Tag: sametime

Sametime widget – would you like to have it?

I was looking through idea jam the other day and saw an idea in the Sametime category and a comment to the idea from Carl Tyler. The idea was to provide an easier way to let users upload their own picture to the Sametime directory (see Make it easy to add Images of People). I thought that it wouldn’t be too difficult so I started coding and I have the Sametime client part ready. I envision a menu item that launch the below dialog box which allows the user to select a picture from the hard drive, have it automatically resized, previewed and then uploaded to the server.

Using a servlet, I also plan to supply, on the Sametime server the picture is inserted into the Domino Directory or the database you use as source for your blackbox. A LDAP implementation should be easily possible as well. This would allow you to have users change their own picture and let you easily get nice business card data for your colleagues.

Before finishing the project I would like to hear if this was something you would consider using.

Lotusphere 2007: Sametime 7.5.1 miniApps


As mentioned the other day (Lotusphere 2007: Sametime 7.5 and Notes 8 sidebar compability) you’ll have to change how you do miniApps once Sametime 7.5.1 is released. I went and talked to Dave Schlesinger in the Developers Lab today since he’s in charge (or actually wrote) the Sametime client toolkit. It turns out that the com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.miniApp extension point will be kept for backwards compatibility but you should start writing miniApp plug-ins as ViewParts instead. This will also be the case for “miniApps” destined for the side-shelf in Notes 8.

Apart from discussing extension points we also talked about how one should go about discovering the active environment. We had a good talk about this since we as partners or ISV’s will need to be able to discover whether we are running in Sametime, Notes 8 or simply Expeditor. This discovery should be possible without having to link against or include specific libraries since not all libraries (e.g. notes.jar) will be available on all platforms. We kind of agreed that a system property would the simplest way to go.

I also asked him to please document the extension point schemas better… 🙂

Lotusphere 2007: Sametime 7.5 and Notes 8 sidebar compability


After INV107 I talked to Kevin Cavanaugh since I wanted to hear if the the extension point (com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.imhub.miniApps) we currently use for miniApps in Sametime 7.5 will be the same as we should use in Notes 8 sidebar applications.

It turns out that the extension point name will be changed with the Sametime 7.5.1 release. From thereon it will be frozen and the extension point name will be the same for Sametime 7.5.x miniApps and Notes 8 sidebar applications.

A small detail worth noticing…

Bleeding Edge 12/13/06 – No More java.library.path

A very nice addition in relation to loading native libraries from plugins has been added to the next Eclipse release (version 3.3) in the M4 milestone build. While it looks like the addition is only applicable to the SWT native libraries I really hope that the addition will also be applicable to custom plugins at some point in the near future as it would make devlopment of plugins with native access much easier.

Why is this of interest to you? Why because Sametime is built upon Lotus Expeditor (actually a pre-release of Lotus Expeditor) which in turn is built upon Eclipse 3.2…

I don’t think there is much hope of relief any time soon however… 🙁 Judging from how long it has taken IBM to move from previous Eclipse releases for their other products such as Rational Application Developer I don’t think that Expeditor will be any different and I think we will be “stuck” on Eclipse 3.2 for Sametime development for a long time.

There are solutions however – stay tuned for my upcoming article in THE VIEW to read more… 🙂

Full article: Bleeding Edge 12/13/06 – No More java.library.path

The Sametime 7.5 Server Installer vs. Sophos Antivirus

When trying to install Sametime 7.5 Server on a computer running Sophos Antivirus be sure to disable the antivirus service while installing. If you don’t you’ll most likely get an error saying “Installation has detected some Domino or Sametime processes already running” and you will be unable to continue. The answer was found in technote 1245237.

Technote 1245237:
Error installing Sametime 7.5 server: ‘Installation has detected some Domino or Sametime processes’…

Update Site for Sametime – why not simply go local?

As pointed to by Adam Gartenberg there’s a new article out on developerWorks (Creating an update site for your IBM Lotus Sametime Connect plug-ins) on how to create an Update Site for your Sametime client deployment. As much as I would recommend the article I really would suggest that readers don’t stop there and read the entire story on Update Sites at Eclipse.org (How to keep up to date) before venturing into this territory.

Although the developerWorks article does a nice job of describing the subject for the Sametime inclined I would recommend also reading about the Eclipse foundations…

As an aside I also wants to mention that you can test plugins using an Update Site without having a HTTP server ready (although we all have a Domino server ready, no?). You can do this because the Eclipse framework also allows for local Update Sites (i.e. on the same computer or on a network share). To use this feature simply choose “Local Site” instead of “Remote Site” and point your Sametime client to the Update Site directory under your Eclipse workspace. Very nice for testing.

J9 Launching plug-in for Sametime 7.5 development

Since I get some questions on how to find this plugin I thought I would post the URL. The plugin can be downloaded here (link to full URL at dev.eclipse.org) or you can get it via this http://tinyurl.com/w97so as long as it works… This is even more relevant where the link posted in the Integration Guide of the Sametime 7.5 Java SDK doesn’t work anymore.

What brilliant person decided to publish a document with link pointing directly into CVS with specifying the revision? I would say that a short redirection link via ibm.com would make much more sense!

Doclinks in Sametime 7.5

You might know that a doclink is actually nothing more than some text in a special format. The below snippet is a doclink to an e-mail in my mail database. As you can see it contains the replica id of the database and the UNID of the view and the document to go to.

Mikkel Heisterberg - Vedr.: Re: mail sync.
<NDL>
<REPLICA C1256833:0079BF90>
<VIEW OF38D46BF5:E8F08834-ON852564B5:00129B2C>
<NOTE OF1B86D647:A8161190-ONC125723D:005E6086>
<HINT>CN=server1/O=Example</HINT>
<REM>Database 'Mikkel Heisterberg', View 'Inbox', Document 'Vedr.: Re: mail sync.'</REM>
</NDL>

The same is the case for a view link except that there’s no document UNID present.

Mikkel Heisterberg - Inbox
<NDL>
<REPLICA C1256833:0079BF90>
<VIEW OF38D46BF5:E8F08834-ON852564B5:00129B2C>
<HINT>CN=server1/O=Example</HINT>
<REM>Mikkel Heisterberg</REM>
</NDL>

A database link is even more slimmed down and it only contains the replica id of the target. For some reason the chat area fail to convert this into a notes:// URL – could be that the regular expression IBM use to match a doclink doesn’t take database links into account.

Mikkel Heisterberg - Inbox
<NDL>
<REPLICA C1256833:0079BF90>
<HINT>CN=server1/O=Example</HINT>
<REM>Mikkel Heisterberg</REM>
</NDL>

Does anyone know whether this is a known issue or something I should report to Lotus Support or even worse write myself? Actually I don’t think it would take too long to write since it’s a slight modification of the acronym sample plugin supplied with the Sametime SDK. I would of cause prefer not to… 😉