I am currently running a survey on how organizations approach user adoption for collaboration tools. Many people have filled out the survey in the past couple of months, but I only have 25 responses from organizations using IBM Connections. I know there are a lot more of you out there ... and I'm very interested to read the pulse on your approach.

Here's an offer for organizations with IBM Connections. If I can get more than 100 respondents using IBM Connections to complete the survey, I will run a special webinar just for IBM Connections customers on the survey results. The webinar will report on what organizations with IBM Connections are doing from an adoption perspective. If I get more than 200 responses, I will write up the findings in a report ... and give a free copy to every IBM Connections organization that completes the survey (and leaves contact details).

So, if you use IBM Connections ... please take the user adoption survey now.

Thanks much!

This document describes the recommended strategy and steps for applying maintenance updates to IBM Connections 3.0.1.

In this wiki, we discuss the following topics:

• General customization process
• Customizing the Home page
• Customizing strings
• Customizing blogs
• Tivoli Directory Integrator
• Customizing the Profiles and Communities business cards
• Customizing communities
• Using the API
• IBM Web Experience Factory
• IBM Mashup Center
• Microsoft Outlook Connector

Smarter Knowledge Sharing - Quantitative research into the perceived usefulness of Lotus Live as knowledge sharing system by Dutch healthcare professionals

Master Thesis
Strategic Management
Tilburg University
December 12, 2011

Student
Sjoerd Bouma (962256)
S.Bouma@uvt.nl

An organization’s ability to learn and share knowledge has emerged as a key factor influencing organizational performance (Argote, McEvily, & Reagans, 2003; Kane & Alavi, 2007). IBM can provide an integrated cloud solution,  Lotus Live, to support online knowledge sharing and learning. The measurement of information systems usefulness is critical  to understand the value and efficacy of information systems investments  (Delone & McLean, 2003). Therefore, IBM wants to study the usefulness of an integrated cloud solution for knowledge sharing. IBM is especially interested in the added value of Lotus Live in a knowledge-intensive environment (e.g. healthcare, research institutes, and universities). Especially in these type of organizations lifelong learning and knowledge sharing are crucial aspects of everyday’s work.

This study elaborates on knowledge sharing in healthcare. In general, when talking about knowledge sharing in healthcare it concerns collaboration between healthcare professionals (Chau & Hu, 2002a), and access to learning resources (Geueke & Stausberg, 2003). Lifelong learning and knowledge sharing are important concepts in today’s healthcare, and a requirement for all healthcare professionals (Barnard, Nash, & O'Brien, 2005;  Frankford, Patterson, & Konrad, 2000). However, knowledge sharing by face-to-face interaction on a regular basis can be costly and time consuming. Online communities of practice supported by internet technologies are among the few viable alternatives to live conversation and knowledge sharing (Hara & Hew, 2007). It  is therefore, very interesting to look at the usefulness of an online knowledge management system for knowledge sharing in healthcare. The central research question dealt with in this thesis will be:

To what extent is an online knowledge management system for knowledge sharing perceived useful in supporting knowledge sharing in a healthcare context?

Leading UK bloggers Chris Turner (Springwise), David Terrar (Biz Two Zero), Matt Alder (Recruiting Futurology), David Cushman (Faster Future) and Johnnie Moore (The Johnnie Moore Weblog) come together with IBM experts Jon Mell, Jon Machtynger and Alex Bray to give their perspective on the concept of Social Business.

Leading UK bloggers David Terrar (Biz Two Zero) and Kathryn Corrick (KathrynCorrick.co.uk) come together with IBM Social Business experts Alex Bray, Ofer Guetta, Jon Mell and Stuart McRae to discuss the benefits of social tools within the enterprise from an IT perspective

Leading UK bloggers John Ingham (Strategic HCM), Peter Gold (Hire Strategies), Matt Alder (Recruiting Futurology), Mike Morrison (Rapid BI) and Johnnie Moore (The Johnnie Moore Weblog) come together with IBM Social Business experts Jon Mell and Stuart McRae to discuss the potential of social tools within the enterprise to benefit HR and drive employee engagement.

Leading UK bloggers Chris Turner (Springwise), David Cushman (Faster Future), Karl Long (Experience Curve) and Kathryn Corrick (KathrynCorrick.co.uk), come together with IBM Social Business experts Ofer Guetta, Jon Mell, Jon Machtynger and Alex Bray to discuss the potential of social tools within the enterprise to drive innovation.

It's time to ask the question again. How are you approaching user adoption? What strategies are you using? How effective have the strategies been in your organization?

I have re-developed the survey - adding a few new strategies from the book, and using slightly different rating scales - and it's up and ready for you to contribute your experience.

WIN A COPY OF THE USER ADOPTION STRATEGIES BOOK! If you take the survey and leave your contact details, you will automatically go in the draw for one of five copies of User Adoption Strategies. There's a weekly drawing between now and early January, so complete the survey early to get a maximum number of opportunities to win a copy.

IBM Sametime 8.5.2 IFR 1 extends unified communications to Apple iOS and Google Android operating system devices and delivers significant new features to IBM Sametime Advanced

IBM Sametime provides a core set of real-time communication services designed to help make your social business actionable. Sametime can help teams organize quickly and respond with unprecedented speed and can help unified communications become a core part of your enterprise's social business strategy.

IBM Sametime 8.5.2 Interim Feature Release (IFR) 1 further extends unified communications to new mobile devices and adds additional social collaboration capabilities.

IBM Sametime Standard 8.5.2 IFR 1 adds:

• A new native Instant Messaging client for Apple iPhone and iPad devices that includes a dialer for Sametime Unified Telephony licensed users
• New browser-based meeting participation on Google Android tablets and Apple iPads
• New Sametime meeting room features and options such as Active Speaker indication
• New platform support including Mac OS X 10.7, Domino 8.5.3, Internet Explorer 9, and Firefox 6 and 7

In addition to the enhancements in Sametime Standard, Sametime Advanced 8.5.2 IFR 1 also includes:

• Offline messaging
• Multi-file and folder transfer to individuals
• File transfers to multiple people simultaneously
• Organizational tree view

IBM Sametime Unified Telephony 8.5.2 IFR 1 provides new flexibility with a native Apple iOS client and server virtualization

IBM Sametime Unified Telephony is a telephony middleware application designed to provide advanced unified communications capabilities without the need to consolidate telephony infrastructure on a single vendor. Users benefit from a single, unified phone number and intelligent call routing based on location, presence, time of day, and caller ID. Ease of use includes click-to-call, click-to-conference, rich call control, along with an intuitive softphone built into the Sametime experience.

IBM Sametime Unified Telephony 8.5.2 Interim Feature Release (IFR) 1 delivers additional deployment flexibility with:

• A new Sametime client for Apple iOS devices that includes a dialer to initiate Sametime Unified Telephony calls
• Support for virtualization of the IBM Sametime Unified Telephony servers

Sametime Unified Telephony Lite Client now supports IBM Sametime Standard and Sametime Advanced 8.5.2 IFR 1.

We are very excited to bring you the IBM Sametime Mobile Client for iOS! This gives you access to IBM's award-winning platform for Unified Communications on today's hottest devices – the iPhone and iPad. The client gives you the following cool features :

● 1/1 and Group chat
● Send and receive photos
● Background message notification
● Search corporate directory for a contact
● Search contact list by name or number
● Broadcast announcements
● Customized presence status
● Chat history
● View your contact list by groups, favorites, or all contacts view.
● Add new individual contacts or groups
● Robust Business Card
● Easily import Sametime contacts into your Apple iPhone contact list.
● Manage application preferences from the Apple iPhone device settings.
● Interface is automatically optimized for the iPhone or iPad.

If you are a Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) user, you also get the following from your iOS device:

● A dial pad to place calls with SUT
● Click to call
● Receive incoming SUT calls
● Your off the hook telephony presence is reflected to desktop rich client users
● Keep your cell number private! Recipient's caller ID shows up as your SUT number.
● Control call routing rules and
● Set preferred device for receiving your SUT calls.

