Lotus Rock Star

Category SNAPPS Quickr
I would like to invite a select group of Lotus Quickr customers* (8.1, 8.2, and/or 8.5** beta participants) to a special webcast this Wednesday where Viktor Krantz and I will unveil a series of potential extensions to Lotus Quickr being considered by SNAPPS for commercialization. We haven't sold products for a while, and have given away millions in free software, but this stuff is so valuable to so many customers that we want to run it by a small group of customers before making a final investment in development.

We will be demonstrating concepts of extensibility that have never been done in Quickr before, including one of the most often-requested features by Quickr (and all predecessor names) customers. As well, we will solicit input to let you give us ideas for customer-specific (bespoke, my European friends) extensions.

This will not be a sales pitch, and will not be the run-of-the-mill awesomeness that we usually do on stage. This is very early stage stuff, but we don't want to go too far without real customers providing feedback.

This webcast event will be held this Wednesday, June 9 at 10 AM CDT. It will consist of about 20 minutes of demonstration, a quick discussion of our initial goals with the framework, and then we will open it up for questions and your feedback.

*This webcast is by invitation only. To request an invitation, you must be a Lotus Quickr Domino customer or are in active evaluation of Quickr, must have a minimum deployment or planned deployment of 250+ users, and must request an invitation via email to me: rnovak at snapps dot com.

In the email, you must include contact info, let me know your current or planned Quickr deployment size (both servers and users), the name of your Lotus sales representative, and you must use a corporate email address. Of course, your information will not be shared with anyone. Upon confirmation (or if I already know you), you will receive an acknowledgement. On Wednesday morning, one hour before the webinar, you will receive a link. Your identity in the webinar will be visible (we will be using GoToMeeting for integrated audio).

So again, send me:

1. Corporate contact info - customers only - including your country so we can arrange phone service if possible
2. Deployment statistics - number of servers, users
3. IBM sales rep name (specifically Lotus/advanced collab sales rep if you have one, or named account rep if you have that)

If you are an IBM sales rep and would like to have your customer included, please introduce us via email and confirm their availability. Spots are limited by the webinar's capacity.

**We will not be demonstrating anything specific to Quickr 8.5, which is under NDA. What we're working on will have the capability to extend Quickr 8.1, 8.2, or 8.5.

See you online!

Posted by Rob Novak At 12:56 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Collaboration University 2010 Quickr Sametime
It's hard to believe we held the 9th and 10th Collaboration University conferences for Lotus Sametime and Quickr last year. This great little conference has had such an impact on the skills of so many people that we often hear back months - and even years - from attendees, with success stories linking back to what they learned from our experts.

So it's with pleasure that I've announced Collaboration University 2010, and opened registration at midnight last night. As a "thank you" to individuals who register in the first week, we have decided to give you a $200 USD incentive. Register by midnight Central Daylight Time US next Wednesday, April 28th, and you'll get the best possible rate. If you've never been to Collaboration University, this is the perfect time (and price) to invest in your skills. If you're a returning CU alumni, welcome back! And, you can once again take $50 off for each year you've attended - up to another $200.

Update: Our first registrations came in just minutes after opening, including a 2-time alumni. Welcome back!

What is Collaboration University? An intense 2 1/2 day learning experience where your instructors - independent IBM Lotus business partner experts doing this without sponsor support - share their years of experience with you in a fast-paced and very accessible manner.

What's new? We listened the past couple years and have made some changes based on your feedback. In 2010, we will spend significant time on the latest versions (Sametime 8.5 and Quickr 8.5, shipping in Q2) but also add new cross-product and collaboration strategy sessions appropriate for management. And, the agenda will be influenced by the early registrants who access the Collaboration University Campus, an online (take a guess!) Quickr and Sametime environment where we will collaborate on topics, share the latest (public) version news, and take your ideas and questions in advance.

After the conference, you remain Collaboration University alumni for life. In 2011 when we produce three more webinars with code examples and recordings, you'll have free access to them. And, you can continue to participate in the Campus as long as you like. As for the math - if you register in the next 168 hours (7 days), are a long-time alumni, and attend the webinars, you're saving $897 USD.

So - to the business of registration! Some important things to note are the dates and locations...and we've gone all backwards this year. That's right, London goes before Chicago for the first time ever! Here are the dates and locations, and of course you can get much more information on the Collaboration University website:

London: Tues-Thurs, September 21-23, IBM South Bank
Chicago: Mon-Weds, September 27-29, IBM Innovation Center

Thank you, and I hope to see you in London or Chicago (wow it feels strange to say them in that order).

-Rob

P.S. For the latest news follow @CollabU on Twitter, our Facebook page and Facebook group!

