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!

2nd Session Speaking at SugarCon 2012

 

An even bigger surprise to me yesterday when I was researching something for SugarCon and found out I was doing a 2nd session!
The first time, I found out via blog post, this time via Google search.
I had wondered about the session because it is one which I am quite sure no one else was doing, namely:

Full Power Collaboration with IBM SmartCloud Engage and SugarCRM

The session was meant to be about the points of integration between SugarCRM and LotusLive IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. However, it was also about how to integrate older  Domino CRM applications into SugarCRM. Since SugarCRM bought the iEnterprise CRM solution it is not such a rip and replace.


ideally we want to help every company with a Domino infrastructure looking at SugarCRM to recognize that it is not an all or nothing effort. There are choices and using 2-3 client case studies we will be outlining the options and demo them as examples, where posible.


So if you will be in San Francisco April 23-26 let me know and if you have SugarCRM questions or Domino CRM questions ask away.

What's New in LotusLive as of Today

This is from a PDF we received from IBM. Some nice additions and changes. If you are looking at LotusLive let me know, happy to help you with it.
One thing which is of interest:


Mail file transfer over FTP
Companies that user a hybrid environment and that transfer mail files to the service can use a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client to perform the transfer. This method is supported for mail file batches that are equal to or less than 1234 GB.


What's new in LotusLive

The latest update of LotusLive™ contains many new features and upgrades.
Searchable help system
The new help system is navigable and searchable. It contains help for Profiles, Contacts, Communities, Activities, Files, iNotes, Events, and Administration. For additional information, go to the Product Documentation on the LotusLive wiki.

What's new in LotusLive Engage and LotusLive Connections
Many features have been implemented that enhance productivity and give users
additional capabilities.
Communities

1. A community business owner can change the business owner of the community to another person.
2. Files uploaded into the community, and files shared with the community can be made available to community members.
3. Community owners can stop sharing files and folders that were originally shared to the community by its members.
4. Community Folders within Files navigation are now displayed in Folders shared with Me.

For more details about Communities, see Communities Help in LotusLive.

Activities

1. As you create or edit an activity entry, your work is automatically saved every 5 minutes, unless the administrator changes the interval.
2. The activity business owner can change the business owner of the activity to another person
3. You can add a link to a file or folder in the Files application from an activity entry to share it with the activity members.

For more details about Activities, see Activities Help in LotusLive.

Files
The LotusLive Files application has been replaced by the IBM Connections Files application to better leverage the functionality across product offerings.

Functional and user interface changes include the following:
– You can pin frequently used files and folders to make them easier to find.
– You can subscribe to Feeds to receive update notification for files, folders, and views in your feedreader.
– You can share a file with a user who is not yet a member of LotusLive; the guest must accept the invitation to join LotusLive before they can access the shared file. When you include a non-LotusLive user email in your share list you are prompted to specify the person's name. The person receives an email to join LotusLive; upon doing so they can access the shared file.
– You can add tags when uploading files and folders and can search and filter on tags to retrieve files and folders.

Some features of the old interface have been removed or have been changed. The changes include the following items:
– Bookmarks are preserved as an attached text file.
– Readers will see all other readers on a shared tab for all files, regardless of when the files were created. If you do not want the readers of files created prior to this release to be visible, you must remove those readers prior to using this release.
– Users will no longer be able to upload a file and have it be accessible by anyone inside or outside of the company without authentication for all worldwide public users.
– The size limit for comments is reduced from 10 MB to 50K. This limits the amount of comments you can type.
– The character limit for tags is reduced from 256 to 100 characters. This limits the amount of Tag text that you can type.
– Recent Collaborators is no longer included on the Files dashboard and is available through the LotusLive Files interface.
– Recent Files is no longer included on the Files dashboard. However, it is available through the LotusLive Files interface.
– All files uploaded to LotusLive Files take the name of the file name being uploaded.

For more details about Files, see Files Help in LotusLive or watch the Getting
Started using Files in LotusLive video at http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/
dw/lotus/LotusLive/train2/Files/Files1.htm.

