IdoNotes (and sleep)

Lotus Traveler Device Support Updates

Chris Miller — Thu, 2 Feb 2012 14:59:46 -0500

Lotus has updated some documentation for different OS levels and required server versioning for Lotus Traveler:

Android 4.0 and Apple iOS 5 Support:
For 8.5.3.x: Please apply Traveler 8.5.3.1 PLUS the Android client build 8.5.3.1 Build 20111207_1606 found on the Recommended Maintenance page.
For 8.5.2.x: Please apply Traveler 8.5.2.4 HF1 found on the Recommended Maintenance page.
Devices under evaluation for possible future support:
As mentioned in this IBM press release, IBM intends to support Microsoft Windows Phone in a future release of IBM Lotus Notes Traveler. IBM intends to support several devices such as the Nokia Lumia line and some from HTC.
For our support statement regarding Kindle Fire or Barnes & Noble Nook Android device support, please reference this technote.

LotusphereLive 2012 stats and a huge thanks again

Chris Miller — Wed, 1 Feb 2012 12:33:24 -0500

Each year the amazing work of Carl Tyler stands out when we run LotusphereLive to bring you live blogging of the Opening General Session at Lotusphere using only Domino technology to run it. The only site that does the back end in Domino.

We welcomed over 1,000 unique visitors to watch the live stream and see our commentary as the OGS went along. There were Flickr photos, Twitter messages, YouTube and more capabilities that Carl has built in over the five years.

The best part is you can go to the site and see each and every years commentary! Yes that is right folks. Persistent chat capability, embedded replays and photos all within Domino.

So special thanks to Carl and Epilio for us being able to make this happen each year. Thanks to all of you that keep coming back! Now go sponsor Carl for charity before he stops giving away free plugins.

�IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices launches into beta plus news

Chris Miller — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:58:46 -0500

I have been sitting on this after hearing about Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices at Lotusphere, waiting for the official press releases and beta announcements. Here is the announcement of the Tivoli branded software and places to find more information.

Unify management of mobile devices and traditional endpoints

With the ever-growing number of smartphone options and the recent explosion of tablet computers, IT departments must find an efficient and secure way to enable employees’ use of mobile devices in the work place. Services such as application management and security controls have been delivered by IT organizations for years, but mobile device platforms have unique management needs that disrupt the traditional paradigm. However, rather than implement a separate infrastructure solely for mobile devices, organizations could benefit from a single solution that effectively accounts for these unique needs while providing unified endpoint management.
Now, with IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices, currently in Beta, enterprises can leverage the BigFix infrastructure to secure and manage traditional endpoints as well as Apple iOS, Google Android, Symbian, and Microsoft Windows Phone devices.

IBM also announced the purchase of Worklight today, a software development company for tablets and mobile devices.

With this acquisition, IBM's mobile offerings will span mobile application development, integration, security and management. Worklight will become an important piece of IBM's mobility strategy, offering clients an open platform that helps speed the delivery of existing and new mobile applications to multiple devices. It also helps enable secure connections between smartphone and tablet applications with enterprise IT systems.

So what does this mean for your organization and the new BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) push? It means that IBM is staking claim to the enterprise management ground on controlling data that is accessible and the ability to remotely wipe and control your enterprise information across mobile devices. Currently IBM has a few products offering mail and secure connectivity capabilities for iOS, Android and Windows Mobile. Specifically Mobile Connect and Lotus Traveler.

The Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices (EMMD ?) will offer VPN, password policies, encryption standards, non-compliant device identification and even denial of such devices until they meet company standards.

With the purchase of Worklight, they gain the immediate skills and I imagine patents around mobile device management sorely needed in this new competitive space.

IBM reached out into the social media channels today with a hashtag conversation around #ibmmobile. While it was very loose and not a ton of traffic, it was an interesting way for them to have an open channel conversation.

Lotusphere 2012 as an exhibitor (part 2 of 5)

Chris Miller — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:06:48 -0500

I started this years viewpoints of Lotusphere 2012 as a partner, so moving it downstairs to the exhibitor floor made sense. Each paragraph seemed to take a new angle in my thought.

Lotusphere 2012 as an exhibitor
Some noticed that we did not exhibit at the last couple Lotusphere events. We debated internally and made the business decision to network more in person that stand hoping someone would come along. It has proven beneficial since we started working that way the past couple years.

The sponsor/exhibitor floor is nothing like it used to be. Gone are the sheer numbers of pedestals. This is the second year since IBM redefined the shape of the floor to break up your line of sight making it look larger (see IdoNotes Episode 98). Gone are the days of straight lines of pedestals as far as your eye could see.

The wave of attendees is not as strong as it once was, yet the quality seems to have gone up. This means that the days of just sending people to Lotusphere was trimmed down to those treating it as an investment. As an exhibitor I see less traffic but better leads (I heard this from more than one exhibitor).

