SnTT: What if You Only Want Sametime, Meetings or Connections but NOT Mail in IBM Connections Cloud?

For years, since it was a wee little LotusLive, we, the greater Business Partner community, have told customers they could go to the Cloud one step at a time, or everything at once. Easier said than done sometimes. The hybrid or on premises decision, which IBM imposes on your organization BEFORE you start out, is just the tip of the iceberg.

Maybe your preference is Connections or Meetings or Traveler(well you could, not sure why you would) or Verse or Docs...anything BUT mail.

You see, mail is of course the big one, the main reason usually why people want to go to the cloud.

So when one of our clients realized a bit late in the day that they needed to do something fast for their Sametime servers, we suggested the IBM Connections Cloud.

Why build a whole Sametime infrastructure when you can have one permanently in the Cloud and updated all the time and it costs you less than a license fee a year? Seems like a good deal, right?

As someone who builds out Sametime infrastructures, this is much cheaper than having me build you one, that is, presuming you can or want to go to Cloud.

Well, it has been at least 3 years since I loaded a customer into the IBM service, while some of the process has stayed the same, the rest was a new thing for me. And now you get the benefit of my sleepless nights.

For this post, we will presume you have Cloud licenses, of some sort, either dual entitlement or purchased or some other IBM named license that grants you Cloud usage and access.

Once you request from IBM your login credentials (most people get an email about it when the dual entitlement went out, but easier to ask IBM to resend it then find it) you can start the process of setting up your cloud domain.

For this project, because we thought it would be a possible migration down the road we recommended a Hybrid approach. The truth is no matter which way you chose, the details below will work for you.

Once chosen, one has to detail the Domino passthru server name, ID, cert.id files, passwords, mail directory name, directory name itself, etc. and reach a point where IBM's server talks to your server, and with some DNS changes, everyone gets along real well. Note usually any issues at this point are Firewall and/or DNS related as we presume you know your Domino infrastructure and how to create IDs and passthru servers,

Now comes the fun part.

If you have a small organization(between 1-50), you may want to just create everyone manually, but when you are a few thousand people, that is not practical. Oh and remember this is WITHOUT email.

How do you do this? Normally when you register people, it starts the whole mail file and directory process, oh you can selectively add/remove parts manually but how do we bulk process people?

Well you will need to do a few more things with IBM before you start this process. Note to IBM, a nice flowchart of what to do, when, how for each option(Cloud or Hybrid) would be REALLY nice and helpful.

First thing to do is to request from IBM an Integration Server (about this here) account to provide FTP uploads of .csv files. This request, for a LLIS (Lotus Live Integration Server) account includes the steps as follows from here:

• Send an email to support@collabserv.com with Integration server enablement request - Your Customer Name in the subject line. The email must contain the items in the following list. The first three pieces of information can be obtained from the Organization Account Settings page for your organization.
• Organization name
• Customer ID
• Organization contact email address
• Email address that is to be used to access the integration server. This account must already exist in the cloud and have the Administrator role. This account does not need a user role or any subscriptions assigned to it.
• You can request additional email addresses that are to be set up as integration server users, as long as they are existing accounts with the Administrator role.
• You are notified when enablement is complete and you can use the integration server. Note that your CSR might need several days to complete your enablement. This enablement account is known as the integration server user account.

Once this is done you will get a reply with details to login and set up your FTP links.

The MOM tool will not be used because that is for Mail Migrations/integration with the Cloud in case you were wondering.

Now comes the part that drove me crazy for a while, the .csv file.

You can read about it and see example pages here, here and here among other page of the documentation online.

Suffice it to say, because I know if you are reading this, and in the process of trying this, you probably said TL:DR for the documentation or like me tried it a few ways and felt like breaking a baseball bat on some tech writers head.

And to you, lucky winners, I am providing the exact syntax and details.

You need to understand IBM envisioned people only using Mail, or only using Connections as the primary reasons for moving to the Cloud so  there are actually 2, yes, two, .csv files you need to create to get any user registered as a Sametime user.

Got that? Neither do I but this will become HCLs issue to correct soon enough.

The 1st .csv needs to create the user, and thus a Connections account. 

DO NOT JUST MAKE A MAIL ACCOUNT THAT WILL NOT BE USED. IT WILL TAKE OVER THE USERS RECORDS AND POINT THEM TO THE CLOUD. 

You have been warned.

Here is what I did, you may have better luck with different ways to create the .csv file, but this is how I did it.

Once you get the list of users from the customer, you will need to break the list down to 200 people at a time. Why? Because that is what IBM has the system set to handle currently. If you put in 201, it will provide a failure report and not process. Again, you have been warned.

Open Excel and create a header row with each column for one item and they look like this, syntax matters so check the docs if you are not sure!
emailAddress  action subscriptionid givenName  familyName  language  timeZone  country

Details to be put in each column under the heading:
Emailaddress - put in the users email address
action - Add (Add is used for new people to be registered/provisioned, see here for the other choices)
subscriptionid - Found once you login to Connections Cloud and go to Admin-Manage Organization from the top right side, then click on Subscriptions from the left side and get the Connections

Subscription Entitlement ID

givenName - First Name
familyName - Last Name
language - en_US for US English (Language list here)
timeZone - America/Atikoka (This is EST, Time Zone list is here)
country - US (Country list here)

(Originally IBM also included password, but since the system automatically sends the user an email with a temporary password with the links to Connections Cloud and to change their password, we figured we did not need this option. If you think you need more options or more specifics in registering people, here is the complete list of field options.)

Sounds so simple, right? So you fill in the spreadsheet, then click Save As, find the basic .csv option and save the file. Oh, but you need a specific name as well, see here for more details.

Format of the .csv file name is: customerId_prv_seqnum.csv

customerid -  Found once you login to Connections Cloud and go to Admin-Manage Organization from the top right side, then click on Organization Account Settings from the left side
prv - leave as prv
seqnum - you need to go to http://www.epochconverter.com for the UNIX time that the file needs. Keep in mind all future csv files must have a time stamp after the prior one or they will not get read. A bit of a PITA but understandable for an automated process.

so an example might look like this: 22792279_PRV_1556820735.csv

Now login to your ftp client and the LLIS and upload the file. My efforts showed the file was picked up by the server every 7-10 minutes. 200 people would be registered in about 10 minutes.

