Quickr settings in there, and some of them can be addressed in different and better ways. I'm referring specifically to the "ServerTasksAtX" lines. These lines are designed to kick off a specific process or processes at a specific time in the early morning.

Here's my tip - get rid of the qptool tasks that are run this way! Some you don't need, while some are overlapping each other and could be run at a better time. For instance, in Quickr 8.1 the server install added a line (look below the normal location) "ServerTasksAt4=qptool refresh -a,qptool report -policyexecute,qptool register -pts". That's three qptool commands - meaning three Java programs - run simultaneously at 4 AM. Ouch, kill that line!

What to do with these? A much better option resides in the Domino Directory, names.nsf, with Program documents. You can replace all of the qptool notes.ini settings with Program documents with the following benefits:

1. You control the timing. If you want to run a task at 3:12 in the morning, you can
2. Program documents can be enabled and disabled
3. You can decide to run qptool tasks more or less frequently than daily, as your needs dictate

Next time, I'll tell you which other notes.ini settings and server tasks you can safely (and should!) get rid of to speed up the Quickr server. For now - schedule away, and trim down that notes.ini file!

-Rob Novak
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Posted by Rob Novak At 5:18 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (1)