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The presentation below is a great overview of the Quickr product. It covers the need, concept, key features and much more. I especially like how it speaks to the need for a utility like this in organizations that have employees spread across a wide range of experience, age range, etc.

It’s so good that I found myself wishing I would have started to talk about the concept at my company now (since this presentation is available) vs. over a year ago when I actually did begin talking about it.

Kevin IT Management lotus, presentations, quickr

Two weeks ago today I was sitting in the Lotusphere 2009 OGS. I was also in much nicer weather, despite the fact that it was the longest cold streak in Orlando in 20 years. Today, I’m still on a sort of Lotusphere-high and I’m really surprised (and pleased) to see my team is applying a lot of what they learned at the event.

One of the things we were most excited about was DAOS. This utility falls under the category of “stuff I never expected IBM/Lotus to come up with, but am REALLY glad they did.” This is a great example of some brilliant thinking on the part of the Lotus development team because it gets at a core problem within nearly every company: huge amounts of redundant file attachments.

Armed with more how-to knowledge about DAOS, we returned to the office with the goal of implementing this as one of the first action items coming out of Lotusphere. Below are stats from just two of our servers:

• Mail server:
  - 171 db’s analyzed
  - 162GB of NSFs
  - 647,001 attachments
  - 368,877 duplicate attachments
  - Disk savings: 64.1GB
• Application server:
  - 158 db’s analyzed
  - 52.6GB of NSFs
  - 410,219 attachments
  - 148,035 duplicate attachments
  - Disk savings: 12GB

Beyond disk savings on those servers, the value of this extends (almost exponentially) to our backup solution. We store a few days of backups on-disk (so that savings is multiplied) and then write to tape (again, multiplying the savings) and finally to archive tapes. When you consider that the Lotus Notes/Domino upgrade that contains this feature is included in our normal maintenance and that the savings extends throughout our infrastructure … it becomes a tool that’s so much more impressive.

Kevin IT Management, Misc. Info daos, domino, lotusphere

Sort of.

A few weeks ago I talked about an application called NotesCal which looked to be a promising application that would deliver my Notes calendar to my iPhone. However, I ran into a common error that many others did. The developer contacted me to tell me that he was seeding a new update to the AppStore and since then, I’ve been waiting patiently.

Today, it arrived. The application has been renamed to NotesPro and its worthy of the name change! Not only does it deliver calendar information (which now works for me, btw) but it also supports email, contacts and to do’s.

Let me repeat that: iPhone application that displays my Lotus Notes email, calendar, contacts and to do’s.

Now, before I go further, let me just say that I’ve litterally tried each and every iPhone-Notes solution out there and this one, in my opinion, comes closest to being “the app” that’s been missing in the marketplace. AND, I’m plesantly surprised that the upgrade didn’t just fix the calendar issue, but threw in some AWESOME value-added tools in the process!

That being said, I think there are some obvious next steps for the app. No, you’re not going to be able to tell your organization you can now support the iPhone. A few more things need to exist, including:

• Ability to delete emails (right now its view, create and reply)
• Ability to create calendar entries
• Ability to create to-do’s (or at least update them)
• Scrolling of the entire “document” on the iPhone. The app just scrolls the text field, not the whole thing. I thought this was going to be a cool feature but it feels like my HUGE iPhone screen just got limited down to about 1/3 the size.
• Ability to accept calendar invites
• Ability to set email/calender/etc. sync schedules (the whole thing works off an agent you need to build in your mail file, so I’m not even going to beg for push email). And then if I had that, I’d want…
• Icon denoting how many new messages in the inbox at the iPhone application menu

Overall, its still a great app and a very strong release (considering that I didn’t even expect ANYTHING else to be in the release other than a calendar fix). The app is a bit slow, but tolerable (and faster, for me, than using the ultralite thing). My contacts also don’t work and give a generic error – but I haven’t followed up on that yet.

So… if you’re looking for a strong iPhone-to-Notes application, this is worth checking out. I have to say, I’m really hopeful for where this will go based on the HUGE step forward since the last update. Who knows … maybe I’ll get my dream list above and more on the next round!

Kevin IT Management, Mobile Phones, Notes and a MAC appstore, iphone, lotus, notes

Right off the bat, I’m not going to go through a technical explanation about doing what the title suggests. That would take, like, more than this one post. Instead, I’m going to talk from more of a conceptual perspective.

The problem.