Once the file is picked up, the ftp site will add 3 new folders to your login location, error, report and processed.

If all goes well your file will be in processed and your report will show a new file for each upload and a code of 463.

If it did not go well you will see your file and a trace file in the error folder and the report will tell you which line failed and why. Usually syntax, I had some cut and paste spaces in a few cases that caused me issues

Great, moving along now we need to create .csv #2 and get all these fake Connections users real Sametime accounts.

This one is much simpler because we only really need 3 columns:

emailaddress

action

subscriptionid

emailaddress - put in the email address

action - AssignSeat (this is so the existing registered person gets Sametime added to their account)

subscriptionid - Found once you login to Connections Cloud and go to Admin-Manage Organization from the top right side, then click on Subscriptions from the left side and get the Chat 

Subscription Entitlement ID


Name the file as above but change the timestamp and upload the saved .csv.

You can login at anytime to your Cloud instance and check the users have been created and have Sametime included in their options.
And that is how to register users that are not using Mail into Connections Cloud and you can do this for the other options or when you need to migrate their mail later on:Connections, Docs, Email, Traveler, Meetings, Verse, Chat

Good luck and remember, syntax matters!

IBM THINK is Next Week, Here is How to Find Me

I fly in from Israel, via Boston, Sunday and spending it with my cousin's new baby.

I will see some of you early Monday morning at the Champion breakfast.

For those in the Champion sessions I will be giving a Lightning talk along with a few other Champions from across IBM.
Why I, and you, (should) Love Domino
9 AM - 10AM
Moscone South Level 3, Room 301

Wednesday morning I am presenting my customer Case Study, in an open format to encourage people to ask questions rather than talk about the good, and bad, things we did. Slides will only be used if you don't ask questions.
Session 4572A - Why This Global law Firm Does Not Miss Deadlines
8:30AM - 9:10AM
Hilton Union Square - Yosemite A

Also Wednesday I am part of a Champion round table discussion
The Cloud and Competitive/Evangelism Activity
3:30PM - 4:10PM
Moscone South Lobby
IBM Champion Area

Aside from these defined events I will be roaming around and the best way to find me is via Twitter (@Lotusevangelist), what's app/call me (ask me for the number), Facebook Messenger, or if you are in one of my workspaces, Slack.

I am leaving Wednesday night due to other plans in Boca Raton, Florida and I hope to see you all before I leave. If you want to catch me in Florida let me know..

Dear IBM

As Yom Kippur starts for me here in Israel in 2 hours I want to publicly ask IBM, well everyone who reads this blog and knows me in one way or another, for forgiveness for all the things I may have said, or did, during the last year that just made you want to nsd -kill me.

A few things come to mind:

• Calling in a PMR as a Severity 1 when it probably was a 2.(I only did that once last year...I think)
• Screaming at the Fix central site for numerous reasons I will not mention but if I can ask one question, why can't I just enter my customer number to get a file? hmm?
• To all the Product Managers I have loved and lost and found, thanks for always answering the questions, no matter how difficult, even if it was to say it will be in a future release. 
• Whomever manages the certifications and virtual badges I only have 1 question, why doesn't it come in Yellow any more? Otherwise I know it is not your fault, you are just following orders.
• The QA teams. You must exist, I hope you exist, but sometimes I have my doubts. I apologize for the voodoo dolls.
• The naming committee members, oy, I am looking at a small quota on my mail file for those thoughts aren't I?
• PartnerWorld, I apologize for screaming at the most recent changes and it will not happen again...until next year's redesign if you remove my saved links again.
• Watson Workspace team for not creating a 32bit client and driving me crazy trying to get it to work, sorry about all the IMs.
• The NWTL team because I kept losing my links and having the patience to answer me 5 times where to upload the files. Sorry did not get to do it again this term.
• The content management teams that asked for guest blog posts, I find it very hard to write for a non customer facing product so I apologize for anthropomorphisizing Websphere. But #DominoRocks via IBM Notes.
• HCL I am really sorry I could not use my Golden Ticket. #Domino2025 will be here soon and I look forward to what you bring us.

I'd also like to apologize for the number of times a year I say, Quickr would work so well for this project.

At THINK, Therefore I was

55+ kilometers I walked last week.

For a conference.

The IBM THINK conference.

In Las Vegas.

30,000 people at an IBM Lovefest for 5 days of 3,000+ sessions.

I can only imagine this is what Woodstock was like, awesome speakers and musicians, great amounts of love and imagination and when you left you were worn out beyond belief.

My bad knee needs a vacation.

I was busy almost every day with sessions I gave, sessions I attended and various hall way meetings with IBMers.

Some sessions ran, some in mythical rooms (lacking maps it was hard to find some rooms), others never ran for unknown reasons. I missed more sessions because of the app that synched incorrectly dates and times. I hope they fix that for next year, and give us access to it much earlier.

HCL

My discussions about the HCL deal were interesting, the ICS teams strongly believe this is going to be the best thing yet. The fact Quickr was even mentioned made me pause to think maybe they were really looking at ways to rebuild everything. But dreams aside, the deal will run its course and this year, well really 2019 (presuming R10 comes out in Q4 2018) will be the make or break it year. Barry, don’t worry, I will let you know our top 10 webadmin needs.

THINK Academy

The IBM THINK Academy was a great place to spend time. The life size BattleShip game, professional head shots, Watson, labs galore, Soft Skills sessions where I and many other IBM Champions gave our time to help the next generation and most importantly…food and drinks all day long.

I attended one lab and it was run by a developer advocate Erin McKean, her avatar is a pink robot, that was great, sadly it was the only one I got to be a part of at the show. But it was run quite well and easy tutorial to follow. For more details about it, see the lab on git hub here.

I had more people at my soft skills presentation on speaking, Monday, than my microservices session on Thursday. To be fair, the latter was near the end of the show and attendance was way down by Thursday. I will post about the Q/A from my Soft Skills talks because that was enlightening.

Notes and Domino

Yes we will finally get to use .xls instead of .123 for import and exports. And a few things we have been asking about for years but the HCL team is listening and if you have enough information on why you want/need something, they will seriously think about it. Go to Gabriella Davis's blog post which includes her presentation on what is new, I can't do it justice.

