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.

Mission Accepted: Lotus Quickr to IBM Connections Cloud

My last Lotus Quickr customer is moving off of Quickr by December 31st.

I love Quickr, still do, but time marches on and maybe you found yourself looking at Quickr wondering:

• How do I secure this box? You have options, and hopefully have used them, but the server is trapped on an 8.5 server which is basically an unsafe server to run at t his point especially if it has access to/from the outside world.
• Accessing your data is getting harder as browsers advance but the code on the server does not recognize all the updates of course.
• Mobile needs, never really got a working Mobile client for Quickr
• Java, yeah well it was good while it lasted

The thing is, if you are solely using it internally it can just sit there for years on end, some of you out there know exactly what i am talking about too.

IBM does not provide a tool to migrate data from Quickr to Connections. IBM Global Services relies on a tool from a Business Partner and you can go that route. It is priced accordingly.

However, in this case my client is not that large and only has about 300GB of data in Quickr so we decided to move it using the tools available to us.

I did many tests before it was agreed to move to IBM Connections Cloud, the client already owns and uses Mail and Sametime there so the move to it would not involve new licensing. 

In fact, we saved money by not needing to renew our Lotus Quickr, now called IBM Connections licenses and support.

Once it was shown we had viable functionality, which basically meant many tiers of FOLDERS that could be created and edited via Notes, Plugins to Windows and MACs, we were ready to go. 

Sorry taxonomy and search people, but when you need many files quickly, search is not your friend especially if you have no idea what the file is called. This is a religious argument to have at the next LUG or IBM Connect event.

So if I didn't go with IBM, how did I do it? Same way I have done migrations for over 20 years, ask around and build and leverage what you have to work with and it should save the client about 40% of the Global services price. 

Your mileage may vary, but if you are in need of this, my January is free now so call, email, tweet, skype me to help move you to IBM Connections Cloud from Quickr.

Next post will be about the process involved, for those interested let me know so I can provide more details to help you.

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!

Free Quickr Tools Available

Lotusphere brings out all the greatness of the Yellow World and in this case a favorite topic of mine, Quickr has emerged with a new player and some useful tools.

Before continuing, we have a business relationship with RPR Wyatt that goes back about 3 years or so, just being open and honest.

So Michael beat me to it, but let me provide some more details.

There are 2 tools found on this page. Yes, they want you to register to get it.

1st tool is the Essential Place Catalog
And it provides some easy to use details, see this screen shot of the sizes of the largest (all)sites/places:

As you can see from the screen shot, you can get a quick easy view of inactive sites as well.

And if you need to, export it out using native Notes export options. Something which can come in very handy for reporting to management or HR or security when they ask more detailed questions of you.

Their other tool, Essential File Extractor will pull all of the attachments in a site/place and store them on your file server or other location.

I did not test it yet as I don't have a good reason right now to do this, but I can see usage for this tool especially when ending a place or archiving it but wanting the data accessible.

If you go get it, let RPR know I sent you we are listed as Vanessa Brooks. I have a Lotusphere bet going.

SnTT - IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors in 8.5.x can act like 8.2

A few days ago I was with a client and we were going over how their files will look in Quickr 8.5.1.

Using the Quickr Connectors I noticed something which was not how my laptop was working with them.

If he double clicked on a file in the explorer list, it did not open the file...but opened the Quickr site and the file page. If he then wanted to view or edit it he had to right click or click on the drop down or the item and then preview to see it.

My laptop just opened the file.

I realized my Connectors had not been updated. So I updated them.

And they did it too!

As Darren Duke and I discussed via Skype, this is working as designed. Some have said this only happens in specific cases. And so it seems, this is that case.

What normally should happen is one should see this screen:

Ok, fine. But I, and my client, are not seeing it and want the old way back.
In this case rebuilding 1,000's of documents was not feasible.

I searched and did not find anything about this.

I did find someone inside IBM on the Connector team who emailed me back a solution, which works for me, but no guarantee it will work in all cases. YMMV

The behavior was changed to allow for the connectors to add/edit custom metadata to documents. By doing this, we needed a method to allow management of attachments on a document type page.