*The IBM Sametime Mobile Client for iOS devices requires the Sametime 8.5.2 IFR 1 Proxy Server to be deployed in your infrastructure environment. Please contact your IT department to validate this is the case.*

Universal app - new native iPad interface
Ability to upload documents to the IBM Connections server from other apps that support the "Open In..." feature of iOS  

• Upload email attachments directly to the IBM Connections server  
• Enables round trip editing of documents. Allows you to download a document from the IBM Connections server, open it in another editor app, then upload the updated document back to the IBM Connections server

iOS 5 Compatible
Fixed an issue with getting "Cannot Verify Server Identity" prompt for servers certificates from a valid certificate authority

Google is rolling out a feature I mentioned in a previous post: signing in to multiple Google accounts simultaneously from the same browser. When you go to the Google accounts page, you might see a new option: "multiple sign-in". If you don't see the new feature, it will probably be enabled soon.



After clicking on the "change" link, Google informs that this is an advanced feature and that it will only work for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites, Google Reader, Google Voice, App Engine and Google Code. When multiple sign-in is enabled, a drop-down is displayed next to your email address at the top of the page, so you can quickly switch to a new account.

"If you use multiple sign-in, the first account you sign in to will be your default account. If you visit other Google products that don't support multiple accounts after you've signed in, you will automatically sign in to your default account for that product. If you sign out of any Google product while signed in to any account, you will be signed out of all your Google Accounts at once."

Connections Enterprise Content Edition delivers the following capabilities:

• Provides integration of office document management with social collaboration and full content management of both structured and unstructured content.
• Leverages familiar desktop applications to author, share, and collaborate on content anywhere.
• Allows you to manage and securely access all content types, including social and collaborative content.
• Extends your social capabilities and advantages to enterprise and industry environments.

Connections Enterprise Content Edition V5.1.0 is an integrated solution designed to provide extensive desktop and collaborative application integration between IBM FileNet Content Manager, IBM Connections, and IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors.

It provides an office document management approach to enterprise content using existing desktop applications. Organizations can now create and leverage enterprise content with familiar applications.

Connections Enterprise Content Edition V5.1.0 leverages powerful social tools and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) capabilities for creation and management of accurate and relevant content. Both office document management and social collaboration are merged into a single environment for management of all content with the same social and enterprise tools.

Connections Enterprise Content Edition V5.1.0 is designed to provide the basis for your enterprise's social content community.

Connections Enterprise Content Edition V5.1.0 runs on the industry-leading content repository FileNet Content Manager V5.1.0. It leverages ECM performance, scalability, and security. On top of this enterprise base, Version 5.1.0 provides the additional social features needed for ECM users around desktop integration via the Lotus Quickr Connectors V8.5 and office document management in a social environment with IBM Connections V3.0.1.

Both IBM FileNet Content Manager V5.1.0 and IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition V8.4.3 customers can purchase discounted add-on licensing to add social capabilities to their ECM environment. Connections Content Edition customers can obtain less restrictive ECM capabilities with discounted trade-up licensing to IBM Connections Enterprise Content Edition.

IBM Connections Content Edition V3, an integrated solution, enhancements:

• Enterprise document management and social collaboration are merged into a single environment to manage all types of content using the same social and desktop tools.
• Users can proactively manage content from within IBM Connections, providing support for corporate compliance requirements.
• Subject matter experts can create relevant and reliable content in real-time that is stored in your IBM Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repository and shared with your professional network.
• ECM content is accessible from social tools and desktop applications using the included Lotus Quickr Connectors.

Today's business environment is information and knowledge intensive. Today's social tools are designed to help you to leverage this exponential growth of information. Reliable content is essential, and connecting the right subject matter experts with the right content gives businesses real-time information in context - helping contribute to better business decisions made more efficiently.

IBM Connections Content Edition V3 integrates IBM Connections' best-in-class social software with the IBM industry-leading Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform in a single affordable offering. This offering enables you to extend ECM services and function to a broad audience of business professionals using social software to help achieve their business goals.

IBM Connections Content Edition features:

• Users of IBM Connections 3.0.1 can view, access, and manage corporate content and associated metadata stored in IBM FileNet Content Manager through IBM Connections Communities.
• The IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors provides the ability to access content from popular desktop applications. Lotus Quickr Connectors now support 64-bit Windows Explorer and Microsoft Office 2010.

IBM Connections FileNet Content Manager Edition V3 is comprised of IBM Connections 3.0.1, a restricted license of IBM FileNet Content Manager V5.1, and IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors 8.5.0.3.

For existing IBM Connections customers, the IBM Connections FileNet Content Manager Add-on to IBM Connections includes a restricted license of IBM FileNet Content Manager V5.1 and IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors 8.5.0.3.

IBM Connections Content Edition V3 customers can purchase an attractive trade-up license, which give them more feature rich content management functionality and fewer restrictions (for example, the ability to extend their social content system to include broader enterprise content management functionality, such as records management, content analytics and collection, case management, capture and more).

This vignette comes from our member Andrew Carusone at Lowe’s Companies, Inc. who told the story at our workshop this summer.  Lowe’s on-boarded 100% of its employee base to its collaborative platform, IBM Connections last year.  That’s every executive, store manager, retail clerk, and stock boy on the payroll.  The entire Lowe’s workforce of 289,000 employees have access to Connections.  What’s interesting is that less than 17,000 of these employees are salaried employees, and even less are members of the management team.  The challenge for the Lowe’s social business team is to inspire the employee base to turn to the platform in the course of their normal day’s work.  For some employees, it comes naturally.

During beta tests, an enterprising Paint Department employee decided to try something new to demonstrate the ease of cleaning a Teflon paint tray.  She poured latex paint into it, let it dry, and then peeled the paint out whole.  She left both the paint “mold” and the paint tray on the paint counter.  Customers were amazed and delighted. Suddenly, she was sold out of the paint trays and shoppers were clamoring for more.

The employee turned to all of her traditional channels to get additional inventory.  She accessed the company’s enterprise inventory system, however, like most major retailers, the business process tightly controls the amount of additional inventory employees can request.  After exhausting other traditional sources, the employee then turned to the Connections platform and asked “out loud” if anyone knew how she could get more inventory.  Funny thing happened.  Although everyone felt her pain on the inventory shortage, they started replicating her paint mold/tray demo in their stores. And guess what? Suddenly other stores were selling out of the paint trays too.  As interest in the thread and the display idea grew in popularity, sales skyrocketed.

Lotus Notes 8.5.3 helps you quickly locate the people and content you need through integrated access to social tools from IBM Connections. This release provides an entitlement to the Files and Profiles features of IBM Connections 3.0.1 to customers with these licenses :
 

• IBM Lotus Domino Enterprise Client Access License
• IBM Lotus Domino Messaging Client Access License
• IBM Lotus Domino Collaboration Express License
• IBM Lotus Domino Messaging Express License

As a Lotus Notes customer, you can now deploy and access the Files and Profiles features of IBM Connections at no additional charge.

Access to the Files feature allows users to easily share content with other people and remove the need to send large files through email. It also allows you to socialize content you create, allowing people to easily find it, make recommendations, and share with other people.

Profiles helps users find the people they need by searching across the organization's content using tags to identify expertise, current projects, and responsibilities. It socializes skills, interests, and organizational structure for others to discover and benefit from.

• Access to Profiles and Files will be permitted from the Notes client, web browser and mobile devices (including the new IBM mobile native apps).
• Homepage is not included (so no activity streams etc.).
• TDI and DB2 are entitled as part of the offering, limited to use with the Connections features (though both may already be included in a limited form with Domino anyway).
• The Connections infrastructure is not limited to any particular number of PVUs, just as with the full Connections offering it will be flexible to serve the number of users licensed.
• There will be an upgrade path from this limited entitlement to the full Connections product, details due to be announced later this month.
• If a customer is already licensed for Quickr for the Notes/Domino users then, then they will have access to Connections Profiles, Files and Wikis (as Files and Wikis have been part of the Quickr license since 2009).
• There is currently no out-of-the-box technical means to limit Notes users to just these features on a existing Connections instance whilst other users have the full suite.  I'm sure that we can be creative!

