The story on Lotus Connections 2.0 and Sametime awareness

So I have been messing a bit with Sametime enabling Lotus Connections the last few days. It all started with the browser blanking out on me once I enabled Sametime Links (stlinks ie. the Javascript API for Sametime normally used to Sametime enable web pages) in the LotusConnections-config.xml (the page source only showing the stlinks HTML). After troubleshooting and fixing the stlinks the Sametime Awareness still didn’t work so I opened a PMR with Lotus.

The answer from Lotus Support is however that Sametime Links is not supported in Lotus Connections 2.0. It maybe will be in Lotus Connections 2.0 but for now it’s not supported. Does this mean Lotus Connections 2.0 cannot be Sametime enabled? Well no! The technology used in Lotus Connections 2.0 is however a little bit different since it uses the Sametime Web API intriduced with Sametime Connect 8.0.1. So Sametime awareness is enabled in the Profiles feature of Lotus Connections if:

  1. You have enabled Sametime awareness in the profiles-config.xml (note it’s not enabled in the LotusConnections-config.xml as is stlinks).
  2. You have Sametime Connect 8.0.1 installed on the local machine.
  3. You are logged into Sametime.

Once I understood this the Sametime awareness works like a charm. Also using the Sametime Web API means that chats you start are started through the Sametime Connect client instead of the plain old stlinks web page. Very nice.

Does this mean that you only can have Sametime awareness in Lotus Connections 2.0 if using Sametime Connect 8.0.1? Well no but it requires that you get in contact with Lotus Support. They can send you a plugin for Sametime Connect 7.5.1, Sametime Connect 8.0, Lotus Notes 8.0.1 and Lotus Notes 8.0.2 (the latter two for the embedded Sametime client). Installing this plugin makes the Sametime awareness work as well.

And just to point it out. This was described in the InfoCenter (see links below) but maybe the LotusConnections-config.xml should have a comment indicating that Profiles would break if stlinks was enabled.

Further reading

2 thoughts on “The story on Lotus Connections 2.0 and Sametime awareness”

  1. I tryed to set the ST Awareness on my Connections, but doesn’t work! I’ve follow the InfoCenter instructions, but without any results..

    I’ve a SameTime Client 8.0.2 and I haven’t enabled the STLinks.. My Connections is 2.5.. Can you help me?!?! Thank You!!

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  2. Connections now use what is called the Web api in sametime which means that the Profiles page talk with the Sametime client rather than the Sametime server as it did with StLinks. Once configured in Connections your ST client must have the Web container enabled.

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