Posted by Rob Novak At 1:17 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category SnappFiles Quickr FileNet IBM Content Manager Alfresco iPad SNAPPS
The wait is almost over. Tomorrow a few hundred thousand people will be picking up their iPads at Apple Stores or waiting at home for the delivery truck. And quite likely, a few of those will have jobs, where they do work, and use document management systems. Like IBM Lotus Quickr, FileNet P8, IBM Content Manager (CM8), Alfresco Open-Source ECM, or another flavor. Just a couple weeks ago, we announced Julian Robichaux had updated our SnappFiles app for iPhone and iPod touch to support all of these formats with version 1.0.3.

Well if you're one of those lucky ones tomorrow and live at the intersection of coolness and business, you'll want SnappFiles 1.0.4, which was approved last night (!) and is now available on the Apple Store, officially listed as both an "App" and as an "iPad App." In fact, as of today it's the only iPad App listed when you search for "IBM" or any of the supported ECM systems, so it should be easy to find. You can search for it by name, or by any of the supported ECM system names. Julian will eventually go into some technical depth on his blog about the changes he made to be more iPad-friendly (mostly having to do with form factor), but here is a screenshot of SnappFiles in action - all the configured servers, and viewing of a PDF:

Of course, the price remains the same. Free.

Enjoy!

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:49 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (10)

Category Quickr Bootcamp SNAPPS
It took weeks to work it all out, but we've now published the full agenda for our Lotus Quickr Development Bootcamp being held April 12-14 (with an optional half day of personalized one-on-one consulting, only two slots left for that). Of course, there are some usual suspects there like theme development and dynamic forms, but we also have come up with some amazing content that will have attendees doing one of two things - either a) going home and immediately putting code in place to prove the trip was worth 20 times the cost, or b) curling up into a little ball in the corner of the room, crying until they get their Jell-O pudding pop.

It's a seriously ambitious agenda for a hands-on course, and includes some topics that nobody, anywhere, has ever taught. I know, because at least one of them is based on something programmatic that we - all of SNAPPS - just figured out about Quickr last week and have never seen nor heard of before. I'll blog on it after the course, and am telling IBM about it in 20 minutes, but don't want to spoil the surprise for those who are coming. You'll love it.

So...we are at T-minus 15 days and there are some seats left. Personally I like a small course, as there will be less running around the room, but we do have a little room left. It's well worth it, the hotel is $99, Kansas City is easy to get to, and you get about $50k worth of examples. The ROI is ridiculous.


The agenda link is right under the topic list. See you here!

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:27 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category iPhone Quickr App Store
Out of brilliant minds (like Julian Robichaux's) and bench time, recently re-branded as SNAPPS: Labs by the way, has come another release of SnappFiles, the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad (April 3. Line up now.) client for Lotus Quickr.

SnappFiles 1.0.3, available yesterday from the App Store, is more than a point release. Julian improved several areas, including better support for self-signed SSL certificates, better handling of Office 2007 documents, added a download counter for large files, and a progressive load feature. Those are cool and useful additions. But the big news is...

We have added support for Alfresco's Open-Source ECM and IBM Content Manager (CM8) to the existing support for Quickr Domino, Quickr J2EE, and Filenet P8. So FIVE document repositories are now available and accessible from one app.

Just to clarify, when we talk about CM8, FileNet, and Alfresco, we're talking about each of those products being front-ended by the "Services for Lotus Quickr" component for that particular product. Julian has a more technical description of this on his blog. The links above all go to sites having to do with the integration, too, not the product websites.

It's actually a brilliant move for IBM to have a common front-end API that is shared across multiple products. Aside from the slight implementation differences in each case, it makes these technologies easy to work with client-side. Well, in this case, easy if you happen to bury yourself in Objective C and XCode like Julian has, and know the REST APIs fairly well, and have access to systems. That kind of easy.

But it also means that the exposure of platform-specific features - like Views in CM8 or lists in the upcoming Quickr 8.5 (public knowledge, call off the NDA hit squad) might not be as readily available if they're not exposed with the common API and could need a new app built to purpose. We can do that. Julian's brilliant a this stuff, and - because he can - Viktor has a prototype of an iPhone app that reads rich text in Quickr. Shhhhhh.

All you iPoeple, go upgrade (or get) SnappFiles today. Enjoy!

Posted by Rob Novak At 2:43 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (1)

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 | Permalink | Comments (1)

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 | Permalink | Comments (3)

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 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 | Permalink | Comments (5)

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 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Quickr iPhone iPod iPad
Last night, amidst the buzz in Cupertino about the launch of the iPad, we at SNAPPS quietly got an email notification that the fruits of Julian's labor for the past few months, SnappFiles^TM, is now available for sale on the Apple app store. "Sale" is a bit of a misnomer, since like many of our other "SNAPPS Labs" efforts, the inaugural version of SnappFiles is free. Yep, free. Can't think of a better price.