Question
When you search all IBM Connections components, the results are returned based on relevance. How does Connections determine which documents are most relevant?

Answer
The simplified explanation is the more times a search term appears in a document, wiki, blog article etc. the more relevant that content becomes.

The search is built on top of Apache Lucene, as are most of IBM's search components. Detail of the Apache Lucene project can be found here: http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/index.html

Here is the formula that is used in Connections 3.0.x: http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_4_0/api/org/apache/lucene/search/Similarity.html

The score of query q for document d correlates to the cosine-distance or dot-product between document and query vectors in a Vector Space Model (VSM) of Information Retrieval. A document whose vector is closer to the query vector in that model is scored higher. The score is computed as follows:

...

Fix:	Description:
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-BLOGS-CRLO63035	BLOGS: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-COMMUNITIES-CRLO63039	COMMUNITIES: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-HOMEPAGE-CRLO63044	HOMEPAGE: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-FORUM-CRLO63047	FORUM: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-SEARCH-CRLO63045	SEARCH: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-ACTIVITIES-CRLO63031	ACTIVITIES: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-PROFILES-CRLO63043	PROFILES: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-DOGEAR-CRLO63042	DOGEAR: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-NEWS-CRLO63046	NEWS: CR3 FOR LC301

Vantage for IBM Connections V1.0 and Vantage for IBM Sametime V1.0 enable security and policy management controls, beyond the native IBM implementations, that are designed to help social organizations remain compliant with key regulatory and corporate governance requirements.

Vantage, provided by Actiance, an IBM Business Partner, is the industry-leading security, management, and compliance solution for unified communications and collaboration platforms. Through tight integration with IBM Connections and IBM Sametime, Vantage delivers granular security, reporting logging, and archiving controls for content posted within IBM Connections and IBM Sametime environments.

Vantage for IBM Connections captures and reports social conversations, posts, comments, and files that have been shared between IBM Connections users for eDiscovery purposes. Vantage for IBM Sametime enables real-time management, reporting, and security alerts augmenting IBM Sametime's native functionality. It enables granular policy setting, ethical walls, message hygiene, malware prevention, and content archiving for eDiscovery purposes as well.

Vantage for IBM Connections V1.0 monitors and captures conversations, posts, comments, and files that have been shared between IBM Connections users.

Vantage for IBM Sametime and IBM Connections provides a compliance solution that is up-to-date on the dynamic and interactive communication channels a social business leverages. No matter how small or out-of-context a remark or comment might be, every post can be captured and put into the larger context of a holistic compliance solution for the social business.

Additional compliance capabilities of Vantage for IBM Connections:

• Automated logging of all IBM Connections end-user events (wikis, blogs, forum, activities, communities, profiles, bookmarks, and files)
• Real-time content inspection by keywords, lexicons, restricted phrases, regular expressions, user, type, and date range, that helps enable compliance personnel to easily locate relevant data, and helps to significantly reduce risk by allowing organizations to remove inappropriate content quickly
• Logs and archives original format and images of posts within IBM Connections; real-time review in the context of how they were posted in chronological order that helps to make the legal discovery, review, and reporting process simpler and less costly
• Simple creation and enforcement of granular policies on which content to capture that helps enable organizations to more effectively manage their compliance program
• Global and group role-based access control helps strengthen and simplify an organization's ability to comply with regulations

• This solution is much needed and very exciting.  Connections helps organisations do business and collaborate in a more flexible and informal way, but that doesn't mean that security or compliance can be discarded along the way.  This solution helps maintain these aspects without impeding the free flow of social content.
• Actiance (formerly Facetime) have a great reputation for their IBM-based solutions, and what's more, are keen members of the Lotus community.  I am delighted for them to have brought these solutions to market with IBM, and wish them great success.
• Hopefully this is the start of a successful and profitable ISV market for IBM Connections - we need other ISVs to step up to the plate with solutions for analytics, backup/recovery, monitoring, CRM and more.  Clearly IBM is betting on Connections being a central pillar of their Social Business strategy - a vibrant ISV community is an essential aspect of a successful platform.

• There will be a mix of great speakers from IBM (including from the Connections product management team in the US), business partners and customers
• We will cover business, technical and management aspects of IBM Connections, as well as having a few wildcard topics thrown in as well
• Most sessions will be 30 minutes long, keeping the high-tempo and varied topics that were such a success at Social Connections 1
• We will mix up the session types even more than we did at the first event, with seminars, Q&A panels and unconference sessions
• All sessions will be recorded and made available for replay, and all presentations will be uploaded to Slideshare

IBM Connections is social software for business. It enables you to build a network of colleagues and subject matter experts, and then leverage that network to further your business goals. With its integrated suite of tools, you can share and discuss ideas, work collaboratively on presentations or proposals, plan and track project tasks, and much more. IBM Connections is a web application that is deployed on a company intranet to promote collaboration within the company. The IBM Connections mobile application extends access to company data to employees who are on the go.

Use the mobile application to perform common IBM Connections tasks with a minimal number of steps. If IBM Connections is deployed in your company, you can download this application and log in using the same credentials as always. (The server must be running version 3.0.1 plus the July 2011 mobile update or higher and the mobile application must be installed on it. Check with your IT administrator if you aren't sure.)

1. I'm impressed at the level of integration available, making it easy to retain the control of ECM data with check-in/check-out etc, whilst still being easy to use by novice Connections users.
2. This is an area where IBM's broad suite of middleware offerings allows it to develop solutions that go beyond traditional social tools, and therefore ahead of many competitors.
3. Louis does a tremendous job of explaining and demonstrating the solution.
4. Having both Connections Files and Connections ECM ('Content Library') options available to users and community owners could be confusing - why use one over the other etc?  I would imagine that when ECM is enabled, many organisations would disable Files to push users down the more formal content management route, but that leaves a gap for information sharing outside of communities.
5. There have been lots of questions about the future of QuickrJ alongside Connections.  The introduction of ECM integration into Connections communities covers many use cases (though not all) where QuickrJ has been a good fit.
6. FileNet and Content Manager have (in my experience) previously been pretty complex and heavy pieces of infrastructure, particularly for smaller organisations.  If ECM is only required for integration with Connections (or Quickr), it would be great to see these solutions offered as appliances or with an easier means of deployment.

• A great reference for both LotusLive and Silanis e-SignLive - this shows the benefits of IBM's campaign to sign SaaS partners for the LotusLIve suite.
• $35,000 of additional revenue per month - that's real ROI.
• I'm guessing that Signature Mortgage has less than 1,000 users, making it an SMB in IBM's eyes.  Great to see a public reference for such an organisation.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that the Quickr Connectors now support Microsoft Windows 64bit and Office 2010. As promised at this year's Lotusphere, our development teams were hard at work on this one and I thank them for their great work and earlier than expected release.

The updated installers are available on Fix Central as Quickr Connectors 8.5.0.1_HF7.

With the IBM Connections Connector for Lotus Quickr, you can create associated Lotus Quickr team places for IBM Connections communities. A Lotus Quickr team place provides a central location from which a team can organize, share files, and collaborate on documents. Every IBM Connections community owner can optionally choose to create an associated Lotus Quickr team place. Updates made in the Lotus Quickr team place are aggregated in the community overview page, making it easier to stay current with projects and work collaboratively. Access control and membership of the Lotus Quickr place is determined by the often fluctuating IBM Connections community membership; it does not need to be managed separately. This version of the connector supports integration of Communities in IBM Connections 3.0.1 with Lotus Quickr 8.5 for WebSphere Portal, or Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Lotus Domino 8.5.

