03/31/2010

Farewell, old friends

QuickImage Category QuickPlace Team Workplace Death Taxes
The time has come to say good-bye to two old friends, Team Workplace 6.5.1 and its practically identical twin QuickPlace 7. Born April 4, 2004 and October 7, 2005 respectively, these old pals of mine brought joy, tears, laughter, anger, and on occasion, business to me. It will be sad to see them go.

I have spent months trying to come to terms with their impending death, writing over and over what I thought would be a proper epitaph. But the words never came. They just never came. So in the spirit of all that is good with the Internet, I will borrow what I believe their last words would be (if software could talk) from Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658): "My design is to make what haste I can to be gone."

I felt that much more meaningful than Billy the Kid's last words ("Who is it?"), but nowhere near as funny or prescient as Denis Leary's thoughts on death (sorry, unprintable, this is a family-friendly blog).

So now is the time when you say aloud, what in the world is Novak talking about? Well every product comes to life, even ones we don't think should (you can't believe the temptation I have to put links here), and every product has a death. Fortunately these two were given a year's reprieve but in fact, they now have but 30 days to live. Even Gregory House can't save them.

On April 30, 2010, Team Workplace 6.5.1 and QuickPlace 7 reach the end of their support lives. Roughly translated, it means they are dead to IBM. A more exact translation is that if you have any problem and call support, they can't help you. Unless you happen to fork over cash for extended support, which can happen with some products but not all. You may have to ask.

You might want to take this opportunity to examine the IBM Support Lifecycle website (this link goes straight to the Lotus products) and see if any of your other Lotus product versions are nearing or have passed their expiration dates.

Of course, a migration path to 8.2 exists but - cue booming voice - you will have issues with many kinds of customizations (and sometimes without them) if you just jump in and upgrade without a proper analysis and plan. Having remediated many of these issues, I can tell you that the documentation - official or community - does not account for every possible permutation. You're most likely to have issues in two cases - customizations and very old sites (upgraded from versions even prior to these). My suggestion is definitely to upgrade, but to spend significant time analyzing and planning for it. Of course, your friendly neighborhood business partners are out there to help. Cough, cough.

You know, on second thought, maybe Arnold said it best:

"Hasta la vista,baby!"

(Now if only I could repeat this post for IE6...how I hate it so...)

Posted by Rob Novak At 12:33 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (0)

03/29/2010

Got all prolific today - Newsletter 19 Part 1 delivering now, Part 2 tomorrow

QuickImage Category Quickr Sametime Newsletter
I decided to start living up to my old "monthly" (ish) promise and wrote ten articles for my Quickr & Sametime newsletter today. Since I use pretty pictures and go on and on, I try to stick with 5-6 per issue so decided to deliver this one in two parts.

In Part 1 just now on Monday (or Tuesday the more east you are from Kansas City) I cover five topics:.
  • iPhone Webinar (free) this Thursday April 1, and upcoming Seminar
  • Poor Man's Backup for Quickr: A Quickr Wiki Article
  • Recommendation: Michael Sampson Report
  • Tip: Using Quickr Extension Libraries
  • SnappFiles™ 1.0.3 Release: Free iPhone App for Quickr, FileNet, ICM, Alfresco

Tomorrow in Part 2 (unless you opt out, which you are free to do at any time, I promise it won't hurt my feelings!) I cover these five:
  • New Free Utility for Quickr Admins Released: "Quickr Cleanr Uppr"
  • Full Agenda for the April 12-14 Quickr Development Bootcamp
  • SnappShot® 8.5 Chat Recorder Release Announcement
  • A Basic Explanation of Sametime 8.5 - Worthy of Forwarding to Management
  • Collaboration University Webinar Series: Quickr Development Recording & Code Available

If you don't happen to receive the newsletter, you can sign up on the right, and if you think you should but don't, check whatever spam-o-rific solution you have in place and white-list me! I really do understand people not wanting spam, so much that I have three blockers in place myself.

Posted by Rob Novak At 4:53 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | | Comments (0)

03/26/2010

Full agenda posted -- including some things WE just learned about Quickr

QuickImage 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 | | Comments (2)

03/11/2010

What a little point release can do...

QuickImage 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 | | Comments (1)

03/09/2010

No more flying solo: Launching SNAPPS Co-Pilot for Lotus Quickr Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't fly solo.

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

03/08/2010

How to hide the standard Quickr branded footer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Add this:

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


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

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

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

03/05/2010

Spilling the beans on next week's webinar, now that it's over half full

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

03/05/2010

Down to eight seats left. Maybe we'll play musical chairs.

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

Anyone fancy some Kansas City barbecue?

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

03/01/2010

Well that didn't take long. Ten slots left for Quickr Development Boot Camp, 3 for personal day, 15 for new iPhone dev training

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

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

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

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

Calendar

Rock On With Me and SNAPPS

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

IamLUG
I am Lotus User Group - August 2-4, St. Louis

Collaboration University
London and Chicago - September 21-23 and 27-29 respectively. That's right, London goes first!

The events have very limited capacity so signing up as soon as possible is recommended. Hope to see you there!

Be With the Band

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On With The Show

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

Utilities:
AnyPlace SiteMap
AnyPlace ServerMap
AnyPlace Designer for Dreamweaver

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

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

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