So what is SnappFiles? It's fairly easy to grok. Start it up, point it to a Lotus Quickr server (Domino or J2EE), and browse for your files. If there's a viewer, open and read them on the device. Or, send a link to the page and file to anyone with one click. That's it. Pretty easy, huh?

Here are a few screenshots. Because it's a native app (vs. a browser app, which Julian also developed when he was getting started), it looks amazing, flows very smoothly, is very responsive, and follows all the Apple human interface standards. It's really slick, works great with PDFs, Office docs, images and anything else with a viewer. It even works with several of the Quickr Templates including QPhotos.

And, it will work straight away on the iPad when it's released. In fact, I think it will be a killer app for iPad in business - ECM integration - as the format is so good for reading documents.

Enjoy, folks. We'll issue a press release later today. Movies and more coming over the next couple days. And of course, we'll be doing more of this with Domino and the iProducts...it's fun! Go get it, or read more about it here: http://snappfiles.snapps.com

Posted by Rob Novak At 10:04 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (12)

Category Quickr
In my newsletter last week, I outlined the nine IBM improvements (below) to Quickr 8.2, then added a series of recommendations at a very high level that can apply to any version of Quickr or QuickPlace. I consistently see home-grown Quickr and QuickPlace installations that haven't had the benefit of professional Domino administration and performance optimization - sometimes because it's not even a Domino shop, sometimes because the skills are not on staff, and sometimes because Quickr is the only web app in place. Or, the Domino apps in place are so simple as to not need the kind of attention a more complex app like Quickr requires.

So - since not every one of my readers here gets the newsletter (sign up below), I thought I'd repeat here and take questions and comments. And of course, I'd encourage you to come to Collaboration University 2009 where Chris Miller, Gab Davis and Warren Elsmore all have sessions focused on this very topic.

So enjoy, and I hope this makes your Quickr, Quickr!

++++++++++++++++++

So thrilled I was with the 8.2 performance improvements that I almost forgot some of the basics that I encourage customers to do - or do for them when their back is turned - to enhance performance on their Quickr/QuickPlace environments. So in no particular order, here is a list of things to check on your own environment. I'm not going to tell you WHY to do everything, because that's a much longer story. Possibly, more blog entries or newsletters too...!

Some things to do with notes.ini:

• Remove unnecessary tasks: Sched, CalConn, RnRMgr, Statlog
• Remove: ServerTasksAt4 (reschedule as a program document if you must)
• Remove: qptool placecatalog push -a (same)
• Add: HTTPJVMMaxHeapSize=256M
• Add: QuickPlaceWebCacheEnabled=1
• Add: UPDATE_SUPPRESSION_TIME=90 (or 120 if you can get away with it)
• Add: UPDATERS=4 (or, a number equal to or one less than your number of CPUs)

System changes:

• Enable Transaction logging on a separate drive array (HUGE topic)
• Enable view indexing on a separate drive (big savings)

Server document and Quickr setting changes:

• Exclude graphics from logging. Do you really want to write to a database just because a gif was opened? (Hint: No.)
• Use authenticated LDAP lookups, not Anonymous

If you're still slow after all this? It may be:

• You have some customizations with un-optimized code
• You may be using a theme, even a standard one, that is bad for performance
• You may have reverse proxy issues or firewall bandwidth restrictions
• The server may not be optimized for TCPIP throughput or timing
• Your users may not be caching properly, or your proxy may be caching improperly
• You may have rogue agents or placebots (Quickr agents) inappropriately implemented, especially in larger systems

When you've tuned and tweaked your servers, and considered and ruled out all of the possibilities above, there is one remaining possibility. You may really just have old, clunky servers or clients, or are overloading them, and really do need an infrastructure change. It happens, don't worry.

Unfortunately, the poor-performance conclusion is reached WAY too early by most companies, and QuickPlace/Quickr gets a bad name for it. "Quickr is slowr! Let's look at SharePoint!" fills a conference room, and people nod in general agreement because it just seems like the right thing to say. But you, my newly-enabled admin guru, have the power to stop that dead in its tracks with "It's not the software. There are measures we can take to improve the situation and improve performance. We'll work on it and report back."

So go, people. Take this knowledge. Fix it.

Posted by Rob Novak At 11:23 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (7)

Category PandaBear Quickr
PandaBear (Beta) is the code name for a desktop application for uploading, downloading and locating files stored in Lotus Quickr 8.1 and 8.2. Designed on the Adobe Air framework, PandaBear runs on Windows, Mac or Linux using the same application code. Viktor is the genius behind the project, and how about this sexy website Julian did?

Use cases for PandaBear include:

• Quickr places designed primarily for file sharing
• Organizations with Mac and/or Linux desktops
• Transient users of Quickr, who just need access to files
• Archiving folders, rooms, or even entire places full of files
• Your unique use case!