• Undoubtedly the 64-bit connector is overdue, however I completely understand that the model for building this kind of Explorer-level plugin had changed in 64-bit WIndows and so it would take some time to build a new version.  
• I thank Mac Guidera and his team for getting this out of the door - there are a lot of customers waiting (not so) patiently for this code.
• The fact that so many have clamoured for the 64-bit connector just shows how important they are to the Quickr product.  At the time Quickr shipped back in 2007, they were unique in the marketplace and really added to the power of what had been a web-based tool until that point.  There are more tools that do this now (Dropbox etc.), but users still rely on the connectors to get their work done.
• Now that the 64-bit connectors have shipped, the attention will undoubtedly shift to the long-awaited Mac connectors.
• It's great that we have the new Quickr connector for Connections, I look forward to giving it a try.  However, it still feels to me as though this code should be part of the standard Connections product.  Given it just calls Quickr APIs, there is nothing to add there, so just put the code into Connections and make it work with just a few configuration switches.
• The Connections connector works well for a particular use case, having a Quickr place embedded within a specific Connections community with a 1:1 mapping between the two.  However a lot of customers would like to be able to do more to integrate the two products into one solution - adding two or more existing places into a community for instance, or pulling a feed of updates from all a user's places into the Homepage activity stream.  As IBM decides what to do with the Quickr J2EE product, I hope for more of the Quickr functionality to be brought into Connections to allow this to happen.
• Credit where credit's due, it's great to see these connectors ship. Thank you.

TeamPoint makes the management of your policies and procedures easier than ever. TeamPoint tracks and manages the creation of your controlled documents, helping you remain compliant with employment law, health and safety regulations and standards such as ISO 9001.

TeamPoint also allows you to capture an employee’s acceptance of key policies and procedures and automatically provides a “Starter Pack” for new employees based on their location in your organization. Integrated with LotusLive collaboration tools, now you can share your documents through LotusLive while still controlling versions and access through TeamPoint.

This application works with LotusLive Engage and Connections and requires a subscription of TeamPoint.

MobileLive Android client for IBM's LotusLive cloud collaboration services.

Rich client version of IBM's LotusLive, the enterprise cloud based collaboration service. Gives you offline access to your Contacts, Activities, Communities, as well as Sametime instant messaging. Requires an existing LotusLive subscription or active trial account.

Northeastern Pacific Ocean earthquake countermeasures provide free LotusLive
March 14, 2011

Japan IBM (Hashimoto Takashi President, NYSE: IBM) is to support the rebuilding of northeastern Pacific Ocean Earthquake, "Earthquake Preparedness Program LotusLive northeastern Pacific Ocean off the free offer" to announce. The activities in the affected areas, organizations need a means of sharing information and e-mail (local governments, nonprofit organizations and philanthropic activities and charity work) to a subject in order to support our activities, Web browser only LotusLive available from today to start offering free use of three months for mail-enabled collaboration and organization.

"Earthquake Countermeasures program provides free LotusLive northeastern Pacific Ocean," an overview of the following.

Recorded

Program:
Northeastern Pacific Ocean Earthquake Countermeasures Program provided free of charge LotusLive
Conditions and subject:
Organizations that require e-mail capabilities for information sharing and Disaster Relief Act applies in the region (local governments, nonprofit organizations and philanthropic activities and charity work)
Period:
Today, 31 July 2011 (application deadline until April 30 2011)
Application Procedures:
Below, please contact us by e-mail contact information.
Northeastern Pacific Ocean Earthquake Countermeasures Program provided free of charge receptionist LotusLive
　Email: sbcloud@jp.ibm.com


* IBM LotusLive information, please see the following URL.
https: / / www.lotuslive.com/ja/

Driving Social Business from the Cloud with SugarCRM on IBM LotusLive

Date:	Mar 17, 2011
Time:	2:00 PM - 3:00 PM (Eastern Time)
Hosted By:	Allison Marentette (IBM LotusLive Social Business Cloud)
Presented By:	Jan Sysmans (Senior Director Product Marketing, SugarCRM), Brendan Crotty (Program Director, IBM LotusLive Social Business Cloud)

Join IBM and SugarCRM and learn how the SugarCRM integration with LotusLive drives social business and brings you "CRM Made Social". Get first hand insight on how this integration will benefit your organization and see how you can get started with SugarCRM and LotusLive today. 

Agenda: 

* How LotusLive and SugarCRM enable Social Business in the cloud 
* LotusLive overview and demo 
* SugarCRM integration with LotusLive demo
* Review availability and timelines

All attendees to this webinar will get a special discount to attend Sugarcon, the annual SugarCRM user conference.

1. I had a good chance to meet with SugarCRM Director of Communications, Martin Schneider, at the recent TFM&A show in London and discussed this LotusLive/SugarCRM integration with him.  It is clear that SugarCRM see LotusLive as a significant area of opportunity for them to move into the larger enterprises that IBM specialises in winning.
2. For IBM, Social CRM is going to be an area of significant growth over the next 3 or so years.  Gartner have released a report in the past week, saying that 'Use of Social CRM for Customer Service Will Grow Rapidly Over the Next Two Years'.  LotusLive already has links with SalesForce.com (though this is less impressive than the SugarCRM integration), and IBM has also purchased Unica who operate in a similar space.
3. Whilst less impressive in volume terms than the 'Google Apps Marketplace' than Google have for their Google Apps service, IBM is slowly growing an impressive list of ISV solutions that integrate with LotusLive.  Microsoft is growing a similar list too - this is clearly a battleground as the cloud-based collaboration war heats up!

IBM FileNet Content Manager Collaboration Edition and IBM Content Manager Collaboration Edition offer you the integration between IBM's Lotus Quickr team collaboration and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) family of offerings.

IBM FileNet Content Manager Collaboration Edition V8.5 and IBM Content Manager Collaboration Edition V8.5 deliver updated versions of IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5, IBM FileNet Content Manager V5.0, and IBM Content Manager 8.4.2 to provide integrated end-to-end collaboration and ECM solution that allow users to:

• Easily move content to and from Lotus Quickr and IBM ECM repositories
• Benefit from enhanced integration between Lotus Quickr, IBM FileNet Content Manager, and IBM Content Manager, including new "direct connect" web-based component so users can natively display and interact with ECM content from within a Lotus Quickr place
• Search FileNet Content Manager and IBM Content Manager content from Lotus Quickr Web 2.0 user interface
• Use the Lotus Quickr connectors to interact with content in both Lotus Quickr, FileNet Content Manager, and IBM Content Manager software, providing access to these repositories as a natural extension of popular applications such as Microsoft Office, Windows Explorer, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime, and Lotus Symphony

IBM FileNet Content Manager Collaboration Edition and IBM Content Manager Collaboration Edition both extend ECM services and function to a broader audience, while introducing collaborative tools to the content management environment helping organizations connect the right people with the right information at the right time.

IBM FileNet Content Manager Collaboration Edition and IBM Content Manager Collaboration Edition leverage new Web service components to provide integration between best-of-breed collaboration tools of IBM Lotus Quickr and IBM's ECM repositories.

1. These bundles have been well-received by customers looking for integrated collaboration and document-management solutions.  
2. Typically, larger enterprises already have document-management infrastructure, whereas these bundles are intended for those that do not have the back-end in place.  They typically score well in the mid-range organisations.
3. Both FileNet and Content Manager are considered best-of-breed by analysts, and tend to do well in competitive situations.  They have their own strengths and weaknesses, which sometimes leads to confusion in terms of which is the right solution for a given situation.
4. FileNet Content Manager P8 5.0 is a big step forward, with CMIS support, Content Federation Services (enables federated content to be moved from source repositories into P8 native storage) and more.
5. Lotus Quickr 8.5 is probably the most significant upgrade in the history of the Quickr/Quickplace product line.  It has received great feedback in every upgrade we've completed for customers.