Sametime is NOT Watson Workspace (WW)

Yeah, that is obvious but not to everyone yet. Sametime is staying on premises. WW is web/cloud based.

Sametime was Mentioned but nothing pronounced other than some licensing changes and a possible return to "just chat". Rumors of all kinds of things from a streamlined full stack to a completely microserviced architecture were tossed around. Of course it was dwarfed by the WW information. The new shiny in everyone's eyes. Helps it has Zoom built into it and its infancy is growing so stay tuned.

Connections

Dwarfed by the HCL stuff, Connections had sessions and I went to the troubleshooting one from Roberto and Sharon. Great stuff if you need to dig in deep. Grid looks good but I don't spend much of my time on Connections, although I will be in 2018.

Before I forget , I send my apologies to Heather Graham for cornering her about some things, but knowing each other for 10+ years it happens that some frustrations some with the discussion.

Thank Yous

Thank you to all the IBM Champions that I met for the first time and the usual cast of characters that I call my friends for helping me out or just talking through ideas or just spending time together which in some cases has been years apart.

Huge thank you to Alan Hamilton and Libby Ingrassia and their staff of IBM Champion wranglers. We are not an easy group to please and can be rather vocal when we want to be and they handled all of us quite well. They also supplied us with swag of the best kind and even got the front row tickets fort the concerts for everyone. They also helped get us some speaking options and other meetings of the secret kind so for all they do, thank you!

Thanks also to the team in THINK Academy that engaged us and let us have some fun in their areas to help people who wanted something other than tech details.

Parties
A great shout out goes to Ephox for the never miss Aussie Party, the many Business Partners or Vendors that invited me and everyone to imbibe and enjoy ourselves. For the ones I missed, or could not connect with, my apologies, I tried, but there are always plans and misses at the shows. There are also serendipity occurrences you can only put down to being at the right place at the right moment in time.

Skateboards

Thank you to IBM for the speaker gift certificate for the Logo and Book store. But $40 was not enough to get the skateboard. Libby, can we get IBM Champion ones? J

Next Year

Next year in San Francisco, in February is the next time this will happen, will see what the future brings before I commit to do this again.

A Sad Note

Lastly, I may not have been as much fun this year as usual. I found out on Monday that my best friend’s father passed away and I could not be there for him in Florida, or home in Israel for the burial. No doubt this influenced my time at the show and the nightly activities. RIP, BDE Rabbi, as I always called him even after I was old enough to call him by his first name.

As I head home finally, been away for 12 days, and I write this at 10,000 feet above the ocean I wonder if anything I saw will keep me busy for another 20 years like Domino has for so long. I don’t know. Time will tell. Then again I doubt Ray Ozzie thought Notes and Domino would still be alive.

I'm a LEGO Man Living in a Duplo World

This was aimed at business people, not developers.
The idea was to balance the past, client server world, with the new decentralized microservices one.
Delivered on the last day of IBM Think in Las Vegas.

I'm a LEGO Man Living in a Duplo World from Keith Brooks

SnTT - Pieces you may need for IBM Notes 901 FixPack 10 Interim Fix 1

In the evening, when the day is done...

I tried to upgrade my IBM Notes client to 901FP10IF1 from FP8.

And as luck would have it, you just.can't.do.it.

It breaks Sametime Embedded, it breaks the Connections plugins, it causes Milli Vanilli to win a Grammy. Okay, not everything can be blamed on the QA teams.

If you will be going down this path you will need the following, and Mac People there are updates for you as well.

These are on IBM.com Support/FixCentral which you now need your subscriptions up to date to download. Links will connect to IBM but you will need to login to download the files.

IBM Notes Fix Pack 10 Interim Fix 1

IBM Sametime 9011-ST-Client-FP-GSAI-AVHQ3A 

This Technote explains about the plugin failure you will receive when you install the FP10IF1 and includes the direct link to Fix central.

MAC clients? 

Notes_901IF14_MAC64_Standard

Otherwise known as 901SHF886.dmg

These Plugins are on the IBM Greenhouse site which was supposed to be sunset but seems to still be alive so move quickly. Links directly to the pages.

IBM Connections Plug-ins for IBM Notes

Version: 5.5 February 1, 2018: An updated image has been posted with the following changes:

• Support for IBM Notes 9.0.1 FP10 (on Windows)
• Miscellaneous defect and customer PMR fixes

IBM Connections Desktop Plug-ins for Microsoft Windows

Version 18.2 (February 2018) update:  The latest release introduces the following:​

• Miscellaneous defect and PMR fixes.

IBM Connections for Mac 

Version 18.2 (February 2018) update:  The latest release of the IBM Connections for Mac introduces the following:

• Miscellaneous defect and PMR fixes

PS - I am unable to reconnect my plugins to the IBM Cloud, stay tuned for further updates or let me know if you know how to fix it. To be fair it did not login before I upgraded either.

6th Time IBM Champion Thoughts

I think last time I pretty much laid out everything I wanted to say on being a Champion and what one can do to become one. Turns out it was a very popular post.

Thank you to my customers from other partners and projects, my clients, my friends (inside and outside IBM) and family for nominating me or voting for me. Especially like to thank everyone in the various forums, chat groups, bloggers that help me succeed in my day to day world as much as I hope I have helped them in theirs with my support and posts and archival code :-).

More details on the 2018 champions from Libby here. 

The IBM Champions program recognizes innovative thought leaders in the technical community and rewards these contributors by amplifying their voice and increasing their sphere of influence.

An IBM Champion is an IT professional, business leader, developer, and educator who influences and mentors others to help them innovate and transform digitally with IBM software, solutions, and services.

1400 nominations

650 Champions Elected

62% renewing

38% new Champions

38 countries represented

6 business areas, including Analytics (34%), Cloud (25%), Collaboration and Talent Solutions (24%), Power Systems (9%), Storage (1%), IBM Z (7%)

If you are going to IBM Think find me and my fellow Champions on User Community Day / IBM Champion Sunday.