PandaBear is free during beta, and is not time-locked or disabled in any way. Post-beta plans are still under consideration but will include a free version with all the capabilities of the beta version.

To download now with your QuickrTemplates.com ID (a new one takes just a minute), visit http://pandabear.snapps.com

Enjoy!
-The Team at SNAPPS

Posted by Rob Novak At 10:41 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Quickr Sametime Case Study
In the past few weeks of the blogosphere, and my belated but energetic entree into Twitterland (follow me! follow me!), there have been a number of discussions about the utility of collaboration tools, observations about their use and intentions, appropriateness for Enterprise 2.0 status, and more. While I would love to weigh in on the discussion, I haven't yet learned enough about one of the big players - SharePoint - to, well, share.

So with admiration of the discussions and analysis of Mike Gotta, Thomas Vander Wal, Ed Brill, Ferdy Christiant, Luis Suarez, Bill Simser, and Alan Lepofsky, I decided I would contribute in a slightly different way.

Buckminster Fuller (designer, philosopher, mathematician, and architect) pretty much summed up the point I'll make today:

"You can't change anything by fighting or resisting it. You change something by making it obsolete through superior methods."

While I can't yet argue, fight against, or resist (on behalf of customers) SharePoint's ominosity or the dumping-ground use of Quickr (and Mr. Fuller's advice is that I don't really try), what I can do is quietly take tools like Domino, Quickr, Dojo, Air, Sametime, and a host of toolkits and build applications that not only give customers "aha" moments, but render arguments for the file-dump that is many web-based workspaces - including Quickr, but more extensively due to its proliferation and file-share roots SharePoint - obsolete.

Been doing it for years. For really big companies, many of which have 52-page nondisclosure contracts that prohibit our ever showing it off in its native state. That's why we build demos for Lotusphere, Collaboration University, The VIEW, ILUG, UKLUG, and others from scratch. However, I can tell stories. So that's what I'll do here, to give you an idea of how Quickr specifically is being used as a non-file-dumping collaborative powerhouse of a tool in the real world.

Case 1: The Executive Meeting and Decision Support
A large automotive manufacturing concern has plants all over the world, with country and regional presidents and vice presidents, but has managed their global multi-billion _______(insert currency here, they all apply) concern closely by bringing together the CEO and top 30-40 presidents and vice presidents once a month for two days for a physical meeting. To enhance the ability of the CEO and management to reach consensus on initiatives, each month every one of these executives received a packet with all current 100-million-plus investment initiatives (new plant, massive marketing campaign, etc.) as PowerPoint files, expected to comment on them, and give a "vote" - their personal thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the idea.

In addition to arranging the meeting and agenda, the CEO's executive assistants (and a few executives) were tasked with tallying votes, consolidating comments, and presenting a comprehensive but concise package to the CEO and all team members. Enter Quickr, in the guise of a web application that automated the entire process from uploads to presentation slide viewing (without PowerPoint, BTW) to commenting, voting, data capture, and the organization of an agenda designed to maximize the meeting's effectiveness. Executives arrived ready and able to skip past the details (already read), comment on comments, and make decisions. Fast forward a couple years, and the meetings can be held virtually some of the time.

Case 2: Global Patent Application Management
A beverage company operates in just about every country on earth. As you can imagine, the introduction of a new brand involves not only creative people and lots of meetings, but a serious amount of patent and trademark research by the company's formidable patent legal team - and contracted firms in many countries. Managing this process through email? Yes, that's what they did for years and years.

A simple Quickr application based on a tracking form, some placebots for internal notification and external status updates has brought this process some semblance of order while effectively halving the time-to-trademark process for global brands. International attorneys and contract firms can submit and review submitted names and designs, then use internal processes to conduct their investigations and searches.

Case 3: The Extranet(s)
This is really two cases in one - as several of our clients have chosen to deploy Quickr as an extranet for sharing documents, business processes, and even work product with clients. One commonality among companies that have chosen to use Quickr as an extranet is that they almost always need UI work to match corporate standards and provide their own branding. A second is that these companies typically have one "place" per customer - or, in some cases, if the company's work is large project-based, one per project.

Our first extranet is hosted by a global insurance and risk management company serving many of the world's largest companies. With nearly 3,000 (and growing) places surfaced through WebSphere Portal, they had a unique set of needs to provide clients with the ability to easily retrieve insurance certificates, submit requests, and maintain relationships with account managers. In addition to the highly customized theme, we developed five custom forms to manage content with expiration dates, enhance tasks to include multiple assignees and consolidated reminder emails, provide for imported PDF and Flash files, and a multiple-PDF import facility. This combination serves the company's 25,000+ internal and external users, keeping client information readily available to account managers and clients. As a "P.S." to this case, they also migrated away from two other systems.

