Day 2 of Connect was Road Map Day for me

The day opened with Mat's AdminBlast session which was so full of tips and ideas he could barely get to all of them and he laid out how he manages his team and uses all the resources he can from Notes, Domino, Connections, Watson, etc. Great effort and valuable training for new managers to get a great view of how they could be working.

Usually the sessions are a secondary benefit, for people like myself that are involved in the product line for so long. We have various meetings, briefings, side chats, commitments to other partners and so our time is used quite well. I admit to barely getting to 2 sessions a day, but this is average for me over the years.

Not being a developer, a number of sessions didn't work for me. Road map and hands on sessions are what I look for to expand my knowledge, especially around what is available now or soon to be available. The future products that are a year or more away are nice to know about, but I have time. Plus, as an IBM Champion we get private briefings during the year as products progress.

I tweeted about the IBM Notes and Domino Road map session(links below are to the slides I caught on camera), which by the way was one of the best in years. Okay, we didn't get hard dates, but we did get end of Q1 for feature pack 8 and end of Q3 for FP9 see this slide. I know IBM said they want to issue updates quarterly, and I think they will, but my expectation is two updates a year for now. Once they iron out the process to handle quarterly updates they should hit the four.

What made this session so great was Barry Rosen Offering Manager for Notes and Domino took the time to see it from our view. And he did pretty well with it.

We, the customers, partners and community at large need to know definitively what is coming down and that there are plans. He laid out the change in future support for some servers and client operating systems. Various slides outlined what was coming even the development updates and ideas was discussed. There was even a mention of Quickr! Well it really was about CCM (if you don't know what this is, don't worry) and should interest people who need it. The committing support through 2021 is nice to hear.

Suffice it to say, for now we see into 2018 and that should work for many people who will, and should, at some point start looking at Verse on Premises for mail users. Why? Because I got the impression Watson and cognitive abilities will be baked into Verse instead of over the Notes client as will more pieces of the overall puzzle that IBM is putting together around the future of how we work. Like I said a few months back, we are in the 3rd or 4th level of change in the messaging/communication/collaboration/social and we need to evolve and look towards the future, while maintaining the current architecture.

I did not get into the session on Pink so one of the other Champions or bloggers I am sure will cover that and better than I ever could. I will reiterate what Jason Gary said, Pink is not meant to rewrite IBM Connections but augment it with more, newer features in a simpler more modular method.

One session I really wanted to go to, we had to commit to attending before the event, was the Docker 101 hands on class. Unfortunately, due to network configuration issues at the site we did not get that far but with the guidelines in hand I look forward to playing with this technology, especially as Pink is being designed to run on it. Curiously I found out Websphere today can be run on Docker. This could be very useful for some of you.

You can learn new things, you can also meet new people. Lots of IBMers have changed positions and moved out of ICS or back to it. Always be open to talk to anyone and everyone. One of my client issues with a Connections plugin was raised to the owner of the plugin. It can be hard to do this not in person sometimes, here is why.

I started with an Offering Manager (OM)I knew and asked who in the room, we were at a reception, would own the plugin which led us to two more people that led us to the right person who happened to be talking to my friend Mac. Since I never met this OM before I now had a known and a newly met OM introduce to me to the right person. If I had not done this in person, I would have still called/emailed/Sametime one of the OMs I know and find the right person. And then start a conversation. Maybe it is easier this way but if I didn't know any OMs I would search online to find some presentations on the subject then go to IBM Whois and look up the presenter and email or call to get on track.

As Eric Whitacre, the closing speaker, said, make issues your features. If you don't know someone, keep asking till you do.

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?

Mission Worries: Lotus Quickr to IBM Connections Cloud

Who knew so many people still had Lotus Quickr? See IBM I told you people love it still.

There are many things to think about during a migration of data, most of which you as the client will not think about, or even know about, until you have moved and find it out. Do you know why? Because not very many companies, people, or Business Partners have done these migrations like I have over 20+ years. 

These "Mission" posts are meant to help you in this process.

Last post I gave some basic information, now we can dig into some details.

The client uses a plain and out of the box Lotus Quickr so we did not have to worry about meta data or odd forms or whatever else dreamed up by some developers or over eager Admins. I know because I am their Admin.

We did worry about some things and here are some of those items:

• My name for the most part is tagged to all the files and folders NOW which is how IBM Connections and IBM Connections Cloud works since I am the one uploading the files.That is the down side, however, once you get into the folders and find the files, you can see all the document details and it shows all the past information. Not a bad thing, but not perfect. Client accepted this as a good monetary trade off.

• MACs lack of a Notes sidebar plugin. No comment. I am not a MAC user so I am not justified in arguing this point but the Windows Notes plugin is helpful....BUT not for the migration itself. Afterwards it acts like the Quickr Places sidebar app and drag and drop and such is fine plus you get Files, Activities and Status Updates in your sidebar to better leverage the rest of Connections.

• Training users. Actual training is minimal, updating the Notes clients on machines and then the plugin installs and configurations takes about an hour a person on average. If you leverage SmartUpgrade or my friends at Panagenda's Marvel Client you may just need the plugins updated and that is quick.

• Where is the ROI? Mobility! iPad access in front of a client meeting or potential client meeting is crucial and even better, IBM handles the backup of our data. 