If you go to any IBM events this year and see someone in IBM Champion logos or jackets or backpacks or whatever it might be, stop and say hi and meet some awesome people from the sales, technical, marketing and business world. 

Serverless Presenting at IBM Think

Greetings one and all to my first blog post of 2018.

I gathered you here today to admit that I was rewarded by my creative writing efforts with an acceptance email to come speak at the ultimate IBM event of the year, IBM Think.

In 2018 IBM has decided there should only be one event to "rule them all" and dropped all of the division events including many of my dear readers favorite Lotusphere IBM Connect.

Las Vegas, where the event will be held at the Mandalay Bay on March 18-22 will be like going to an all day concert where you will listen to everyone, but really just want to hear a few artists.

Naturally my ICS side hopes/expects there to be enough to keep me and the faithful happy.
With an estimated 100 tracks (just kidding, but if a normal event has 5-10, this could have 30+?)I also look forward to learning and seeing more about other areas of IBM's world that most likely you, and I, never knew existed. Examples? How about:

• The AI Bar where it knows your mood when you walk in and provides the appropriate drink.
• The IoT Plane Seat that automatically reduces the movement of your chair if you have unruly adults behind you.
• Collaborative lunch plans when your email/chat/IM/text/messenger/Facebook/Twitter feed senses you should eat and go with people ready at the same time. (choice of foods is still left to you)
• Teenager Security, keeping you alert to when your teenager....
• Beer chilled data center servers, because once you move non essential stuff to The Cloud, you need to get some ROI from that space and every company should have their own microbrewery.

Yes, in addition will be the Websphere, DB2, Tivoli, MAAS360, Trusteer, Smarter Planet, I P and Z series hardware, Kenexa, Redbooks and lots of things you never knew IBM sold.

Okay, what am I presenting on you ask? Here you go:

I'm a Lego Man living in a Duplo World
"Try it you'll like it", works for food, alcohol and TV shows, but doesn't work very well for software, does it? You know what works in software? Headless, adminless, serverless, payless parts and pieces. We live in a Lego world and piece by piece you need to build your world with as little as possible that is interchangeable as well. Finding the right piece that fits just the way you need it to do so, is all that matters.

I know what you are thinking, wtf is he talking about? 

Honestly when I revisited my submission notes, I am not sure either, my notes scribbled at 3am were impractically illegible.

How do you try IBM Cloud when you are not a developer? It's like going to the Whisky bar and being unable to make a choice because you never drink scotch, whisky, bourbon or rye.

Can one just "use an email service" without a server and license? 
Should you? 
Would you? 

How do you manage all these parts and pieces? Do you use a different piece for security or trust the one inside the IBM(or AWS, Azure, etc.) Cloud?
How do you monitor them since any one part can fail and kill your solution?

All of this and more, well what will fit in my time slot.

If you have any ideas or thoughts on this, questions, or maybe your company provides some of the tools I discussed, let me know about them.

See you all in Vegas! For more information go to IBM Think.

Thanks Spamanda

Our fearless leader, cat herder, rock singer, crazy cat woman has been given a chance at even more greatness and is joining Salesforce. The "XI" forum inside there grows daily it seems.

She got to know all of us pretty well while she ventured across the world for all the LUGs and other events that we all have partaken in over the years. 

Her efforts to make our experiences as Champions memorable paid off every time. When you consider the cult of personalities that we as a group exhibit, this is not a small feat.

Always helpful when I needed her, I am sure in her new role she will be even more helpful to everyone she works with and wish her much success. 

She will now have to find another supplier of Kinder eggs.

Your presence will be missed as you leave a big microphone for the next person to fill.

Why Experts Save You Money

Did you ever hear these from clients or prospective clients?
"Your fees are too high!"
"You want how much to do this?"
"I can get a <insert tech solution name> person for $10/hr why do we need you?"

I have heard these, and many others too over the course of my career.

Now let's hear how some others see this issue, these are general references not specific to anyone or anything.

• Sales advisors tell us it is because we have not sold the client on us and our solution that the price still matters. If they are not sold on using us, price becomes the scapegoat. This is true.
• Marketing advisors would say our value proposition is not clearly reaching out target market and we should either move down or up, depending on our circumstances and expectations of clients. This is true as well sometimes.
• Financial people would tell us that they have a budget they can not exceed, which we know is not true because if the CEO, or another executive with power, want something, they get it, no matter the cost. This is true too.
• Technical people will tell you they can get it done in a day or two. However, they first have to clear their existing project or support items and then involve a few teams of people and plan the change management, etc.. This is true too, except it will not get done until next year, usually.

What is rarely understood, although we do explain this all the time, is your code-monkeys will spend days trying to fix something that an expert sees and can fix in a few minutes or hours. When this is an internal resourced project, it seems, no one cares about time or cost. When it is an external resource, that is another story entirely.

A friend of mine recently spent, per their post, 5 hours on an email configuration issue.After I asked why they didn't ask my help for what I know to be a five minute fix, we then walked through the config and solved it. Even though they knew I have spent over 20 years on messaging systems, they did not ask for help until they had wasted quite some time. ( I am still hoping they used hyperbole and it was really an hour or 2 which is still too long)

Now, if they are the hourly billing type of person they have a dilemma, do they bill for the wasted hours of troubleshooting or part of it or none of it? If they bill by the project, this would not matter because things like this are expected and included in the pricing. It never makes one happy, but on the other hand, you gain valuable knowledge and experience to solve a problem for next time in seconds, and THAT is huge money to be made...when you bill by the project and not hourly. 

Of course, I can't bill for five minutes of work, well I could if they weren't my friend. The bill would be like the famous joke about the guy with the hammer who knew just where to hit the machinery. I could bill anything just to solve the problem, whether it took me five minutes or five seconds. 

Yes, cheaper solution providers exist, but they are not IBM Champions or Microsoft MVPs or Salesforce MVPs or whatever leaders in their respective fields that while we may not have encountered every issue, we are very battle tested and call upon our other friends to help us because that is what experts do in life.

We trust others to help us in return for the help we lend them. This for me is one of the best things about being an IBM Champion and knowing people that are the equivalent across many platforms. No one wants to ask for help, it is seen as a weakness, but once you get over this your world is much better as is all the people you engage with over the years.