The second extranet is a little more project-based, and is for one of the world's best known marketing and advertising firms. For each major account they land, they rapidly spin up a Quickr space that includes their branding (of course) with a twist: The ability to easily import their client's logo to co-brand the site and impart the sense of collaboration from the start. Once the design is finished (about 5 minutes), this firm imports project documents to the shared library or discussion - depending on whether the images and documents need feedback. Then, they write a blog entry to introduce the client to the site. In this case, we combined the standard place with the wiki and blog features found in the templates to make one "super-template". Effective and efficient, it allows the host company to land a sale one day and be up and running with a populated site the next.

Case 4: Innovation Feedback and Reporting Dashboard
One of the big four (or is it three now, I can never remember) consulting/accounting/auditing firms approached us with a few serious challenges last year. They are in the process of changing their operating software globally, and a massive team of developers works to deliver enhancements, bug fixes, and new versions in a timely and professional fashion. The challenge is that the thousands of users of the systems in question are distributed worldwide in engagement teams of 4-10 people - with an engagement manager, country and region managers, and a central team. Gathering feedback and ideas for improvement is not only highly distributed, but if left to messaging would be completely unmanageable. Enter a collaborative workspace.

For this challenge we built two major pieces of functionality: idea "management" and a reporting "dashboard". Each has a different audience, user base, and purpose. I'll start with the "idea": End users enter ideas into the system, and depending on where the user is in the hierarchy of the organization, it is either self-approved (not meaning that the idea is approved, but rather the posting of it is) or requires an approval step. The workflow is highly dynamic and based on a set of flexible rules. Once an idea is approved for posting, the "second tier" management person assigned to that group in that territory or country provides a ranking using the familiar "1-5 stars" methodology. The criteria for rankings are not based solely on merit, but also on the completeness and clarity of the idea. Once ideas are posted and available for others to view, they are opened up for comments - which are entered blog-style in a simple and intuitive UI.

With several territories and hundreds (perhaps thousands) of ideas in each, bringing this content to leadership can be a daunting task. To simplify, we built a data-driven search facility that, when executed, produces a report of all ideas meeting the criteria in the search parameters. The report includes the idea titles, author, content of the idea, ranking, and even all the gathered comments to date. The report can be "massaged" by the report-writer before distribution; for instance, they can choose to summarize it by not showing comments, single out individual ideas and exclude them from the report (perhaps in the case of redundant concepts), and re-run the original query with tweaks based on the original results. Reports are saved as a snapshot in time and "locked" so they can be revisited later, or archived by an automated process. Finally, the rich text report can be sent to leadership either as a link, or as rich MIME to carry on the road in Notes mail.

As of today, several thousand ideas have worked through this system, creating not only a sense of community and inclusion among the end users, but also informing leadership about the most important concepts to improve their practices. We are actively working with this client on a new project to provide aggregated reporting across all their territories and countries - breaking long-standing perceived technical barriers and performance limitations of Quickr and Domino.

Case 5: Deliverable and Editing Cycle Management
Finally, one I can name. This application was built for us (and shared with other extended team members) to more easily meet our requirements under a consulting contract with the U.S. Navy. Unlike many of our engagements, this project didn't involve implementation or technical work (really - someone else was supposed to do that!). Contracted as subject matter experts in the field of collaboration, we provided industry, market, government, and comparative perspective and analysis along with a team of experts in other related fields such as security, naval operations, intelligence, law and policy, data acquisition, mapping, and more. This extended team meshed very well, worked together as a unit, and delivered analysis and reports (our deliverables) on time and in budget.

Early on, we concluded that consistent style, naming conventions, acronym, and language use were going to be a challenge with a distributed team. We also discovered that not everyone on the team was "a writer" - with many making departures from long periods of "doing" what we were experts in to "analyze" it. For this reason we decided that an editing process including a comment period, versioning, and three edit cycles was appropriate. What we designed encompassed 11 "phases" of the document lifecycle, from initial draft to final deliverable with the appropriate cover letter for the ultimate customer at the Pentagon.

With nearly 100 deliverable documents form the various parties, well the math is easy. 1,100 combinations of document+phase to be managed. So, we designed a Quickr application to manage the whole process. Each document got a placeholder, and assigned a primary author. When the author was ready to submit the first draft, they simply attached it, chose the team members they wanted comments from, and clicked a checkbox "Move to Phase 2". Appropriate emails got sent, team members jumped in and reviewed (or didn't, that was their choice), and the author decided when to move it forward to the editor for a first pass. While preserving all versions of the deliverable document, it passed through several phases with different actions and emails happening at each stage in the process until, the day before the project was due, all of them were at Phase 11 (phew!). Of course we also built views of the data to make it easier to manage - by author, by phase, and by deliverable number.

