You might already know of this but I suggest you listen to the Windows Weekly podcast episode 56 and episode 57 for info on the upcoming Microsoft Mesh. In episode 57 there are comments about Lotus Notes and how Ray Ozzie took the thunder of Notes and brought it to Microsoft.
New CompApp url type (cai:///)
Niklas Heidloff is being very productive today on the CompApp wiki. He just uploaded another page called Pass Context to Components when opening Composite Applications. On this page he explains a new url type (cai:///):
“Opening a connection to a CAI URL will cause the corresponding application to be projected to the client or updated if already on the client, and then opened in the user interface to the specified page. If no page is specified, the first page in the application is opened.”
Besides being, as Nathan describes it, “hideous”, it’s never going to work IMHO. This approach fails the number one test for URL’s – they should be easily computable and/or written by users. How something with an appInstanceID of 63 characters (example: CFB7535080ECD4C270FDD126C5DD9E27_11_5JMPDRH1000980269G784H2GO4) came through QA I don’t know.
The page refers to M5 (probably milestone 5 for 8.5) and says that “we might publish [the url type] in Lotus Notes 8.0.1”. Let’s hope not!
CompApp wiki: Open Notes Documents on Pages
Niklas Heidloff from IBM added a nice page to the CompApp wiki today detailing how to use a Notes 8.0.1 feature to open a doucment in a CompApp on a specific page. This is a nice approach and in many cases better than the Notes 8.0 way where a document would open the on a new tab.
More info at the IBM developerWorks CompApp wiki: Open Notes Documents on Pages
Stuff learned today
- ContentViewer.setInput() is a lot different than ContentViewer.refresh()
- When painting stuff in SWT you litterally have to paint everything yourself
- 15 September 2008 is the longest day in 2008 (GC.stringExtent)
- Sametime awareness is easy in Notes 8
- Composite.getChildren() makes it easy to dispose all components
It’s been a while
It has been a while since I last blogged. Since last I have been in Paris and have had a busy week with customer projects, Lotus Connections 2.0 beta LDAP issues and some very interesting meetings regarding the future. Can’t say anything yet but it’s gonna be exciting I think.
Off to Paris
Tomorrow morning I’m off for an extended weekend to the cities of cities aka. Paris, France… How sweet is that!

Meeting Manager finally out
OnTime Meeting Manager is done! When I joined IntraVision in October Meeting Manager was almost ready, but not completely. Now the product is done and out the door – kudos to the team for putting in the extra hours to get the product done and out the door.
Warning – product plug comming up… 🙂
The product is called OnTime Meeting Manager and is an extension of the Rooms and Resouces feature of Notes/Domino. Meeting Manager extends R&R by handling booking multiple rooms at once, across time zones, booking catering (coffee, tea, lunch etc.) and by giving you fine grained control over calendar invites. MM even lets you invite invitees based on geography which is nice to reduce travel. Below is a small snippet from the release newsletter.
“Managing meetings and facilities can be time consuming. It involves a number of people and processes within your organisation. OnTime Meeting Manager is your one-stop meeting organiser – your personal electronic assistant – dedicated to making the process of organising meetings quick and efficient, leaving you free to concentrate on whats central to your business.
OnTime Meeting Manager focuses on streamlining the process of making invitations, booking meeting rooms, ordering catering and reserving resources. At the same time, Management gains a clear overview of all the meetings within the organisation.”
Nice feedback
I’m using Skype for all my conference calling (which has been a lot lately) and noticed a new status message I thought was very nice and that I haven’t noticed before. Skype now tells you if you’re talking but your microphone is muted.

AT
It’s frightening but this link pretty much sums up my day…. A day I’ll never have back! 🙂
Lotus/SAP project Atlantic
Screencast demoing Project “Atlantic”, the future software product integrating SAP into Lotus Notes 8 standard.