If you are an IT manager, price means nothing when the issue is Enterprise important. If you think otherwise, your company will never get ahead of your competition. Work with experts who help make you look better to your boss, not cause your boss to look for replacements for you.

In Closing, the Connect CGS Speaker

The closing session at IBM Connect this year was probably the most educational closing session I have listened to over the years. And that is a good thing because although some closers were motivational or inspirational or imaginative, the creative process often gets hidden in the final product.

Eric Whitacre, who until the session I had not looked up or heard of, was very upfront about his motivations and goals/dreams and how all of them combine to help him fulfill his music efforts.

Eric has created a collaborative choir, digitally, and continues to push the envelope to do more. You can look at some of his work here, here, and here to get an idea of what I am talking about.

While that was all very cool and awesome acoustically, it was his explanations about how he composes the new pieces that was so intriguing.

As with most designers and artists, he free hands some ideas on paper peppered with items that pop in his head to come up with a high level plan. Nothing is wasted, they are just ideas for next time perhaps.

He quoted Hans Zimmer the great composer of so many movies themes who said “Why go with your 5^th worst idea when the 1st one is just as good”.

He then continued on by explain the Fibonacci number and how that influences art and music.

When Eric broke down the song from Frozen and compared it to how Beethoven’s 5^th works, I am pretty sure everyone in the room was blown away by the relative simplicity of his explanation to something most people give little thought.

Eric composes orchestral pieces but involves non-traditional methods into his work. His usage of snapping fingers to make rain storms for instance or having an audience download an app to run during  the concert when he tells them to hit the button providing an aural and visual enhancement to his piece is great art. By bring his audience into the conductor circle he has gained their interest and makes the symphony seem modern instead of old and dusty. I would love to take my kids to see him some day.

My wife will read this and remind me of how I fell asleep at the symphony with her parents when we were first married. It isn’t that I don’t like the music, in most cases I do, it just doesn’t excite me the same way as seeing Eric Clapton in concert. Let the record also state, I fell asleep at a Fleetwood Mac conference during Mick’s elongated drum/percussion solo. I argue I was just tired in both situations. J

I can only presume this is how great developers plan their applications. I have worked with few developers that do it this way to such detail but maybe the detail is not what is really important. The details are appreciated, but are they just nice to have or do they serve a purpose? Even if that purpose is to complete the overall original vision of the creator? Do people really notice these nice to have items?

Whoever said don’t sweat the small stuff, really never understood, it is the small stuff that means the most.

Executive Upgrades of the Server Kind

At Gurupalooza, the last day session of IBM Connect where the IBM Champions and Best Practices presenters answer audience questions, my friend Todd asked us something along these lines:

“How do you convince an executive that feature packs must be installed and maintained like formal releases?"

In today’s world, there are no formal releases. Your browsers update automatically, if you let them, your phones update apps automatically, again if you let them. So why should your servers or clients that have helped you to make money and sales likewise not be updated?

A few of us replied with these answers:

• ·         Security, many updates are about security which should not even be a question, especially if you have outside facing servers.
• ·         Compatibility, advances by obvious vendors like Microsoft can cause issues with older code because it cannot understand new drivers or parameters (I’m not a developer so keeping this simple for readers). Even Apple makes choices that can limit functionality for Traveler and device synchronization.
• ·         New functionality, even old dogs can have new tricks although these days evolutionary functionality is more expected. To be fair, non IBM messaging products do not have anything truly new, just different ways of doing the same thing, albeit faster (one hopes).

And these are all good and valid reasons, but for a stubborn executive, or a combatant one against specific companies or products, you need to dig deeper.

My answer was formed from my years of evangelizing the product line and pushing the boundary of what one can say to an executive. I always ask to see their staging and development architecture or environment. This usually creates a long discussion about priorities, resources and good intentions, but also brings the point home. If you want to delay the updates, because of fear of it breaking something, which is a very valid reason, you have no reason NOT to at least have some test environment for the updates.

My friend, and fellow IBM Champion, Bill Malchisky added to this idea by suggesting one look for the feature or function in the updates that best supports the business lines and getting the business lines to do your dirty work in getting the updates pushed through.

If you need an illustration, try referencing an automobile. If they had a service engine light on, they would bring their car in to the dealer. If their headlight died, they would go to Auto Zone or whatever shop, Walmart probably works too, and get a bulb and replace it. Okay, maybe this is too much for an executive who may not even know there are bulbs, but as a parallel reference it works.

The feature packs are that bulb. Safety (security) necessitates your head lights work.

Now ask about changing the oil on the car. The average person has no idea that it does not need to get changed every 3 months, yet that is what the industry started to do because once a year didn’t make them enough money. Anyway, the point is, when you change your oil, and your oil filter and usually the air filter and some other things you are helping your car run better and improve your mileage/gas ratio.

Feature pack 8 works the same way. One nice benefit is you get faster indexing or new enhanced view lookups or as we will see shortly, the index being removed from the NSF itself, optionally, and imagine how much faster your backup could be and your replication once you have these installed. Now to put that in application transactional business benefit, you may be able to do transactions a few seconds faster which makes your customers happier. Every little bit counts.

Like I have been preaching for years, if you did not get any budget for updates or after hours work it is because you never made the proper business case for your Enterprise software. If you treat it, internally, as an expense, rather than an investment with an ROI, you deserve the quagmire you may have fallen into by now.

In two separate conversations with other Business Partners, each were amazed at how many Domino.Doc customers still exist and never went to Lotus Quickr, or anything else. And now they will find it is even more expensive to migrate because at the time it was “just the document management app” instead of the “soul of our organization”.

If you put Domino and your applications up on high, or down low, then your executives will see it as you do. 

Aim high, be proud, be strong....and then present it all as a case study at IBM Connect next year or at a User Group event and be a leader to others.

Thursday Tips - Sametime Installations Gone Awry?

I recently inherited a failed Sametime Complete 9.0 Installation that was stuck on the proxy server.

This would be the 3rd time in the last 2 years I have had the same exact circumstance.

Thank you all for bringing these to me. The commonality in each case was a reliance on the Zero to Hero 900+ slide deck. While it is a great guide to follow, especially if internally you need screen shot by screen shot directions, it lacks a few things that are kind of important.