When all was finished, I personally used the Quickr Connectors for Windows Explorer in my Windows VM to copy and paste the well-ordered and named deliverables, their cover pages, and supporting documents to a local drive, and burned the requisite CD to hand off to our client. It was with relief and pride that my team, and the other 10 or so on the core distributed team, presented the final product on the actual due date. Without our deliverable management process - and BTW without the services of an incredible editor - we'd likely still be writing, emailing around drafts, and requesting extensions.

Conclusion
So there you have it, five cases (out of scores of them jumbled around in my head) where customers have made decisions to get more out of a collaborative workspace than a file dump.

When evaluating Quickr - or for that matter Domino, SharePoint, or any other "sharing" platform, it is absolutely key to consider what you can really accomplish in your organization by applying innovation and some development resources to the core product you choose. IBM, Microsoft, and other software vendors do a fair job of building core features, taking the top requests from key customers and eventually implementing them to meet the needs of as many companies and users as possible. It is only through extension of the platforms, however, that you can realize a greater return on the investment in pure product, giving you a competitive edge by making the platform work for your unique business model, process, or desired end result. You differentiate yourself in the market, why not reflect that in your flexible, customizable collaboration platform? Bottom line? Don't ever complain that SharePoint, Quickr, Domino, or any other platform was a "failure" in your company, if all you did was install it and do a little training!

It's all about creating value - and adding value through innovative development is what I encourage to make these concepts and platforms work for as many companies as possible.

If you have a case study you'd like to share, even anonymously, email it to me and we'll go through our own "edit cycle" so I can post your success here. Doesn't have to be Quickr, but it does have to be enlightening!

@Copyright 2009 Rob Novak

Posted by Rob Novak At 3:04 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (9)

Category Quickr
When QuickPlace 1.0 shipped in 1999, there was no concept of a custom theme. That came with 2.0 in June 2000. IBM also shipped some themes that were fine then but pretty awful by today's standards. Some are so bad that they break functionality, or hide it. In Quickr 8.0, they hid the old themes (finally!) but they came back in 8.1. You can even select QuickPlace 1.0 "Classic" as a theme.

By "You", I mean place managers, who are most of the time plain old end users - not developers or designers or administrators, not tech savvy people who know a good Web 2.0 design when they see it.

I've been advocating for IBM to retire for GOOD the old themes for several years now. Since they're still there, here are two ways you - administrator, server jockey, developer with access - can rid your server of the offensive UI choices.

Method 1: In Quickr 8.1, modify qpconfig.xml to unblock the following, then allow and block themes as you desire (including custom themes):

<themes restrict_choices="true">
                <allowed>"Quickr 8.0", "Quickr 8.0 (with classic navigation)"</allowed>
                <blocked>"Quickplace Classic","Quickplace Classic 3.0","Quickplace Organized","Quickplace Simple","Quickplace Clean Space","Quickplace Shapes","Quickplace Banner","Quickplace Classic 1.0"</blocked>
        </themes>

Method 2: For all versions, a simple method:

1. Using a Notes client, open the database Data\LotusQuickr\resources.nsf on the Quickr server.
2. Open the view Skin Groups
3. Sort the view by the h_Position column.
4. Select the themes with values 70 through the first 10000 (screenshot below). Delete these documents. This will leave the standard theme, the Quickr Entry theme only used by that template, and the accessible themes only used when a user enables accessible mode.

Posted by Rob Novak At 10:32 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Quickr Casahl SNAPPS
Having built five custom solutions for migrating specific customers to QuickPlace and Quickr, I recently found myself in a timely position to do a Dom.Doc migration to Quickr. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I spent time researching the available tools and quickly settled on Casahl's ecKnowledge. I've known Harry Wong for 5 years and though our paths haven't crossed much outside Orlando, know that he'd built a successful company serving a lot of markets. The tools are great, and serve my selfish one-way needs to bring customers to Quickr, faster. So we've decided to take advantage of the synergy of Casahl's product focus and SNAPPS' services for Quickr to offer high-end, high-value migration and integration services. Our technical teams are cross-training now, and we're already working on that Dom.Doc migration together.

In case it's not smack-you-in-the-face obvious, I'm only interested in migrating to Quickr, or in integration. And, I'm very interested in migrating into custom Quickr apps including ones we build for clients, and of course the SNAPPS Quickr Templates for Domino and IBM's new Quickr templates for WebSphere.

Harry and I shook hands in Orlando and are happy to make the following announcement.