• Which brings me to backups. IBM doesn't really backup the data, this is an issue to be addressed by me going forward, but IBM does synch data between their data centers and in IBM we trust, so again a trade off. Not to worry the Quickr server running on VM will just be sitting here if we need data prior to January 1, 2017. Just like the Domino.Doc VM server sits waiting for something we lost from the previous migration. For those keeping score, I have NEVER run that VM to find any files that went "missing". 

• Multiple Folder levels. It is this one item which has prevented the client from moving until now. Promised by IBM over a year ago, and it was delivered, just not the way the client wanted it to work(it also only now lets you edit and create folders from the plugins and mobile which also did not come out last year). We had patience in IBM and since I am an IBM Champion and part of various beta teams for IBM and advisory councils, I pushed for it all to get done, as did quite a few fellow Champions. So if this is what you have been waiting for, you have no reason not to move forward now. January is free for me, let me know when you need your migration done by and I am here for you.

• Timing. Start testing as early as possible as you need a lot of testing scenarios. Keep in mind that uploading speeds are usually MUCH slower than downloading speeds. So that Terabyte of data will not get uploaded overnight, I don't care who you use or what they promise you.

• What if they hate using the Cloud? Said, no. one. ever...who knows what they are doing.

Are there more issues? Sure, every environment is different and I am happy to discuss them if you comment or tweet, call, skype or email me.

I forgot to mention this was a Windows server customer, and I could complete the migration no matter what operating system platform you are running Lotus Quickr.

How to Create Multiple Communities in IBM Connections or Connections Cloud?

As a non developer, this was easier than I imagined it would be, once help arrived from my friends.

I have a Lotus IBM Quickr customer, my last one, so any Quickr sites, contact me I am available! Anyway, I am moving them from Quickr to the IBM Connections Cloud environment.

This post is not about the move itself, but about how one can create over 200 new communities(200+ Places and 220GB of data) without having to hire an intern to do it manually.

I posted to the chat for IBM Connections people and my friends Christoph and Ben pointed me to the Connections API documentation. Yes, it looks and reads like gibberish so I asked if there was an easier way and one of them found a blog post by Julius.

Julius, as it turned out, was also in the chat and I asked if this post would work for Connections Cloud, no one knew. So we tried. And failed. Christoph said we needed a header, which as it turns out was the correct answer, an atom+xml header.

Confused yet? Well you could review Julius's blog post where he covers almost everything, but here is what you need to know.

Using Firefox and the RESTClient plugin you get a nice little UI that lets you create your request in pretty simple XML terms. Thanks Julius for coding something simple enough for me to figure out how to swap in the information to make it work.

These are the steps:
1) Set the header. I did not even see the little menu on top of the screen with a drop down to create headers.
Click on Headers to see the choices and select Custom Header.










When the next window comes up, enter the text as in my screen shot. To remember this for future need, click on  the Save to favorite box then say ok.








2) For the Method drop down box, select POST
3) For the URL, you need to use: https://apps.na.collabserv.com/communities/service/atom/communities/my
4) The body field, this is where the fun starts.

This is what my code looked like in basic form.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<entry
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app"
xmlns:snx="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn">
<id>ignored</id>

<title type="text">Jefferson Airplane</title>

<summary type="text">ignored</summary>
<content type="html">Music group in san francisco</content>
<published>ignored</published>

<author>
<name>Keith Brooks</name>
<email>keith@keithbrooks.com</email>
<snx:userid>18675309</snx:userid>
<snx:userState>active</snx:userState>
</author>

<updated>ignored</updated>

<category term="community" scheme="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/type"></category>
<snx:membercount>ignored</snx:membercount>
<snx:communityType>private</snx:communityType>
</entry>

 5) Once run you should get a 201 Created reply and when you go to the communities you will see it.


Next step is to include members and format the communities. Will post an edit or a new post with that code for those in need.

Thank you again Julius, Christoph and Ben!

I Finally Experiencd the Social Connections Conference

If you have been living outside of the collaboration or social space you probably have no idea what conference I am discussing.

The Social Connections Conference, which has just completed their 7th conference in 3.5 years, is an impressive effort that you should experience too.

Having been a part of or attended so many conferences over the years I had been unable to get to any of the Social Connections events until this one in Stockholm, Sweden and what makes it so impressive? I have a 10 11 12 item list for you:

1. it is run by normal people like you and I, they also have day jobs too
2. not run or owned by a specific vendor
3. always in a different country
4. has a consistent change of audience for each event 
5. limited number of any vendors people so it truly is customer filled
6. sponsors that are known and appreciated by the audience
7. sponsors get to do speed sponsoring and a speaking session
8. great speakers and thinkers present both technical and business sessions
9. some cool event venues for dinner
10. some extremely social interactions of digital and in person kinds
11. All sessions were streamed and recorded for later usage
12. beer, as in free beer

OK the last one is available most events, but it is a serious part of connecting with people. I even had a Moo card made that said Collaborate Better with Beer.

While I did spend quite a bit of time on some client work, I also got to spend time with many friends I rarely get to see in person, some I have never met in person, and some I only heard about through others. The connections I made, and the few companies I discussed how I can help them with training and adoption was worth the price of their admission and my efforts.

The team had asked everyone to pay a nominal amount to ensure fewer no shows and it worked as they announced they had 100% attendance! Long may they have that record now. 