One thing you can try, is to modify the server version in the registry ON YOUR PC(my addition). The old behavior is in the code, but we get the server version from the registry when you manage places ... and we update it accordingly. What you you can try is to change the following key:

in the registry ...
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IBM\Lotus Quickr\Desktop Integration\Servers\
and change the Version to 8.0.4

The flag for the code is for server API version 8.0.5 or greater ...
No guarantees this will work and it can change back when you manage places on that server ... and you lose some of the new features (such as required metadata prompting).

So it worked for me and hopefully for you as well. No idea if it will revert back or not after a day or 2 or reboot or next time I login but so far today it's worked as expected.

EDITED with an update 1/7 Noon: It seems that if you add a place it reverts back. Still testing if I don't add a place what happens. So this may or not really work in the end. Perhaps just installing a Connector from 8.2 is best?

Connections vs. Quickr

Someone on Twitter posed an excellent question today, when should one use Quickr or Connections. This is not the first, or last time someone posts on this topic, so do your research too, or contact me. This is meant to be seen as a basic overview.

There are numerous answers to this and the fact that someone asked implies IBM and we Business Partners have not done a great job of explaining the difference. Most likely I will not do it service, and some will have better answers than I and if so, please comment.

While there is overlap between parts of Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections there are also some fundamental differences about them.

Quickr, for example comes in a Domino format and a Websphere J2EE format.
Connections on the other hand ONLY comes in a Websphere J2EE format. Previously I used the term Mostly because Domino could be running the mail side.

Both come ready to work on multiple Operating systems.

Quickr is more likely to be used by a group or project of people within an organization, sometimes with external users. Their needs revolve around secure file sharing, some workflow perhaps, management of details and deadlines and of course the ability to let others know when something has been posted or changed with an alert via email. Security is the primary benefit, sharing of data and being selective about who can see or edit that data is of importance.This is like having your typical silo business unit where what goes inside it, stays inside it.

Connections is more about the individual, but within the enterprise as the whole, profiles are important, sharing of documents or grouping them and making them freely accessible is a by product, creating communities that will thrive about a product or idea that are more social and open by nature, although still within a secure and security minded infrastructure. Connections can maintain one's personal contacts list as well as some more details on people than usually found in most PIM solutions. This is like taking your typical silo of a business unit(or in my language a Microsoft thinking business) and letting it share its knowledge and experience across the platform for everyone.

There are overlaps, both:

• Handle file sharing, but in different secure ways
• Provide RSS feeds for their places or data to be viewed
• Allow for external users to gain access to data files through invitations
• Provide for Single Sign On integration
• Provide security levels as to be expected
• Have Blog and Wiki options
  
• Provide for some form of management of activities and items to be done for projects
• Integrate with Lotus Notes, Symphony and Sametime

It is not my intention to provide a full detail explanation of each product, for that you could go their respective websites, Quickr and Connections for more details.

There is a pdf you may wish to review that outlines some guidelines of roles that would suit each of them best, and includes Lotus Sametime as well. You can find it here. http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/stwiki.nsf/0/00FE2842583EB37C8525757F0049A069/$FILE/Experience%20Lotus5.pdf

One can also find a rather longer pdf from the R8 Quickr time frame about Quickr here.

Quickr Customisation Samples

As I sit here, all alone in our soon to be ex-office on the last days of the year, I found this little gem that got posted to the Quickr wiki last week.

As it turns out, when the developers are away I get to act like one.

Don't worry, they earn their keep, and I really don't as a developer.

But nonetheless in an effort to help others, and at our own company potential expense, if you want to customize Lotus Quickr on your own, (Danger Will Robinson)here you go. And if you don't want to do it by yourself, get a hold of us, we are happy to help.

The Quickr Wiki page that discusses this is here.

Openntf.org has the download here.

Kudos go to Ferdal McKenna for updating and posting it and Steve Castledine for putting it together on Openntf.

ROI in 30 Days

While discussing the benefits of training employees how to make proper usage of graphics and email with Chris, it seemed to me that this has been going on since day one of email systems.

Wait till you see this picture, all 1.5MB of it.

What if that 1.5MB picture was sent out to everyone in your contacts list because it was your latest PR release? And what if you send this type of information regularly, like once a week?

If you have a list like mine, of over 5,000 people, one can start to see some serious numbers and dollars, being wasted.

Simple math(not including the size of the email for simplicity sake):
1.5MB x 5,000 = 6,500 MB or 6.5GB per weekly email sent is going out of my network.

