My Collabsphere Session on More Efficiently Working From Home with HCL Products

 

While my session had a small group of attendees given the great sessions I was up against, the beauty of an online conference is everyone can catch other sessions afterward.

It was great to be a part of MWLUG again now known as Collabpshere.

To Home, To Work, To Home, To Collabsphere! from Keith Brooks

Who Announces New Products in Tokyo? HCL That's Who

A little bit historical symbolism inside, a little bit new, and 100% of the future!

HCL sent an email out to Business Partners and HCL Masters (I am both) yesterday announcing that they are good on their word and releasing announce HCL’s first major releases for:
Domino V11
Notes V11
Sametime V11
Connections 6.5
plus some other items perhaps on December 4th at 9AM Eastern Time from Tokyo.

Details:

9–­9:15 a.m.: Live from Tokyo Keynote: A Major HCL Milestone.
Presenter: Richard Jefts, General Manger, HCL Digital Solutions

9:15–9:30 a.m.: Domino V11: Why Modernizing Beats Migrating. Presenter: Andrew Manby, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Domino

9:30–9:45 a.m.: Domino V11 Demo: One Vendor, One Solution, One Stack. The Only Stack You Need.

Presenter: Andrew Manby, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Domino  

9:45–10 a.m.: We Hear You: HCL Connections 6.5 = More Value from Your Investment.
Danielle Baptiste, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Connections

10–10:15 a.m.: Boost Engagement with HCL Connections 6.5: We'll Show You How. Danielle Baptiste, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Connections

10:15–10:30 a.m.: Get Started with Domino V11 and Connections 6.5 Today.Presenter: Presenter: François Nasser, Global Sales Leader, HCL Digital Solutions

Many of you just got V10, or have yet to take that leap, but HCL has got you covered and wants you to move to V11.

So what do you think? Are you spry enough to update this time? If not, let me know, I am happy to handle it for you.

If you want to watch or listen to the announcement, it will be on this website over here.(https://www.gotostage.com/channel/livefromtokyo) Register here.

If you thought HCL was just milking the support money and not expanding the products, you lost that bet, and will continue to lose that bet for a few years out, but you have to tune in to find out why and how.

If you thought Notes and Domino were old and not caught up with the times, you may be pleasantly surprised to see changes that will stretch life longer because 30 year old(software) know a lot more than an under 5 year old(startup) about how you run your company, and integrate your business to the world as a whole, not just to one vendor, or one country.

In software terms, not many other software has survived this long and still produced money and ROI for companies using it, DOS still runs Windows, so that may be the only thing everyone still uses.

If you say email doesn't make you money, tell that to online stores and entities that rely on automated orders and ticketing systems.

Down time hurts, big time!

If you require on premises servers, you have come to the right place!
If your fear is the Cloud apps will get stuck, yes, on premises has down time too, YOU can control the situation and get your self back up, something not available to you when you are 100% Cloud indebted.

I hear the young people saying no one uses email, everything is in Slack and their integrations into products we use.

Maybe

But did you ever meet a person on the street that uses slack?

Neither have I.

But they ALL use email. They also use instant messengers but the bridge from the IM to email is still not there, yet...

So tune in December 4th 9am Eastern time, if you want to be part of the next generation of collaborative software.

Peek a Boo with O365 and Bits

Collaboration means different things to different people. Business collaboration is about sharing of
information, ideas, details, actions, and presuming everyone does the same in return so you truly reach that 1+1=3 world.

I am spending sometime on a side project with a company that is leveraging O365. On the outside looking in, it seems to be just what one wants for work. Online shared space for files, email, IM, ESN(Enterprise Social Network), team/group space, Office tools, and much more all wrapped up in one price and available only in the Cloud.

The first thing I experienced, and keep in mind I am accustomed to being the admin usually, was my name was spelled incorrectly. In general, not the end of the world, however, in some cases, my logins were correct, but it appears not in AD. When I asked IT to correct it, they told me it would take most of a day to do this because they would now have to go change all the other systems that I have logins for and fix them as well. SSO is not available in O365? And to rename an ID takes hours? As an admin, I am bemused at the discussions.