Instant Messaging

1. Added support for Sametime® Connect client 8.5.1
2. Dropped support for Sametime Connect client 7.5.1
3. Sametime Connect client for BlackBerry is available if activated for your account.
4. A browser-based Sametime Chat client is available if activated for your account.
5. Users who are logged into Sametime using the browser-based client will see presence awareness information for other users when viewing their LotusLive business card.

People

1. Usability improvements to My Profiles makes it easier to edit your profile.
2. "Company" has been changed to "Organization" throughout the People interface.
3. Personal Profiles no longer displays Folders shared with me.
4. Organization Profile no longer displays a Files widget. Public files, which was the content of this widget, are no longer supported.

For more details about People, see the People category in the LotusLive wiki.

Charts

1. The Charts service/feature is being removed from LotusLive Engage and LotusLive Connections.
2. The Creating Data Set feature is being removed from the navigation of LotusLive Files.

Meetings for Mobile

1. A mobile Meetings client is now available for BlackBerry, Android, iPhone, and iPad devices, enabling subscribers to join a LotusLive Meeting, view presentations, list participants, and chat with participants.
2. Visit Apple iTunes for the LotusLive Meetings Mobile app for Apple iPad or iPhone. Or go to the Android Market and download the LotusLive Meetings app.
3. LotusLive Meetings for Blackberry users is available from http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/58679?lang=en.

Integrated Applications
A new integrated application is available: Trilog ProjExec Live . ProjExec Live
enables project managers to create, plan, execute and track projects using a professional Gantt editor that synchronizes with Microsoft Project. Invite other LotusLive users as project members and collaborate securely using a multi-project activity stream called the Project Wall. ProjExec Live is an intuitive, mobile-friendly solution to effectively manage and deliver projects of any size. More information is
available in the wiki page for ProjExec.

Note: Integrated Applications are available only if your company administrator has enabled them.

What's new in LotusLive iNotes

1. Additional browser support and automatic configuration for IMAP, CardDAV, and CalDAV has been added.
2. Internet Explorer Version 9 and Firefox Version 5 are now supported.
3. The LotusLive iNotes Consumer profile is now available. This allows you to set up IMAP, CardDAV, and CalDAV in one operation on your iPhone.

For more details about LotusLive iNotes®, see LotusLive iNotes Help in LotusLive

What's new in LotusLive Notes®
The following features and documentation improvements are new in the current
release of IBM® LotusLive Notes™.

Free 60-day self-service trial
You can sign up for a free self-service trial of LotusLive Notes. This self-service trial includes a 60-day subscription to LotusLive Notes and LotusLive Engage. To sign up, simply go to the LotusLive website, and then click Try LotusLive. Complete the information shown on the form and click Submit. You receive an
email that includes your trial account logon information. For details about the self-service trial, see Frequently Asked Questions about the LotusLive Notes Self-service Trial.

BlackBerry smartphone management improvements
Administrators now manage user’s BlackBerry® smartphones through an improved interface in LotusLive Notes Administration. Most options available through the previous MDM interface are still available. One exception is the ability to add and delete BlackBerry smartphone accounts; these tasks are no longer available because they are no longer required. To manage a user’s smartphone, administrators perform the following steps from the LotusLive Notes Administration window:
1. Click Users.
2. Select Show: BlackBerry only.
3. Select a user name and click Manage BlackBerry Smartphone.
Users now manage their BlackBerry smartphones through an improved interface in LotusLive. Options available through the previous MDM interface are still available, except the ability to reset a device password.

To enforce a stricter device password policy, only administrators can now reset device passwords. To manage their smartphones, users perform the following steps from the LotusLive dashboard:
1. Click Apps > Downloads and Setup.
2. Click View LotusLive Notes options.
3. Under Got a mobile device? click Manage your BlackBerry smartphone.

Administrators can now provision users with BlackBerry smartphone subscriptions and LotusLive Notes subscriptions at the same time. Also, the smartphone management interfaces and the documentation are now translated.To read about this feature, see the topics Administering BlackBerry smartphones
and users and Using your BlackBerry smartphone with LotusLive Notes.