We have found that if you have a solution that integrates with the announcements from the OGS, or you won an award, you get much more foot traffic. I mean that if you make an integration with Connections, this was a year for you. If you only make a fax solution for Domino, not so much.

IBM does their best to move attendees into the show floor by providing breaks and snacks down there. The opening night party always draws the largest crowd. Staffing numbers is hard. Should we bring more than enough to make sure we catch everyone and risk having people stand around. Do we send a skeleton crew and risk missing someone too impatient to wait.

Badge scanning is becoming odd as people don't use real phone numbers or email addresses much anymore. It is hard to get in touch once Lotusphere is over. Are we really making an impact by having them simply follow or like us on the social networks? Do we have reach?

Many vendors reach out to use at the end of the floor time asking to share lead lists. Yes, this happens annually. Give us yours and we give ours. Helps everyone build bigger lead pools. However, people that found us on the floor wanted to talk to us. Passing them off to someone else and potentially losing money they spend with you that we could have made makes no sense. We decline and watch many exhibitors do it anyway.

At the end we tally up all the badges we scanned, business cards with notes collected and hope Lotusphere pays for itself in sales this year again.

************************
See my 2011 posting on Lotusphere as an exhibitor to compare (or see the whole series in the links at the bottom of that posting)

January 2012 Sys Admin Tips is out on LotusUserGroup.org

Chris Miller — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:56:57 -0500

In the January 2012 edition of Sys Admin Tips I cover OpenSocial and Social Business in the editorial section and the following articles:

From the Idonotes mailbox: Citrix performance and Notes Standard client
OpenSocial as an administrator
Lotus Traveler device ids and names of devices
From the IdoNotes mailbox: A failed Sametime 8.5.2 IF1 upgrade attempt

Look for a bunch of new webcasts coming along from Consultant In Your Pocket as we kick off the spring season

MR, FP, FR, IFR, Hotfix, IF - what do they all mean?

Chris Miller — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:34:00 -0500

As a customer and even partner you may struggle with all of the terms that Lotus uses for things outside of the full point version numbering schema. With some digging I was able to bring together a short list for you to use as reference.

MR= maintenance release

This is the building block of the number system. Where 8.5 would be the base install version, the MR would be the .1 behind it to make 8.5.1. You get more fixes with a later MR than an earlier MR with FPs applied.

Extensive testing is done on these and usually we see 1-2 a year.

Hotfix = it's broken and here is a tiny fix till next FP

Self explanatory. These are normally not mass released and you have to call support to get them (even ones that other customers have) so Lotus can keep track of who installed it. Beware they are not hard core tested and may contain regressions.

CCH = cumulative client hotfix

A bundle of hotfixes all wrapped nice and pretty. Extensive regression testing is not done on CCHs but will be done when it moves to FP level.

Oh you need like four hotfixes together to make that work. Here is a CCH for you.

IF = interim fix

This should sit up near fixpack as it is a temporary fix. They seem to word it more than a hotfix, but not quite a fixpack. These are publicly available, where hotfixes are not

FP = fixpack

This represents fixes applied on top of a specific maintenance release. They are issued between MRs and are cumulative. This means installing FP4 would include the same fixes from FP1-3 with new ones to make 4. A version will be represented as 8.5.1 FP4 for example.

However, you must uninstall hotfixes before applying fixpacks that contain the hotfixes.

"By providing a small number of fixes, customers are able to accept fewer code changes with lower risk, allowing them to "patch" an older Maintenance Release until a more extensive upgrade to the current Maintenance Release is possible" from IBM.

FR = Feature Release

These are normally blended into maintenance releases and now Upgrade Packs (UP). IBM snuck some into the following IFR, but you will find new features being introduced when they talk of feature releases.

IFR = Incremental Feature Release

This is a new naming idea that showed itself in the IBM Sametime 8.5.2 codestream. While it added quite a few fixes it also added enhancements. Some of us feel the new features should have made it an actual maintenance release, but IBM stood strong and made up the IFR.

UP = upgrade pack

This is quite new to the Domino family. it is totally optional and adds capabilities to an otherwise stable version. It has made it first appearance in 8.5.3 to add social capabilities. I can see IBM doing many more of these since it is not required by anyone.

The new Notes and Domino Social Edition that is pending release will sit atop of Domino 8.5.4 but is optional and in my opinion will be called an Upgrade Pack.

Digging around to get this information found one IBM technote with some of the information.

BP111 slides from Lotusphere 2012 - Deploying Plugins and Widgets: The How-to Guide

Chris Miller — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:04:53 -0500

Here is the PDF of the slides I presented at Lotusphere 2012 for my BP111 session on deploying plug-ins and widgets. ...

What was IBM Connect 2012?

Chris Miller — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:39:00 -0500

I have now had the question "What was IBM Connect?" asked of me four times this week. Each time I give the same answer and then thought, I really don't know what went on behind those closed doors. I went online to hunt down some answers outside of IBM sites. Unfortunately if you search for "IBM Connect" you are left with few choices to glean any real information.

