I went on a search of different Lotus Notes Address Book convertors with the recent migration to Google Apps for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) we are going through.  They asked about moving straight to Outlook by converting the address book in the Lotus Notes client and leaving mail off as an archive.  Here are some tools I ran across in my searches (not comprehensive I imagine) since there was no one page encompassing them:

• SysTools software for Lotus Notes - this site has a slew of tools for obtaining converted Address Books.  They had tools for Outlook (and in reverse I might add), Excel and Outlook Express.  Pricing was $250 for a personal license and $500 for a business
• Notes Address Book - You could but this one (which was SysTools again as far as I could tell) for $99 from this site.  They also had a Lotus Notes to Google Mail Address Book conversion tool for $49.
• Lotus Notes Address Book to Outlook - besides having a long URL, the Kernel tool supported converting to Outlook and Excel.  It was $79 for a personal license and $99 for a corporate.
• Quick Recovery - moves all the contacts over when both Lotus Notes and Outlook with an active profile are installed on the machine.  The cost for this one was $99 and $199 for a corporate license.  The listed support for Address Book conversion all the way through Lotus Notes 8.
• BinaryTree CMT - they are the leader in the migration space of data, including address book data, from in/out of Lotus Notes for many years.
• Address Majic (via Scott) - this had a huge list of supported address books.  You can get the personal issue for $29.95 and the Plus version for $49.95
• (I will keep adding tools)

Join a webcast next week,  Jun 2nd at 10am CST, that will walk through the components that make up a plug-in and the administrative knowledge you need to deploy them.  Learn about widget catalogs, user rights needed, administrative controls and automatic site updates.  Both Lotus Notes and Sametime will be covered.

You can learn more and register for the Consultant In Your Pocket even right here.

The event is sponsored by Plantronics with a special offer during your registration process.

So we left off yesterday running through the admin database and moving into migration options.  One of the key parts of this is the feeder databases where all the Notes mail is converted.  You are allowed to process users one by one or have multiple threads running.  My first fear was that no numbers were given for load based on this conversion.

•  How would this function on large mailfiles?
• What if the user mailfile was already over the maximum allowed size on Google?
• Do we waste time stripping down content from all the mailfiles before the migration?
• What if they had DAOS enabled?  This is not replication, so how is that handled?
• Can I grab local archives by moving them to the server and assigning them?

The list went and we soon discovered that in a complex Lotus environment, there is some huge hurdles.  In this smaller migration where users have single mailfiles that are not huge, the issue is not as bad.  Google does suggest placing the migration on a dedicated server for performance needs.  Once again, no numbers, just do it.  So to be safe we are firing up a VM and registering a server in their domain to grant access to start pulling data before moving ahead.

The admin database can be replicated out globally for large scale sites, but the feeder databases will be local to each install location.  I also figured that this dedicated extra server should be in proximity to the mail server being migrated up.  I wouldn't want it pulling hundreds of gigs of mail data across the pipe and then sending that same data again back to Google to build the new mailfile.

History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:

• The intro,
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9

The Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes surprisingly comes with a Domino database.  This was happily shocking and surprising as I imagined all sorts of command line stuff.  Now, there are partners that make many tools to migrate, but the customer wanted the built in provided tools, since they are free, of course.

The actual administration database is small, limited views and does the configuration.  Logs and stats are included in the database itself.  Users can be viewed by state (pending, active and complete).  Logs cover such things as mail conversions, migrations and registrations. Make sure you know the Google Apps admin password as it is required in the System Setup.



There was a setting I was curious about (I think Marie Scott has the answer) on maximum mail size allowed.  At first we were concerned it was the actual total mail file size itself and not an individual message.  We set the end date for the migration to indefinite as there is no guarantee of completion date and I am not sure why anyone would actually put a hard date in there and then also allow it to continue past end date.  Just don't set an end date.

User selection pulls from the Domino Directory via the familiar directory look-up interface.  We will talk about migration options next.

