Monthly Archives: January 2012

As the article in Computer Sweden now have been published, I reposted my blog entry about Ernst & Young migrating 150,000 users world wide from Notes to Exchange.

IBM in Sweden is not commenting to Computer Sweden, but Ernst & Young have been using Lotus Notes since the mid-1990's and have been considered a major Notes account. In this first step only the email will be migrated, and it is unclear if applications will eventually be moved as well.

My personal analysis (as I wrote in my original post) is that IBM will not really lose very much revenue, but it is a prestigious win for Microsoft. Even if email might be less important than applications (many consider email a commodity), the market will probably see this as a loss for IBM, and in the long run I think this will be used as another example of "Notes is dead".
I think it is important for IBM to realize that perception is actually important. You can't always be logical. IBM need to keep as many of their big customers on Notes mail as possible, or the market will get the perception that customers are abandoning the platform, even if it is just email.

I brought some of my home-made Apple Cake drink to Lotusphere, and I had many people ask me how it is made. It is not hard at all, it just takes some time.

You need the following:

• 75 cl vodka (that is one regular bottle), and I recommend Absolut 40% (or even 50% if you want it stronger).
• 30 cl (that is about 10 fl oz) concentrated apple juice. I used one can of defrosted frozen juice concentrate.
• 3-4 tablespoons granulated sugar.
• 3 tablespoons of vanilla sugar. It can be purchased at the nearest IKEA in the US. You can also use vanilla extract.
• 3 sticks of cinnamon.

Gently heat up the apple juice on the stove. Stir in the sugar and vanilla sugar/flavor until it is all dissolved. Pour in a big bottle that is just over 1 liter, a little over a quart. I use a 2 quart Rubber Maid MixerMate bottle. Add the cinnamon sticks and then the vodka. Shake well.

For the next 7 days, shake once or twice a day. After 7 days, remove the cinnamon sticks. It is now ready to serve.

Whip some cream together with a little vanilla sugar. Pour the drink in shot glasses, but don´t fill them to the rim. Add a spoon of whipped cream on top, and it is ready to drink. Skål!

Here is another version of Duffbert and Andy Donaldson performing "I Got You, Babe" at Kimonos during Lotusphere 2012.

I am having problems embedding videos on this blog, please use this link instead. Enjoy!

The busiest day this far. The day started with a keynote session, featuring among others Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of World Wide Web. He spoke out against the SOPA and PIPA laws, coincidentally on the same day that Wikipedia, Google and other sites went black in a protest against the proposed US censorship laws. He encouraged everyone to mail their representative to denounce the laws.
Then he procede to discuss the Semantic Web, and how data can be aggregated from many sources but must be tracked back to it’s origin.

The next speaker was Manoj Saxema, the General Manager of the newly founded IBM Watson Solutions Group. He talked about IBM’s plans to commercialize Watson. The first target is the medical fields, where Watson can help doctors in diagnosing patients. The next step is financial institutions and insurance companies.
He also mention that 90% of all data in the world was produced in the last two years, and that 80% of that information is unstructured, saved in documents, spreadsheets, etc. Watson is designed to work with unstructured data like that.

Finally Andy Miller, CEO and President of Polycom, talked about video conferencing, social functionality and mobile, and how the younger workforce demand access to that technology.

The it was off to sessions.

BP303 – I Smell a RAT — Rapid Application Testing, by Peter Presnell. This was a very interesting session. I got plenty of ideas and inspiration of things to do after I get back home.

BP101 – Adminblast 2012 by the always excellent and entertaining Paul Mooney. Even as a developer I always walk away with tons of useful tips from his Adminblast sessions, and this year was no exception.

AD112 – What’s New in the IBM Lotus Domino Objects: Version 8.5.3 in Demos, featuring James Cooper and Elizabeth Sawyer (both of IBM). A good session, with a few interruptions that slowed down the tempo somewhat. One of the most interesting new functions is agent.RunWithDocumentContext(), a way to pass and retrieve data from another agent. Previously we developers had to use a profile document or similar hack to get the same functionality.