IBM Lotus Symphony Plugin for Lotus Web Content Management 7.0

The IBM Lotus Symphony Plugin for Lotus Web Content Management helps customers simplify the process of authoring Web Content managed and delivered by IBM Lotus Web Content Management (WCM). By introducing the concept of “profiles”, content authors can create, edit and publish rich documents from within Lotus Symphony to Lotus Web Content Management as native web content just as easily and simply just as if they were authoring local documents as normal. 



In order to install and use the IBM Lotus Symphony Plugin for Lotus Web Content Management, the following steps must be completed. 
1. The IT administrator deploys the WCM Rest Service on the WCM server (Part 1 ) and then creates and sets up the Public Profiles (Part 2);
2. The content author installs the Lotus Symphony Plugin for Lotus Web Content Management (Part 3), creates servers (Part 4) and private profiles (Part 5).
3. After the server and profile have been created correctly, the content author can use Lotus Symphony to create and publish (Part 6) and edit (Part 7 and Part 8) the content. 

There is a read me file included in the installation package, please download the package and follow the read me document step by step to install and use the plug-in. This plug-in does not support dragging to install directly from the web page.

At a glance

IBM LotusLive Notes 1.3 enhancements:

• Option to purchase cloud-based services for BlackBerry mobile device users
• Support for additional platform -- Android OS -- for users of the optional Traveler for LotusLive Notes service
• Additional mail management controls
• Advances in user experience

Overview

IBM LotusLive Notes 1.3 is a full-featured, cloud-based email service. Subscribing to the LotusLive Notes service means that IBM sets up, operates, and maintains your organization's Lotus Domino-based mailboxes via a LotusLive server farm operated within the cloud. LotusLive Notes offers users the benefits of the Lotus Domino mail server architecture and security without the mail server maintenance overhead.

With this update of LotusLive Notes, you get the addition of a fully hosted service offering for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, both with and without optional Mobile Data Services from Research In Motion (RIM).

Additional enhancements:

• Traveler for LotusLive Notes subscription supports Android operating system, expanding the mobile needs of virtually anyone.
• Additional Mail Manager controls are available as part of the web-based LotusLive Notes Administration experience (including automatic management of content older than "n" days and administrator-controlled User Exclude lists).
• Support for limiting the size of inbound file attachments for email messages (administrator controlled at the user or group level).
• User experience modifications in the area of calendaring and scheduling to further improve visual parity with the Notes client when working in LotusLive Notes via a standard web browser (including full support for alarm preferences plus font, background, and color updates).
• The ability to import contacts within LotusLive Notes web in any supported language.
• Support for purchasing subscriptions to the LotusLive Notes service.

This morning we released a service update to LotusLive Notes, as announced here. This is the third release of LotusLive Notes in six months, an impressive demonstration of IBM's ability to deliver in the software as a service market. 

Today's service update is notable mainly for the improvements to mobile access for LotusLive Notes. A new service, IBM LotusLive Notes Hosted Blackberry, offers a fixed-price, pay as you go full BES capability listing at US$10/user/month. LotusLive Notes Traveler has been extended and now offers Android device support on top of existing iOS and other devices. Some service improvements have been added from both the administration/management point of view and also some usability enhancements in LotusLive Notes web. 

We highlighted LotusLive Notes customers at Lotusphere including Panasonic and General Motors Component Holdings. Another wave of customers has been onboarding in the last few weeks. My team is busy planning the fourth release already, with plans for that and a fifth release still on tap for 2011. If you are looking for the best, most-integrated cloud collaboration solution, I encourage you to check out LotusLive Notes and LotusLive Engage and see what we've done -- and will continue to do -- to make the IBM collaboration stack stand up in a SaaS world with tons of value and at a cost-effective price.

Today IBM announced LotusLive Symphony, a revolution in online collaborative document editing.  With a preview release later this quarter and final release later this year, LotusLive Symphony delivers word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations for users looking to improve efficiency and collaboration during the content authoring process.  Like all of the LotusLive story, one of the unique differentiators for LotusLive Symphony is its ability to provide that value to interactions with customers, suppliers, and business partners in addition to colleagues within an organization.

In our mind, document editing is about more than cell formulas, formatting, and animation.  LotusLive Symphony offers capabilities such as real-time or private co-editing, live sections, author presence awareness, contextual commenting, assignment and notifications, and task and attention management cues.  Initially designed for use with LotusLive, we are also exploring ways to deliver these capabilities in an on-premises environment through an initial customer partnership.

We announced LotusLive Symphony a year ago as Project "Concord", and now have made significant progress and are ready for Technical Preview release 2.  That will go live on Greenhouse.lotus.com after Lotusphere.

LotusLive Symphony in the Cloud complements its on-premise, free of charge, office productivity suite, IBM Lotus Symphony. IBM has seen more than 50 million downloads of Lotus Symphony, and recently introduced updates including tighter integrations with the desktop to LotusLive allowing users to click to the cloud to get, save, share and collaborate on documents.  

National Bank TRUST is a social business using Symphony to collaborate on documents and transform their business processes, IBM officials said in its press release.

"The collaborative editing support and productivity gains make Symphony unique in the productivity suites market," said Sergey Chikov, director, NB TRUST's Board of information and banking technologies for remote sale of credit products, in a statement.

With this release, IBM is joining an increasingly crowded field of Web office productivity suites. In December, Oracle launched the first version of itsown hosted office service, called Cloud Office. That version is based on OpenOffice as well. Microsoft offers consumers some basic online office document editing capability through its Office Web Apps service. It also has plans to roll this service into its enterprise-focused BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) set of hosted services as well.

Accelerating Cloud Collaboration in Organizations Around the Globe
 
Organizations including C&D Foods, Crawford & Company, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, General Motors Components Holdings LLC and General Milling Corporation have adopted IBM's cloud based email offerings. 

General Motors Components Holdings LLC (GMCH) purchased LotusLive to provide employees with cloud based email, calendar and contact management services.  A wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, GMCH was looking to improve collaboration among its employees in plants in New York, Michigan and Indiana that manufacture HVAC climate control systems, powertrain cooling systems, engine management systems, automotive electronics and related products.  Formerly part of the Delphi Corporation, GMCH needed to move all employees to GM compatible systems after the acquisition from Delphi.  GMCH wanted a cloud solution that would meet GM's requirements for performance and reliability without the capital expenditure necessary to run email in-house.  They chose LotusLive Notes for the flexibility of the service and because of IBM's enterprise experience.  GMCH has also purchased LotusLive Connections to facilitate social networking and collaboration between employees in the Cloud. 

C&D Foods, based in Longford, Ireland, is one of Europe's leading high quality pet food manufacturers producing more than 150,000 tons of pet food annually. C&D Foods needed a quick and cost-effective way to move employees at their canning facility in the Netherlands off Microsoft Exchange. "We decided to move employees to the cloud with LotusLive iNotes. With its simple administration tools and user-friendly interface, LotusLive helped take pressure off our migration team.   We were able to move users quickly and easily without any interruption to our network or IT infrastructure.  With LotusLive, users can now access their e-mail, anytime, any place," said Rosalyn Donnelly, IT Manager, C&D Foods. 

Crawford & Company, based in Atlanta, Georgia, is the world's largest independent provider of claims management solutions to the risk management and insurance industry, as well as self-insured entities. "With a global network of more than 700 locations in 63 countries, we needed a cost effective, reliable email service," said Beverly Trice, Catastrophe Services, Crawford & Company.  "We chose LotusLive iNotes so field adjusters could have access to their email whenever, wherever.  More over, it's important that the email have a consistent email domain in a secure environment so the adjusters feel confident to share information with clients and communicate internally with colleagues." 