Our organization is no different than probably any other. We have really old systems, really new ones and everything in between. The level of integration that exists between all of them is never enough, despite anyone’s best attempts. We needed to find a way to deliver information to our customers via the web in an easy to use, intuitive way AND to re-consume some of that information along with much, much more for internal use. In short, we needed a one-stop shop that was role based, highly integrated with lots of back-end systems and had direct connectivity to additional detail which resided in the source system, regardless of what that was.

The technical problem.

From a software perspective, we were dealing with AS/400 (or iSeries, or SystemI or “I” – whatever you want to call it today) data in six different software environments; three major Notes applications and a number of other data sources, mostly Notes/Domino based. The data would present information to multiple countries and thus have to support multiple languages. Also, the security structures of most of these systems are unique and not highly integreated. — So… when we first started talking about this project, we often sarcastically said “good luck with all that!”

The solution.

Ext.nd! If you haven’t seen this, go check it out. In short, we’ve been able to ask our AS/400 developers to set up data warehouse tables that help consolidate some of the information across those systems. In the other areas, we’ve worked with them to use LEI activities to directly access the information. The Notes databases have all been “ext.nd enabled” and we’ve used a lot of XML to organize the data exactly how we want it. In short, there were plenty of ways to access the data needed in each unique system – we just had to carefully step through the process, organize it and get it ready for presentation in Ext.js or Ext.nd.

The result.

Ext.js starts (and ends) with a very nice, intuitive user interface. I feel strongly that the UI is part of the secret sauce to the project. We started putting together our application’s interface by looking through the gallery of examples that ext.js and ext.nd had to offer. We printed off many of these examples and drew lots and lots of whiteboard pictures to work on the layout.

The value-add.

Since the products we’re using have an established (and contemporary) UI, even some more boring reports (last screen shot) look really nice and updated. We’re able to show reports that previously printed in a standard AS/400 kind of style, on the web, with colors, and inside a layout that allows the user to turn on/off columns, change the sort behavior and move each column to a new position dynamically. Oh yeah, they can also search and page forward/back with the navigation at the bottom – or jump directly to a specific page in the report.

The icing on the cake.

What really put us over the top was integrating graphics from FusionCharts. These are Adobe Flash based, XML driven graphics which look outstanding. There’s just enough animation and interactiveness to them to make them interesting as they render on the screen. We re-consume the XML we’re presenting in tables and forms into these charts to represent the exact same data into different visuals. In the end, “yes” the data may be on the screen three times, but the three repsentations have very different purposes – and everyone agrees they all have value.

Attached are some screen shots of our new application. We branded it, purchased a logo for $35 from PixelLogo and launched it at our international sales meeting yesterday. The biggest compliement about the success and power of the application was when I overheard someone in the crowd say “this feels like something Steve Jobs would launch!”

… and I wasn’t even wearing a black shirt and jeans!

Kevin IT Management, Notes Development domino, ext.js, ext.nd, fushion charts, old systems

A lot of people who stumble on my blog figure out that I have a sort of love-hate relationship with Lotus products. However, they often incorrectly assume that at any given time, I’m more on the “hate” side of the pendillum.

That’s actually not the case at all. Infact, I’m sort of a self-appointed customer evangelist for Lotus products. To prove my point… I’ve SAVED two companies from jumping ship off Lotus Notes in the last 6 months alone!

I just got a call from a former co-worker who said “hey, I just got back from our planning meetings and the company finally agreed that we need to invest more talent into our Lotus Notes area, not jump ship to Outlook … and the decision was based on the info you armed me with for the meeting, so thank you!”

That’s great news! In this case, it was a company that was on Notes 6.x and had used very few applications. They had lost two developers and never replaced them. I spent some time meeting with their IT team on one occassion and a group of other executives on another to walk through the applications we use at my company. I talked about the power of Notes security, replication and administration tools. But I focused heavily on how we’ve used Lotus Notes to augment our ERP systems and deliver information via the Notes client and/or the web.

For the record, the first company had an install base of 500 users. The second was roughly 15,000. – Hmm… I really should get a cut of something for that, don’t you think?

Now here’s the bad news. JUST yesterday, I met with yet another former co-worker who said “yeah… Lotus Notes might be on the chopping block forus.” I absolutely hate hearing that kind of comment and I’m convinced that the reason the comments is made is because the people using the Notes don’t have a clue how to maximize their investment in it.

And yes, I insisted he set up a time for me to stop by and do a quick demo of what Notes can do for them, too. I’m going for the hat-trick of Notes saves this year!