BP121 – Performance Programming, by Andrew Pollack. Yet another very interesting session. This one covered different issues that can slow down your Lotus Notes applications, and showed different techniques to work around this.

After this it was off to get ready for the party at Seaworld. It had been raining some earlier in the day, and I think some long-time ‘spherians were worried about a repeat of the 2007 party at Animal Kingdom, when it was pouring down rain. But the rain stopped and I had a good time. My favorites were as always the sharks and the dolphins. I am not a big roller-coaster fan…

A busy day at Lotusphere. It started with a keynote about how Social affects business. The messge was that leadership matters, a dedicated team must take point. Social is not an IT function/project, it needs to involve departments liek HR, legal and of course IT. If you engage the employees, they will be a huge resource. The example given was when TD Bank decided to be open 7 day a week, the reaction from the workforce would probably been negative. But by using social capabilities and transparency, the employees got engaged and even enthusiastic about the new opportunity.

Then the sessions started.

BP102 – User Blast with Mat Newman. Mat Newman, the Australian with the yellow suit, had a great session showing a multitude of functions that will make life easier for end-users. The idea is that anyone attending the session should be able to bring this info back and energize their users. The room was packed (as was the repeat session later), and the organizers had to use overflow rooms. Even experienced Notes users learned new things here.

BP110 -  A Performance Boost for Your IBM Lotus Notes Client, presented by the excellent pair Francie Tanner and Florian Vogler (both from Panagenda). I learned a number of things that I will be able to bring home and hopefully implement in my environment.

I also had some meetings, so I went to the Solutions Showcase and looked around inbetween meetings. GBS was out in force and had occupied a huge section of the floor. I did not have as much time as I wanted on the showcase floor, but it seemed like bigger than last year, with more booths and vendors.

Finally I took some time to visit the Meet the Developers lab, a place where I always spend several hours during the week. This time I had mainly development questions, most of them related to issues with Domino Designer itself. I spent quite some time with Maureen Leland, the head of Domino Designer development, and we identified a number of issues that hopefully can be fixed. One of them, to automatically indicate that a database is a template by using a different background color behind the workspace icon, was so easy that she was convinced she could code that on the flight back to Boston. She said the hardest problem to solve was to decide what indicator to use…

This is the kind of access we get to the IBM staff, nothing beats being able to talk to the guys and girls who actually wrote the code we have questions about. If you haven’t been to the labs, take a few minutes or an hour to go there. Highly recommended!

OGS. The abbreviation seasoned ‘spherians use for the Opening General Session. The fear in the community was a repeat of last year, with endless customer panels with readings from teleprompter and no demos. But IBM listened. There were plenty of demos, and the customers on stage were on for just a few minutes, were well rehearsed and had interesting stories to tell.

The OGS started, as in previous years, with a musical performance. This year by the band OK Go.

Then this years guest speaker was introduced: Michael J Fox. He talked (among other things) about how 75% of people diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease (which Michael is suffering from) are members of an online community.

What new products did we see? Well, we got to see what came out of Project Vulcan: the new Activity Stream. It is integrated with the next version of Connections as well as in Lotus Notes/Domino Social Edition and other products.

Another very interesting product that was demonstrated at the OGS is a plugin that let you run Notes applications totally modified in a browser, without having to rewrite it using Xpages. Finally, LotusLive Symphony has been renamed IBM Docs.

So what is Lotus/Domino Social Edition? Ed Brill explains it well:

What version number is Notes/Domino Social Edition? Answer: It isn’t. It’s a feature version, but it is built atop the simultaneously-forthcoming planned Notes/Domino 8.5.4 release.

 

It includes the activity stream, but if I understand it correctly, you need Connections in order to fully benefit from this.

Personally I think this was one of the better opening sessions I have been to. It was well paced and had enough news to keep the audience awake. The four customer cases were fairly short, but next year, try just three, and add even more demo, especially on the main product we all use, Lotus Notes.

After the OGS, I had some meetings. When they were handled, I managed to catch two good sessions.