The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM), a private college in California specializing in the fashion design, interior design and entertainment industries, adopted LotusLive iNotes to provide 7,500 students with low-cost, reliable Webmail that they can access anywhere on or off campus. 
FIDM's goal was to offer its students with email accounts that provide a consistent domain so the administration and faculty could communicate with the student body more effectively.  In FIDM's eLearning program, where most of the interaction between students and teachers happens electronically, LotusLive provides a consistent and reliable user experience for the entire class which facilitates more effective communication.   FIDM also wanted to ensure that its students had a professional email account to use when applying for internships or jobs.  Prior to moving to LotusLive iNotes, students used their free, personal email accounts and the administration did not always have the correct email address for every student on campus. LotusLive helps the students and faculty stay in touch with each other more efficiently. 

General Milling Corporation (GMC) is one of the largest integrated food companies in the Philippines with offices and plants located throughout the country.  In business for 50 years, the company was looking for a reliable and cost-effective collaboration platform as a foundation for growth as they aim to become one of the top food producers in Philippines.    The company adopted LotusLive's complete collaboration suite to provide its employees with cloud-based e-mail and advanced collaboration tools.  Moving e-mail to the cloud with LotusLive Notes allows the company to expand IT resources while still having access to business-class messaging and the latest technologies from IBM.  GMC also purchased LotusLive Engage for web conferencing and other collaboration capabilities such as file sharing, instant messaging and activity management, to promote greater collaboration among its widely dispersed workforce and its partners and vendors.
 
Organizations including the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Zoo and Aquarium Association of Australia have adopted LotusLive Engage to drive increased collaboration across geographically distributed teams. 

For example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) adopted LotusLive across its 3,200 person organization for increased project collaboration with other international statistical agencies.  The ABS are members of several international networks developing standards and applications for statistical processing.  By adopting LotusLive Engage, the international project teams have been able to quickly share skills and intellectual property and assets, design and co-develop statistical standards and applications -- all within a secure, cost-effective environment that LotusLive provides. 

The Zoo and Aquarium Association of Australia integrates more than 90 zoos and aquariums across Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific in a network for wildlife conservation, environmental education and wildlife research.  Its main activity is the Australasian Species Management Program (ASMP) which has a mission "to plan and manage animal collections cooperatively, in ways that promote sustainability and contribute to species conservation."  The Association has adopted LotusLive Engage as its collaboration platform to support more than a 100 species programs that involve teams implementing best practice policy across the region. The Association has found the platform to be secure and easy to use and a good way of disseminating current information and collecting feedback. 

By adding business partner integrations, LotusLive delivers more cloud-based options to simplify and improve everyday business activities. IBM LotusLive offers integrated applications from business partners that are designed to help companies of all sizes, in every industry, work more efficiently and effectively.    

Today, IBM is announcing two new partnerships with SugarCRM and Ariba, delivering integrated applications that deliver Cloud collaboration within CRM and commerce applications.  

SugarCRM, a leading provider of open source CRM software, is integrating LotusLive into its customer relationship management application. The combined offering will help sales more effectively collaborate with prospects and customers during lead generation, lead-to-cash and issue resolution processes.  For example, a sales agent can now instantly launch a LotusLive online meeting with key prospects right from the Sugar application, and quickly and easily share important files and information with a few simple clicks.    

This capability provides a more streamlined experience for the prospect, creates greater visibility into account activity, and increases CRM user productivity, which can shorten sales cycles and increase revenue for sales organizations. The new service is expected to be available during the first half of 2011.  

With today's news, Ariba is integrating LotusLive into its Ariba Discovery service. Ariba Discovery is a free, easy-to-use service that provides access to more than 325,000 sellers in more than 400 business categories. Ariba Discovery for LotusLive lets buyers and sellers more easily collaborate through online meetings, and through web conferences, online chats, and sharing documents, resulting in improved communications and faster decision making. The service is expected to be available during the first half of 2011.

IBM LotusLive is a portfolio of online services that deliver scalable, security-rich email, web conferencing, and collaboration solutions, enabling you to interact with your employees and business network without in-house IT resource requirements. It is a cost-effective way to communicate better with your employees and business network. With LotusLive you benefit from essential and effective collaboration tools in a securely designed environment that helps simplify and improve your daily business interactions with customers, partners, and colleagues.

This IBM Redguide publication highlights the IBM LotusLive services, including details about the business need and business value of these services. It provides a scenario showing how these services can apply to your business and presents a high-level discussion of the LotusLive cloud-based architecture.

IBM Lotus Quickr supports several features in Lotus Connections and is correspondingly supported by them.

The following features are available:

• Lotus Connections Profile business card display for Lotus Quickr users
• From a Lotus Connections activity a user can publish content to a Lotus Quickr library
• From a Lotus Connections community a user can create a Lotus Quickr place, wiki, or blog

The following steps provide an overview of the process of integrating Lotus Connections and IBM Lotus Quickr...

Opus Neo ready to reveal the new Neo.Dashboard for Quickr and Domino

It’s a great feeling to come to this point where you finally can share all the exciting new stuff we at Opus Neo have been working on whilst having one of the busiest year in regards to project work.



But that is not all :-)

Imagine opening your Dashboard on the mobile and read information from Quickr, RSS feeds, web apps, ECM or even information from Connections – “Wow” we say – what do you say?

So what does this mean for Current and new Quickr Users?
With Neo.Dashboard you are combining all your Places into one consolidated homepage for your Quickr Places so that you can remain updated regarding your Quickr places and stay connected to your professional and social networks.



For a full feaure list, a web demo or getting access to a trial Dashboard, please visit http://www.opusneo.com/neodashboard

Background for Neo.Dashboard
The open architecture (through widgets) makes it possible to leverage social media technologies e.g. Blogs RSS Feeds, Google Gadgets, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook as well as IBM Lotus Quickr, Sametime, Notes Mail, Calendar & ToDo, Applications and Lotus Connections all integrated into one page in Neo.Dashboard while maintaining security.

... Keep in mind [that when you replace the Symphony 1.x embedded in the Notes client with Symphony 3.x] you then LOSE the SmartSuite compatibility. A major oversight imho. I regret having to reverse, I rather liked Symphony 3.0.

@Ed: Please, please please, I would like to ask you to reconsider. To make Symphony more universally useful I would like to be able to at least read/view/import all the file formats Symphony 1.x supports. Can you respond and/or forward this request to the appropriate person(s)?

IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5.1 for Domino adds significant enhancements for users with important business content who need to collaborate with colleagues, clients, and partners

IBM Lotus Quickr is team collaboration software that helps you access and interact with the people and information in your organization to complete projects effectively. IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5.1 for Domino provides additional features to the newly released Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Domino including:

• Support for Domino Off-Line Services, which enables users to create a copy of a Quickr Place on their local machine, make changes to the local copy without a network connection, and then synchronize changes on the server when reconnected to the network (Microsoft Windows users only).
• Availability of Hebrew and Arabic national language versions so now all national languages are supported.
• Import and export support for Microsoft Excel 2007 formatted files into the new "List" feature for structured content. Lists were first introduced in Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Domino.
• Easy, direct upgrade process from Lotus Quickr for Domino 8.1, 8.2, and 8.5.
• Support for Lotus Connections 3.
• Support for Lotus Sametime 8.5.1.

