Author: lekkim

Positive, competent, out-spoken, frank and customer focused architect and developer with a strong foundation in web, cloud and product development. I'm a strong advocate for API first and cloud based solutions and development. I have a knack for being able to communicate and present technically complicated matters in conference, customer and training settings. I've previously acted as team member and leader in a product organisation.

Lotusphere 2009: Lineup revealed


As Ed posted the complete lineup for Lotusphere 2009 has been revealed at it looks like an impressive lineup as always. This year is going to be all about Lotus Expeditor, Composite applications, Sametime, Connections and XPages. Actually putting together a schedule incl. managing showcase duty is going to be difficult.

If you’re registered for the conference you should also have received the e-mail that lets you vote for the sessions and BOF’s you would like to see at the conference.

I’m at BP106 in case you wondered… 🙂

Lotusphere 2009: Session abstract and thoughts on the session

As posted previously I’m so fortunate as have been given a session slot at Lotusphere 2009. The session is titled “From Notes Java developer to Notes 8 plugin developer” and have the below abstract.

“Attend this session to learn the basics for leveraging your Notes Java development skills to start building plugins for the Notes 8.x client. Learn about the extensible nature of Notes 8, how to build plugins (not just for the sidebar) and how to create your own extension points to allow your plugins to be extensible. Bring your Eclipse IDE…”

I have loads of contents for the session and I’m trying to figure out how to limit myself and how to best provide all the information I would like to convey. I’m thinking of trying to gather a set of downloads to go with the session and a couple of followup blog posts to furter elaborate on the demos I showed. I already have about 10 fully documented sample sidebar plug-ins for people attending the session and I create more every day showing everything from basic viewers to animation to REST API usage to drag’n’drop to basic Notes data access while retaining a responsive UI.

If you have specific questions let me know by commenting on the blog. I’m very interested in hearing what YOU want to hear about and if YOU have specific questions.

Lotusphere 2009: I’ll be presenting a session

I’m happy to say that I once again will be speaking at Lotusphere. This time the title of the session will be “From Notes Java Developer to Notes 8 Plug-in Developer” and it will be in the Best Practices track. I’m very excited about this and I’m already off trying to figure out how to squeeze 3-5 hours worth of stuff into 1 hour. It should be fun… 🙂

Oh Bruce – wake up!!

Upgrading a Lotus Connections Pilot install

For testing etc. internally I use a Lotus Connections 2.x Pilot install which is working fine for me. Now that 2.0.0 FP1 has been out for some time and 2.0.1 has been released I have wanting to update my install. If nothing else to make sure it worked with Firefox 3. As previously blogged it is quite easy to update Connections if you know how. Before starting I had my doubts if it was possible at all to upgrade a Pilot install but I had to try.

For starters I wanted to get my install up to 2.0.0 FP1 and it worked perfectly! Upgrading to 2.0.1 will be the topic for another morning but based on these results it shouldn’t be a problem. Please note that you have to be a 2.0.0 FP1 in order for you to go to 2.0.1.

Below is the command line I used to upgrade my LC Pilot from 2.0.0 to 2.0.0 FP1 (installed to D:IBM). I basically followed my own instructions posted here.

D:IBMLotusConnectionsWebSphereLotusConnectionsupdate>updateLC.bat -fixpack -install -installDir d:ibmlotusconnectionswebspherelotusconnections -fixpackDir d:ibmLotusconnectionswebspherelotusconnectionsupdatefixes -fixpackID LC2001_Fixpack -wasUserId lcuser -wasPassword password

Lotus Connections 2.0.1 available

As posted by Luis Benitez Lotus Connections 2.0.1 as been shipped.

This quarter we shipped Lotus Connections 2.0.1 (on Halloween). If you are upgrading, you can download it from IBM’s Fix Central. One question that I’m continuously asked is: “what’s new in Lotus Connections v2.0.1?”. Well, here’s a list of what I’ve gathered:

  • Quickr integration with Activities – Push-button publication from an Activity into one of your Quickr Places for permanent document storage
  • Quickr integration with Communities – Allows communities to use Quickr as their content repository and document collaboration platform.
  • Enhanced person card
  • E-mail is no longer a required attribute (great for external implementations)
  • New feeds inside of Communities
  • New feeds for forums
  • New APIs for Activities, Blogs, Communities, Homepage (federated search), Profiles
  • Hidden support for STLinks (more about this later)
  • User Interface and Usability enhancements, for example:
    • Can now save members as part of an activity template
    • Drag-n-drop activities entries
    • Uploading images to a blog is now easier
    • Improvements in the Activities widget
    • Easier way to work with multiple bookmarks
    • A couple of bug fixes

Dragging Sametime buddies around

I have been playing a little with the drag’n’drop support in the Notes 8.5 beta client and found out that a VCard is created the you drag a Sametime contact to a place that accepts dragging files to (this probably also works in earlier versions). This means that dragging a Sametime buddy to the desktop will create a VCard for that person. Nice! Dragging the buddy to an e-mail (or other place which accepts text transfer) will create a mailto-link.

Just one of those nice, time saving features…

How I survive using Notes 8 sidebar plugins on my 4:3 display at home

Lets face it! The advent of Notes 8 and the sidebar really requires you to use a wide-screen display if you want to keep the sidebar expanded and have some screen real estate left for mail and business applications. This is a major head ache for me when I’m in my home office as my primary display is a 4:3 (i.e. traditional) display and my wide-screen laptop is the secondary display. I found a solution that works for me though.

The way I solve this is by detaching the sidebar plugins I use the most (TwitNotes and Sametime) and have them open in a new window (see the part menu for that option) and then collapsing the sidebar. Now I have the screen real-esate I need on the primary display and my main sidebar plugins visible all the time on the secondary display.

That works like a charm for me.