History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:

• The intro,
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9

Last week I did the intro, explaining the immediate request we got to perform testing in a Google Apps migration of their small Domino domain.  We have now fired up a duplicate of the existing Domino server to perform the testing, making it look just like their data.

So we have the specs lined out for all of you..

• Existing server is Domino 8.0.2 on Windows 2003
• Google Apps Premier Edition is ready
• Microsoft Core XML services v6

It states that it supports Notes mail and attachments, so even with the trusted ID we needed to make sure that all the mailfiles and contents were unencrypted.  I imagine we will encounter something along the way.

One thing right away that will take getting used to is that Notes folders become labels inside of Gmail.  If for some strange reason you have not seen this yet, it is a simple sorting mechanism and nothing more.  Users will find this to big a rather large adjustment, mainly if they have built a sophisticated nesting structure of labels.

Luckily the users really do not utilize follow-up flags yet in Notes, as those become stars in Gmail.

One thing I am interested to see is how Notes document, view and database links are translated as it promises.

History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:

• The intro,
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9

Due to a schedule conflict for multiple parties involved, we moved the date to June 8th.  If you have already registered, no fear!  Your registration moved over.  However, if you have not registered for this free webcast event, see below!

The need for Lotus admins to assist across intra-company teams while ensuring regulatory compliance is increasing. Whether your firm received a disclosure motion from district attorney, is being sued, or is concerned about either internal litigation or future actions, register for this session. Will your company be ready? Are your response measures taking too long? Will you be able to meet your goals? Join Bill as he provides a brief foray into the area of compliance and data management while providing tips to enhance your implementations. If you've never thought about this topic, or are having internal discussions, tune-in for some exciting and important information.

Another webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket was just announced, and it is happening Jun 8th!  Head over and register for this free webcast

I am attending this one for sure, being presented by William Malchisky and sponsored by SecureTrac.

Yesterday I concentrated on some of the email migration portions that were of concern as we entered into the migration testing.  Calendaring does have a tool as well and is supposed to support all meetings, reminders, events, recurring and even privacy.  Calendaring will be later and separate.  Today we focus on personal moving contacts and groups

So to move a users personal address book and/or groups we had a couple options to make this happen.

• Server side - the first thing we noticed is that the user must have synchronized all of their contacts into their mailfile.  Unfortunately, this has either never been done.  Due to it previously being manual, then in a policy that was never set, or worse yet it was done long ago and would totally screw them up if it was done now.  So the server side feature is only one, via an agent that runs, that should be considered if your environment has actively been synchronizing already.
  - The other portion is that users must enter their Google Apps passwords into the GAMLN system itself.  Not something we would have all the users do.  This whole idea of server based it borked it seems.
• User driven with a Notes form - This form actually gets emailed to users.  So now we expect them to fill this out.  The good news is it pulls their local names.nsf information, no sync necessary and they feel more in control and are able to enter their password directly into the form to upload their contacts.  The user being prompted gives a good feeling but then we rely on users to actually perform this step.  A catch-22.
• User driven with a web form - This only is needed if the user does not have Lotus Notes for email anymore.  So I am so confused.   It also tries to pull from their web mailfile.  Which means they had to sync before or have entered info now via the web only.  My guess is that this is made directly for iNotes.
  Something I did notice is that if the site forces SSL with a self-signed certificate then Google had issues connecting since it couldn't read the cert.  The only answer?  Remove the SSL for the migration of iNotes users.

All this above migrated content is not emailed in any way.  It is all direct upload via SSL to Google so the user must be connected to Google at the time.

Ok, that is enough for today..

History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:

• The intro,
• Part 1
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9

Back in February 2010, I made the change to turn off the native commenting system inside of DominoBlog.  While it was doing a great job of catching like 9% of everything, it was still dropping hundreds if not thousands of spam comments into the database itself.  So I made a decision to investigate alternatives.