CONTACT:         Chris Jones
        Business Development Manager
        CASAHL Technology, Inc.
        (925) 328-2828 Ext. 125
        Chris_jones@casahl.com

For Immediate Release

Posted by Rob Novak At 3:45 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (3)

Category QuickrTemplates.com Quickr Templates


Pleased to announce that somewhat quietly (because of travel...!) SNAPPS has updated the QuickrTemplates.com site with new documentation and updates to almost all of the templates.  Some highlights:

1. All templates are tested with Quickr 8.1.0.3
2. Minor fixes for QPresent, QIssues, QMeeting and QProject - hence also for QSite
3. Longstanding bug fix for QContacts! External contacts remain intact when nightly agent runs to refresh data

In addition to the new postings, Julian designed a beautiful new site for the templates including a blog, library, and options for support....yes that's right, we now offer support for the templates (you asked)...either incident support for SMB or enterprise support for larger installations. The first is what it sounds like, the second is a subscription-based offering that gives you unlimited tech support, fixes, upgrades, first new features, and guaranteed compatibility & upgrade procedures within 30 days of a Lotus release of Quickr!

Jerald and Julian also put together a sweet little quotation app that lets you receive a quote for enterprise support by plugging in your license numbers and selecting the templates you want supported.  

I'll have a couple more updates and news on the QuickrTemplates effort before the end of the year. In the meantime, go have a look.

Posted by Rob Novak At 2:11 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (3)

Category Quickr templates Quickr SNAPPS
This afternoon, three of the SNAPPS Quickr Templates were revved to 8.1.0.1a, after a minor fix to one of the workflow placebots that had not been updated on August 13 (my fault!). Head off to the brand new site to grab the downloads for QPresent, QAnnounce, and QIssues.

Thanks to Troy for the eagle-eye and thanks to CU folks who pointed out the problem they were having. All better now.

Posted by Rob Novak At 3:35 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (5)

Category Quickr QuickrTemplates
Just found out via a Google Alert that the Quickr team has shipped "Fix pack 1" which is a roll-up of Hotfixes 1-19 for Quickr 8.1, plus some 51 additional SPR fixes. This revs your Quickr server to version 8.1.0.1.

If you are dependent on Quickr Templates from SNAPPS, please hold on for some initial testing from our team. Hotfixes have been known in the past to break functionality. In fact, a private hotfix #22 was slated to go public but we were able to stop the presses, as a minor change broke, well, pretty much everything.

Today just became testing day.

Posted by Rob Novak At 9:30 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (5)

Category Collaboration University Quickr
I've mentioned before that we're creating pre-conference video sessions for Collaboration University in order to "level the playing field" on day one - that is, to deliver the most basic sessions before the conference starts so we can provide a more advanced learning experience even for those new to the products. It also lets us conduct the conference in 3 days while still offering almost 40 sessions. With seven or eight of these video sessions already assigned, I hadn't planned on doing one myself. But then the guilt got hold of me for being Mr Delegation Guy, and I decided to summarize nine years of experience deploying and developing for Quickr (and it's previous names) and do one myself with the above title.

While the full session is for CU attendees, it'd be mean of me not to share the list. So I'll be nice. My decision in choosing this topic came out of the experience I've had with the majority of Quickr customers who have deployed on their own, or even with assistance, and at some point faced tough decisions, ran into brick walls, or seen their deployments run amok. In some cases, my recommendations are just common sense responses to IBM's packaging or deployment choices that cause problems down the road (in other words, product problems). And while not every suggestion is for every operation, I'm confident that most of them will apply in any given company.

So without further ado:

10. If you just installed Quickr using an administrator's name from the directory, STOP. UNINSTALL. READ THE DOC AND START OVER.  This is perhaps the most common initial mistake and it causes numerous difficult-to-diagnose problems until the question is asked, answered, and the admin is trying to reverse engineer ten years of underlying authentication code to get themselves out of the jam.

9. Clean up notes.ini, and move qptool server task lines to program documents. If your Quickr server isn't the administration server (it shouldn't be, unless it's all by its lonesome), you don't need to run, say, the Design task at 1 AM. And three qptool activities at 4 AM...three java programs on a Domino server kicking off at the same time. Bad idea, my friends. Bad idea.

8. Set up Multi Server Single Sign On (MSSO, yes I know it's missing an S, don't ask). Do not use single server, and basic is kinda...amateur.

7. Hunt and forage for all the REAL proper field settings for your desired upload and download file restrictions. Hint, they're not in the doc.

6. Set up poor man's backup, right away, for rapid recovery of places, rooms or documents. Rotate it nightly. Hint, it uses qptool archive and a USB or SATA drive. Then let the admin folks (or you, I suppose) deal with transaction logging, backup APIs, tapes, offsite storage, and all their regulatory mumbo-jumbo on their own time. In the meantime, I can set up a recoverable system in about 20 minutes.

5. Remove the old themes from the "Select a Theme" UI. Really. Now. They are UGLY, sometimes broken, and inappropriate for the product. Bad idea again. Worse than the first one.