Integrated instant messaging for LotusLive Notes web
Administrators can use the instant messaging settings in LotusLive Notes Administration to enable an instant messaging community within LotusLive Notes web clients. The integrated community can be the LotusLive instant messaging community or an on-premises IBM Sametime community. Lotus Notes® clients that
previously connected to the LotusLive instant messaging community, continue to do so in the current release.

To connect to a community that the administrator has enabled, LotusLive Notes web users perform these steps:
1. From the LotusLive Notes web Inbox, click More > Preferences.
2. Under Instant messaginge, select Enable instant messaging.
To read about this feature, see the topic Configuring instant messaging.

Trash folder management
By default, when a LotusLive Notes user deletes a message, the message is moved to the Trash folder where it remains for 14 days, and then is permanently deleted. Administrators can change this value by configuring mail settings and entering a number 14 - 90. Additionally, you can specify whether users can select and delete a single message, or delete all messages from the Trash folder by emptying the trash. For information on how to enable trash folder management, see the topic Configuring mail settings. For LotusLive Notes users, the topics Managing the Trash folder in the Lotus Notes client and Managing the Trash folder in the Lotus Notes web client provide an explanation of how administrative settings impact Trash folder management.

To read about this feature, see the topic Configuring mail settings.

Adding external names to a group
In a service-only environment, administrators can add an external name to a group. An external name is one that is not included in the directory list. To read about this feature, see the topic Managing groups.

Email filters
Administrators can create filters to allow or block Internet email sent from specific domains or addresses. For example, they can create filters to allow users to receive email from people whose messages would otherwise be blocked because of the content they contain. Or they can use filters to block email that is not normally
blocked but that their users do not want to receive. Filters are applied to all email that is addressed to an Internet domain for which LotusLive manages inbound routing.
To read about this feature, see the topic Creating filters to apply to inbound

Internet mail.
Revoking a LotusLive Notes user account
When you delete a LotusLive Notes user account, you remove the LotusLive Notes subscription from the user. If you delete a new account within seven days of creating it, the data is removed from the LotusLive Notes servers. However, if you delete a user account that is older than seven days, the data remains available on LotusLive Notes servers for up to 30 days. If you want to delete a LotusLive Notes user account and remove the data from the LotusLive Notes servers before the 30-day period ends, you can revoke a LotusLive Notes user account.
For information on this feature, see the topic Deleting and Revoking a LotusLive Notes user account.

Mail file transfer over FTP
Companies that user a hybrid environment and that transfer mail files to the service can use a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client to perform the transfer. This method is supported for mail file batches that are equal to or less than 1234 GB.
To read about this feature, see the topic Uploading mail files to an FTP server.

Documentation improvements
In addition to documentation on new features, the "Administering LotusLive Notes" documentation includes the following improvements:
New and updated topics in product documentation

Information resources for LotusLive Notes :
New topic -- lists additional resources available to help you keep up-to-date on technical content, known issues, and product news.

Frequently asked questions about administering LotusLive Notes
New topic -- provides answers to questions frequently asked about the tasks that company administrators perform in a LotusLive Notes environment.

Using policies to configure message disclaimers
New topic -- describes how to use explicit policies in a hybrid environment to enable message disclaimers.

Forming a distinguished name
New topic -- describes how to form a distinguished name. Used when adding new users or change LotusLive Notes user names in a service-only. Information was previously included in renaming topics.

Suspending a LotusLive Notes account
New topic -- includes results when a user account is deleted. Information on suspending a user was previously included in a general user management topic.

Removing a LotusLive Notes subscription from a user account
New topic -- describes how to remove a subscription, and how the user account is affected.

Additional administration tasks
New topic -- includes links to general LotusLive administration tasks that are included in the Administering LotusLive product documentation.

Managing user accounts
Updated topic -- provides additional details about account management tasks such as renaming or deleting user accounts.

Changing a Lotus Notes user name in a service-only environment
Updated topic -- added advisory text that includes a list of recommendations to ensure a successful user rename.

Changing a Lotus Notes user name in a hybrid environment
Updated topic -- added advisory text that includes a list of recommendations to ensure
a successful user rename. Also reorganized topic to make it clearer which steps are performed on-premises, and which are performed using LotusLive Notes Administration.

