Month: September 2008

A couple of reasons why the update site template in Notes 8 is cool!

Here’s a couple of reasons why the Eclipse Update Site template supplied with Notes 8 is a killer template and why it’s preferable to use from a Notes users perspective (get the pun?):

  1. Update Site accessible over NRCP (only by Notes clients) or HTTP.
  2. Easy to host on a Domino server even without running the HTTP task.
  3. Replication to other servers.
  4. Easy to control access with ACL.
  5. Easy overview of categories, plugins and features.
  6. Easy to update the update site URL for all/selected features without rebuilding.

If you’ve been doing plugin/feature packaging in Eclipse you’ll really appreciate item number 6.

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

Lotusphere 2009: The heat is on!

So registrations for Lotusphere 2009 opened just a few hours ago and Duffbert is all set after waiting in line for a few hours on Twitter… 🙂 It’s amazing how Lotusphere registration is that special day when the excitement starts building. I know I’m excited and I’m looking forward to heading to Orlando.

This year is going to be a little different as I’m going as part of the Intravision team (this was also true last year but still) and we once again have a both on the showcase. It’s weird not being among those clicking refresh all night and rush to it.

Once again it’s also time to think about session abstracts and those of us planning to submit session have probably been fine tuning the abstracts for the last few months. I know I have and hope to get a session or two this year. I have 6-8 abstracts up my sleeve that I want to submit once the final quirks has been ironed out.

Better get to it and remember to tag your Lotusphere posts with “lotusphere2009”.