That's a lot of bandwidth!

Plus the time involved to send each email, let's be really nice and say it takes 1 second per email to create and send from your server.

1 x 5,000 = 5,000 seconds or 84 minutes or 1 hour and 24 minutes
(Servers are multithreaded these days so this is purely theoretical # which is probably 4-5 times as large as it should be)

You think you just sent out a little email, but what you do not understand is you have now probably prevented others from sending perhaps for as long as an hour or more. Not to mention incur the wrath of your Administrator.

Now imagine if you did this inside your company with a new HR manual or employee time sheet or price guide? This gets a bit nastier.

6.5GB x 4 weeks = 26GB a month in new storage on your SAN or hard drives and email accounts. In theory. Why? Because presumably everyone will detach the attachment and store it locally and delete the email. Or at worst keep it until next week's version comes out.

Sadly I wish I was joking when I say that more than 75% will not delete the emails.

So you have now increased the daily, weekly and monthly backups(which includes tape, SAN, clustered servers, offsite storage, etc..) and over the year this would be 312GB or 234GB based on my 75% rule.

Big deal disk space is cheap, right?

Bandwidth? Internally? We have 1GB or more who cares?\
Your telecom people do if you need to keep that Quality of service up and running for that great VOIP system you have connected to Lotus Sametime. Every time you flood the network, you create a potential dam that blocks other traffic, important traffic, that needs to run efficiently so your CEO doesn't drop his calls every Monday morning.

Dollar value of this? Being nice and presuming $1-$5(real number is between $27 and $40 per month so based on this Forrester post from June 2009) a person to cover all expenses related to the bandwidth, backups, virus checker, mail system, disk space we could end up with $5,000-$25,000 lost or spent EVERYTIME this message goes out.

So monthly that's $20,000 - $100,000
Annually, $240,000 - $1.2 Million
3 years - $720,000 - $3.6 Million

OUCH!

Or, you could run Lotus Domino (8.5.1 is the latest) with it's DAOS (Domino Attachment and Object Service) which provides a one stop save for the attachment and sends a link to everyone else in your company.

So if you have DAOS setup to manage any attachment over 1MB(default is 4mb) you would only see a small blip of 1.5MB plus the text size of emails every week which even at 5,000 users is not more than 25MB per week.

A reduction in disk space of 99%! And all other costs as well.

Now, on top of this, use Lotus Quickr with it's built-in places for special groups or projects, with auto emails (links only no attachments)and group calendars to keep everyone involved and up to date and you can see some amazing ROI.

This is why we can promise a 30 day ROI to most companies.

Even if the licensing and consulting fees equals $100,000 it's still an ROI of one month at the higher end or 5 months at the low end. And this is on the low end and very generic.

If you or your company resembles even part of what was discussed, please allow us to provide more specific details to you.

Is Quickr Caching data between Sites?

In between other things today I was testing a solution for a client and ran into something which was troubling and thinking this can not be Working as Designed.

Let's say in Quickr 8.2 one has attached a movie clip in one site, called moviesite and it runs in a little window on the page.

Now let's say I hop over to demosite on the same Quickr server using the same browser window instance. As the admin I do not have to relogin of course.

In the demosite, we placed a similar window box but in this case embedded in the html code the movie name. (Just testing so it was a quick fix for a test)

Opened the page in demosite and suddenly the movie starts running.

I was at a loss for words at this implication.

Could it be a browser cache issue? There were no pointers to the other site just a simple movie.mpg name.

Some one with some more development knowledge on Quickr please enlighten me.

Lotus Quickr Case Study posted

University College Sealand builds a personalised collaborative Web 2.0 learning environment with IBM and Opus Neo

Read it all here.

With more than 8,000 students and 700 employees, University College Sealand (UCSJ) is one of the largest higher educational institutions in Denmark. Formed as a result of a merger between CVU South and CVU Zealand, UCSJ is consolidating its operations to four main campuses in the Sealand region and integrating staff and students from 18 different educational institutions into a single organisation.

My favorite quote:

“There were two things we were absolutely convinced about,” says Michael Jungfalk: “First, the system had to be flexible and easy to develop and extend – so we were keen on open technologies and Web 2.0. Second, we were not interested in solutions that couldn’t prove that they offered the functionalities we wanted. ‘It will work in our next release’ was not what we wanted to hear.”