AD111 – The X Path: Practical Guide to Taking Your IBM Lotus Notes Applications to IBM Lotus Domino XPages, presented by Hunter Medney and Stephan Wissel. This was a great session, explaining the recommended steps to move existing Notes applications to Xpages. The speakers explained what to look out for, and how to best perform the conversion.

AD106 -IBM Lotus Domino XPages -Write Them Ones, See Them Everywhere, by Viktor Krantz and Stephan Wissel. Another great Xpages session, showing how Xpages can be consumed by different platforms, including mobile phones and pads.

Then it was on to a reception for an hour, before heading to Joe Litton’s Mai Tai night. Then we all migrated over to Shula’s for the traditional UK Night. The night then continued on the Swan side outside Kimono’s, where a smaller group were hanging out, smoking cigars and swapping war stories from previous ‘spheres.

A great day and night.

Sunday is now officially the first day of Lotusphere, with Jumpstart sessions and (of course) the welcome reception at night. I had a full day’s schedule, and went to four great sessions.

JMP102 – Introduction to Java for IBM Lotus Domino Developers, by the excellent Paul Calhoun. I can’t say I know Java, even if I did write some code many years ago. This session made me very excited about taking another look at Java, in order to add that language to my toolbox.

JMP103 – "How Stuff Works" IBM Lotus Domino Style! by Susan Bulloch and Jess Stratton. I am a developer, but I want to (and feel that every designer should) learn the basics of administration and security. Susan and Jess are excellent presenters and are experts at their subject. This session was very beneficial to me.

JMP303 – Master Class: They Really Are Out To Get You by Gabriella Davis and Andrew Pollack. The title is ironic, as it seems like a certain corporate lawyer at IBM is out to get Andrew. An hour before the presentation was about to be given, the lawyer demanded that all pictures were to be removed, because of potential copyright issues. You can read the full story on Andrew’s blog.
Despite this, Gab and Andrew managed to deliver a great session on security, which of course would not surprise anyone who know these competent long-time speakers.

JMP101 – IBM Lotus Domino Xpages JumpStart by Howard Greenberg and Paul Della-Nebbia. I attended some Xpages sessions at Lotusphere 2011, but have not been able to start doing any actual development. I was having problems getting over the initial hump, but this session explained things very well and inspired me to take a look at Xpages when I get back home.

Then there was the traditional poolside welcome reception, followed by a visit to Kimono’s, before heading to bed.

After getting up early in the morning, I boarded my flight from DFW to Orlando. As usual I flew American Airlines, but for the first time they had WiFi on the plane. So I was able to stay connected even on the flight, keeping track of how all my friends and contacts in the Lotus community were arriving to Orlando as well, from all over the world. Some had already arrived on Friday, and they shared weather info and other tidbits with the rest of us. During the approach to Orlando, I was even able to get a picture of Dolphin and Swan from the airplane.

After taking the shuttle to Dolphin, I checked in, and #occupyswandolphin (as Andy Donaldson once called it on Twitter) could start. The official twitter hash tag is #ls12, though.

After picking up my badge at registration, I headed over to Big River Brewhouse and the traditional BALD, which stands for Bloggers (and friends) Annual Lotusphere Dinner. There I met many of my friends, and we had some beer, food, and Kitty Elsmore's excellent toffee.

Spankford Blogmonkey also made an appearance, and he even brought some friends.

The plan was to head over to ESPN Zone after BALD, but because a couple of football teams decided to play each other, so the line was ridiculously long. A number of us went to Kimono's and had some drinks and some food.

After Kimono's we moved over to the Dolphin Bar to continue socializing. I had brought some "apple cake" (or perhaps it should be called "apple pie"), a drink that is popular in Sweden. It was a big hit with everyone that tried it. I will post the recipe soon, for anyone that want to make it themselves. 

On Flight AA1434 DFW to MCO. Should be at Swolphin around noon. Can't wait for Lotusphere 2012 to start! I have high hopes for the OGS, hope IBM delivers.

Looking forward to see all my friends again, and make new ones.

As I promised in my previous entry, I will show how to use the Windows clipboard functionality in a Notes application.