In my other blogs, I was already utilizing Disqus with great success.  I soon realized it also gave me a slew of other benefits that were easily implemented:

• ability to comment registered (native, Facebook, Twitter, OpenID and more)
• ability to allow video comments
• ability to bring in tweets and pingbacks
• ability to allow such things as video comments
• ability to have users tweet their comments or share on Facebook brining more traffic back to the posting

You can subscribe to each comment section by email and the trackback URL is listed for each.  Sorting of the comments is allowed by newest, most liked and more.  This gives readers the ability to mark comments that are important, give answers or make good points.

So now I have a central management for all the blogs, no spam and a larger community built around it. You can get scripts, plug-ins for such things as Wordpress and other blog system to make implementaiton a breeze.  Now,  I am hoping for a migration tool to finish moving all past comments into Disqus as well.  They support Wordpress import, so I need to get all past DominoBlog comments intot that format and we am set.

After Marie Scott posted about the tool Google launched, we had a smaller customer see the same news and ask about the possibility of migrating.  This included fidelity, costs and more.  I will have a series on this as it gets tested and rolls out.  

I will be blogging it in parts to help breakdown each section.  Humorously, I am attending a meeting with both Google and Microsoft (Live@edu) next week at a local school district to gain an understanding of that architecture and integration.

I wanted to highlight one part before we move into the series:

These instructions are designed to work with the most common Lotus Notes scenarios. Any changes to Lotus Notes configuration should be made at the discretion of your Lotus Notes administrator. Google does not provide technical support for configuring mail servers or other third-party products. In the event of a Lotus Notes issue, you should consult your Lotus Notes administrator

History of postings on the Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes (GAMLN) series:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9

In this May 2010 issue I talk about training and the following:

IN THIS ISSUE #58
* From the Editor: Chris' 0.0316841 TRY
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Widgets and Plug-ins. What's the Difference?
* Can You Attain Unified Communications?
* Quick Tip: Business Card Info In Notes 8.5x Client Has Changed
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Anti-virus and Sametime Connect

Make sure you:
* head over to Consultant In Your Pocket and catch one of the upcoming free webcasts on eDiscovery, Plug-ins and more
* head over to IamLUG and register for the upcoming North American Lotus User Group meeting in August 2010

Another webcast from Consultant In Your Pocket was just announced, and it is happening May 26th!  Head over and register for this free webcast

I am attending this one, being presented by William Malchisky and sponsored by SecureTrac.

The YouTube video above walks you through my commentary on this awesome headset device, the Plantronics Voyager Pro UC.  This is a bluetooth solution for all the calls you take over your computer.  Couple it with the new plug-in from Plantronics for Sametime and you have one heck of a way to save on PC calls via Sametime, Skype or whatever VOIP software you load.  I would peek at the IBM announcements from Plantronics here.

Disclosures:
The headset was sent for me to give an honest review with no stipulations.  However, it has become my headset of choice when using my laptop.

The above link is an Amazon affiliate link so you can find the best deal.

This is a hot topic with many organizations.  Well on Wednesday May 19th at 10am CST, there is a free webcast covering this very topic.

Tom Duff and Marie Scott are back for part 2 of their Tivoli Directoy Integrator series with the administration perspective:

Domino, LDAP, AD – what do they have in common?  Tivoli Directory Integrator!  Have you ever wanted to use TDI to synchronize data between directory sources but you weren’t sure about how to get started?  Join Marie Scott and Thomas Duff as they present a Domino Administrator’s perspective of TDI.  In this session, the focus will be on setting up TDI to detect changes in the Domino directory and Active Directory, keeping them synchronized automatically.

You will be able to attend this session on May 19, 2010 at 10am CDT.  Registration is still open!!

Another webcast brought to your by Consultant InYour Pocket.  If you are not on the newsletters to know when upcoming events are, sign up above or on the sites.

Upcoming webinars also include:

• eDiscovery
• Deploying plug-ins and widgets

William Malchisky, Effective Software Solutions, takes fifteen minutes to sit down and catch up on his:

•  sessions at Admin2010
• brand new blog
• upcoming webcast on may 26th
• user group presentations
• writing and more

We have a welcomed sneak guest of Andrew Pollack, with some of his thoughts as we go along.