Open Season on Domino.Doc to Quickr Conversions

In the last 48 hours I have written documents/SOW for 4 migrations so if you have Domino.Doc and fear it, let me know and we will take care of it for you, it can be done faster than you can imagine.

As one of the few Business Partners entrusted with the code to handle these conversions I wanted to provide a few items to help you plan for the migration to Quickr.

1) In order for the tool to work, you MUST be using Domino.Doc/LDDM versions 6.5.1 or 7.0, it doesn't matter what Domino version. So if you are NOT using these versions, we will first have to upgarde you to them.

2) The Quickr server must be running 8.2 on top of Domino 8.5 and we need the Notes 8.5 client to manage the task as well running the desktop enabler.

For more, you can read the Redbook, Self Assessment and Strategy Guide for Migrating from Domino Document Manager

The MOST Common question asked?
1) What version of Domino.Doc am I running?
Not as easy as Quickr to find out. But if you open your main file cabinet/library of Domino.Doc in a browser and click on the Lotus/LDDM/Domino.Doc logo in the upper left corner you will get a pop up telling you which version and what date it came out.

Of course you could also go straight to the url which would look like this:
http://servername.com/domdoc/yourdocLibraryLib.nsf/SysAdmin/AboutBox?OpenDocument

2) What version of Quickr am I running?
This is much easier. You can either look at your server console when http starts or view the page source of any Quickr website and in the first few lines you will see this:

<-- Copyright (c) IBM Corporation 1987, 2008. All Rights Reserved. -->
<-- IBM LOTUS QUICKR VERSION: 810007.004 | Built On Domino: Build V801_02072008-->
<-- IBM LOTUS QUICKR VERSION: 810007.004 | Release: 8,1,0,7 | Build: QRD8.1.0.7-004c -->

And this server has not been updated yet to 8.2 as one can plainly see.

They Call it Flippr and it's for Quickr

Admins at least.

The great SNAPPS team, led by Rob Novak are playing with another Quickr tool, this one for Admins.

Panda Bear was for the users, but now they gave us Admins something nice as well.

Great UI, smooth, fast and simple.

Fast! I am currently in London, UK on a DSL line with average speed connecting to a very old piece of hardware in the states on a slow line. And this does my work faster than I can if I try to refresh a web page!

Although I had some problems initially, that were my fault, now it shows my sites and does lookups on people so one can make access changes a snap.

The basic necessities are there just like they are via a browser, but without the headache and delays or crashes of the browser(you IE people know who you are, stop it).

Now if they can merge Flippr and Panda, for us Admins, I would be very happy. One program and screens pace is always better than 2.

Excellent work! Coming soon to a website near you probably in the near future.
What do I know, I am just a beta.

Quickr 8.2 REQUIRES Lotus Domino 8.5

Just in case you never read anything or wait until you get to work on it.
Wanted to make this clear for everyone.

Those of you who stopped paying maintenance before 8.5, not sure what to tell you. An interesting predicament you and IBM find yourselves.

Technote with all the details is #7015852 found here.

Some highlights:

Windows 2008, 32 bit only
Windows 2003(and R2), 32 bit only

Domino 8.5, 32 bit only
LDAP from R7 and R8 Domino servers, among other 3rd party ones
Active Directory 2003

Sametime 7.5.1, 8.0.1, 8.0.2

Quickr for Domino 64 and Windows 64....MIA

And I do not mean it is hanging out at Terminal 2 in Miami International Airport.

According to the Lotus Quickr 8.1 Technote 64 bit is not an approved version. A discussion ensued as to IF it will install at all. Based on our tests, not in our environment.

Our offices and some of our clients are asking about Quickr on 64 bit Domino running on Windows 64 bit.

All new machines are running 64 bit Windows 2008, usually.

Naturally one wants to put on Domino 64 but if you are or will be doing Lotus Quickr installs you are best to install Domino 32 bit on the Windows 64 bit server.

Maybe a VM is the answer, if hardware is not in your budget or you already started your project and ran into a problem, as one client found last week.

There was a posting about how to use the Lotus Quickr Connectors on a 64 bit OS and here is the forum link if you need it.