While the majority of the attendees are using IBM products, like IBM Connections, IBM Domino, IBM Notes, IBM Sametime there were some people who also used other products and were equally interested in what works and does not work when discussing adoption.

I can't speak for the technical sessions (I did not attend any) but the business side was heavily based on the do's and don'ts for adoption, customer cases both great and tragic, hurdles of jumping from email to an ESN(see my bridge slide) and even an Ask IBM session with prizes given to the best questions and/or most challenging ones that received a "we don't know" answer.

As a surprise to everyone, the next event they run was announced and it will not be in Europe!

It will be in Boston, Massachusetts in the US, April 16-17, 2015.

I hope to see you there!

Have You Designed a Car without an Engine Today?

Half baked ideas? No, they were completely baked and ready to go....except for a strategic piece. Lost in translation or just lost in space, hard to know sometimes where to assign the lack of accountability.

A Cloud solution that is not quite ready for the Enterprise or an application that you are working on when you suddenly realize no one thought about who would use the solution, let alone, why they need it.

Governments, countries, airports and many organizations run into this it seems more often today than ever before. The site, Why Projects Fail, might be useful to you.

Imagine if in walks your business leader with an announcement of a cool new car they dreamed up for the company to produce. It's just a drawing right now, maybe a clay model, but they have a vision!. They have searched out some vendors that promise to make everything nice and clean, like never before, and they asked to let them do everything so the leader can focus on the end game. Agreements are made and a date set to expect everything to be ready for the "1st auto show of the year".

Shortly before the eagerly expected date, the leader calls the vendor and asks if everything is ready. They reply, yes, of course, we made sure you have roads from your office to the show. The leader is confused and asks, where is the engine for the car we designed? The vendor replies no one said anything about the engine, we provide the roads for you to drive and look how nice they are all black and smooth topped."Where's my engine!?" screams the leader. Engine? Replies the vendor, we don't do engines.

I have been in numerous meetings over the years where parts of these discussions went on and I wondered why it happened in the first place.

Would better meetings help? Would an ESN like IBM Connections or Microsoft Sharepoint or Jive? Was there a problem in Microsoft Project? Not enough project managers? Too few? If you had used a different email system none of this would have happened.

It is easy to be carried away by the excitement of a new project and just as easily to be led astray. Just because the client asks to go to the Cloud does not mean you should block it, or help, without some clear logic and information.

Last night I wrote and compiled a two page list of questions for a client that wants to migrate mail systems... to Domino. I broke up the questions, some 60 or so, into 3 groups, the "old info" , the "future info" and the "co-existence".

The actual list could be 80 pages, like an SUT document I worked on previously, or one page. The questions and answers will come but being prepared is more important.

IBM Connections Videos for User Adoption

Saw this and wanted to make sure others know about it.

These are videos from IBM that outline each part of IBM Connections. If you are looking into Connections or trying to explain it for people this may help outline the functionality found in each section.

These have been useful for people just getting to use the product understand all the ways they can utilize the options.


Activities -  http://ibmtvdemo.edgesuite.net/software/lotus/uxid/connections/activities40/activities_demo.html
Activities allow you to organize your team's work around project tasks. Creating an activity is a useful way to share information and resources, assign and track to-do items, post team information, and organize meetings. You can add new members to an activity at any time, allowing you to quickly pull together the resources you need for a project.

Blogs - http://ibmtvdemo.edgesuite.net/software/lotus/uxid/connections/blogs40/blogs_demo.html
Blogs are online journals that you can use to share information with the rest of your organization. A blog is a great way to communicate your latest news and views in an efficient, dynamic style. By posting regular entries on a specific subject or theme, you can make sure people are kept up-to-date with the latest developments in a particular area.

Bookmarks - http://ibmtvdemo.edgesuite.net/software/lotus/uxid/connections/bookmarks40/bookmarks_demo.html
Use Bookmarks to store and retrieve bookmarked Web links from a central space. You can share some or all of your bookmarks. You can also see other people's bookmark collections, giving you the means to connect with people who have similar interests or the expertise you need.

Communities - http://ibmtvdemo.edgesuite.net/software/lotus/uxid/connections/communities40/communities_demo.html
A community is a group of people who share a common interest. Communities provide an excellent way to connect members of a team and help them to stay in touch and share information. Communities can be public or restricted, allowing community owners to control who can join the community and access community content.

Files - http://ibmtvdemo.edgesuite.net/software/lotus/uxid/connections/files40/files_demo.html
Files offer a convenient way to upload and store files in a central repository. You can share uploaded files with selected people, giving you the means to collaborate on content without having to send large files through email. You can also like and comment on files, organize files using folders, and track different versions of files.

Forums - http://ibmtvdemo.edgesuite.net/software/lotus/uxid/connections/forums40/forums_demo.html
A forum is an online discussion board with a focus on a particular topic or theme. You can participate in a forum by posting questions or responding to existing discussion threads. Want to find the solution to a problem that's been blocking you? Forums are a great way to brainstorm ideas, gather feedback, and leverage the expertise of others.

Profiles - http://ibmtvdemo.edgesuite.net/software/lotus/uxid/connections/profiles40/profiles_demo.html
Profiles is a directory of the people in your organization that allows you to find and connect with the right people fast. You can search for people based on their contact information, background, or expertise. Let people know who you are by filling out your own profile. Build up your own set of contacts by adding people to your network.