Planned Availability Date

December 16, 2010: Electronic availability
January 14, 2011: Media availability

New Features
      •        VBA scripts support
      •        ODF 1.2 standard support
      •        Office 2007 OLE support
      •        Brand new sidebars containing enriched property sections and panels across different editors, with support of sidebar panel management to show or hide sidebar panels
      •        Ability to customize toolbar content and layout
      •        Ability to create new business cards and labels
      •        Ability to insert OLE, audio and video files
      •        Master document support
      •        Support of Live Text
      •        Enabled file encryption and password protection with Microsoft Word and Excel files
      •        Support for "Open in new window". Users can use Command+~ on Mac OS and Alt + Tab on XP/Vista to switch windows
      •        New clip art gallery
      •        More template files
      •        Support of VML images in OOXML files
      •        Support of more parameters for protecting spreadsheet files and sheets in VBA API
      •        Support of separate downloads of spell check dictionary addons for 22 languages for Windows OS users
      •        Support of same build re-installation in silent mode on Windows
      •        Support of online check of new product updates
Enhancements
      •        Better graphic object rendering through improved anti-aliasing
      •        Refined main menu and toolbar design for better usability and consistency across editors
      •        Ability to open a file by dragging and dropping it to a tab or empty workbench
      •        Better usability during the operation of dragging graphic objects
      •        Enhanced the usability in manipulating color property with new color picker controls
      •        Enabled new progress bar to launch and load/save files
      •        Enabled memorizing user file paths when inserting objects into file
      •        Added one click link to LotusLive website on homepage
      •        Improved accessibility support for graphic objects in files and help
      •        Various additional user experience enhancements
      •        Significant enhancement in online help content and structure

Guests:  
David Pearson (twitter | email) is a senior architect in the IBM Software Services for Lotus Centre of Excellence, and is also IBM's worldwide services leader for Symphony. He has been at Lotus / IBM for 14 years.
Eric Otchet (email) is currently the Product Manager for Lotus Symphony.  He has been with IBM for over 22 years and has held both technical and sales positions during that time.

Symphony 3 launch:

• What is IBM Lotus Symphony ?
• How did Symphony come about?
• What is IBM's strategy ?
• Can you describe the Symphony roadmap ?
• What is the relationship with the OpenOffice community ? What does IBM do with OpenOffice Code ?
• Will split in OO movement help or hinder (LibreOffice)? Does IBM feed back into OO code?
• What are the key differences between OpenOffice and Symphony ? Is there round-trip compatibility?
• How Does Symphony link into the rest of the Lotus portfolio ?
• When will Symphony v3 be available ?
• What are the key new things in Symphony v3 to get excited about ?
• Once Symphony 3 ships, can we integrate it into (and over) the current Lotus Notes Symphony install?
• What is Project Concord and how does that integrate with Symphony ?
• Any plans to extend Symphony to include Draw and give us a real Visio replacement?  Or a database?
• When will be able to save as docx, xlsx and pptx?
• Quickr connectors? Coming? Dates?
• Get more information from symphony.lotus.com

Overall, the LotusLive Notes release does not feel that dramatic. It's only with its context in history does the true meaning of its next progression begin to illuminate and we see how connected IBM and Microsoft are to developments in collaboration and the cloud.

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Connections	Quickr

IBM Lotus Quickr V8.5 for Domino streamlines user experience and is designed to reduce total cost of ownership

At a glance

IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Domino makes it easier to share, save, and search important business content while collaborating with colleagues, clients, and partners. Performance improvements and administrative improvements are designed to reduce the total cost of ownership of Lotus Quickr for Domino.

New capabilities include:

• Streamlined user experience
• Native integration with Enterprise Content Management systems
• Feature enhancements you requested including recycle bin and lists
• More extensibility for easy customization
• More administrative control, reporting, and deployment options

Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Domino integrates with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories. New ECM integration capabilities are:

• Custom defined mandatory metadata entry, through the Web interface and via Lotus Quickr Connectors
• Direct connection with ECM repositories that allows native display and editing of ECM content directly from the Lotus Quickr Web interface
• Parametric search of ECM content

Adding features you requested makes Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Domino a competitive and compelling solution for managing business content. Some of the new features included in Quickr 8.5 for Domino are:

• Easy document check-in, check-out, and versioning from the Web interface and Lotus Quickr Connectors
• A recycle bin for soft delete capability, which maintains document security
• Round trip editing in all browsers, not just Internet Explorer
• Team calendar overlays to your personal calendar in Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook
• Folder level access control making it easy to secure or share content appropriately
• Intuitive lists function to organize data sets and to provide an easy way to visualize, edit, and analyze tabular data
• Representational State Transfer (REST) services for page and document uploads and expansion of Web service APIs that provide additional extensibility and customization

Additional enhancements make managing Quickr 8.5 for Domino easier:

• Easier to manage with new and easier to use administrative control, reporting, and deployment options.
• Easy to upgrade with support for direct upgrade from Quickr 8.2 to Quickr 8.5 for Domino.
• Expanded and stored system usage statistics that allow trend analysis and easier optimization.
• Multilingual Lotus Quickr servers that are supported for organizations who use different languages. You no longer need to deploy multiple Lotus Quickr servers to support more than one language.
• Supports Windows single sign-on so end users can leverage their Windows logon for the Lotus Quickr browser UI and Lotus Quickr Connectors.
• Linux server support provides more choice of operating systems.

As I announced here on Aug 16th, SNAPPS was working on some user-focused plug-in modules for the "My Places" area of Lotus Quickr for Domino. Well today I can happily say it is a fait accompli, and ready for production! We've developed three to start with, and more are in the works. The Modules work with versions 8.1, 8.2, and 8.5 (beta or GA, when that comes). I've detailed them below, and you should see screenshots very soon - but the code is ready and evals are downloadable now. Our final stress test simulated what would likely be the largest single-server Quickr installation in the world, so I think we're ready!

Favorites Module
The Favorites Module gives end users the ability to - with a simple click of the mouse - create a link to their most often-used places at the top of the My Places list. Once there, the user can reorder the list, change the name of the link to what they want, or remove them from the list. In the My Places list, places that are already Favorites have a visual cue of a gold star next to the name. The Module is simple, intuitive, and one of the most requested features in the Quickr product. The Favorites module is licensed per user.

Custom Tab Module
The Custom Tab Module lets you add your own tab to the My Places area, with your own HTML and Javascript. It can be as simple as "Company News," "Privacy Policies," or "Usage Guidelines." Or, you can make it as complex as a charting application, dashboard, aggregation of data from other sources - there really is no limit to what you can do with this extra page! SNAPPS is of course available to develop your custom content for these more complex use cases. The Custom Tab Module is licensed per server.

InfoBox Module
The InfoBox Module lets you add your own text or HTML on the left side of the screen in one of five ways. You can create a separate box above or below IBM's "Tips" box, you can prepend your text in the same Tips box, append to the end of it, or replace it entirely! The InfoBox Module is licensed per server. However, if you purchase either the Favorites or Custom Tab Modules, we'll give you a license of the InfoBox Module as a bonus!

After angsting for a few weeks about building a new website, registration process, and all the beta testing involved with just the evaluation process, we decided to use what we already had - QuickrTemplates.com. Thousands of Quickr users, administrators and developers are already registered there, so we have built a second tab (once you're logged in) for Product Evals. It was very important to us to keep it clear that everything on the primary list of templates is still free! If it's been a while since you've logged into QuickrTemplates.com (and it shouldn't be - we updated the freebies just a couple weeks ago), simply enter your email address and click "Reset Password" and you'll get a new password immediately. Then log in, click on Product Evals, and all you need is right there on one page - downloads, instructions, and the key request file.

Lotus Quickr Domino 8.5 Beta upgrade complete

We have completed the upgrade of our Lotus Quickr Domino server to the 8.5 Beta version for everyone to try out!!  This upgrade took slightly longer than expected due to the number of places that we have (we'll need to do some archiving soon), but was very straight forward.  Please try it out and let us know what you think by posting comments and any issues that you may encounter to the Lotus Quickr Forum or send us an e-mail.

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New IBM Social Software to Help Enterprises Securely Manage Files, Blogs and Wikis

Today at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, IBM announced new social software called IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 for WebSphere Portal to help workers connect and adapt to information and insight, including files, blogs, and wikis in a rapidly changing business environment.

ebizQ received the following:

The software, which offers a higher level of integration with a variety of IBM and Microsoft offerings than the previous version, is available now.



Rheinmetall AG tested the new software. “Lotus Quickr 8.5 software will help our employees cope with daily business challenges and collaborate more efficiently with coworkers, customers and suppliers,” said Markus Bentele, Corporate CIO, Rheinmetall AG.

