Announcements!

As many of you are already aware, IBM announced ND8.5.3.

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/nd85.html

Beyond the typical fixes, we now have access to Connections Profiles and Files as Domino customers.  This is all in an effort to help businesses on their road to becoming social businesses.  This is great because there are Notes plugins for these features, bringing this content to the users at no additional cost.

We already have access to Portal at no additional cost if it is used to drive content for Notes clients and not a Portal implementation.  (limited use for ND customers)

What about Activities?  I would love to see activities added to the list of entitled software, but we need to take these things one step at a time.  Thanks IBM!

ND 8.5.3 also brings us an improved Traveler experience for the Droid community.  With greater attention to the Android platform, we now have support for newer devices and better overall security through feature leveling across platforms like partial device wipes.

It has been hinted that this is likely the last major release in the 8.5.x code stream.  This means it will soon be time to look for ND9?

We also heard that IBM has a new offering, the XWork Server.  This is an application only (XPages driven) server that allows you to deploy up to 4 applications (not just 4 NSF files, mind you) within the limits of this flat fee license.  This means that there is no abacus required as you try to calculate your PVUs.  Ed Brill covered this in a recent blog post.

http://edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/introducing-ibm-xwork-server

There are numerous applications that I can think of for this server.  I believe this could be a good thing for IBM.  This reminds me of a recent conversation on LinkeIn where someone had suggested that IBM separate apps from mail in the Domino product line-up.  Offering an applications only approach to maybe embrace (SHUDDER) another email platform along side of Domino as your RAD environment.

Buried in the Inbox, besides these important announcements, LS12 is ramping up.

Heads up: Get out your social calendar.  It's time to add Lotusphere 2012 to your agenda!
Lotusphere, IBM's premier collaboration event, kicks on on Sunday, January 15, 2012.  As in past years, Lotusphere 2012 promises to be content-rich.
Whether you are interested in Social Business strategy or product features and capabilities, the event promises to offer something for just about everyone.  Attend and:
- Listen in on over 300 sessions
- Pick up technical tips and tracks
- Hear about best practices and see live examples
- Tour the Solutions Showcase and see real-world solutions firsthand
- Socialize with your peers, Business Partners and IBMers
Are you ready to expand your social circle?
Register for Lotusphere 2012 today: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/events/conference/index.html
I look forward to seeing you in Orlando!

Did we already start collecting session abstracts?  Where have I been?!?

Well, kids… this is definitely a very short summary of this busy week in the Lotus camp.  Good luck, and happy socializing. 

June is Learn XPages Month!

http://xpages.info/Internal/home.nsf/dx/Learn-XPages-Month

If you have not heard, pass the word!

Highlights:

• OpenNTF.org XPages Contest, win an iPad:
  http://contest.openntf.org/
• Free XPages Workshop, sponsored by TLCC on June 2nd and 3rd - Join TLCC's instructors in this free two hour webinar designed for Domino Developers with no (or very little ) XPages experience. This webinar will have hands-on activites to get you started with XPages! There are two identical sessions planned for June 2nd at 3:00 PM (EDT) or June 3rd at 8:00 AM (EDT).
  Click here to get more information on the Free XPages Workshop
• XPages Guru Webinar on June 1st - This webinar is a great way to learn what XPages can do for you. Six XPages experts will discuss what XPages are, case studies, the benefits of XPages, migration to XPages, the roadmap to getting to XPages, and resources for XPages developers. The date is June 1st at 11:00 AM Eastern time.
  Click here to sign up for this webinar

XPages Forum Template

https://greenhouse.lotus.com/blogs/lotustechinfo/entry/xpages_forum_template_is_now_available_for_download?lang=en_us

It is available now for download.  Thanks Amanda and company for getting this out to us!

Traveler for Droid

The news is out.  Ed Brill posted a commitment to delivering Droid support in the middle of December.  I know there are many people anticipating this release.  I was a bit bummed that we missed the mid-quarter projection, but I suppose it is better late and right than on time and riddled with obvious bugs.  Here is a link to Ed’s post.

http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/lotus-notes-traveler-for-android-will-be-a-holiday-present

Bundled Install: Sametime & Notes

Notes 8.5.2 ships with an embedded Sametime client.  It is still version 8.0.2, however, and therefore one of the first things you have to do is then run the installer that is part of the 1.7 Gb Sametime client download to upgrade this embedded client.  While this is not that big of a deal for small installations, if you do not have an automatic distribution method for software in a larger organization or very geographically dispersed one, this can pose challenges.  To solve this, we are able to manipulate and customize the Notes installer.

The first step is to extract the Lotus Notes 8.5.2 installation package.  Assuming you are doing this from a download, launch the installer that you obtained from IBM, and select the option to save the installation files as opposed to removing them after installation.

You can specify a new location for the files if you like, so that you can more easily locate and differentiate your custom installation package from an unmodified one that may already exist.  If Notes is already installed, you can cancel the installer right after it extracts the files.  I then make a working directory and copy all of the contents of the extracted installer, minus the Utility directory, into the working directory.  It is also necessary that you remove the “Read-only” bit from any items to be manipulated by the customization utility.  Right-click the working directory and clear the Read-only box.  Click Apply and be sure to propagate these changes to all subdirectories and items.  You will now have a clean installer to customize.

You will then find a Utility directory in the root of where you originally extracted the installer.  This contains a small set of tools to assist with this procedure.  You can use the Notes Customization Kit to reduce the installer in size to eliminate unwanted components, or also use it to add additional components.  For optimal results, you may want to do both.  Extract the NotesCustomizationkit_1_0.zip to someplace you will be able to find it again.  I tend to just leave it in the Utility directory.

** TIP** There is an alert when you first launch the Trim UpdateSite utility indicating that it needs to have zip.exe and unzip.exe.  If you are running this from a Lenovo laptop, you should have these utilities in your Program Files\Common Files\Lenovo\infozip directory.  Copy these files to the NotesCustomizationkit directory.  Run the Trim UpdateSite utility and remove any unwanted elements, like Symphony and Sametime.  The utility makes backups of the original files it manipulates which we preserved by creating the working directory.  Remove these “Copy of…” files.

Since in this exercise, we are working with Sametime + Notes, I also downloaded the Sametime Standard 8.5.1 client bundle and ran the installer for the Sametime embedded client with the option to save the installation files and not clean them up after installation.  Make sure you specify a path for installation that you will be able to find again.

Back in the Utility folder where you originally unzipped the Notes client, there is another utility called addToKit.exe.  This  will be how we merge the two update sites together.  To prep the Sametime update site, I first renamed it from sametime.embedded.addon.win32.20100731-1716.zip to updateSite.zip.  Next I changed all references in the deploy\install.addon.xml file from the Sametime embedded installer to reference the new update site zip file name and saved it as install.xml.

To merge the two together, you can run the addToKit.exe with two parameters.  The first is the path to Sametime, and the second is the path to the Notes installer we are customizing.  I was then able to add/modify the plugin_customization.ini file in the Lotus Notes installer’s Deploy directory to include the appropriate settings.  You can refer to the Sametime product wiki or InfoCenter to find out more about the appropriate entries to add/modify here.  Before using your new installation package, you just have to remove the install instruction from the setup.ini in the Notes installation package for the included Sametime components and you should be all set.

In researching how others have used this as well, I found a blog article on Usable Software that suggested to also unzip the resulting updateSite.zip file as it will speed up the installation process.  It is up to you and your installation requirements if this is something you also adopt.  The full article can be found here.