4. Set up a custom invitation script. Control your own text in invitations to places, and free yourself from IBM branding. The example from Lotus Devcon 2000 in Las Vegas still works. What? Don't have the backpack? Search my blog for "invitations", I posted the whole thing three years ago. Still works.

3. Take the Standard Template for Teams. Make a place. Change Basics. Make choices appropriate for your company. Make it a placetype. Hide the Standard Template for Teams. Now it's yours.

2. Make a custom login form. Unless, of course, you like advertising for IBM and pointing out capabilities you might not want to expose yet, like connectors to Microsoft Office.

1. And the number one recommendation for Quickr deployments....drumrolll...

Posted by Rob Novak At 11:32 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (5)

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 Quickr Notes Domino

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

++++++++
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
+++++++++

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

Category SNAPPS Projects Quickr

Continuing what may be a series (maybe of three, who knows, I could get bored...) of anecdotal approaches to development and customization, the next topic is the concept of managing and expiring Quickr content based on a set of business rules. The rules may be defined by a corporate mandate, regulatory issues, or simply best practices in keeping content fresh.

In this installation, I'll discuss two different approaches taken by two companies to the same issue. Each one was innovative and helped the client meet their specific business needs.

Clients:
International Beverage Company, International Insurance Company

Project:
QuickPlace/Quickr Document "Expiration"

Project Sizes:
Small to Medium

Features:
Project #1:
The firm had a mandate that all content posted on the Extranet, which was a QuickPlace server, be revisited by the author of the content within 180 days to be either a) re-saved, or b) removed. This was driven by a company-wide "document retention" policy. Now of course, there were some exclusions to the rules based on the kind of content entered into QuickPlace. For instance, calendar entries, discussion items, programmatic elements in QuickPlace applications, etc. were not required to be monitored. It boiled down to items in Library folders.

So how do you take this concept of "look at it every 180 days and make sure it's still relevant" and apply that simple rule to an environment like QuickPlace/Quickr, where content may be in hundreds of rooms and authored by hundreds of people? What happens when people move around, or leave positions? There are two approaches to this, and one of them is dead wrong.

Traditional QuickPlace/Quickr development, as discussed in forums, the documentation and Infocenter, would focus on using Lotusscript and Java Placebots in each QuickPlace to gather the information and send off emails. The problems with this approach are numerous when the number of places goes beyond ten or so, but I'll save that list for another post. It's sufficient to say that scheduled placebots are not the way to go when you have numerous places in which to run them.

Solution? A separate Domino application with agents, forms and views designed to aggregate metadata about the documents contained in QuickPlace/Quickr, pair the author information with their email address based on the record in each contacts1.nsf database, and hold that metadata for weekly agent-driven email "newsletters" to inform people of the titles, places and links to library documents. When an author is discovered to no longer be a member of the QuickPlace/Quickr, the Manager of the room in which the document resides is used instead.

Project #2:
This firm had a requirement to manage content, but only certain documents and not a whole category like the Library. They also wanted granular control over two things instead of a global ruleset - how long the document was "live" before a review was required, who was responsible for it when the expiration date came.

We borrowed from the aggregation concepts of the first project, with a twist. In this case, the additional control needed required us to build a custom form in the Quickr placetype. The form became known as the "Managed Content" form, and a description was created so it was obvious that this form was to be used when the content needed to be reviewed after a certain time.

Another difference with this application was that it went into a very large QuickPlace/Quickr environment - 2,500 places, 20,000 rooms. So even by consolidating the processing into a Domino database, it was unreasonable to ask an agent to comb through all the content looking for forms based on these documents like in the first project. A more targeted approach was required.

Upon submission of the custom forms, an Ajax call triggers an agent in the separate Domino database. This agent is passed some parameters including the place name, document UNID, author, email, date for review, etc. and it creates two metadata documents in the Domino database. One is simple, it just has the placename for each place that has triggered the agent. This way, when we do go searching for the documents later, we know exactly which places they are in and can focus the search. The other document is a placeholder for the individual documents that have been created or edited. The weekly agent targets each place and room that has a trigger, then compares the metadata documents to the real content to ensure nothing has been deleted from the place (deletions cannot trigger a placebot, so this cleanup stage is required). Then, an email consolidating all of the links to documents requiring review is sent to the designated author, or as before, the manager of the room if they're no longer around. A mime email is used for good formatting, and the user has a single email to link to all of the reviewable documents, where they can extend the dates, and reassign for the next round of reviews. This feature is useful for delegation or when people change assignments.

The End.

Lesson:
Quickr document management isn't that complex, it just takes some creative thought and use of the tools it presents us with - agents, forms, Ajax, and the judicious use of real Domino databases.

Next up, the flexible view.

Posted by Rob Novak At 8:27 AM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (1)