A recent study by IBM found that 98 percent of CEOs need to restructure the way their organizations work; 5.3 hours is wasted per employee per week due to inefficient processes. Two hours is spent per employee per day looking for the right information and expertise within an organization. IBM’s social software can help alleviate this problem because it helps keep global work teams better connected and more able to deliver results.

IBM Lotus Quickr helps teams create content, collaborate and work fast online together. It’s a companion product to Lotus Connections, software that empowers business professionals to develop, nurture and remain in contact with the network of their colleagues; respond quickly to business opportunities by calling upon expertise in their network; and discuss and refine new creative ideas with communities of coworkers, partners and customers.

• Enables the discovery of enterprise content and provides seamless access to business documents across the organization, while leveraging collaboration tools and every day business applications (e-mail, Office, and other tasks)
• Provides organizations with the ability to handle content as a secure corporate asset in an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, allowing content to participate in Business Process Management, and to be managed in accordance with content discovery, auto classification, as well as compliance and retention policies

• Transfer collaborative content from Lotus Quickr to an ECM repository
• Incorporate existing ECM content inside collaborative team places
• Search Lotus Quickr and ECM content from a Lotus Quickr user interface
• Search IBM Content Manager and IBM FileNet Content Manager content from common desktop and e-mail applications
• Use the e-mail and desktop Place connectors to directly interact with content in IBM Content Manager and IBM FileNet Content Manager
• Use direct connect iWidgets to natively interact with content against IBM Content Manager and IBM FileNet Content Manager
• Extend advanced ECM services and function to broader collaborative team services and document management environments

I’ve been using Symphony 3 on Windows and Mac since the release of beta 2 back in February. It’s a huge improvement over version 1.x – but beta 3 is another leap forward. The Symphony web site lists a few things new to beta 3… ability to customise the toolbars, instant export to PDF, and a new plug-in to make your LotusLive files directly available.

But there’s something else that I love about Symphony, and it’s improved in beta 3. In all aspects Symphony shows a panel on the right-hand side which gives quick and easy context-sensitive access to properties for whatever you’ve selected. It’s an approach that’s so much better than endlessly going in and out of dialog boxes, and makes Symphony very easy to use.

Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 3 is now available! Give it a try. Tell us what you think.

Lotus Symphony 3 Beta represents a major new advancement for our Lotus Symphony users. Based on current OpenOffice.org 3 code stream. Lotus Symphony 3 Beta offers loads of new features and capabilities and improved file fidelity. The Lotus Symphony team is excited to get it out to you and get your feedback.

Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 3 adds some exciting new enhancements. You can now customize the toolbars and arrange them as you like. We've added a one click export to PDF icon that you can add to your toolbar. You now have the option to create toolbars to support your individual work style.

We've continued to enhance the user interface and added more features to the sidebar panels in all three applications. We've added additional animations options to give you more choices and moved frequently used functions to the sidebars so you don't have to search for them. We're also connecting Lotus Symphony to the cloud with a new LotusLive plugin. You will be able to store and retrieve content directly from within the Symphony application to our LotusLive service. Make sure to get the plugin from the Symphony plugin page and sign up for the free 30 day trial of LotusLive.

So, download Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 3 today and try it out.

IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 for WebSphere Portal delivers:

• New user experience
• Native bridging with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories
• More administrative control
• New library portlet to integrate Lotus Quickr content into WebSphere Portal applications
• Infrastructure update and expansion, including support for IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1.5

IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors 8.5 provides:

• Users with the ability to easily access and contribute shared content in Lotus Quickr team places and ECM systems directly from popular desktop applications
• Integration with Lotus Quickr and ECM systems from Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Symphony, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Windows Explorer

IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 for WebSphere Portal provides user interface enhancements, increased integration, streamlined administration, and infrastructure updates. It includes:

• Updated browser theme to give users a consistent experience across IBM products, including Lotus Connections and WebSphere Portal.
• Simplification of frequent user actions such as navigation within a place and common library, and document management actions.
• New rich text editor for browser-based creation of content. The same text editor is used across IBM products, such as Lotus Connections, giving end users a common experience.
• Increased integration between Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections, including top-line navigation, use of the person card, and integrated search menu.
• Simplification of member management inside Quickr places to facilitate end-user self-service.
• New place catalog with tag-based navigation that simplifies locating places, particularly in large Lotus Quickr deployments.
• Enhanced integration with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories, including new "direct connect" Web-based component that allows users to natively display and interact with ECM content from within a Lotus Quickr place.
• Parametric search of ECM content.
• Enhancements to Lotus Quickr Connectors to better support ECM content (refer to Software Announcement ZP08-0602, dated December 09, 2008.
• Easier, more flexible management tools with new administrator console that provides more complete user and place statistics, enhanced backup and recovery tools, and simplified place customization.
• New library portlet to integrate Lotus Quickr content into WebSphere Portal applications.
• Support for WebSphere Portal V6.1.5.
• Other infrastructure platform updates including AIX V6.1 64 bit, Windows 2008 64 bit, SLES 10, SLES 64 bit on System z, Oracle 10.2, Internet Explorer 8 on Windows, Firefox 3.5 on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Using Lotus Quickr Connectors 8.5 so users can easily and naturally work together on content and access content contributed by colleagues directly from their favorite desktop applications. The connectors support check-in and check-out to help manage the process of multiple authors, and version control to ensure that everyone always has the latest copy of a document. Lotus Quickr Connectors 8.5 is included with other Lotus Quickr offerings and is also available separately for access to other content repositories such as ECM systems.

• Mandatory metadata enforcement - new, simple and intuitive interface to enter and enforce entry of metadata for documents.
• Notes integration - simple drag-and-drop of Lotus Notes e-mails into Lotus Quickr places.
• Sametime integration - drag-and-drop documents into a Lotus Sametime chat windows and Web conferences.
• Microsoft Office integration - native integration into the Office 2007 "ribbon."
• User-initiated publication to a content server that helps manage performance -- particularly useful in low bandwidth situations.
• Launch a search dialog from the context of a desktop connector.
• Support for third-party authentication tools, such as SiteMinder and Tivoli Access Manager.
• Support for single sign-on tools, such as SPNEGO.
• Support for multiuser installation of the connectors on a shared workstation.

Lotus Symphony is an office suite by IBM. It’s free.

Free?

Yes, free. From IBM. And yes, I know, "IBM" and "free" never appear in the same sentence, but this time it does. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s available for Windows, Ubuntu, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux and Mac OS X.

Why it is free?

Because it’s based on OpenOffice.

I will state up from this is not a Microsoft Office replacement. If you use MSO now, you probably wouldn’t switch to this. However, you probably would use this over OpenOffice.

Let’s get into why that is.

The splash screen on startup. I’ll be honest – I felt like I stole this software when I saw this, even though I know it’s free. IBM goes to great lengths even in their free products to achieve a look that is polished and professional. I see the IBM and Lotus, and think, "Whoa.. IBM product. Big deal here."

I really dig the fact that modifying text properties is just so darned easy in Symphony. Just about everything you would want to do with text is here.

It’s all about the tabs.

Symphony for all intents and purposes acts like a web browser with the way it does tabs. In fact it even has its own web browser!

Home, Document, Spreadsheet – all in tabs side by side. No ridiculous separate windows. It’s all contained and you can switch back and forth at whim.

That’s just so beautiful it gets me misty. Someone give me a tissue (sniff)..

Kidding aside, this is a darned convenient way of switching back and forth between open docs, spreadsheets, presentations and web sites.

Also know that most software titles that tries to do the all-in-one thing usually fail miserably at it. Symphony doesn’t and it gets it right the first time.

What’s the best part about Symphony?

What I liked best is that there’s almost no learning curve to Symphony at all. It feels familiar from the moment you start using it. Things are laid out in a way that just make sense. It can be use