Normal users probably just shrug it off as IT time and plans.

My login aside, the quirks of O365, as some of my friends call them, are more a skewed view based on other products and our own expectations.

It seems one can not change the colors on screen for Outlook (2010 edition they use here). The choice is limited to 3 colors, none of which are even remotely exciting, Blue, Silver, Black. Cowboys and Raiders colors? What about us Dolphin fans that want orange or green? Or just set to Windows Desktop theme colors? Evidently 2013 is no better about this.

I will post this next bit, as it is important, but want to point out it is not unique to Microsoft. The multiple profiles, pictures, details issue is a major PITA to employees. Why can't the entry in AD cover the basics of the person (name, photo, phone, location, email, etc..) and have that, via LDAP, or AD itself, pushed out to any other system connected to it for user accounts? Instead there is Outlook, SharePoint, Yammer, and whatever the O365 bit itself is called all not sharing ANY details, in the case here, not even my login and password for the domain. Yes, WTF indeed.

Off I went to create profiles, about me docs, upload photos, enter office details because this is posted on the Yammer home page:

When signing up to Yammer can you please add a recognisable photo of yourself, so people can easily identify you in the office. Also add your phone number(s) and where you are located, including which floor you are on.

As it turns out SharePoint is not connected to O365 here, so I understand that...as an IT person. As an employee it would make me wonder why, if I cared enough, which maybe no one does anymore. Thus why adoption of an ESN is not an easy task inside companies and why I try to help it best I can.

Before some friends jump on this, as some have, be careful, IBM in this case does not handle it any better. Sametime vs. Connections profiles/photos vs. Domino data/profile/photos. Same problem, no solution. I understand why, in both companies products this exists. Simply put, if they have no way to know what "solution" you are installing, they have no way to provide the details efficiently. My argument has always been it should reside in the Directory (AD, Domino, whatever) and let everything else pull it from there. Whatever, live with it, do not slam either for this shortcoming.

The login and password thing is more bewildering to me. My Windows Domain login and password do not match my Outlook or Yammer ones but does SharePoint. A hybrid model that works as designed I guess but SSO or SPNEGO or even Oauth, anything/something would be a better solution.

On the plus side, the Yammer mobile client looks good and works well albeit in a multi step process just to message someone. I wait for the "Skype will rule it all" day coming soon, but for now, tick the box, they did mobile. You need to flip back and forth to the option menu to read group messages or the "stream" and to message someone takes 4 steps but it is a simple UI and easy to respond to posts in the stream or groups.

Yammer desktop, in short, does not exist. This is a frustrating thing for someone like myself so used to just sending IMs easily for the last 17+ years from a list in my tray. While one gets notified when there is a message, if you want to send someone a message you have to login (or keep a browser window open) just to then get to your list and try to message the person. I say try because I have not found a way for the web client to sort people by online status or even by alphabetical order. The Skype transition/integration can not come fast enough in my opinion.

Yammer Desktop Notifier is mostly a waste of time since it does NOTHING. To be fair, it has 3 options, (Inbox, Notifications, My feed) that when clicked take you to a browser and the messages. And if something is waiting for you, it has color codes to let you know in the little icon in your tray. But lookup people? Send an IM? No and No. In a corporate desktop world, this is frustrating. In a mobile, non desktop world, this is fine presumably, I have not loaded it yet on my iPad so I have no direct knowledge at this time.

The discussion around dropping SharePoint in favor of Jira is a conversation which I have not gotten into previously but would seem to be a major question/issue for companies that are using SharePoint or any ESN as a project management workflow tool. I may write more on this in a future blog after some further research.

Overall I can't say anything has blown me away that I must have it, aside from Skype. Perhaps Microsoft and other companies providing Enterprise solutions now find themselves in an unusual situation, big ugly/heavy clients that we use 10% of the benefits have passed their sale dates. When you really have better apps on your phone than your office, we are no longer on the "when will we get updates" discussion, but on the "why can't we use this app" or just doing it anyway. This is not a new opinion, we have been discussing it for years, but as I saw first hand, when IT people and executives are no longer willing to adjust to employees needs, then we in IT have failed and it matters little which vendor you chose.

