Month: March 2010

Complete guide to manually uninstalling “plugins” from Lotus Notes

As you probably know installing and uninstalling Java extensions (“plugins”) into the Lotus Notes client is easy using either File >> Application >> Install, File >> Application >> Application Management or the widget catalog. Sometimes however this doesn’t work and you’ll have to resort to a manual uninstall. This blog post outlines the way to perform a manual uninstall.

We have to start with some basics though. A Java extension in Lotus Notes (also known as a “plugin”) consists of two things:

  1. Eclipse plugin(s)
    The plugin is where the actual code and functionality is stored together with additional resources such as images, string translation etc.
  2. Eclipse feature
    The feature is what’s actually installed from a Lotus Notes perspective. The feature points to the Eclipse plugins that provides the actual functionality. It’s almso important to note that a single feature may reference multiple plugins.

Both an Eclipse plugin and an Eclipse feature are represented in the file system as JAR-files (files with an extension of “JAR”) and both of them are kept in the file system. A JAR-file is just a fancy ZIP-file with a predefined folder structure. Eclipse Features and plugins are stored in two directories beneath your Notes data directory (<Notes data dir.>/workspace/applications/eclipse/features for the features and <Notes data dir.>/workspace/applications/eclipse/plugins for the plugins).

From the above it may seem obvious that simply deleting these files will uninstall a Java extension – unfortunately there’s a final piece to the puzzle. Lotus Notes also keeps a record of what’s installed in a file called platform.xml (stored in <Notes data dir>workspace.configorg.eclipse.update). Simply deleting the feature(s) and plugin(s) may seem to work but will misbehave for instance when activating the File >> Application >> Application Management interface. The solution is to edit this file as well.

The complete steps to manually uninstalling a Java extension is therefore as follows:

  1. Close Lotus Notes
  2. Open the “features”-directory (<Notes data dir>workspaceapplicationseclipsefeatures)
  3. Locate the Eclipse features to uninstall.
  4. For each Eclipse feature you need to open it and edit the feature.xml file. Locate the <plugin>-tags and fine the names of the referenced plugins. Note that there might be more than one. Combining the plugin id and the plugin version will give the full filename of the plugin (<plugin id>_<plugin version>.jar).
  5. Delete the Eclipse features you’re uninstalling.
  6. Open the “plugins”-directory (<Notes data dir>workspaceapplicationseclipseplugins).
  7. Delete the plugin JAR-file(s) you recorded in the step above.
  8. Open the directory containing the platform.xml file (<Notes data dir>workspace.configorg.eclipse.update).
  9. Edit platform.xml and go to the end of the file.
  10. Remove each entry you see for the features you deleted in the step above.
  11. Save and close the file.
  12. Since Lotus Notes also keeps a record of which Java extensions to load it’s best to start Notes with some parameters to make it recompute the Java extension registry: notes.exe -RPARAMS -clean

Let me know if the above doesn’t work for you.

Please note: Manually uninstalling a Java extension installed via a widget descriptor via a widget catalog/policy will probably just make it reinstall once uninstalled.

Project Agora Next – imagine this for Lotusphere 2011

I’m currently commuting doing some late catchup on what happened at Lotusphere. Among other things I was lucky to have Stephan tell me to go and check out Project Agora Next in the Innovation Lab (Agora: Next Generation Meetings). This is very cool technology.

Agora: Next Generation Meetings
Agora is a collaborative media service with the primary goal of surfacing information buried in monolith meeting recordings by making it accessible from a collaborative point of view, as well as from an information mining aspect. This web-based solution enables users to upload recorded meeting video and/or audio, automatically create transcriptions and attach metadata such as micro tags and comments. Tags and comments are identified along the meeting timeline highlighting items and segments of interest. The metadata can be edited and improved upon through collaboration. Metadata is used to facilitate searching for segments of interest, as well as collaboration and discussion.

So what does it actully do? Well imagine that you missed a web meeting and/or wanted to see what happened in the meeting. Instead of having to sit through the entire recording the system has transcribed the audio, indexed the transcription and slides for searching AND made a note when something of interesting happened. So what’s “something of interest” you may ask. Well that’s a slide changing, new speaking appearing, a question being asked etc. With all this info you can jump directly to the interesting sections instead of having to sift through it all. Way cool. Oh! And the system also automatically updates your calendar so that when you search your calendar for that meeting you cannot quite remember, you’ll see the thumbnails and links to interesting spots right there in your very own calendar. It just got even more cool.

Besides being available in the Innovation Labs at Lotusphere Agora is also available now in LotusLive Labs (probably requires login to LotusLive but has some cool recorded samples) so you may check it out there as well.

Imagine stuff like Agora for all Lotusphere sessions coupled with a persistent Lotusphere Online community. How cool would that be. Persistent access to all sessions, transcribed for easy searching with a community aspect of tagging cool demos and the like. Wicked!!

Changing the way I approach selling the value of social software

Yesterday I spoke at Lotusphere Comes To You in Copenhagen (and will be again tomorrow in Århus) on Lotus Connections and how companies should consider implementing Lotus Connections. As part of the discussions we have been having at the office in preparation for these talks I realized that my take on social software has changed significantly. I have spent a great deal of time the last year(s) evangelizing, installing and talking about Lotus Connections but I never really took the time to stop and think about whether I was doing it the right way.

While preparing for the talks I realized that the discussion has changed from a “isn’t this cool technology” and “you got to have this to be forward thinking” discussion to a “how can you live without it” and “you need this to be current” discussion. And I think that’s where the ball dropped. You need this kind of technology to be current. Not forward thinking. Current.

From the discussions I’m having it still seems like many people think of social software as something related to their private lives. Social software is Facebook – it’s not something for use on the job – at the office we use e-mail. For some reason many consider it an either/or and that the two doesn’t complement one another. It’s also becoming clear that many are so used to using specific applications that the concept of having multiple interfaces for the same data/functionality and that social capabilities may surface in many locations is foreign to them.

Another interesting thing I realized is that I need to stop talking about Lotus Connections as a product but instead talk about social software services. If we start discussing Lotus Connections as a product we quickly get into a technology discussion which it really isn’t. We need to discuss the need for social capabilities. The customer may obtain these social services from other sources than Lotus Connections – they may come from LotusLive. I see this as an interesting way to approach the problem of getting social software into business.