How to deploy widgets and/or plugins in your organization

Deploying widgets and/or plug-ins in your organization is very easy and there’s a number of options for doing it.

  1. Desktop policies
  2. Widget catalog via MyWidgets
  3. Drag’n’drop of widgets to the MyWidgets sidebar plug-in

Using a desktop policy is just a administration shorthand for using the widget catalog via MyWidgets.

The first thing you really should do, if not simply using publishing widgets created through the MyWidgets functionality, is to read up on and understand the Lotus Expeditor provisioning manifest syntax. The manifest is used to specify where the update site server is and which features and in which version to install. The manifest looks weird at first but it’s actaully easy enough. Unfortunately there isn’t a nice UI for creating these provisioning manifests but I head rumors in the Meet the Developers lab at Lotusphere that a UI is coming. Soon… 🙂

And now for the time and frustration saver…

Absolutely make sure that you put the widget catalog in the root of the Domino server to make sure it ends up in the root of the Notes client. If you do not do this and you specify a widget catalog in the preferences the Notes client wont apply updates to the widgets when new versions are available. This is a bug at least in Notes 8.5 GOLD.

Resources:

One thought on “How to deploy widgets and/or plugins in your organization”

  1. Hello,

    I’m the link of the IBM technote, does not work (and in the support site is unavailable). Do you have a copy ? Or do you know where I can find ?

    I need to add LN dictionary via widget and I do not know what to do.

    Thanks in advance

    Like

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