Wi-Fi, Firesheep and Lotusphere

Using the Wi-fi at Lotusphere has been a real nice experience so far this year (of course the OGS on Monday being the true test). Coverage is better and the bandwidth seems to have been upped quite a bit. I do find it a bit sad though that the network is still open and unencrypted. Even a passphrase like “Lotupshere” would make security so much better. Why you ask? Why because a place like Lotusphere which is, lets face it, a big gathering of geeks. A worse a big gathering of geeks using social software sites. And using them a lot.

Lotusphere will be a nice place for someone running Firesheep to come in a harvest 5000 accounts in a day or so. I wont let it stop me but I think people should be aware of it. If you are afraid of it I suggest using a tunneled VPN connection to access your accounts.

If you want to learn more about Firesheep see the Wikipedia article or simply search for Firesheep on Google. Also just to be fair – this is a problem, and will continue to be a problem at all conferences or gatherings with open wi-fi hotspots.

Using LotusLive for Sametime – 2 months in

I previously wrote about how we shutdown our Sametime servers and moved to LotusLive for Sametime (“Why we shutdown our Sametime servers“). About 2 months after making the switch I thought it was a good time to sum to the experience and whether it’s a move we’re happy with.

There’s nothing to be said about performance or uptime which has been flawless. Users are happily chatting away and the worries that some had about being available for customer chat in off hours (because we are now in the same community as customers and partners) hasn’t been a problem. Whether it’s really not a problem or whether customers and partners haven’t found us to LotusLive is unclear. Only thing I’ve heard from users is that it’s a real pain no longer having public groups to help them maintain their buddylist. Previously many used public groups such as “Sales” or “Developers” to automatically maintain their buddylist but the concept of public, shared, groups are not available in LotusLive. That’s a real shame. Same goes for LotusLive meetings which has taken over from Sametime meetings without any issues at all.

All in all I haven’t heard anything from users that would make us want to go back to running our own Sametime environment.

Now from the technical side of fence I find the lack of groups really annoying. I also find the fact that file transfer isn’t allowed by policy annoying and frustrating. Using Sametime as a quick way to move a file between colleagues was really nice and having to resort to drives or e-mail is so 1990’s… As a LotusLive (Engage) customer

I’m also finding that lack of tools for automated user management (creation, modify, deletion) irritating and frustrating. I’ve heard about a LDAP sync tool or using TDI but not something I have found solid information on. The tools might be there and but they’re hardly easy to find or come by from my point of view. The result is that we have to manually make sure that users update their profile with current information which is time consuming and far from ideal.

In conclusion however…

Despite all this I still find that the move was a good one and I’m hoping that some of the above can be solved in the near future. I have a list of LotusLive questions lined up for Lotusphere 2011 so if you’re in the developer lab and know something about LotusLive I want to talk to you.

When the default isn’t enough – creating a new Lotus Connections Files policy

As posted earlier today I had to change the default maximum library size of in Lotus Connections Files to accommodate a particular user. Of course 1 GB (double of the default) wasn’t enough so I created a new policy for that particular user and assigned it. I was very easy as well. Below are the wsadmin commands. 

wsadmin<FilesPolicyService.add("2GB Policy", 2097152000)
A policy was added with the new id 584f818a-106c-4343-
8f40-63ceb0ac5c5f .

wsadmin<FilesLibraryService.assignPolicy(
   "1a60c8d1-fc59-41bc-9d89-c266a9709230",
   "584f818a-106c-4343-8f40-63ceb0ac5c5f")
The policy with the id 584f818a-106c-4343-8f40-
63ceb0ac5c5f is now assigned to the library with the id
1a60c8d1-fc59-41bc-9d89-c266a9709230.

Lotus Connections and extending Files Library Sizes

Funny thing at a Lotus Connections customer today. A user was complaining that he wasn’t able to upload a new version of a file into his Files due to size restrictions. After poking around I found out that the user had uploaded 492 mb of data into Files. After poking some more I found out that a maximum library size is enforced based on policy. By default all users are assigned a policy that allows for 524 mb of data hence why he was unable to upload any more data.