Wikis - http://ibmtvdemo.edgesuite.net/software/lotus/uxid/connections/wikis40/wikis_demo.html
A wiki is a collection of web pages about a particular topic. Wikis are a great way to share information centrally and encourage collaboration within your project team.  Wiki members can add their own pages, and edit and comment on existing pages, thereby ensuring that information is always kept up-to-date.

Connect 2013 Tip #4 Connections Goodies

This is a natural presumption, but you know some of you out there just can't wait for your IT team to set you up sometimes. I am not advocating you should go around them and if your environment is that locked down, sorry, but for everyone else...

So I am going to remind everyone about the FREE and (mostly) client side benefits you have that can be installed to help you get the most out of your IBM Connections services. All of these are at the Greenhouse Catalog. But some have been updated, you do know you should update the widgets if you haven't recently? Right? Hopefully we will see some new ones during or after Connect 2013.

1) Lotus Notes Widgets covers:

• Status Updates
• Files
• Activities
• Business Card

2) Desktop Plugin for Windows covers:

• Upload local files to IBM Connections from Windows Explorer or from your desktop
• Share uploaded files with people, communities, or folders in IBM Connections
• Work on files locally and publish them to IBM Connections
• View people's contact details and get in touch with them
• Pin, follow, or like IBM Connections files and folders
• View or contribute comments for a file
• NEW Lock a file when you are editing it to prevent file conflicts
• NEW View and restore files from IBM Connections Trash
• NEW Share folders with IBM Connections Communities

Here is a video of it in action:

3) Sametime Widget covers (and works for 4.0):

• NEW: SPNEGO support (using Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1)
• NEW: Support for Catalan, Kazakh, Thai languages
• Save chat transcripts into a Connections activity or a community forum.
• Business Card federates data from various sources such as the Connections Profiles, Sametime buddy list, and the Lotus Notes Directory. Links to the Connections applications are available as well as profile contact information.

The IBM Connections 3.0.1.1 Plug-in for IBM Sametime supports:

• IBM Connections 3.0.1.1
• IBM Lotus Sametime 8.5.1 standalone clients (Standard, Advanced, and Sametime Unified Telephony)
• IBM Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1 standalone clients (Standard, Advanced, and Sametime Unified Telephony)

4) Quickr Widget covers both Quickr for Domino and J2EE (I have not tested it, possibly needs server side help):
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 4.0 with Lotus Quickr 8.5.1 for WebSphere® Portal, or Lotus Quickr 8.5.1 for Lotus® Domino® 8.5.

4A) Quickr J2EE Library for Connections in case you need it too (I have not tested it, possibly needs server side help).

5) Firefox Connections Toolbar which I really like, when using Firefox and covers:
The IBM Connections toolbar for Firefox facilitates searching and using IBM Connections directly from the toolbar without the need to navigate or search the IBM Connections UI. The toolbar supports IBM Connections 3.0 to 4.0

6) Widget for Sharepoint covers:

• NEW: Support for Catalan, Kazakh, Thai languages
• Add the widget for Connections community owners to setup and customize
• Easily add documents from Microsoft SharePoint Sites to your communities
• View and edit Folders and Document properties
• Download and Check Out documents for editing then upload to share changes with the community

The IBM Connections 3.0.1.1 Widget for Microsoft SharePoint supports:

• IBM Connections 4.0
• IBM Connections 3.0.1.1
• IBM Connections 3.0.1
• IBM Lotus Connections 3.0
• Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Standard
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• Microsoft Windows 2008 Server Enterprise
• Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Enterprise

 There you go 6 widgets to help you get the most out of your Connections installation and all for FREE!

See you at Connect!

Which Version is GA for Connections 4.0?

This is because I wonder who else has this problem.

Or maybe I just downloaded a bad copy but I have 3 different sized files for the primary IBM Connections 4.0 installer.

The first I know is the beta code.

The 2nd I know is hot off the press so to speak as it was just downloaded last week.

What is this one? Anyone have this size file, windows server version? Was it some beta code? I thought it was the GA code I downloaded the day it came out.

Why should you care? Why do I care?

Because I have now built at least 3 installations that all had various stages of issues, see below, which IBM PMR teams say came from my installing "older code" which indeed when I looked at it with them, the dates are off, these came from this middle one.

Rather than have others suffer from what may have been a rogue download, please someone tell me what this middle code is/was which says it is 4.0.0.

You may have issues like:
Index never completes, just runs and thus no searching
Communities have widget issues
Status updates do not always update
Files upload, then stop at some point and show an error when you try to upload any to a newly created Community.
I changed the IBM Logo to ours yet in never showed up yet same instructions work fine on a "clean" box.
Home/Start page does not show any updates.
You can only click on Communities I am invited to, the other 3 options error out.

So the moral of the story is if you are not seeing what you expect, you may want to verify all your versions of code work properly.

But, what is #3?

Email is not the Pony Express and Ignorance Never Goes Away

An article which was really a marketing lecture from the CEO of Hootsuite struck numerous chords across the web. Some argued he was right, many said he was just being arrogant, others felt he was purely pushing his own agenda/solution. And yes, I recognize the fact this only provides more awareness to him.