And a Technote of an FAQ on 64 bit Domino

My findings have led me to discuss this with the IBM product management for consideration in the future. If this is important to you, post here so we can bring it back to them.

Marc Pagnier PM for Quickr had this to say:

yes, it is always a question of priorities. We tried to support 64-bit in 8.2 but this would have taken some work, non negligeable, and we had so many other critical items on the list. Not all Domino apps will be 64 bit right away. Quickr should run on its own Domino server (part of the package)

Stuart Mcintyre assisted with some of the details on this post. Cheers, Stuart.

When I'm Mobile....Beep,Beep

Continuing on recent discussions from WES, RIM has a bunch of clients for you and your Blackberry friends. Not all available yet, but Sametime has been for a while(I am updating my install doc for it, look for the post this week).

Go to this page for all the details and then get in on the notification or beta for each of the mobile clients.

1) Sametime - You always remember your first..and still advancing.

See this IBM PRESS Room Announcement:

The new BlackBerry Client for Lotus Sametime extends real-time collaboration from the desktop computer to the BlackBerry smartphone, including instant messaging (IM), presence awareness, contacts, broadcasts, file transfer, click-to-call and other features. Traditional landline phones become obsolete through the combination of voice-over-IP with presence awareness via IBM Lotus Sametime and corporate network and wireless routing with the BlackBerry® Bold® smartphone. In addition to IM, presence is seen throughout the smartphone applications. For example, a customer can use instant messaging within their calendar or an email to get an urgent answer in the moment without breaking the work flow. If instant messages aren't fast enough, the click-to-call feature is one button away.

2) Connections - The next generation BlackBerry Client for Lotus Connections, developed by RIM and available May 8!

3) Quickr - Coming soon? But not fast enough for me and my clients

4) Symphony - Coming soon?

Of course you need to move to BES 5.0 for some of these to work with all the benefits. We can help you if you need it.

By the way if you were looking to mobilize your applications and work force to leverage your investment in Lotus and RIM technology, let me know as I will be doing a LCTY event on this topic soon, look for slides.

Lotus Domino SSL, Don't Force It (updated Post)

Can't save this for SNTT, that's on Yom Kippur.

Evidently one's intepretation of a setting can lead to double trouble.

A URL which should look like this(found on a Lotus Quickr server):
https://www.youarethe1.com/lotusquickr/...

Turned into this:
https://www.youarethe1.com/https//www.youarethe1.com/lotusquickr...

And of course prevents logging in.

The resolution for this odd appearance is the following:
In the Server document of the offending server go to:
Internet Protocols Section
Domino Web Engine Tab
HTTP Sessions Part
Force Login on SSL set it to NO

Setting it to YES caused this dilemna.
I am not going to delve into what this field is for exactly, there is no hover over or click on it help to tell me what it is for....so someone want to enlighten me I will be happy to add it on to this post.

COntinuing now with User Acceptance Testing.

Updated 4/23/2009 Per Patrick's post
Technote:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21283220

Lotus Quickr, The Outside World and You

More than half of the installations we do for Lotus Quickr are for companies that want and need to work with outside vendors or customers. Do you or your clients fit these molds? Step outside of your network and see the world outside and expand your horizons, embrace the Extranet.

Sometimes this is on a project basis, like our retail firm that specializes in enhancing sales.

In one case it's so a Fortune 50 company can provide even more attention to their suppliers and customers in a real time way, using Lotus Sametime integrated with it in an industry where time is of the essence.

Or an auto company that uses it internally but provides limited secure access to it's suppliers to ensure all parts and designs are always available and correctly designed.

Maybe a law firm that wants to stop the sending of large files, packets by courier and other expenses to find a better way to provide even more return to their clients.

Pharmaceutical firms that need to track their patents, testing and other items around the world using blind tests and results in an updated dashboard daily.

Can you do these with Sharepoint? Perhaps some of the simpler side. And with enough development maybe most of the rest. But it will cost you 10X what it will cost doing it in Domino. Plus your replication of the data for offline usage when traveling is just an added benefit, built in of course because Lotus Domino is behind it all. And you don't need an extra server just to enable email for all of the workflow, like you would under the Microsoft way.

So when you think about Lotus Quickr, what are you doing to expand your companies usage?