Bill has some incredible content covering Linux and Lotus, discovery and archiving.  I would get ready to watch his blog.

I watched, not one, but three people within two rows around me pull out iPads (in varying cases I noted) and begin reading books or other writer material.  As I watched them flip a page here and there, open a game app on another and generally do nothing else, email was a missing component.  One even took out a laptop as well.  So I began to think, it pursuing this as a true mobile platform client worth it?  If you want the summary answer now to skip reading, I say no. Not as "client" as we know it.  But a hybrid model of some sort.

Pro
People are wanting more applications and function.  They believe that this can replace basic features they have in their netbook or laptop.  It is highly portable, super long battery life, quick to launch and offers a blend of work and pleasure.  Carrying a lighter weight client and browser in one is attractive.  Having a device employees want to carry makes it an easy sell.  If you walked in to a meeting with a stack and said use this for your mobile (non phone) device how many would turn it down?

With 3G and wifi, you are online anywhere.  Data plans are reasonable.  Attending online meetings is a breeze.  The camera and mic built in. Carrying cases for #nerdgirls will be stylish.

Con
The iPad is a media consumption device, not enterprise.  It was built as such and will grow in that direction for some time to come.  It is not a true replacement for laptops and netbooks, yet the comfort factor drives adoption.  Enterprises do not have control, policies enforcement or even the ability to remote wipe.

There would be difficulty handling encryption, connectivity, replication.  An id file is not something you toss on the device easily since application deployment goes through Apple, not your company.  Storage space would compete with movies, videos, pictures and music.

No real keyboard.  The virtual one is ok, but takes getting used to.  Then the added accessory of adding one.  Printing is not native, it costs a few bugs to buy an app to allow you to print.

All your other applicatons they expect from Lotus Notes will either be web (which can then be done on anything) or written in addition.  Once again it would be Apple deployment control, not your as in plugins for Lotus Notes and Sametime.

Summary
I could go on and list each and every aspect, but I find it redundant from other web sites.  The point being that just having web access is "ok" via Lotus Domino iNotes (not the other one), so why put forth the effort?  Pulling mail via POP/IMAP is a show-stopper right away as most enterprises have killed that off as an option.  Not being able to control the app deployment and configuration (policies) is a stopper.  The demand for them makes them a risk item to carry.  Encryption in the true Notes model is missing.

Oh yeah, I couldn't have written this offline on the plane, replicated it quickly later and moved along.

If your company was unable to send you to Admin2010 or Developer 2010 in Boston this week, do not fear.  Consultant In Your Pocket has a slew of webcasts coming starting May 19th through June bringing content right to your desktop.

• May 19 - Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) for Administrators with Tom Duff and Marie Scott
• May 26 - eDiscovery In Your Enterprise (title might change) with Bill Malchisky
• Jun 2 - Deploying Plug-ins for Lotus Notes and Sametime with myself

There are one or two more that are joining the schedule the next couple days.  I suggest you get on the mailing list for Consultant In Your Pocket or follow the RSS feed at least to keep up.  Remember, the above webcasts are totally free.

While you are at it, why haven't you signed up for IamLUG in 2010 and the TackItOn event immediately following.  All taking place in St Louis Aug 2-4 2010.

Live from Admin2010 I sit with the Nerd Girls to talk about their BOF, Skype chat, LinkedIn group, Twitter hashtag, sessions and tons of woman in tech issues.  Join myself and:

• Mary Beth Raven
• Jess Stratton
• Kathy Brown
• Susan Bulloch

They also are passing out buttons all over Admin2010 as hope you catch them coming up at other events like IamLUG and Lotusphere.  Get in touch with any of them to get involved with the chats, #nerdgirls hashtag or LinkedIn group.  Or to become a Nerd Girl !

Special thanks to STS for sponsoring the buttons they are handing out.

Great news for all third party plug-in developers for Lotus Notes an Sametime as the keynote kicked off with demos of Gist, Tungle, TripIt and more.