In the comments to the post another HootSuite employee tried to explain it from the end user perspective. Not sure he did any better at an explanation than his boss.

Normally I would just leave a comment, as I did, about the virtues of Lotus Notes and how his issues have been previously thought of and dealt with over the last 10+ years in one way or another.

But this provided insights which should be taught in school.

It's not his fault, funny how the evasion of accountability over the last few years has grown exponentially. Ryan points out they grew from 20 people to over 200 in a short amount of time. Having watched similar things happen to businesses across the IT spectrum this is not a rare occurrence.

However, as with many businesses, how you grow your business and how you grow your internal processes do not always correspond. "Everyone knows how to use email" is incorrect. Everyone knows how to send and receive email, beyond that the percentage of knowledge workers have about managing their time and inbox dwindles fast.

Maybe they do not have a CIO/CTO or VP of IT but surely someone "owns" their infrastructure and should have provided a path of tools and solutions to meet the growth and expected functionality. Perhaps they didn't have the time from the explosive growth.

Time spent on webmail is a vague term, is that browser mail or mobile phone mail? Why use email when you can send 50 status updates or tweets? Persistent chat rooms do help in this case, has he tried IBM Sametime? Maybe their Conversations app will help as well, but it is not unique nor an advancement.

Stop emailing attachments. Yes this was a Holy Grail which, again, Lotus Notes has had the ability to send a document link for a file which is in a database, or just on a file server almost from day one...over 20 years ago. IBM Quickr first started with offloading your attachments to a set web accessible site and integrated it into the R8 Lotus Notes code stream in 2007. With IBM Connections you can leave your files in there and just share the links to others inside outside your firewall.

Version controls have existed in various degrees for years within Domino databases and you could even go to openntf.org which hosts free and open licensed templates which usually solve most people's needs and no heavy coding.

Make it sound like Twitter, oh, we needed something to just do X and we built it, you will all love it. No. That is not how life works. First you let others use it and then afterwards you can say whatever floats your boat.

In the meanwhile I am a happy Lotus Notes user of nearly 20 years, even though I have worked on numerous email systems and variations through the years, because it lets me get my work done in ways nothing else has even come close to offerring.

If you do not believe it, ask me for a demo. Everything Ryan discussed he could not do, I and millions of others do every day.

IBM Connections 4.0 Installation Details in a Spreadsheet Form

Last Edited Nov 7, 2012 now includes some more TDI ports which i left off and also fixed a typo in DB2 port number which should be 50000 among other items.

Since working on IBM Connections 4.0 installations I found the provided document lacking in a specific area...Cognos.

This can be very important for everyone doing these installs the first time. You need to track a lot of information and it also helps provide documentation for the next team.

So if you want my spreadsheet, it is here which links to my Download Page from the menu on top.

The IBM documentation comes as a wiki page you can see here.

I have added some fields or entries as I found them missing or of help during my travels.

Let me know if you need it an another format or if you add anything I should include please let me know.

Cognos Integration for IBM Connections hints #2

IMPORTANT: your cognos directory where you have the cognos transformer and BI files as well as your connections install files with the cognos parts should be in a directory with NO spaces in the name. just another hint.

Another one of the problems I faced when building it was the cognos-setup.bat would run properly, but then the cognos-configure.bat would error out.

EVERYTHING you do for the Cognos installation is built around the cognos-setup.properties file. Which if you saw my previous post, you will already gather some understanding.

The docs outline how you need to set up a new instance under Websphere. But again, not being a Cognos person initially, some defaults or expectations were unknown.

Luckily I reread the docs and also found this page from the infocenter to IBM Connections 2.5, emphasis is mine.

If you are installing IBM Cognos BI and IBM Lotus Connections to the same IBM WebSphere Application Server, you must create an additional profile for one of the applications. Do not use the same profile for both applications.

Since I was building everything on one box, I needed to make sure my cognos-setup.properties file was properly setup.

First, as the documentation shows, you do this:

IBM AIX, Linux:
manageprofiles.sh -create -templatepath WAS_install_root/profileTemplates/default -adminUserName

         Microsoft Windows:
         manageprofiles.bat -create -templatepath WAS_install_root\profileTemplates\default -         adminUserName
 This will create a new application profile, lets say Appsrv02.

You need to know more details so go look here(this is my machine, but you should be able to follow the syntax):
D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv02\logs\AboutthisProfile.txt

You will see details that look like this:

Application server environment to create: Application server
Location: D:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv02
Disk space required: 200 MB
Profile name: AppSrv02
Make this profile the default: False
Node name: conexNode02
Host name: conex
Enable administrative security (recommended): False
Administrative console port: 9062
Administrative console secure port: 9045
HTTP transport port: 9081
HTTPS transport port: 9444
Bootstrap port: 2811
SOAP connector port: 8881
Run application server as a service: False
Create a Web server definition: False
Performance tuning setting: Standard

Now that we have these details, you can then insert them into the cognos-setup.properties file here:

# Default profile is located here: /profiles/
# Example: /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/AppSrv01 uses the profile name AppSrv01
was.profile.name=AppSrv02

And also here:

# The WebSphere Application Server node where the Cognos BI server instance will be created (this must be an existing node)
# The node name can be found in /profiles//logs/AboutThisProfile.txt
cognos.was.node.name=conexNode02

 Once you do this, you should be on your way.