Adding a new user in a service-only environment
Updated topic -- added information about new Administrator Assistant role. Also added clarification that the language specified in the Basics section needs to match mail template language.

What's new in LotusLive Engage and LotusLive Connections
Administration Improvements and updates have been made to the administrator interface and administrative functionality. Performance upgrades are also included in this release.

Updates and new features

1. Custom Apps are now called Internal Apps.
2. OAuth 2.0 is now supported. OAuth 2.0 introduces new features, including the ability to customize how long an application has access to LotusLive.
3. A new role called AppDeveloper is available for users that need to integrate their organization's internal applications, but don't need access to other Administrator areas.
4. Usability improvements added to User Accounts make it easier to find the context menu and account status for each user.
5. Administrators can now request enablement of journalling to capture various LotusLive application events.
6. Administrators can now request enablement of federated identity management, with SAML protocol, to control how federated users log in to and access LotusLive.
7. Administrators can now request enablement of LotusLive integration server capabilities, allowing designated subscribers to upload user provisioning information from their organization's on-premises systems, such as IBM Lotus® Domino® directory or LDAP, to LotusLive. The LotusLive integration server also enables designated subscribers to upload user and group content from their organization's enterprise directory to their LotusLive iNotes corporate contacts directory.
8. When uploading user provisioning change files using LotusLive integration server, if no language is specified, the company contact language is used. Previously the default language used was English. An administrator specifies the company contact language in LotusLive on their My Account Settings page using the Localization and Language options.
9. The Administrator Download Report is now shared by column. This change affects the Shared by column of the report to display the File Owner.

For more details about administering LotusLive, see LotusLive Administration Help in LotusLive.

And in closing:

This information was developed for products and services offered in the U.S.A. IBM may not offer the products, services, or features discussed in this document in other countries. Consult your local IBM representative for information on the products and services currently available in your area. Any reference to an IBM product, program, or service is not intended to state or imply that only that IBM product, program, or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program, or service that does not infringe any IBM intellectual property right may be used instead. However, it is the user's responsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any non-IBM product, program, or service.

March Madness, IBM Southeast Parties Yesterday

If you were in Miami(like me), Atlanta (Like Lisa Duke) or Jacksonville you were treated to an evening of LotusLive, or more specifically about IBM Connections at your local Dave and Busters.

We had about 25-30 registered attendees. Some of our clients, some unknown to me,other Business Partners and naturally a gaggle of IBMers.

The session started with a overview/welcome and some marketing pitch. Then the IBM team gave a scripted demo of a day in the life of a basketball manufacturer.

Clients I discussed it with said they liked the demo and how the integration was shown. I suggested the demo be less marketing fluff and more about what the people need and used, but I would say that wouldn't I. Aside from some sound issues it went well and we would like to see more of these types of events done in a vertical market way for finance, insurance, cruise lines etc.

Thanks to the IBM team that put it all together.

LotusLive, good for what connects you

I have discussed it before but one of the things I like about LotusLive is that everything is in one place and interacts with each other.

You do not need to remember multiple passwords, nor do you need to remember where you left that file last month.

When you look at it from an online meeting discussion, yes it does not do everything a full IBM  Sametime solution does, but what you get for your $6/month(LotusLive Meetings) is superior to what you get from webex...and they charge $49/month. Inside the LotusLive Suite which costs a whopping $10 (LotusLive Collaboration and Meeting Suite)offering you get some parts of IBM Connections, plus secure file sharing, plus email, plus calendar/scheduling, plus plus separate housing for your company not shared spaces. You can even do a hybrid model between you and the IBM Cloud. Now that is control as well as quite an offer. We can help you with this, just ask me how.

By the way, you probably have no idea how many people in your company are paying the Webex monthly fees, find out, the truth may be shocking.

So we can reduce your costs, one just one item, by 75% or more, shouldn't you look at our other offerings as well? We can help you reduce next month's bills today...even if you Exchange, Groupwise or Gmail.