Oh The People you See at Lotusphere and the Help They Provide

Sunday, Business Partner Day and also Jump Starts going on. Saw the usual cast of characters plus IBMers. The great thing about the show is walking around you run into people like Luis Suarez who get Social very well. Louis Richardson does too but he was busy at the time I passed him.

When you are trying to figure out a way to help clients, no better way to do so than to talk to others in the space and ask for help.

During BP day we, the partners, were asked to do more. Stop being IT shops and installing, start discussing more broader topics and not just with IT. I think the problem with this still is historically many partners have contacts at the IT level, not always at the business line, HR or marketing level. Which is who some of this is truly aimed.

The show is still young and the impression is there is MUCH to come this week. No wonder given there are many layers of activities, for attendees, business people, partners aside from the developers and admins.

Questions I have this week are around IBM's Cloud offerings, including LotusLive, and naturally Connections and the latter is the focus for sure so you better be up for it.

The Parallel Life of Notes/Domino and Connections

In response to a few people today, this theme kept coming up.

I expect others to add to this list and some to detract from it, but it's a basic view of a situation which if you have been on the fence lately, still, this may help you.

If one views IBM Connections in parallel to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino you see these parallels:

Both:

• have picked up some steam with the advent of release 3.x
• are a platform to run your business, or some aspects of it
• provide for messaging integration in one form or another
• are extensible and expandable
• are/were not so friendly to build at their earlier points in time
• Domino(with R4) was an answer to the Internet, Connections to Social, both paradigm shifts

Then companies had green screens and dumb terminals for email making Notes a great alternative plus it had a built in designer client to make your own apps! 

Connections uses widgets or plug-ins or apps that could be found almost anywhere and put to great use.

Notes really made one believe in sharing or collaboration and that information did not have to be locked away on an as need basis.

Connections helps you find the persons or things, and don't forget the analytics, that will help you get the most out of your project, sales pitch or budgets.

Simple view? Yes. But do you want the 3 pages version when you are explaining it to the execs or the "Twitter" size?

There is an elegance to simplicity.

CIO.com article about Nationwide and Connections

This article appears in the October 1, 2011 issue. You may need to register to read the full article on line.

What should be of interest is this quote from the CIO of Nationwide:

IBM’s integration “was ahead of most other companies’ in terms of vision,” says Mark Gaetano, CIO for enterprise applications at Nationwide. 

This for years was Lotus strength, being ahead of the world, IBM also has many initiatives that are ahead of the curve and nice to see it recognized.

Mark Gaetano contiues

Lotus Connections integrates with document management, making documents searchable by end users in a way that could violate policies for protecting sensitive data at financial firms, Gaetano says.

This seemed to be a problem for them. Something which has come up in sites we have worked on as well. Customers do not grasp the security setups and how much is related to the end user versus the admin preset or defining them. It could be resolved but I am not privy to what went on.

When you explain Files, please make sure to discuss the pros and cons of how to handle security.
Admins can set to only share internally or leave open to the user's discretion. Tried to find a good document that outlines this better, if anyone has a link to one, please let me know and I will add it.

Objective Subjectivity

This post from the other day provided a number of comments, IMs, discussions with IBMers and some funny stories from friends who just don't get any of this.

One comment, anonymously posted, suggested that it is wrong to recommend a product without knowing the business reason, or any reason for usage, first.

My thoughts are yes and no.

Do I recommend an IBM product every time to clients....yes, if one exists that meets or exceeds their needs. We are an IBM Business Partner, why would I suggest otherwise. Some will argue not everything IBM sells is better, my clients do have a brain and we are only recommending them these options, they choose what they want to use.

Now, if there is something which is not in our portfolio, I will research the information for them and we will find something to resolve the request. For instance a print to PDF driver, which is not inside Lotus Notes.