IBM Cognos and IBM Connections 4 Install hint #1

After my new found love in IBM Cognos, I decided to take a stab at getting it configured.

Not such a difficult task, yet, one or two things really killed me, so if you get these, here is some help.

Read the documentation, honestly, it helps.

BUT even documentation can not help you when your brain is too tired to pay attention.

Once you get to the step about running the cognos-setup.bat file and editing the cognos-setup-properties file, you may experience this error when you review your cognos-setup.log file:

Using Cognos setup properties file: C:\Installs\conex4\IBM_Connections_Install\Cognos\CognosConfig\cognos-setup.properties
Performing validation check ...
JAR file(s) found in JDBC driver directory:
C:\Installs\conex4\IBM_Connections_Install\Cognos\CognosConfig\BI-Customization\JDBC
was.install.path: WebSphere Application Server exists
Checking existence of profile: AppSrv01
[AppSrv01]
Using profile: AppSrv01
cognos.was.node.name: Found node [betaboxNode01]
cognos.biserver.issetup: Will use issetup.exe to install Cognos BI Server
C:\Installs\conex4\Cognos 10.1.1\BI\winx64h\issetup.exe
cognos.transformer.issetup: Will use issetup.exe to install Cognos Transformer
C:\Installs\conex4\Cognos 10.1.1\bimodel_win32_10.1.1_ml\win32\issetup.exe
Using cognos.locale: EN
All properties provided for Cognos database
All properties provided for Metrics database
Failed to connect to Cognos content store DB. Error: [jcc][t4][2043][11550][3.63.75] Exception java.net.ConnectException: Error opening socket to server betabox.us.voicerite.com/192.168.x.x on port 446 with message: Connection refused: connect. ERRORCODE=-4499, SQLSTATE=08001
Failed to verify the JDBC connection to Cognos Content Store database. Please check the error message.

My good friend, Wannes Rams, a fellow Redbook Thought Leader, pointed out to me that port 446 is not what it should say, but 50000. Indeed, he was correct as most people know.

You need to make the .db.host lines in these 2 sections of the cognos-setup-properties file look like this with the :50000 at the end:

# Information for the Cognos Content Store database
# Supported database types:
#    DB Type    : Value
# ===========================
#    DB2        : db2
#    Oracle     : oracle
#    SQL Server : sqlserver
cognos.db.type=db2
# Format the cognos.db.host property as: host_name:port
cognos.db.host=servername.org.com:50000
cognos.db.name=COGNOS
cognos.db.user=lcuser
# Note: Password is stored in clear text; leave blank to supply at run time
cognos.db.password=yourpassword

# Information for the Metrics database
# Supported database types:
#    DB Type    : Value
# ===========================
#    DB2        : db2
#    Oracle     : oracle
#    SQL Server : sqlserver
metrics.db.type=db2
# Format the metrics.db.host property as: host_name:port
metrics.db.host=servername.org.com:50000
metrics.db.name=METRICS
# The local database name is used by the database client on the Transformer server to reference the Metrics database.
# For DB2, this is the Metrics database local catalog alias name.
# For Oracle, this is the Metrics database local TNS name.
# For SQL Server, this is the Metrics database instance name.
metrics.db.local.name=METRICS
metrics.db.user=lcuser
# Note: Password is stored in clear text; leave blank to supply at run time
metrics.db.password=yourpassword

A small but potentially time wasting thing that I hope has saved someone. 

Not Excited About IBM Cognos?..You Should Be

As part of the IBM Social Business Social Residency this week, run by the IBM Redbooks, we had the luxury of having a great conversation with Mark Heid from IBM. (I hope to publish more on this for the IBM Social Business Insight Blog in the near future.)

Mark is the Program Director of Social Analytics at IBM and luckily, he is based in Raleigh. His session was the highlight of my week by far! As I tweeted earlier today, I am such a geek and have fallen in love again with a technology.

No slides, no marketing pitch, just here is what we do and what YOU can do with a product like IBM Cognos Consumer Insight. Man have I been an idiot to ignore this for so long. but let me backtrack a bit.

Most likely I can not do the product justice, but here is what we gleaned from today and see if you agree with me. I suspect most of my technical friends will agree, for the rest of you I am going to try to shape the description in a way to help you see why this is just so cool.

For those that do not know what analytics are, analytics is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It is the idea that one can measure or chart details culled from disparate sources of data into an algorithm which could lead you to a conclusion about, well, anything.

Big Data is a term for all the mounds of data streams that companies, even you at home, amass but are unable to sort properly or see the string which holds it all together.

When you combine analytics with your Big Data you start to find patterns that emerge that can be very meaningful to your business or life.

As an example, if a store or restaurant has a loyalty or rewards card, as many do, your purchases are recorded and in most cases scoured for tangible information to assist the business in providing you even better service next time or perhaps coupons to match your lifestyle.

Before you cry foul over privacy, IBM does not perform any analysis unless you have opted in. Businesses let you know when you get their cards that the data will be used potentially and you have the right to opt out of this analysis. I doubt many of you have opted out or even thought about it. But that is another blog post for a later time.

While I am in Raleigh my credit card companies are probably trying to gauge if I will be returning again soon or was this a one off event, like a vacation. If the same credit card companies followed my social media stream they would of course realize this is a class which we have come to Raleigh and not likely to return in the near future.

