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At long last - QuickPlace 8 news hits the airwaves

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...and the Blogosphere, newsletters, and more.  

As the IBM Design Partner for QuickPlace, I've had the opportunity to work with IBM on the plans for several months now, so it is a pleasure to finally discuss those plans without fear of having big men in blue suits show up at my door!

First, here is a link to the Taking Notes Podcast posted last night -- with me, Satwik Seshasai, Team Lead for QuickPlace development at IBM, and of course our hosts Bruce Elgort and Julian Robichaux.  The podcast was the debut of public information on IBM's development progress and plans for QuickPlace 8.  Now if I were an IBM employee, this would be the place where I'd insert the obligatory "The following material is directional in nature and does not imply commitment on the part of IBM.  Future concepts and statements of direction shown in this presentation are subject to change.  Requirements may span different releases."  But I'm not IBM, so I won't have any of that nonsense.  Besides, I know some of this stuff is already baked.

Good news abounds, folks.  QuickPlace is not dead.  It's alive, and on track to a major release reminiscent (by then) of what IBM has put into the Sametime 7.5 major release.  Not just step-wise improvements, but an overhaul to a modern user interface, deep integration capabilities, and more standards support.  Here are a few ideas of what to expect in QuickPlace 8, as detailed in my newsletter posted today:

For Administrators
  • Increased reporting for more intuitive information about servers, places and users
  • A "dashboard" interface which gives place managers more control over their places!
  • A Place Superuser role - while not specifically for administrators, this new role allows a Place manager to perform tasks that require calling the administrator today
For End Users (wow!):
  • A complete overhaul of the user interface using Web 2.0 technologies and AJAX -- a productivity boost as well as bringing QuickPlace in line with the advanced capabilities of new browser applications
    • Contextual menus to perform actions on documents directly from the folder view
    • Mouse-over popups for member "business cards"
    • Drag and drop documents into folders
    • A new visual theme to leverage the enhanced UI capabilities
    • Open Document Format support
    • RSS and Atom feeds for subscription and notification of QuickPlace content and events
    • Deeper integration with Microsoft Office - open, save and modify directly from the menu and toolbar
    • Integration with e-mail -- drag and drop threads and attachments from e-mail into QuickPlace folders shown directly in your inbox!
    • Integration with the new Eclipse-based "Hannover" client - a new sidebar panel to see your places
    • Integration with Activities, with the ability to add QuickPlace data to an Activity and see your activities in your place
    • Integration with Sametime 7.5 via plug-ins that surface QuickPlace membership information, contextual "our places" links during chats, and more
    For Developers & Partners:
    • Exposure and extension of the QuickPlace AJAX methods by including them on the file system instead of embedded in a template
    • Resources for development of additional plug-in and integration solutions and products for ISVs
    • Similar to above, exposure of QuickPlace data via RSS and Atom feeds will allow developers to create solutions we haven't even thought of yet
    • Web Services integration

    Then of course there's "Codename: WILIKI." But that's not for QuickPlace 8. It's sooner.

Posted by Rob Novak On 08/11/2006 |

Comments

Gravatar Image1 - Thats cool, quickplace has needed a good facelift for a while.... Now inf only IBM would do the same to Domino Document Manager, and make Quickplace and DDM talk to each other straight out of the box !

Posted by Neil Gower At 05:18:54 AM On 08/12/2006 | - Website - |


Gravatar Image2 - Does QuickR make use of Flash or SVG technology or any "active" type content?

Posted by Louis Bryan At 10:04:52 AM On 05/22/2008 | - Website - |


Gravatar Image3 - Does it use, or can it? Users can put in whatever content they like. And, a developer could incorporate flash or any other technology in forms, pages, or the custom theme. Out of the box, neither of these is embedded in Quickr.

Posted by Rob Novak At 10:40:20 AM On 05/22/2008 | - Website - |