Kevin IT Management notes

I. Can’t. Wait.

I’m not exactly certain, but I’m more excited about Lotusphere (2009) this year than any other year I’ve attended. I think its largely due to the amount of stuff from ‘08 that we’ve NOT yet implemented.

Yeah, you read that right.

My team and I came back from LS08 eager to deploy Notes 8.x; excited about the concept of an “all-in-one” box; anxiously awaiting the promised iPhone compatibility; excited about what looked like a strong update to Quickr; and super excited about the 8.5 beta for the Mac (yes, two of us helped cause the big slow down of that download the evening that was announced).

Nine months later: we’ve just begun testing 8.0.2 in hopes that the performance is finally good enough to launch across the company; DWA ultralite for the iPhone is nice, but not something that we can roll out; Quickr is a good update, but still has some odd quirks (personal folders – please!); and I stopped using the 8.5 beta for the Mac within a month.

Kinda sounds like a swing and a miss to me – and yet, I’m REALLY excited about LS09.

Lotus often does a good job of addressing the comments of their community; and everything I listed above has been talked about, blogged about, twitted (that’s a verb, right?) about, etc. quite a bit in the last year. I really would be shocked if Lotus hasn’t heard (loudly) the comments from all of us and I’m hopeful that LS09 will bring some new announcements on a number of these fronts.

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Here’s the other reason I’m excited: the Lotus community. By far, the most valuable thing to come out of Lotusphere last year was hearing from others in the community about what they are doing with Lotus products. In some cases (being totally honest here) you attend a session, hear a solution that someone put in place and realize: wow, we’re really doing well – that isn’t a problem we have at all! Phew!

In many more cases, you hear (or better yet see and get code examples) about really cool ways that people have used (or stretched) Lotus technology for their applications. This past year, the guys from Snapps put on a solid show (as always) and the amount of information we got (and were instantly able to use) about ext.nd was amazing.

So… while the product announcements may not have brought the value we had hoped (yet), connecting with the Lotus community has given us more tools than we dreamed of. That information has allowed us to deploy three new websites (one for customers, one for supply chain management and one for internal use), two new dashboard/graphing tools and build a toolbox of code that allows us to make application development advancements in 1/3 the time it did before!

And that’s why I’m excited!

Kevin IT Management, Mobile Phones, Notes Development, Notes and a MAC ext.nd, iphone, lotus, lotusphere, quickr

Now this is a great website design! I had to do a double-take on the URL to make sure I was really looking at a Lotus webpage, and I was.

The site design here is very contemporary, attractive and easy to get around. All of the key points of information are quickly brought to your attention (including the all-important “contact us” – which, let’s face it, is the one link every single company hopes you click on … assuming there’s not a “buy now” link that is).

The solution looks really nice, too. I really think they’re on to something here with a one-stop-shop server room in a box for smaller companies.

All that being said, I’m still a bit confused about what software is all included in this tool. It looks like a nice sampling of Lotus software, but its not clear if you get everything; turn on what you want to purchase; or only get selected pieces of software.

… and that’s probably intentional so that you click on the “contact us” links to get more information from a sales rep or business partner.

Kevin IT Management, Misc. Info design, foundations, ibm, lotus, ui, website

I attended an IBM event last week where I had a breakthrough epiphany: IBM struggles to communicate the breadth of their product and service offerings in the same way that IT departments struggle to communicate the tools and applications they’ve deployed to their user community.

This problem is compounded by the following facts:

• New employees are always coming on board – thus you need to find a way to continuously communicate your products/services/applications/etc.
• People are busy – so however/whenever you communicate to them, you need to make it relevant at that moment, or they’ll forget it or ignore it.
• Names change – IBM changes product names frequently. IT shops do the same with applications, or merge applications which essentially has the same effect.

So here’s the question: how do you communicate everything you have to offer in a way that’s memorable, continuous and relevant so no one gets missed.

At this event, a lot of discussion was had around this topic. Lots of suggestions were offered: website listings, application catalogs, company newsletters, printed materials, meetings, training sessions, etc. There’s no shortage of possible solutions – but which one is the right one?

The answer: communicate in as many ways as possible – and as often as possible. That may seem like a no-brainer, but let’s face it: we’re all busy.