In contrast, I am quite sure most of our credit card companies recognize that we all "vacation" in Orlando every January around the 3 rd week of the month. I know Disney looks forward to us coming at least.

Think about the upcoming US Presidential election and how much sentiment is being expressed online over it. Poring over the data and analysis could provide a much better indication of who might win over any data those annoying robocalls or political pollsters can provide. Anything which gets rid of political robocalls and pollsters calling me I am VERY in favor of helping.

Real time analysis of what is happening in your IBM Connections world could be greatly beneficial to your HR staff as far as understanding employee sentiments, to Finance around perhaps costs which are not always so clear for some projects and from a Sales angle you could glean which of your sales people is up or down at any given time. No more guessing.

The cost for the full product is not cheap, it is a 6 figure deal and then some. But there are numerous uses for this even without looking at a retail angle. As a Business Partner I see numerous ways to work with the product and I would imagine so would you. Think of government entities which need to analyze their usage of consumables, small businesses which want to find what holds their client base to them or a financial institution looking to plan for offerings not seen before but gleaned from the data.

What is the downside, aside from the cost, you ask? It sounds too good to be true. The part for IBM Connections is real time for the last 2 years but if you wanted to devour lots of data and social media, the process will take a little longer. The reason is because syntax and tweaking of the searches, data review and such is time consuming and we don't all have IBM Watson in our offices. The programming language which would require one to invest quite a bit of time as well to be able to make the data turn into gold.

Why write this 2 years or so after Connections was an entitlement to Cognos 10? Because like you I watched or listened to various presentations, read posts but it never spoke to me like Mark did today and that is what made all the difference. As a long time Lotus person my focus was elsewhere, and for good reason, but as we evolve as partners and the technology evolves in looking for that next ledge to jump off, this is a good one.

I hope Mark will continue his relationship with all of us and thus future blog posts can delve into this deeper, but for now I feel like a new window has opened and I "get" it and I hope you can appreciate why as well.

Lastly, if you want to see it in action you can go to this IBM page and test it out.

SugarCRM Integration with IBM Connections

Over the course of the last few days here in San Francisco at Sugarcon 2012 I have had some interesting discussions around IBM, integration points, IBM SmartCloud and of course Lotus Notes and Domino.

What you probably know is there has been a few integration points for SugarCRM that have included a Lotus Notes plugin for the Notes client from the iEnterprise acquisition and the LotusLive plugin to SugarCRM itself to share meetings and files.

SugarCRM and IBM have shown the integration of IBM Connections into SugarCRM. and it's pretty sweet too, even if it isn't quite ready for GA(ETA Q3). The basic principle of the integration was put together over a few weeks and was aimed at procviding a bridge between SugarCRM and the IBM Connections environment. Built-in to the SugarCRM side is a connector where you set up your logins and locations and then you have the communities and members to be listed inside SugarCRM.

A great job was done to get the business card settings to work so you can click straight over to the Connections sections like wikis, blogs, profiles, communities and activities, etc.

This may be a huge boost for SugarCRM as they strive to reach more Enterprises. Given the size of most IBM Connections installations, this may be an opportunity for Business Partners to make a huge play with their customers.

The flip side is not so great. IBM Connections is overkill to SugarCRM's bread and butter customers of the under 25 user organizations. IBM SmartCloud Engage, a slightly reduced version of IBM Connections, but one wholly based in The Cloud should be a good play if it gets packaged or bundled together at some point in the future. This is my guess at what we may see down the road. I missed the IBM session that outlined some more details.

IBM Sametime looks to be the next product to find it's way. Most likely due to Yammer being built-in to Salesforce.com. Naturally an organization can also use an online version or on premise version of Sametime but today there is no integration inside SugarCRM.

IBM Business Partners, you may want to start brushing up on SugarCRM. We have been a SugarCRM Silver Business Partner for the last year and a half and happy to discuss it with any of you.

IBM is using SugarCRM Internally

One of the things heard this morning at SugarCon was that IBM is working on rolling out SugarCRM to the company.

This is a huge boost of course for SugarCRM and for IBM and it's sales teams and Business Partners. In doing so, IBM will be putting aside Siebel.

SugarCRM which is looking to grow their Enterprise business, needs this boost. In many ways it brings validity to what many of us have known for years. Mainly that older solutions are cumbersome, expensive and they preclude others from excelling at their jobs.

With this roll out there are integration points in place today for IBM SmartCloud Engage (previously LotusLive Engage) and now there will be IBM Connections integration. More on this topic coming in a different blog post.

If you had been at the Partner day or the Keynote this morning, you may have felt, as I did, that substituting Lotusphere/IBM for Sugarcon/SugarCRM you may think you were in Orlando. Even the music/videos out front had a similar sound/feel. so naturally I feel at home. Just missing my yellowverse friends.

But as I meet new friends, customers and partners, I am struck by the feeling of deja vu. I have seen this similar growth and plans way back in R4 of Lotus Notes. yes prior to IBM buying Lotus, the company was also trying to break into the Enterprise levels. And IBM helped them get there in many ways.

Now SugarCRM is leaning on IBM to help guide the future, make inroads into bigger clients and integrate with their existing systems and extend out to newer ones. It is a good working relationship that can only help SugarCRM. But I wonder what IBM will get from this.

