Sametime Awareness Simulator – part 2

Well I discussed the SAS with Nathan last night at the Welcome Reception and it seems like it struck a nerve and it’s something that’s usable for a lot of the guys in the showcase. I cleared everything out last night so I will probably be sharing the application during the day (Monday).

I have many plans for future enhancements. For now it only simulates awareness but a logical extension would be for it to be able to accept file transfers, join group chats and reply to 1-on-1 chats. One should be able to specify a prerecorded chat script for individual users.

More to follow…

Sametime Awareness Simulator

As part of the preparations for some of the stuff we (IntraVision) will be showing off at Lotusphere 2008 I have developed a Sametime Awareness Simulator. The simulator is used to simulate Sametime users in a demo environment without having to run multiple Sametime Connect clients when all you need is to simulate awareness (that is some users being available, some away etc.). The application will let you manually add username/password combinations or read the usernames and passwords from a configuration file at startup. It will also automatically set the awareness status as specified in the file (available, away, in a meeting, do not disturb).

Below is a screenshot of the application which you can see is written using the Eclipse RCP framework and the Sametime Java SDK. I hope I will be able to let you all to download the application for use in your own demos.

Now I’m off to the beach… 🙂

SWT @ Notes 8: Notes 8 design guidelines

This is the first post of what I plan to make a returning series of posts on using the SWT widget library in Notes 8 that is writing plug-ins, sidebar applications etc. I will als include posts on Java issues you need to consider. It’s always good to do a soft start so I will start by pointing to another post. Mary Beth Raven just published a link to the user experience design guidelines for Notes. 

"This white paper describes user-interface design and
interaction guidelines for designers and developers who
are building IBM® Lotus® Notes® applications, IBM Lotus
Sametime® V7.5 or later plug-ins, IBM Lotus Symphony™
plug-ins, IBM Lotus Expeditor plug-ins, or composite
applications (assembling any mixture of plug-ins, Lotus
Notes applications, and components built with IBM Lotus
Component Designer)."

There are a lot of gems such as programmers should refrain from using Question and Confirm dialog boxes and how to capitalize sentences. It sounds like small things but it’s important if we want a consistent interface.

Lotusphere 2008: Predictions for OGS topics

Following the recent talk of Notes coming to the iPhone I have been wondering about what other exciting stuff may be announced at Lotusphere 2008. Ed Brill mentions eight announcements for Notes/Domino! Below are a couple of my guesses/wishes for the OGS:

  • Universal client – Notes 8.x as a “native” frontend to Microsoft Exchange server using the CSI Java view engine making Notes *the* client of choice for the enterprise
  • Mac/Linux – GA dates of Notes 8.x incl. Domino Designer on Mac and Linux making them first class citizens in Notes-land
  • Traveler for iPhone – Official announcement Notes Traveler for iPhone (and Symbian OS to include in Nokia users)
  • NMFR – Even firmer roadmap for Notes+ and a GA date for what Bob Balaban calls NMFR also unofficially known as 8.5 incl. running Notes without an ID-file and using other LDAP directories (e.g. AD) as the directory
  • Roaming/NOMAD – Notes 8 in NOMAD-mode aka Notes-on-a-stick to solve the lack of roaming in Notes 8 Standard
  • Lotus Symphony – Endorsement of the IBM Lotus Symphony initiative by major industry players to form a real alliance against the Microsoft Office dominance and expand Symbian support to the Mac
  • Lotus Connections for Domino – integration to Domino that allows customers to use Domino Directory as the source for the Profiles component instead of having to pump data to DB2 thus making it easier to deploy Lotus Connections
  • Lotus Expeditor – a clear strategy for the Lotus Expeditor platform incl. how/if IBM will keep up with the Eclipse platform and how Expeditor progress in relation to Notes and Sametime
  • Java – Duke making an appearance to make it clear that Java is in the Notes client to stay and that developers and customers should “skill up”

There is a fair chance that I will need to update/revise the list after the OGS on Monday… 🙂

Lotusphere 2008: Lotusphere online is on Domino 8.0.1

I was pleasantly surprised to see Lotusphere Online is running on Domino 8.0.1 Servers. How can I tell? Well there is a Lite version of Domino Web Access for the mail. This is a *very* nice addition both due to the required load time but also because I hardly need anything else for my Lotusphere Online account. It’s good to see that Lotus is betting that 8.0.1 is production ready out of the box.

5 days to go! 🙂