It makes it very clear everything is on one server, if anyone read the slides, this is not very feasible for the average installation.Why is this an issue? Websphere needs to be installed on each machine but is not mentioned anywhere. SSO is not mentioned. Creating the services, and dependencies for those services is only partially mentioned.Naming everything sametime.org.com is not going to work either.

There are many more items to consider and think about, in short, if you don't know enough about what is missing, don't start down this path.

So for those getting stuck along the way, and have yet to call me for help, here are some pieces of information which may help you along the way. None of this is new but sometimes you just need a bunch of help all in one place.

I will presume you know enough to download any updates from IBM's Fix Central, how to install Websphere and the Installation manager and all the other components. If not, call me.

In no particular order:
SSO import, export of the LTPA token to/from Websphere and the Community Server details can be found here.

Keep in mind the token name must be syntax correct and the same name used throughout the process.
You may want some more details from this post:

When you need to create the Domino SSO Configuration, use this guide.

You can have multiple Domino SSO Configuration documents, just name them differently.

We needed to do this in 2 of the 3 cases because we used the same Domino domain for Community servers and :LDAP servers. This is one case where creating a new OU inside your domain may help you, check with your trusted advisor.

Need to create a Windows Service, and Dependencies so on startup it loads all the WAS and server items properly? You need the sc.exe command tool .

The syntax is not fun, and be very careful with the CAPS letters and lower case ones as any diffrences will not let this work, see this for a massive example.

Here is an example of how I did a few. You start at the bin directory (I used a D Drive) and then enter the text starting with "sc config " after the ">" remember long names and spaces in between words need the quotation marks:

Proxy Server itself and has a dependency of starting AFTER the local nodeagent:

D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\con-stproSTPPNProfile1\bin>

sc config "IBMWAS

85Service - STProxyServer" depend= "IBMWAS85Service - con-stproSTPPNProfile1_nod
eagent"

 For the Sametime System Console (SSC) the Nodeagent has to start AFTER the Deployment Manager

sc config "IBMWAS
85Service - STConsoleServer_NA" depend= "IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.5 - STConsoleServer_DM"

If you need to remember the order of starting and stopping the Websphere Sametime Servers read this note.

Lastly, document that installation using my excel spreadsheet which you can get from this post of mine.

If You're going to San Francisco...

"You're gonna meet some gentle people there" 

- So sang the late Scott Mckenzie in May 1967 as an advertisement for the then upcoming Monterrey International Pop Music Festival.

One of them will be me, as I have been asked to speak about one of my clients about their journey to the IBM Connections Cloud.

The abstract officially says(link):

Getting to the cloud is half the battle; while getting your users to follow you (let alone understand what is where or how) is another story entirely. From CAPS-happy users to 75% traveling executives, and clients that are so well known we have perpetual attempts to defeat our security, these are some highlights of our experiences moving from on-premises to Connections Cloud.

Moscone West, Level 2 - Room 2011

Wed, 22-Feb 01:00 PM - 01:45 PM

(time, date and location may change before the event)

This is a new location, a new venue, a new conference with the same friendly and smart people you know from past years plus more people from across the tech scene which we have yet to know and become friends and family with over time.

Many of my fellow IBM Champions will be there, presenting and attending as will IBM Product Managers and if you look hard enough, the IBM Developers. 

The future which includes an expanding universe of Watson Workspace, Verse, Verse on Premises, IBM Connections, plus some surprises I am sure from the opening keynote to keep everyone excited during the show.

See you all in San Francisco!
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/collaboration/events/connect/

Mission Tools: Lotus Quickr to IBM Connections Cloud

Welcome to the 3rd installment of my migration project.

I am happy to say that we moved everything over, now we are verifying everything came over and cleaning up all the orphaned and misc. files that were found and cross linked at one time.

So, how did we get it all moved I bet you are asking.

There is an automated way, via IBM and their partner in Europe T-systems, which is part of T-Mobile it seems, they can help and their pricing is really for the bigger companies. They have a process and methodology and will then get working on it....but you still have limits of bandwidth and time although they claimed they could get this done in a week.

Our problem was, we could not have any down time, but also not have any duplication of data which they made it sound like they offload the data first then do a second synch afterwards.

If you want to go with them, contact me and I will connect you.

After weighing the pros and cons we decided to do it in house.

These are the tools I used, you may have other preferences.

IBM: IBM Connections Cloud Plugins for Windows and the plugins for Notes clients. You will also need the Quickr Places Monitor.

RPR Wyatt: Quickr Essential File Extractor and Essential Place Catalog. There are some fees with these and you need to ask for it as it no longer sits on the website. I previously worked with RPR Wyatt and was loaned the tools. I owe you drinks Jim! 

Microsoft: Windows Explorer

Lialis: MAC people this is for you, File Jockey, to have a plugin that doesn't cost you anything. As they state on the site:

"We also supply File Jockey for all IBM Connections Cloud users. It's 100% free, no limitations and no signup. Feel free to use it now by pressing the button above to read the how to guide."

And there you go. Nice and simple right? Off you go.

Not so fast. You will find a few things along the way that you also need this cute tool I found called  Bulk Rename Utility. It does exactly what it says and makes changing, say 800 folders that had an added _Folders added to them, magically disappear in seconds. No command line knowledge required. Ask me if you need help.

Why do we need this tool? Because the RPR Wyatt tool extracts all the attachments and maintains the folders layout but adds _Folder to everything, My main gripe, but a small one. The developer did not return my messages, hey it is free without support, I just wanted to make it a better tool. But since these posts are capping out at 200 views I figure no more than 200 Quickr shops exist and maybe it isn't a big enough group to warrant the effort. So if you still have Quickr and are thinking of migrating let me or RPR Wyatt know. There is safety in numbers.