Lotus Live Engage Rocks

Engage is an excellent cloud offering from IBM.
Imagine getting a mixture of Lotus Connections and Lotus Sametime...and only paying about $5!

Need to do easy webinars? Use the built-in Sametime meetings. AND record them.
Want to profile employees and cull more information about your business from them? Set up your profiles.
Secure File Sharing? yes
Simple to invite external people to download files? Yes
Want to work on projects or defined spaces for client work? Use Communities.

As an Admin you can control how files are shared by default or allow people to make their own choice.
Customization includes color schemes and corporate logo. Simple but meaningful.

FREE Add-ins, for FREE, really, include Salesforce.com, Tungle which allows for interaction between one's calendar, no matter which system you are on, Skype, UPS, Silanis which provides secure digital signing of documents, Vondle which is a file viewer and no doubt more will be coming soon as well.

Lotuslive Engage can help smaller companies who do not want to have the added expense of servers, licenses and support.

Larger companies can be more agile by making these tools available worldwide(19 languages) and save a ton of money that way as well.

It also makes for a nice demonstration/testing environment when looking into the full on premises packages.

For more details and compare the LotusLive choices, you can see this page.

If you need help in understanding how to integrate this into your organization just ask me or if you are at LoLA I will be here all day.

LotusLive Impresses Customers

This morning I did a training session for a client's Ukraine team. So I was up at 6am to prepare. This was my 3rd in 3 weeks on LotusLive so I have it all down by now.

If anyone would like a similar session just let me know and we will schedule one.

The client is going to be using LotusLive Engage with LotusLive Notes. Problem is they are not turned on yet, so we used our Business Partner account and a Domino iNotes implementation.

Business Partners do not get to have the full LotusLive suite to use or play with unless they want to pay for it. We only get a choice of Engage, Notes or Meetings,(I believe) and given the choice, well Engage is much more helpful in sales.

Why? Because it covers everything except mail and calendaring/scheduling. Also we have a 1Gb limit compared to a 5GB for customers. And for the parts lacking I use Domino iNotes.

What was nice to hear is when I was showing the people on the LotusLive Meeting how in iNotes you can have all your resources, conference lines, meeting rooms and time lookups done for you, I got many thanks and "WOW" and "that is great" from the customers.

I suggested what is taking up 15 minutes of time could be resolved in less than 3 they were shocked and very eager to jump on it.

They also asked about an HR workflow app and how that will work inside Engage. It doesn't and can't be inside Engage.

Well not today.

This must change in Lotuslive, the ability to add tabs or other websites to My Dashboard so when this app is ready to go live on the web(via their in-house Domino app, unless we can find away to get it into the IBM Beehive for LotusLive) it will be there too.

This was the only issue they raised and one I have is that the link on My Dashboard should be customizable so it can point to the company's public or private website.

If you are a Business Partner and do not sell LotusLive, you should get into it now. However, John Head posted about the issue facing BPS yesterday and I can't agree more with him on this subject. So understand what you can offer before you talk to your customers.

If you have clients using older versions of iNotes templates for any reason start showing them iNotes 8.5.1 and help them save time and effort.

LotusLive NOTES Questions

Seems I struck gold with my queries on Lotuslive Notes...not iNotes.

Seen the Wiki? Almost empty.

If this is in production, then I am confused by the references to it being in beta.

I await entry to the LL beta program, asked months ago and again now, especially given our client is going to go to it.

So many questions, but I have asked some internal people at IBM for help.

So for now I leave you with these thoughts as people have asked why we are looking at Notes and not iNotes.

iNotes only provides email and some calendaring but not the robust side of business life clients need, especially in resource and reservations info.

Then there are policies we would like to use too.

We thought about using iNotes and the client employees could use their client of choice, but this led to a support issue since they did not want to support more than 1 client.

Notes will let the employees login via browser and a Notes client. Best of both worlds ideally. Yes, one could do this with iNotes BUT certain functions(iCal for one) will not work properly(fix promised in 852 but yet to be resolved in our testing). So this negates using it, for now.

Also how would you use Out of Office from a Notes client in iNotes?

We want to help the employees realize the client and the browser based look, act and feel the same(I know this is not 100% true, but it is mostly true..90% maybe).