To solve it I changed the default policy to allow for 1 gb of data per user (after asking management). This is done using the administrative service API for Lotus Connections which is quite extensive. Below are my steps with the key values in bold.

The steps are as follows:

  1. Initialize the wsadmin environment
  2. Get access to the Files administrative services
  3. Find the user id using FilesMemberService.getByEmail(email) (user id is f631a9d9-07c4-4dcc-b820-1fdaefc4895c)
  4. Find the users library id using FilesLibraryService.getPersonalByOwnerId(id) usig the just found user id (library id is 1a60c8d1-fc59-41bc-9d89-c266a9709230). This also shows the user is controlled by the default policy (policy id 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000) and that he is using 93% of the allotted space)
  5. Edit the default policy using FilesPolicyService.edit(id, name, size) to set a new size of twice the original size)
  6. Refetch information about the users library using FilesLibraryService.getPersonalByOwnerId(id) to see that the new library size has been applied

D:IBMWASprofilesAppSrv01bin>wsadmin -username wasadmin
-password <password> -lang jython
WASX7209I: Connected to process "server1" on node SDKFU016Node01
using SOAP connector;  The type of process is: UnManagedProcess
WASX7031I: For help, enter: "print Help.help()"

wsadmin>execfile("filesAdmin.py")
Files Administration initialized.

wsadmin>FilesMemberService.getByEmail("jdoe@example.com")
{isOprhan=false, email=jdoe@example.com,
directoryLastUpdate=2011-01-04 17:07:57.167,
id=f631a9d9-07c4-4dcc-b820-1fdaefc4895c, name=John Doe,
createDate=2010-02-19 13:04:36.404, communityLastUpdate=2011-01-04
17:12:25.084, lastVisit=2011-01-04 17:07:57.167,
directoryGroupLastUpdate=2011-01-04 17:12:25.084}

wsadmin>FilesLibraryService.
   getPersonalByOwnerId("f631a9d9-07c4-4dcc-b820-1fdaefc4895c")
{lastUpdate=2010-02-19 13:04:36.467, externalInstanceId=null,
id=1a60c8d1-fc59-41bc-9d89-c266a9709230, type=personal,
ownerUserId=f631a9d9-07c4-4dcc-b820-1fdaefc4895c, title=John Doe,
label=24924863-F97C-C455-C125-74C9004077E4, externalContainerId=null,
policyId=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, createDate=2010-02-19
13:04:36.467, summary=, percentUsed=0.9382985649108887,
maximumSize=524288000, size=491938678}

wsadmin>FilesPolicyService
   .edit("00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
   "Default Policy", 1048576000)
The policy with the id 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 was
   updated successfully.

wsadmin>FilesLibraryService
   .getPersonalByOwnerId("f631a9d9-07c4-4dcc-b820-1fdaefc4895c")
{lastUpdate=2010-02-19 13:04:36.467, externalInstanceId=null,
id=1a60c8d1-fc59-41bc-9d89-c266a9709230, type=personal,
ownerUserId=f631a9d9-07c4-4dcc-b820-1fdaefc4895c, title=John Doe,
label=24924863-F97C-C455-C125-74C9004077E4, externalContainerId=null,
policyId=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, createDate=2010-02-19
13:04:36.467, summary=, percentUsed=0.46914928245544435,
maximumSize=1048576000, size=491938678}

wsadmin>

2010 year in review

2010 was a year of firsts in many ways. It has been my first full year as a married man (an amazing experience). It’s been the year where I first flew in a hot air balloon (also an amazing experience). The first time I went skiing with a pregnant woman (my wife btw) and to top it all of the year I became a father. The birth of my daughter Milla has of cause been the pivotal moment of the year if not my life. It has been an amazing experience so far and I am sure it will continue that way. No self-respecting new father would end a section like this without a picture of his precious little girl.