When someone says they need a secure file storage online and offline accessible. My immediate thoughts are Domino applications, Quickr, Connections or for "Cloud" options LotusLive Engage, LotusLive Connections.

Are these the best choices? Is SSL better than secure ID or VPNs? Is there really any difference between a BMW a Lexus or a Mercedes?

The answer is subjective. We don't demand or expect clients to follow us like sheep, but we do spend time educating them on why our decision makes valid sense given their infrastructure, budget and project requirements.

Could any one else argue the same points, perhaps. The point is not lost on me or others. But how many companies are still relying on a product that has been dead for years but runs core applications.

Foxpro? I just heard about 2 companies still running versions I haven't seen in 15 years.

Lotus Approach? WAY too may people still use this relational database. Dead product? Not quite, it is still available as a download from IBM, or was the last time I checked.

Office 2000? 10 years later and it keeps going and going and going.
Same with Windows server 2000 and 2003.

You can laugh at these and most likely readers have even more hidden old apps you forgot about over time.

But these all have in common a purpose that at the time was a valid purpose and keeps them running still to today.

Were there other choices out there? Most definitely.
But someone, a sales person usually, convinced them this was the way to go and if it lasted this long, they were correct.

The people that I meet on Twitter related to Lotus Quickr(and Quickplace) are using a product that not only lives and breathes and is updated quite frequently by IBM, it also is managing projects that run their companies.

Why don't they go to Sharepoint? Why not some open source product or cloud based offering? Because their needs were defined and the product fit.

Should every group or person use Quickr in their company? That is debatable.
Could every one benefit from using Lotus Connections? In the long run yes because the more you as a company know about your employees and customers, the better your business lines can go to market with new products or manage to impress customers by your usage of Business Intelligence to find out what they need, like or want.

In the short run, the answer lies in how you roll it out and get buy in from your executives and then the employees themselves.

If you have a need to better understand your workforce and customers and have been struggling with how to accomplish this task, I would suggest thinking about Lotus Connections over Quickr and you can look into it in the following ways:

If you do not understand what Lotus Connections is or never heard about it and want to try it out, we suggest you go to the Lotuslive website and register for a 30 day trial of Lotuslive Engage or Connections.

Or if you want to be more interactive, setup an account on the Lotus Greenhouse site which runs all the Lotus products and is used by IBMers, Business Partners and customers, some as though it was a real and not demonstration site. If you do use it, you can find me on the Greenhouse Sametime server which has an excellent group of people on it as well.

Once you do that, drop me an IM or email and we can talk more about what you want to do or how to do it.

Not every product meets every need, but every need does meet a product.

Lotus Connections Activities Catching On but...

Used to be I had to answer clients about activities that it's a Lotus Connections piece added into the Notes client R8.x by default. I then explain what Connections could do for them and we would ignore it.

Now I set people up with the Lotus Greenhouse Activities site if possible.

It is configurable for your domain but usually clients don't have Connections yet.

So far so good. And Connections, especially under 2.5 is proliferating.

Now, what do you do if you use BleedYellow's Activities or Greenhouse or IBM's or the IBM Business Partner area or a customers?

You will be kind of stuck. There is only one configuration spot for it.

Would be nice if IBM allowed the connections section of your PNAB to handle these connections but for now we are stuck.

So what do you do?

You can use your locations documents to swap around if that works for you and each location does retain it's preference and details, unlike Sametime for some reason, but if not, well you are out of luck, right now.

Have asked PM's about this and posted an Ideajam.net as well so if this bothers you go raise the awareness on this issue.

Happy Holidays, Lotus Style

2007 started out so well,
Lotusphere in Orlando was swell.
R8 was brought out and it was good,
Mobile, internet based and free,
and a new spreadsheet for you and me.

So whether or not you used SSL, VPN, POP3, LDAP, IMAP, IPv6 or a (i)phone,
Make sure to finish the year right and use Sametime8 mobile client when away from home.

So onwards Notes, Domino, Sametime, Quickr, Connections, Forms, Symphony and Doc,
We have many more clients to bring good cheer and luck.

See you in 2008, Lotusphere's gonna be great!