We have a knowledgebase, where information for different departments is posted. A very typical and simpel Notes application, in other words. But some users requested a simpler way to create nice doclinks, so I listened and created two buttons on the document form. 

The first button is 'Copy Link', it will simply collect information about the open document (database server, filename and path and UNID of the document. This information is then just stored in the cliboard as a delimited string.

The second button is 'Paste Link'. It will read the delimited string from the clipboard, get a handle to the document and create a nice doclink. The title of the document is also pasted into the document.

To support this functionality, you also have to create a form called 'doclink', where the only content is a RichText field called "Body". Make sure there is not even a linebreak after the field.

Below is the actual code. It requires the script library I posted earlier. Hope this can help someone.

Button 'Copy Link':

 Use "Class.Win32.ClipBoard"

Sub Click(Source As Button)    Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace    Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument    Dim clipboard As WindowsClipboard    Dim clipdata As String     Set clipboard = New WindowsClipboard()    Set uidoc = ws.CurrentDocument    clipdata="NotesData~" & ws.CurrentDatabase.Database.Server    clipdata = clipdata & "~" & ws.CurrentDatabase.Database.FilePath    clipdata = clipdata & "~" & uidoc.Document.UniversalID    clipboard.Contents = clipdata    Msgbox "Document info has been stored. You can now" & Chr$(10) & _    "use the 'Paste Link' button in IT Support db or" & Chr$(10) & _    "your mail file to create a link to this document.",,"Success"End Sub

Button 'Paste Link':

 Use "Class.Win32.ClipBoard"

Sub Click(Source As Button) ' *** Create and insert a doclink at the insertion point    Dim session As New NotesSession    Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace     Dim thisdoc As NotesUIDocument     Dim tempuidoc As NotesUIDocument    Dim db As NotesDatabase    Dim doc As NotesDocument    Dim tempdoc As NotesDocument    Dim linkdb As NotesDatabase    Dim temprt As NotesRichTextItem    Dim dbname As String    Dim servername As String    Dim unid As String    Dim clipboard As WindowsClipboard    Dim clipdata As String    Dim clipargs As Variant  ' Array to hold data from clipboard     Set thisdoc = ws.CurrentDocument    Set db = session.currentdatabase    Set clipboard = New WindowsClipboard()     clipdata = clipboard.Contents     If clipdata="" Then        Msgbox "No clipboard info found."        Exit Sub    Elseif Instr(clipdata,"NotesData~")=0 Then        Msgbox "No doclink info in clipboard."        Exit Sub    End If    clipargs = Split(clipdata,"~")     servername = clipargs(1)    dbname = clipargs(2)    unid = clipargs(3)     Set linkdb = session.GetDatabase(servername, dbname, False)    If linkdb Is Nothing Then        Msgbox "Could not find " & dbname & " on " & servername,,"Not Found"        Exit Sub    End If    Set doc = linkdb.GetDocumentByUNID(unid)    If doc Is Nothing Then        Msgbox "Could not located document.",,unid        Exit Sub    End If      ' Now the awkward bit: the only way to insert a doclink into RT that you  ' are editing is to paste it. The only way to get a pastable doclink into ' the clipboard is to copy one from an existing document so first we make ' a doclink in an RT field that links to the document.    Set tempdoc = New NotesDocument(db)     ' Form that will only contain the field with the doclink and NOTHING else.    Call tempdoc.ReplaceItemValue("Form","doclink")    Set temprt = New NotesRichTextItem(tempdoc,"body")    Call temprt.AppendText(doc.KBFull(0) & " - " & doc.Topic(0) & " ")    Call temprt.AppendDocLink(doc, doc.Topic(0))    ' This doc must be saved otherwise the display doesn't work    Call tempdoc.Save(True, False)    ' Now "display" the document so we can grab the doclink    Set tempuidoc = ws.EditDocument(False, tempdoc)     ' Select and copy the content    Call tempuidoc.SelectAll    Call tempuidoc.Copy  ' We should have the doclink inthe clipboard    ' Close and throw away the temporary document     Call tempuidoc.Close      Call tempdoc.Remove(True)      Call thisdoc.Paste   ' Paste the doclinkEnd Sub