The year started with Lotusphere in January which again was a great experience. After Lotusphere my wife and I once again went for 8-day spur around Florida to shop, go to a theme park or two and just relax. This year we also went to Key West for a few days and it was great fun. Unfortunately Super Bowl wasn’t played until we got back home to Denmark but that has changed for 2011 so we’re really looking forward to watching the game in a bar somewhere in Florida. It’s just more fun when you’re in the right timezone 🙂

Work wise it has been quite busy year. Besides teaching our Notes 8.5 Application Development workshop 3 times I also became Lotus Connections 2.5 certified. My first certification ever. Before becoming certified I had a very unnuanced perspective on certification but throughout the process I have changed my view. I learned a lot during the process and I now clearly see a place for certifications and wholeheartedly support them. I will tip my hat to all those who are certified.

It was quite a busy Lotus Connections year. I joined the weekly design partner calls for what is now called Lotus Connections 3.0 and it was a nice experience. The product is definitely improving and becoming even better with each release. I also did 5 customer installs of Lotus Connections in 2011 ranging from a target audience of 20 to 70.000. You will be hearing more about the latter in 2011 as it goes live. For the latter I also got to develop based on some o the cool API’s available in Websphere Application Server. It has been a fun project.

It was a quiet year speaking-wise. I only spoke at Lotusphere Comes to You here in Denmark and at the Dutch Lotus User Group (NLLUG) in September. 2011 will be far more busy starting off with two sessions at Lotusphere 2011.

In November we moved offices – the new offices are great and I look forward to a busy year in the new offices. I am sure we will find time for a house warming come the new year.

2010 was also the year where the company took the plunge into cloud computing. It is not that we haven’t used cloud services before but we realized that it did not make sense for us to operate our own Lotus Connections or Lotus Sametime environments. Instead we took the plunge and shut down those servers and moved all employees to LotusLive. It was only 6 servers but still… 🙂

With the best wishes of a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I hope to see you all in Orlando (and yes I’m bringing my daughter),

/Mikkel

Lotusphere 2011: Mark your calendars

Just got word of the date and time for the two sessions I’m involved in for Lotusphere 2011 so I thought I would post them here.

JMP103 (Jumpstart Your “Jedi Plug-in Development Skills” with the Masters, track: JumpStarts and Master Class Sessions) with Ryan Baxter is on Sunday 30 Jan 2011 at 1:30pm in DL S. Hemisphere I.

AD201 (How the Jedis Do Plug-in Development, track: Technology for Collaboration Solutions: Application Development) with Bob Balfe is on Monday 31 Jan 2011 at 3:45pm in SW 7-10.

LotusScript.doc v2 DDE plugin article

Celebrating the return of the full printed edition of THE VIEW I was reading through the latest issue (Volume 16, Issue 6, Fall 2010) and was delighted to read the article by Karsten Lehmann and Tammo Riedlinger on integrating LotusScript.doc v2 into DDE using a plugin. Two of my favorite subjects in a single article – it doesn’t get much better than that!

The article is a great read and well worth reading and presents a cool approach to integrating LotusScript.doc into the heart of DDE. It also highlights how to develop plugins for DDE. Very nice.

If you’re looking for more from Karsten and Tammo they will be presenting at Lotusphere 2011 on plugin development using the Notes UI API’s (BP203).

jWidgets to make it easier to develop Eclipse based components for composite applications

Perusing the the Composite Application Wiki I discovered a technology IBM calls jWidgets. Basically they are for Composite Application Java component development what iWidgets are to websites that is a widget framework for easily and more quickly doing stuff. Developing Java components for composite applications is a little hard as you have to manage wires etc. yourself. A framework would make that a lot easier and that’s exactly what jWidgets are.

Having the technology available to Lotus Notes (and not just Lotus Expeditor) would be really cool. From an IBM’er I however learned that they haven’t been formally tested in Notes, but the technical capability is there. They have only been tested formally in Lotus Expeditor 6.2.2.

jWidgets – Easy Creation of Java Composite Application Components