Back in R4 time, email was just coming out and it was the right time, right product. Now, CRM is not new nor is SugarCRM by far the only player out there, though they are the 3rd largest CRM vendor out there with over 1 million active users, 80,000+ organizations use it and 30,000 registered developers.

Their view, reiterated by Larry Augustin, CEO and Clint Oram, CTO of SugarCRM, is the USER is what is most important. Again, just like Lotus Notes wanted to help the user do more, share more and grow more. It's a great parallel.

Sugarcon grows each year and next year will be in New York at the Waldorf Astoria, April 7-11, 2013. If you want to be part of this great run, join now, try it out. You can download the mostly full installation, called Community Edition, and try it on your own.LAMP or Windows your choice. Go get it from www.sugarcrm.com

If we, as partners, can leverage SugarCRM to augment our IBM solutions it may help IBM Connections grow similarly to how Lotus Notes grew years ago.

My session tomorrow discusses this and more from a practical angle, not a sales/marketing pitch. looking forward to this future and greater information to be coming from this relationship.

Null Users? But They Are Real People but not in TDI

Happy New Year!

So what's wrong with TDI? (This affects 6.0 and 7.0 so far which is the versions running) It seems there is an ominous line that states:

"The population wizard populates only those entries where the value for surname is not null."

And this can be found in 2.5 and 3.0 IBM Lotus Connections documentation and wikis here, here and here.

That's fine but what do you do for the Null family? Poor James, Sara, Amy, Fred, John Boy, Scarlett and whomever else with Null as a last name? They can't get in? No Connections for them? So what is going on?

There were some vague TDI references in fix packs to attributes with NULL in them. We are waiting on IBM for some direction because those fix packs are not compatible, per documentation, with Connections 3.0.1.

We also worry what this will do inside Connections when it hits the Null fields on logins or searches or links or whatever. So working around TDI is one thing, Connections is another.

We do know this much, new people never get added to the profiles database. People already added, never get deleted if they left the company and anyone else is there because when you do the first load off a CSV file evidently TDI could care less and accepts what you submit. BUT if TDI is to run and get updates programmatically it checks for any Last Name field which is empty/Null and stops processing that person.

When we have an update from IBM will post it, until then if anyone has some insight please let me know your experience.

PS - My apologies to the IBM QA team for TDI and Connections, you have one more thing to add to your lists.

Email is Ubiquitous thus IBM Connections exists

Liked Phil's post and you should read it if you haven't yet. I'll wait.

I don't like to say email is a commodity because then I become a stereotyped used car salesman.

Lotus Notes and Domino really are the best solution that takes the email is a XXX premise and makes it your:

1. CRM
2. Workflow
3. Inventory/Orders Manger
4. Shipping/Tracking
5. HR
6. Sales Tools
7. Dashboards

It does all of this by itself....Standing alone, just one box and a client to code it and anything else to make use of the apps you build..

Nothing extra required except a developer who knows what they are doing.

Now the problem becomes how do you do this for IBM Sametime?
How do you make that same ecosystem that swirls around your email, swirl around your IM? Well you can and you can't is the short of it.You can extend email to UC and IM and VOIP but getting your applications into it and mixed with it as listed above well that's another story which really doesn't work as well. You can not make a program that is not meant to be, for example, a database, and use it as one. It has DB2 in the background but I am quite sure at this point that IBM does not see Sametime as the next Domino.

What about IBM Connections? Can it do this?
A better question. One which I believe coming up at Lotusphere 2012 (link still shows LS11) we will see some great steps in making Connections handle more of what Domino does today. This is not perfect or 100% what I or you envision, but if IM, or as some might say notifications, are the "new" email then a new way to work with it is required.

If you have seen the various IBM people doing their demonstrations you will see they are leveraging Connections as some, if not all, of the items I listed above that you may think are database and email related. They are, no question. But underneath the hood of Connections is DB2, a relational database that scales on a different plane than Domino. Not better, just different. My DB2 friends will argue but for my purpose it is equal. The integration, via plugins/widgets, just like in the Notes client, enhance that user experience the same way from within one interface. For those that don't know, that interface is a browser or a dedicated app for device users that want a more native approach, no Windows client required.

The SMTP side doesn't care what the transport is on the back end. Naturally I'd prefer to always be Domino. I respect the Linux community who has their choices, many want to use Sendmail, some other less technical people choose to rely on Exchange, while the budget focused companies go with Google. Nothing wrong with those choices, after all email is a commodity right?


Email is going away, no question, it will join the Telegraph at some point but the companies that look to the future, like IBM, and plan to be there for their customers are working with today's pieces of technology but looking towards tomorrows usage.

So email is ubiquitous, it will linger on for years to come, but more and more people rely on streams of information from twitter, FB, G+, Yammer and a million other apps. Your email system does not want to handle all of that, although it could, but it would mean an average of dozens of new messages per second per person and a more scalable solution is required.

Thus the direction IBM Connections I believe is heading and why as an IBM Business Partner you need to be a part of this now because just like Lotus Notes 3.x which truly was the version to start the growth patterns prior to the R4 and 4.5 when Domino appeared, Connections 3.x is shaping up similarly. I believe the IBM Connections 4.0 to be the one that turns the tide and pushes more customers to get on the bandwagon.