Domino.Doc could make you money

Domino Document Manager, or Domino.Doc as some of us call it still is on it's retirement tour. Like Springsteen or the Rolling Stones, eventually the great ones have to admit to getting old.

Which is why we are so happy to see all the Doc clients.
We haven't been this busy on Doc in probably 3 years. And it's great!
If you aren't or don't have the knowledge on it but have the clients, let us know we can work with you or your customer.

We are working with some of our clients to help migrate them to Lotus Quickr from Domino.doc. Others Filenet looks like a better fit, but either way it's a lot of projects.

How do you get such a project approved you ask in this economy? Well let's see, at the risk of helping competitors(IBM, Microsoft and other BPs) here are some ideas:

1) It's not about cost, although that does figure into it. Yes, your data is going from Server A to Server B and some costs are involved there so how do you justify it?
Look at it this way instead:
You are bringing the clients to a more modern software which connects or interconnects with the latest versions of browsers, MS Office and operating systems. Why is this a benefit? Because your cost base can be spread out now to almost any individual or group or vendor instead of a small group which is limited in their hardware and software updates, which also causes other organizational problems. Maybe not a cost savings, but a better budget line item. And you can push that onto suppliers, vendors or even customers depending on the situation. Or add it into the costs of those expensive Vista laptops you are buying.

2) Maybe the problem was you had the solution sitting on such old hardware by now that every attachment would take a minute or two just to attach it. If you think about it this way, the average business line employee makes $60,000(random #). If an updated version was installed on a new server and could save 100 clients, 15 minutes a day, how much would that save your company?
100 people x 15minutes x 5days x 52weeks = 390,000 minutes or 6,500 hours a year.
A dollar figure to that is $187,500 in wasted time costs that could be recouped or reused that right now are an absolute loss. 3 whole man/woman salaries and time. OUCH!

3) Support and Maintenance may be an issue. It costs more to support older software and hardware than newer systems. Like an old car which reaches a point of diminishing returns. Fixing this, repairing that, corruption, broken enablers, you get the idea.

4) There is also shipping costs to consider(savings to you by having a more open system), saving network bandwidth by using more recent software with better compression and network awareness and even possibly electrical costs.

5) PLUS you get to have Filenet or Lotus Quickr for free in a swap out. Now that's a really great deal you can't just walk away from. You leave an old product for a new one with no licensing fees.

In the end a migration is probably in your better interest sooner rather than later and we can assist you with however much help you need to accomplish the task before you.

Fud Buster Friday #26 - You Can't Measure ROI

Really? Did Google say that because free is the best ROI?
Did Microsoft suggest it because well, we all know the ROI from anything Microsoft is staggering....in their pocket, not yours.
Maybe your university professor wants to get the point across about ROI. And really it is a good point, but if you don't understand and know your customers environment you can't really produce a decent ROI proposal.

2 different clients this week have inquired about Lotus Quickr. I love them for it.
What they both want is a quantifiable ROI to justify the corporate wide installation, licensing and services fees.

So where can you find ROI? It is everywhere, but you have to know what you are looking for to start.

In both cases the easiest way was to explain that the postal service would lose a lot of revenue. Both clients mail out cd's, usb drives and other documents to their sales force around the world. At least 4 times a year if not monthly in some cases. Imagine the costs saved after 1 shipping is no longer needed. Now multiply it all year. Plus reduce the cost and time of packing, labeling, shipping, etc... not to mention the trees and waste saved by going digital.

Sounds ancient, almost hard to believe in this day and age companies still don't put more money and time into their online projects. Yet it's all true and it happens everywhere. Go find new clients and ask them.

Or in a different light, we removed about 500 pounds of computer equipment from a law office and they in turn got back much needed space and piece of mind. The cost was much cheaper than if they removed it themselves and faster too. Yet few companies see it that way. They would rather find the cheapest solution, spend months figuring it out and in the mean time waste prime real estate or warehouse space of theirs.

A third direction is telecommunication costs. Sending links, instead of full 50MB attachments reduces stress on your bandwidth, networks, disk space, backups and of course time. Not everyone or every place has T1, cable or DSL lines, modem speed is still average in many places. Remember that next time you try to rollout some beefy application with your client.

And thanks to everyone for the Birthday wishes and I am happy to say the move to the new office is finally completed. Look for this blog to be moved sometime in the not so distant future.