The steps of my process was, after backing it all up someplace first:

1. Use the RPR Wyatt Place Catalog tool first and review what we had and how much of it existed.
2. Use the RPR Wyatt Extractor tool to extract the files from one place at a time. Why not all at once? 100's of GB and you know there will be issues, you want to progress, even if it is slowly.
3. Once extracted and you installed all your plugins, login to IBM Connections Cloud and manually start making all of your Communities. If you read my post on automating this process you will think, cool I can load them all at once. Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. IBM in a PMR I raised outlined that you can only create 1 community at a time and only with one owner. Thus, the actual time it took me to create a community and configure it the way we needed and have all the proper owners and members was approximately 2-3 minutes each. Not so bad, but I really wish IBM had fixed their API.
4. Next step is to add the Communities to the Windows Explorer plugin.
5. Now copy and paste from one Windows Explorer window from the drive on teh server where you extracted the files to the other which has the Community list.
6. Once done, delete all non admin members from the Place within a browser so users do not accidentally add or delete files that are needed.
7. Continue until done.

The Lialis File Jockey was for the MAC people to start using Connections files the way they needed to for every day work. So technically I did not use it to do the migration, but I give them kudos for being there and were it NOT for them, the project might not have started as the office is moving over to all MACs.

Sounds easy, but what we found was rather dismaying.

1. Cross linked files were everywhere. This was from various crashes over the years and while we knew we had some, I was not expecting the 100's of folders linked.
2. Orphan files. The extractor tool was great about files and folders but sometimes random files just in a place did not get migrated. Always verify what you see is what you got.
3. Hidden folders and other anomalies. Probably some bad drag and drop by someone left some folders in the oddest places.
4. Size matters. What the Quickr server and the RPR WYatt tool showed us was not what we found when we extracted the data, In fact, we found we had about 60% of the data once extracted. As an example if we were told there were 10GB in a place we usually had about 6GB after extraction. SWEET! But left me wondering what was wrong. See cross linked files and you start to understand.

Thus while the project was completed by the time everyone started work today, I still have many folders and files to clean up, VERY manually eye balling everything. And I am sure I will get some panic call about a missing file or two, but at least to the employees, everything is moved.

There will be one more post in this series about what I learned about IBM Connections Cloud along the way, stay tuned.

So now that I am done with this project, anyone else need me to help migrate them to IBM Connections Cloud?

At Last

‘Cause after a while and a thousand miles, it all becomes the same... - Bill Joel

Once upon a time in his song The Entertainer about life on the road as a musician.

This is my 1,000^th blog post under the LotusEvangelist brand/title/moniker/aura. I had planned to write this one December 31^st or when the latest IBM Champion announcement came out, but I was a few blog posts short.

The early days, 2007 or so, I was blogging quite frequently but over the years that slowed down considerably. Last year I had barely a post a month. I could blame G+, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or just face a reality that one cannot write forever. It is not writer’s block but more likely I have said all I wanted to say on this topic. This of course is not true, but it would seem this way based on the data.

Many of my posts were about technical peculiarities and things I, and hopefully you, learned along the way. The ecosystem of Lotus, now IBM Notes and Domino, thrived because we all worked together to help it grow, collaboration at its best. The original belief I had that we, the experienced ones, needed to help the new admins and people who were not getting training anymore was what led me to continue writing once I found my muse for this blog.

The Muse was a lack of evangelism around the Lotus brand. Many Lotus, now IBM, technical blogs exist, but few theory or business related ones. In particular no one really wanted to engage the enemies of our livelihood. It was a role I had when I worked for Lotus and one which I desperately wanted to see the Tiger team and SWAT teams perform, but that never happened. Internally I know they published but it was the lack of external information which pushed me further down this blog of a rabbit hole.

There were 70 FUD Buster Friday posts which were way too much fun to write until there was not enough to really write about further. As Paul Simon once said, “I could see the writing on the wall”. Plus, to be honest, I don’t like the serial, “I have to write another Friday” post feeling, it goes against my free spirited view of life.  However, it is the best way to create a following, by being consistent.

Of course the other vendors also stopped publishing the hard core stuff against us. A few people, not many, asked me to stop wasting my time on these posts and yet many others ask if I will write more for posts and the upstarts they come across. Being an IBM Champion has caused me to respond to these maybe too often. I don’t apologize, they were written because I wanted to write them, not because I thought I needed to do so, or because IBM or anyone else pushed me to do so. The life of an evangelist is a double edged sword at times.

My blog also was used to help promote events. I tried to promote not just the many conferences and training events I was a part of, but some of the ones I never could get to as well. I tried to average 4 events a year to be a part of, and help, where, and when I could with other ones. My blog also helped me speak on 3 different occasions at SugarCon, the SugarCRM annual event.

Sometimes I wrote things I regretted, sometimes I wrote the most amazing posts and no one read them. What encourages readership is beyond me at times but I do know that timing is everything. My iNotes posts from years ago are still hit every.single.day, go figure.

I had some fun posts, various holidays and quirks of pop culture and even discussions about the opera and live tweeting it. Yes, it has been quite a bit of fun over the years. The blog helped me become an IBM Redbooks Thought Leader with a Social Residency. I wish I could be a part of these further for IBM and help train the new people and also protect them from the zombieness of canned social media. Be yourself, some of you out there get it and you should be encouraged further.

Speaking of IBM Redbooks, there were various Redbooks I wrote or took part in writing. There were articles written for The View and Exams that I wrote. I would be remiss if I did not mention the Quickr Administrator book. All of these great things, and people, may not have come about if I had not been blogging and getting my name out there in some way shape or form. And almost all of this was before I was an IBM Champion too.

And now, now I believe it is time to admit that much of what I wanted to say has been said. Are there still things I’d like to post, yes. Will I? That is a good question and only time will tell.

My next project is taking shape and as it grows I will keep you informed but I believe it will take much of my free time and so I am not going to say this is the end, but I do not expect to post often and given the last year or so, I think I am being pretty open and honest on this point.

The friends, places and events which I have been a part of over the years are what give me hope for the future endeavors we all embark upon to shine the light of collaboration, trust, friendship and experience no matter what business, or where, we end up.

For the first time in my life I feel old. I go to events and realize I am not the average attendee age, I am the old guy in the room. I wasn’t expecting this to happen, not yet at least. The interesting thing is my peers and friends, and readers, are in the same boat. We see the new people coming up the ranks and some of them really are as good, if not better, than we were and are today. Some of us also only get better with age.