Price is only marginally important, functionality is crucial to them.

More details coming soon. And no, I missed one of the calls about this so anyone who has some details(not the sales talk I have that) let me know. Thank you

White Space? Doesn't everyone have an Email system?

Evidently not.

Yes, there is life on the planet that does not have a corporate email solution in
place.

Sure, there are some small outfits or startups who don't have anything, but this is a company doing some serious business with offices in 3 locations, 2 in the US and about 100 people.

But they use FREE tools. How cool! How cheap! How....frustrating!!!

Seems the IT person/people had a great idea to use web tools (not ones I even know, but to each their own findings) and Linux file servers running some homespun email, and well, you get the picture. They have serious issues with a failure of various services, some web 2.0 software they used going under, their file server platform needs to get restarted daily, they use an ISP mail server, they have no calendaring/scheduling, they use a (1)Google calendar for everyone to manage their calendar, but send invites via an Outlook like program and track other bits of meeting info in a spreadsheet, which is shared between the AA's and... well it's amazing they get it all done.

We were asked to discuss LotusLive(LL for the rest of this post).
We ruled out LLiNotes because they also want a full client, they can't depend on Internet access for everything all the time.
LLNotes was deemed appropriate because of their need for a mixed client and browser requirements to accommodate everyone's way of working, I can appreciate their forward thinking on this.
LLEngage was included as they want collaboration, sharing of files(inside and out), Meetings and parts of the Lotus Connections which is in the offering.

After meeting with the executive in charge, we sat down with some people who setup meetings and we learned how they work and their frustrations. Something I learned over 15 years ago is always ask the administrative assistants if you want to know what works or doesn't in a company and just what they do every day, because these are the 10% of people who use 90% of the product, really, so befriend them if you know what's good for you...and them. Done with lesson.

So they proceeded to detail how they set a meeting.

First, they go to the great Google calendar they use to see what time is free...for everyone. Yes, most of the employees time is kept in there. Then they find a time(somehow)that works for everyone.

Second, they must find a phone line which is available for the conf. call. They use...a spreadsheet to track this. Evidently their Google calendar does not have a resources option. They provide a line they think might be open based on anything scheduled around the meeting. I kid you not.

Third, they have a location which uses....Outlook. Not Exchange or so I was told, just Outlook for their calendar and email. So these poor AA's have to send an Outlook invite to those people and a Google one to everyone else, I gave up asking why after a while. Suffice it to say they need a little direction as they are expected to double in size next year.

Fourth, they then have to track everyone that accepted or not to merge the 2 different calendars plus outside people. I immediately thought of Tungle and advised them to use it. And save a huge amount of time and effort, but they don't want to learn something new and then another thing after(the LL they meant). While I explained it works together, decided it better to push forward.

Fifth, there is the problem with seeing someone's email, especially if there is NO server for email. Sorry did I forget that part? All emails are downloaded to each person's pc. Never mind Business Continuity or Government requirements(we also discussed what they should or should not do, I suggested their corporate lawyers provide a guideline and then we can discuss it, I am not a lawyer and can not advise on that properly). So they almost have to play phone tag with people to verify times/dates, some people seem to use an IM or Skype but not enough.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Now, after all this, I sat down with my laptop and showed them 3 different ways to create those same meetings requests. I used LotusLive, Notes and the Domino iNotes clients. Imagine their faces, and comments, as I showed them the meeting options in the Notes and iNotes side include the LotusLive details for dialin and meeting details, Group Calendar option, colored layers(they have that in Google but not one for themselves and everyone else), free time lookups, resource reservations, auto processing for meetings and a few other items they asked about.

Happy to hear them say things like "Something really does all of that?" or "OMG, we don't have to deal with 4 different lookups and systems?" and my favorite "We can't do this in Outlook!".

At no time did anyone voice a bad opinion about Notes or IBM. True the exec was in the room, but even after he left, everyone was just amazed and impressed at what they saw.

Next thing is to setup a demo for the AA's on some items they asked about so they can walk through a few meeting setups on their own to make sure we have all the pieces they use/need.