As I thought about this topic I realized that one group that really does an exceptional job at addressing this problem is the Lotus group within IBM. Here’s a (short) list of the ways I get info about Lotus products/services/etc.:

• Lotusphere – an excellent event that’s entertaining, fun and broken into lots of sessions & tracks making it easy for me to get into the right type of session for whatever my needs are or whatever my function in an organization is.
• Lotus.com – while I think there’s room for improvement on the site’s navigation, its still a great resources.
• Lotus bloggers – an excellent community of people who share code, ideas, successes, failures and all sorts of candid comments about how they use Lotus software in their daily lives
• Wikis – a great source for best practices, documentation, etc.
• Redbooks
• Greenhouse
• OpenNTF.org – a great place to stop by for some application jump-start action
• Events near you – proof of technology events, Lotusphere comes to you, etc. — all great resources to attend to get more information

… the list goes on and on. However, its a great example of how people within the Lotus community share information in a variety of ways. Perhaps the fact that there are so many ways to get information on what’s going on with Lotus products only makes us all that more passionate and vocal about what we want (need) and fuels debates like “how the iPhone should work with Lotus Notes” but, at the end of the day, I think you can agree that the coverage Lotus provides on their offerings is really impressive.

And… perhaps its a model for distributing information about my own company’s IT systems. Now if I can just get them to spring for a company-wide trip to Disney World, we’ll be all set.

Kevin IT Management, Stuff I Recommend blogs, communcation, it systems, lotus, openntf, wiki

Before leaving for vacation, I had the chance to attend an IBM event all about Sametime. Two years ago, during Lotusphere a colleague of mine said (after seeing a similar demo): “you know, I can see a world where internal email almost entirely goes away – everything is based in Sametime, Activities, Quickr or some combination – we simply… collaborate, anywhere on any device.”

I have to admit: I see it too!

First, let’s review what Sametime has to offer. — Wait, better idea: let’s review what it DOESN’T have to offer. The answer: not much. Its really a very complete tool. The only thing I’d like to see (of course) is iPhone support – but that IS (at least at the moment) Apple’s hold up. By their own admission, they’re working on a way to improve an IM-type application so it doesn’t have to stay in memory the same way others do today.

For a more complete list of what Sametime has to offer, check out the graphic. It’ll do a much better job than I did in the paragraph above.

Here’s what else I love about Sametime – its one product that really does have the same experience on Macs. We’ve been hearing about Eclipse for a while now and Sametime is where it really is clear why IBM is committed to that. My Sametime client on my Mac (pictured) is nearly identical to its Windows counterpart.

Normally, when I say that, its followed by an “except that it doesn’t have…” but with Sametime, I’ve got none of that! I can even integrate side-shelf applications into the Mac Sametime client. Shown in the graphic is my Cisco Voicemail application.

I shouldn’t need to explain to anyone how powerful it is to have one utility that shows all of my contacts, their contact information, their picture, their on-line or meeting status, my voicemail and lots of other tools all in one easy, intuitive application.

Nice work, Lotus! I’m anxious to see what’s next because this application is so complete – its almost hard to envision room for improvement!

Kevin Apple / Mac, IT Management, Notes and a MAC lotus, mac, sametime

With the thought “actions speak louder than words” in mind, I’m not going to talk (again) about how disappointing it is that IBM/Lotus doesn’t have an announcement about a product that would make the iPhone and Domino work as well together as the demos of the iPhone and Exchange appear to work. I’m not going to comment on how frustrating it is to watch IBM/Lotus bloggers tell people to contact Apple and request the functionality. Instead, I’m going to tell you what we are actually doing:

This month, an Exchange server will go live in our organization. It will be connected to Domino to allow us to deliver iPhone services to our corporate users. We have a number of iPhones requested from our user community and more are sure to come.

Since we plan to have an Exchange server, we’ve also discussed a group of existing Domino users that could be migrated to Exchange as their mail platform. These users only use email and Exchange is a great alternative for them. This also calls into question our commitment to Domino elsewhere. Some departments, like our HR group, are moving processes into applications that are not Domino-based, allowing us to delete Domino databases and prompting the question: why continue to use Notes as their email client? This becomes an even more interesting question when you factor in the UI similarities between Outlook and Notes 8.x – especially since Notes 8.x requires so much more system resource that we’ve decided to not move to it for the time being.

Having an Exchange server in the mix also opens up other possibilities, like further integration with our Cisco VoIP system, integration with some of our manufacturing equipment & systems and even prompted some discussion on evaluating SharePoint instead of Quickr (which we’re now doing).

All of this has been a very natural series of events for us, and I doubt its far from over. At the end of the day, Apple has done a great job of convincing the business world that the iPhone is a product everyone should carry with them – and the lack of integrating with our existing Domino environment (with the same ease and functionality as demoed with Exchange) means our IT team needs to look elsewhere for a solution.

Dark side, here we come.

Kevin IT Management, Notes and a MAC