Network World had a quick two page article:

Alongside Lotusphere, IBM launched its Connect conference this year to instill a line-of-business voice into the traditionally IT-focused Lotusphere conference, specifically with the aim of pushing its next-generation social business products and services.

The article states this is the inaugural year for the event. I am unsure of the actual attendance since it was blended in and registration for just the Connect conference was held in a different location that registration for Lotusphere (even though Lotusphere attendees could go to Connect).

IBM Connect 2012 was aimed at the business executive with a bunch of case studies, hoping the C-level would bring along IT for Lotusphere and vice versa. This would give IBM both sides of the puzzle in pushing the social business theme to both at once. Previous IBM employee and now research analyst Alan Lepofsky was quoted giving a good summary:

"IBM Connect is going to be more about higher-level - more managers or CXO-level people who are learning about why they should be doing this...I think Connections is what they're doing a lot more work on now. I don't think you're going to see a huge increase in adoption of Lotus Notes. I think people are moving towards more agile, web-based, lighter-weight collaboration tools"

IBM (formerly Lotus) Connections was launched in 2007 and is about to hit version 4 as shown at Lotusphere. It has been a fast growing software for IBM and they will be driving this home for years to come as it evolves into sentiment and analytics.

I would look for the dual conference approach to be back for 2013 with more growth for Connect.

Activity Streams - a demise of productivity

Chris Miller — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:47:00 -0500

I really don't like the current state and implementation idea of activity streams. There, I said it. Now I can explain more about why.

IBM made a grand showing of integrating activity streams into the Notes client with the Social Edition and the expansion in IBM Connections with OpenSocial. However, they introduced this idea well over a year ago (below image from Feb 2011) with no traction. I believe that expanding capabilities is always a bonus for any product if it allows more adoption and usage.

I have been quite verbal since R1 and R2 of Lotus (now IBM) Connections about the easier inclusion of public services. Activity Streams are not what I had in mind. I feel that they will become a distraction more than a productivity tool.

By default, all the implementations of activity streams cause users to oversubscribe. This has happened in email lists, RSS feeds and even friends on Facebook. Oversubscription causes you to lose focus and no longer pay attention to any part of the stream. Look at Twitter and Facebook. In their natural state they become fairly useless since you miss a ton of data and cannot keep up unless you only watch the stream.

Once a user is oversubscribed (think tons of time working with projects, users, communities, email and more) the only way out is stream bankruptcy. Mass unsubscription from everything. Then the cycle repeats itself. No productivity is gained building the subscriptions, during the over subscription, during the bankruptcy and then the restart.

The next missing piece is proper filtering tools and skills. Look at the number of third party tools that started around public streams like Twitter. Some, like Refynr, had to shut down the filtering due to low adoption since users are too lazy to filter. We even podcasted about this back in 2009 on TheSocialGeeks.

Filters are far more than being able to sort hundreds or thousands of threads that have come through, full text capability found in todays databases and email are a stating point. Email will not go away anytime in our future as IT administrators, there is too much history, information and workflow built in.

Users creating the inherent ability to share everything to a stream will also not become second nature. The intimate feel of email communication is a stop factor for many in tools like Twitter. Keep in mind the activity stream in Facebook is forced, not something the user does consciously. User need the structure and compartmentalized approach that databases, such as email, offer to be productive.

I do applaud innovation, integration, portfolio expansion and more than IBM has undertaken. I just don't think a full onslaught of activity streams will be easily adopted in a productive manner. Yes it is optional for everyone. I am talking about what they showed as the current tool state to be clear.

How to gather and view Lotusphere 2012 slides

Chris Miller — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:15:56 -0500

This is always one of the more interesting dilemmas each year. The online system has released all of the Lotusphere 2012 pdf files into zip files by track. While not all of them seem to be present (see below), there is a majority.

This content will soon be moved over to Lotus Greenhouse for those that did not attend Lotusphere or IBM Connect or just forgot to log into the system in a timely fashion to get the zip files. The annual sessions database from Genii doesn't have the rights to republish everything as attachments, which would be so much simpler. (Rumor has it you can write your own Lotuscript agent to put the pdf files into the session document. But I am no developer)

So here is your choices:

Get into the SocialBizOnline system quick
Visit numerous bloggers who have made their presentations available
Visit the formed Lotusphere 2012 Slideshare group
Wait for the presentations to be moved over to the Lotusphere Community on Greenhouse. Details in Episode 119.
Do without

Interestingly enough the Best Practices track seemed to have an almost complete package of slides. While others, like the IBM track INV were missing quick a few from the zip files. I could not find the IBM Connect slides directly in the site, but some external speakers have been posting links and I am adding them to the Lotusphere 2012 Slideshare group if they put them there.

I hope to see more of the Connect session slides to see what all the hoopla was about.