So the next time you hear there is no new opportunities out there, just remember, you see what you want to see.

Did I mention these guys have an office inside a building where Microsoft has offices. I almost went to the MS office just to go talk to their local evangelist but as our meeting ran over by an hour or so had to get home. Maybe next time I will check it out. That might be an interesting post.

LotusLive Q&A with it's Product Managers

In discussing LotusLive with sales, tech people, Business Partners and clients there are a number of questions I have still, both from a client perspective and a Business partner perspective. This is not about a specific offering, although probably mostly aimed at LotusLive Notes, but in general I am listening to opinions.

After an email to Sean P. I had a great discussion with Beverly Dewitt who used to be part of the same team as me, but she was in the US, not EMEA. Her role now is to work with the Business Partners on LotusLive. She pointed me to the BD day session which I was unable to attend due to the SRO of the small rooms and I apologized for my ignorance on some topics. She also put me in touch with John Beck, PM for LotusLive. But for those who are not privy to all the Lotuslive knowledge here are some of the questions with some answers.

From the client's view:

1) Security - Login/password is NOT enough for some customers. VPN access would alleviate this a bit, SecureID perhaps?
Answer- VPN is possible, so are many other routes, but the customer should be able to leverage their existing security. We as Business Partners are working on the best practices for these connections to Lotuslive. It can involve many parts of your organization so be aware and think about the choices. We are here to help.

2) Support - Who provides it and for what? The Business Partner? No, IBM manages the hardware, OS and Domino updates so any problems must go to them.
Answer - In short, yes, if the service goes down, call IBM. Since the life of LotusLive Notes is very basic and vanilla currently, not much can go wrong. The downside is you as a customer give up the rights to customization(until 2nd Half of 2010) of the mail template. Ideally this will work for those in a pure email usage case and heavily relying on Notes. Your Business Partner can handle administration of the service, though not via a full Domino administrator client but a custom LotusLive management console as well as management of users accounts.

3) What about our Domino applications? Even if we can put them on LotusLive, will we always have the capability to NOT upgrade the Lotuslive site because of potential update problems in code?
Answer - No Domino applications are going to LotusLive Notes...yet. You can of course host them but for now this is not an option. When customized mail templates are available, John Beck said IBM will test the template customizations for compatibility and approve them accordingly. There will most likely be some cost to perform this, a setup fee most likely but still yet to be determined.

4) Once the customer goes to Lotuslive, as a service partner, once you get locked in to someone's cloud it is really going to be hard to go to another one.
Answer - Perhaps in some cases, but LotusLive Notes, which runs on Domino, should not be difficult. However, it may involve GTS (IBM Global Technology Services) rather than your own staff or Business Partner. I have a follow up call on this subject with GTS. But I am comfortable with it for my clients.

5)What is still needed when you go to LotusLive Noets?
Answer - ID/User admin and training. SaaS solutions requires provisioning users if you utilize them. Customization of UI and other similar services will be coming in the near future and may be of interest to some companies. Archiving is NOT part of the offering of LotusLive as one example of a 3rd party connection.

6) What about other applications like BES, Traveler?
Answer - At some point in 2nd half 2010 these will be options and may or may not involve a small monthly fee.

7) Will LotusLive Labs provide an option to customers for their own "sandbox"?
Answer - No, the sandbox is NOT for customers to use. However, IBM will have BP apps up there. These will mostly be SaaS applications NOT likely to be Domino related.

LotusLive Meetings is very active in many companies and makes more sense as a pure Cloud offering perhaps compared to email. Why? Because until mail template customizations are allowed or Domino applications (stand alone ones that do not require links to other depositories) and Traveler support is included it may not work for everyone just yet.

On the plus side, IBM lowered the minimum number of users required to use the LotusLive Notes solution to 25 from 1,000 and that will go far for those small to medium businesses who really could get the most benefit.

If you are a company with 5-10,000 people you may not see the benefit as easily. However, market segmentation of your employees may show people who could benefit from LotusLive iNotes or LotusLive Notes and reduce your maintenance/licensing fees accordingly.

This is the future, no denying it, but how long till everyone gets there is the question?