Blogging is not a young or old thing to do. It is an expression of creativity, or sanity check, which I have enjoyed. I cannot express my appreciation enough to all the people who commented, liked a post, met me at an event and shook my hand, bought me a drink or thanked me for being there and helping them out, or just encouraging them to go for broke, but keep their day job too.

It was, and is, worth it and I don’t regret more than 2-3 posts over all that time which I think is a pretty good ratio.

Last second words of Wisdom:

Don’t post Shit(but do write some fun posts), think about how people will react when you are being provocative, don’t dump on the hand that feeds you, be it IBM or any vendor, or your customers. Try to give credit to others when it is due, if you get great help from support please blog about it for their managers benefit(Yes, I know it is about the survey but I also know it lets the support people know we care).

I’d like to think I will write another 1,000 posts in time, just not wait 9 years again to reach the milestone.

No idea when I will see you next, maybe at the next conference, maybe in an airport passing through, but we will see each other again soon my friends.

Hope She Takes the Bat

Caveat to any non-Lotus readers, sorry but sometimes my world of Lotus/IBM needs dedicated posts.

Those in the know, of course, get the title of this post reference, and by now should all know that one of the greatest people from the support side of IBM is shutting down her laptop for the last time with her IBM login.

You can read her last blog post on it, here. Go ahead, this can wait the few minutes.

She finished her documentation, closed all her tickets, completed all her training of Watson and her army of replacements.

And it would need to be a big army to cover everything she touched over her career.

She is pretty good at remembering all of it, which is great for people like me who have slowly been forgetting more things than I care to admit from the Yellowverse. Ancient history to some, just another day in support to her.

I tried to find old emails to date when I first worked with her but my archives were not accessible, but it was back in the Calendar and Scheduling days when no one wanted that barrel of monkeys.

I nominated her as an IBM Champion for this year, even though the rules say IBMers are not allowed, because all of her efforts on all of our behalf this and every year. She came and spoke at our events, many times unofficially, and since she was on half time at work, I nominated her solely based on the time she spent with us unofficially.

Hopefully you will all join me in nominating her for next year.

Raise a glass, a bat, your favorite marketing stuffed animal or just send her a thank you via Twitter.

All of your support efforts will now become that much harder, longer and slower without her inside of IBM for us all to rely upon.

Thank you Susan for everything. 

2016 IBM Champions for ICS

For the 4th year in a row I have been named an IBM Champion. It was extremely unexpected and I thoroughly believed my 1,000th blog post would be a farewell post. For the record this is post #997 of this blog.

It seems the judges have other ideas and intended to keep me going for another year. This is not something you win by being voted on by your friends or ballot stuffing on Facebook, it is a process in which, I hear, over 25 IBMers have votes. 300,000+ people in  company and 25 or so vote on us!

Ecstatically pleased some of my friends who are Champions were renewed including some one I nominated was accepted this year.

Some great friends are also now included, as are many of the people who organize some of the world wide user group conferences. I don't want to single any of them out because honestly, I feel bad I did not think to nominate some of them. Thank God other people were not so forgetful.

There are probably dozens of Champions, past and present, I would love to be with at every event, listening to their wisdom, sharing stories over drinks or just helping with problems they get stuck on and I hope many feel the same way about me.

My recent trips to Social Connections 9 and SUTOL brought me to meetup in person many Champions (and some we didn't know yet would be announced today) and friends I so rarely get to hang out with that it is like a family reunion when we do get to hang out. I got to know some people a little better than prior years. It helps to have an open mind and be respectful of each other to appreciate them even more because maybe at one time I, or they, were not in a good place or state of mind and life is too short to not be happy for everyone.

We work hard, some of us travel non stop, some of us work with multiple clients and projects, some of us are dedicated to one client or employer, some of us are not able to get to too many events or even one, some of us even find time for our families too. Some have hobbies, some do not, some brew their own beer, the rest of us just drink it, some prefer the cold, others the heat, some are artists, some play musical instruments, some run, some bike, some hike, some are administrators, some are developers, some are business partners, some are IBM Customers, and some are in sales or marketing for their organizations.

Our aim is for a better and more collaborative world for all of our current and future customers.

Sadly, this is also the end of my three years as an IBM Champion for Websphere and I appreciate all the WAS Champions I met over the years, some of whom I wish I could see more often.

Here's to the Class of 2016!

May we all enjoy the fruits of our labors and share a drink some time this coming year.
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/ibmchampion/entry/Announcing_the_IBM_Champion_Class_of_2016_for_IBM_Social_Business?lang=en

I Love Admins that want to learn here is my SUTOL Session

Having a great time in Prague, last time I was here was either the I AM tour or an LCTY in 2000/2001.

Martin and the SUTOL team did a great job with the event. It was really nice to get to see people I either never met in person or have not seen in a long time. And some of us had been at #soccnx 9 last week in Stuttgart.

It was great to speak to and meet so many admins that really know what they are doing and what to learn and know more. These Admins make it easier to present topics from new viewpoints and appreciate the time we all spend in the trenches.

As it turns out, the night before SUTOL while we are at the local bar we discussed some things around DDM and we agreed things changed, but could not at the time find good details about what and when. Luckily, when we collaborate we find conclusions.

Thanks to Ben Menesi for not only pointing out Domino DDM changed types, but having a screen that shows the changes which I added to my presentation.

I also found a reference to what happened, it changed in 8.0 and this link had this to say:

To view an event message that was generated by a pre-IBM^® Lotus^® Domino^® 7 event generator, open the Monitoring Configuration database (EVENTS4.NSF), and then open the view Advanced -- Message by Text to view how that event message is categorized in DDM. The information on the Basics panel shows the name of the new Event Type and the Old Event Type. In DDM, there are 10 event types and in pre-Domino 7, there are 22 event types. You use the information on the Basics panel to see how the old event types are incorporated into the new event types. For example, this event message has Server as the Event Type and Mail as the Old Event Type

My slides from my session, "DDM, Letting Admins sleep longer and stay at the Pub Later Since 2005" is available on Slideshare. I touch on how to manage non-Domino things and how I get my server and DDM to Tweet me when there are problems, like email is not flowing.

Domino Domain Monitoring, Letting Admins Sleep Later and Stay at Pubs Longer Since 2005 from Keith Brooks

Thank you everyone and hope you enjoyed the session.