For help in learning how to deploy these plug-ins I would catch the Consultant In Your Pocket webcast on Jun 2 right here.

LotusLive is a key push with the ability for any enterprise to get involved in the beta early on.

We all know that Sametime 8.5 is picking up steam and they want companies to start looking at migrating and upgrading to the new features. If you are entering new into Sametime, it is an easy move and you never know the difference.  If you are migrating up, you can stay with what you have now and run Sametime 8.5 without all the new bells and whistles.  But for the full experience, you need to plan your Websphere deployment parts.

Let's not forget all the UC2 stuff and Sametime Unified Telephony.  VOIP is a big topic all over and the recent Skype integration into LotusLive adds to that argument.

They mentioned social analytics in Lotus Connections version 3.  This is something that was more of an asset in previous versions, I wonder if they are adding some of Atlas for free into version 3.  That would be incredibly helpful.

It will be interesting with the last part of open Q&A, not the normal for a keynote but a great idea!  I wonder if people will step up and ask what they want to know.

If you are unable to attend Admin2010, I will be performing all of the above, live from Admin2010 on Wednesday.  You can catch the stream at
http://www.IdoNotes.com/live

The blog will also update all day.  Some podcasts will be recorded, but I hope to get a bunch live.  I opened the stream to pretty much unlimited attendees at once.  If we are not live, you will see some other videos playing as holders.  I will try and tweet when we go live throughout the day, as well, for quick notice.

Apparently the custom blogger search engine (above and in the upper right sidebar) was needed because you guys are using it quite frequently!!  I went ahead and refreshed a ton of sites at your requests.  I also added new sites that came in (including the Lotus Knows blog announced yesterday).

If you don't understand what it offers, here is a quick description:

The custom blogger search is based on the Google CSE and now includes over 350 Lotus related blogs, wikis and technical sites. It only searches these sites for speed and web search efficiency.  You can further trim searches down by the categories that are being built such as Sametime and webcasts.  This allows you to find information quickly you know you read on some blog at some point.  PlanetLotus can handle recent lookups, but going further back in the archives is an issue, mainly if they were around before being added.

If you find any sites missing, please leave a comment on this posting and I will make sure it gets included.

This article just hit the wires, but the comments sum up the issue.  They just didn't get the best way to use and secure the information.  I do not consider this a strike against cloud computing.  Reading the article deeper showed that they felt it was against the compliance of the Electronic Communications Policy.  I question whether the location of the mail content was the issue or that is was not on university controlled hardware.

Most of these cloud initiatives are not well planned or thought out in advance and often do not take into account the reaction of the community at large.  It seems the university system jumped the gun slightly and are puling back the reigns.

We have been heavily testing Sametime audio services inside the firewall for a side project and found some nuances along the way I wanted to share as well as some compliments.

1) If you open an audio call with someone and then decide to chat with them, the chat is closed when you close the call.  Losing all the chat data.  Unless you already have multiple chats open in a vertical or horizontal list.  Then all is well.  But just a single chat with that person on the call and poof, it goes away.  Here is an example image:


2) Next up we had an issue adding video when only one party had a video camera.  The other got an error there was no input device.  While the one with the camera got a wait status, but could still talk.  The only way out of the wait was to kill the conversation, which took Notes down with it.  Not elegant and downright frustrating to users.

3) We also found that the whole firewall thing sucked for outside callers.

There were compliments on the clarity and the ease of starting an audio conversation and the ability to have multiple people join in.  Call controls overall were tough, and no way to mute anyone as the call organizer, but it was not a meeting center and more like people in an open room.  Once that was explained it was taken much better.

The team at IamLUG is announcing TackItOn  for the day following IamLUG.

 You will be able to choose one of any of the single-day events for a low price.  If you are a confirmed IamLUG attendee, the price is even lower.  The amount of information in each of these events is extraordinary, from top names in the Lotus community.  Here is a sample of what you can expect:



Make sure you register yourself and notify your friends about this new and exciting event, taking place immediately after IamLUG.

** Your hotel rate for the IamLUG conference carries over Tuesday night