Brownies Blog

Exchange to Notes 8 Migration Case Study - Tasmanian Perpetual Trustees Limited

Adam Brown — Tue, 6 Jan 2009 13:27:35 +1100

IBM and ISW has just published a great case study on Tasmanian Perpetual Trustees Limited migrating from Exchange and Outlook 2007 to Notes & Domino 8 as well as their adoption of Workflow-Xpress.

More information here...

TripIT and Lotus Notes 8.5 Federated Calandars

Adam Brown — Fri, 5 Dec 2008 10:55:33 +1100

I have been using the Notes 8.5 beta for a month or so now and one of the best features is the federated calendars.

Essentially this feature allows you to overlay additional calendars with your own. For example you might want to add some of your colleagues calendars or you might have an events calendar for your organisation. Well with Notes 8.5 you can simply select which calendars you want to overlay with your calendar. On the left hand panel of your calendar go to Show Calendars and you can choose to Add a Calendar...

You choose a calendar to add and you have the option of using a user's calendar, Notes Teamroom Calendar, and even a Notes application Calendar. The ability to bring together disparate calendars is awesome. We have been able to look at shared calendars in the past and use Group Calendars to kind of compare different calendars but this is just seamless calendar overlays.

An example of how I am using this new feature is leveraging TripIT. TripIT is a new Web 2.0 type service that enables me to forward all my airline and accommodation bookings to it. When I email a booking to it the clever team at TripIT somehow automagically reads the itinerary and adds it to my TripIT Calendar. Now I can access my TripIT calendar directly via a web browser or via my Blackberry Bold's browser but I can also subscribe to an iCal feed.

So all I do is Add a Calendar, select an iCalendar Feed as the source, enter the URL to my TripIT feed, select a colour, and their you go. Your flights etc are automatically added to your calendar!!

So all I do now is email all my flights to TripIT, there secret sauce reads the document, and they add it to my calendar!! Now there is a reason to upgrade to Notes 8.5 when it arrives!

Video Case Study - Lotus Notes 8 Upgrade

Adam Brown — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:40:33 +1100

Further to the recent release of a case study ISW is pleased to publish (with IBM) this video case study: Please feel free to rank the video well:) []

Anglican Church of Australia - Case Study

Adam Brown — Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:47:55 +1100

ISW has just published a new case study with IBM on the recent Sydney Diocese Secretariat upgrade and migration to Lotus Notes & Domino 8.

Have a read here.....

IceTV Guide Via Notes Sidebar

Adam Brown — Tue, 8 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +1100

I just purchased a BeyonWiz DP-S1 PVR. It is a Dual HD receiver with 250 GB drive, wireless access, etc etc. For those in overseas etc reading this it probably isn't a big deal but PVR's are relatively new devices in Australia. In particular ones with downloaded TV program guides. The great thing about the BeyonWiz is that it supports IceTV's Interactive service which allows you to program the recorder via a web site. The Beyonwiz then periodically connects to the IceTV service and downloads the current schedule of things to record. So for someone that travels as much as I do and constantly rings home to ask for something to be recorded that is just great.

But it gets even better. IceTV have a service for mobile devices at http://remoterecord.com.au that allows me to log on from a Blackberry browser for instance. But even cooler is that using my Lotus Notes 8.0.1 Sidebar I have created a Widget that automatically logs onto the site and shows me the TV Guide. I can simply select what I want recorded from my sidebar and the Beyonwiz is updated!

Now that is a great use of the Notes 8 Sidebar Widgets if you ask me!

Wordle

Adam Brown — Tue, 1 Jul 2008 15:40:54 +1100

The Brown Blog Wordle:

Sametime Status - Invisible

Adam Brown — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 20:41:12 +1100

Just a thought that it would be great to have a sametime status of Invisible for all those times when you still want to log on but don't want people to see you. ie You might want to access a sametime bot or just do some work at night without being hassled.

Idea Jam link

Quickr 8.1 New Features

Adam Brown — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:23:48 +1100

Quickr 8.1 has just been released. The announcement letter is here.

The new features are:

New features in Lotus Quickr Standard 8.1

Usability enhancements to the browser experience:
Improved navigation and breadcrumbs throughout
Streamlined context menus
Simplified check-in/check-out and version control
Single-page member management
Note: These usability enhancements apply to Lotus Quickr services for Domino
Lotus Connections integration:
From a Lotus Quickr place, access an individual's Lotus Connections profile (in place of the "person card")

Lotus Notes 8.0.1 connector:

View and access Lotus Quickr places from the Notes side shelf

Drag and drop attachments and entire e-mail contents

Lotus Symphony connector:

Context menu within editors to contribute and share content in Lotus Quickr places

Microsoft Outlook connectors:

View and access Lotus Quickr places

Drag and drop attachments and entire e-mail contents

Personal file sharing:

Streamlined place for an end user to store important files and share them with others

Available separately (with the Lotus Quickr connectors) as Lotus Quickr Entry

Administrator enhancements:

Policy settings for places (maximum size, days inactive before locking)

Easy-to-use browser interface for administrators with improved reporting

Note: These administrator enhancements apply to Lotus Quickr services for Domino.

New features in Lotus Quickr Entry 8.1:

Simple personal file sharing improves personal productivity and reduces space required for e-mail attachments.

Single personal place for storing and sharing content accessible from any of the Lotus Quickr connectors or a Web browser.

Content moves seamlessly from Lotus Quickr entry places to standard Lotus Quickr team places.

I am particularly looking forward to having the Notes 8.0.1 sidebar connector. I have been using the beta sidebar for a while and it is great but was always a little buggy (which you would expect off course). Now that it is released I will be able to get all our staff using it. I think that this feature alone dramatically increases the usability of the product for file sharing. It is so simple and accessible having Quickr in your sidebar.

The other thing I am interested in understanding better is the Personal File Sharing feature. Not quite sure how this works yet but am interested how easy it is to share files across boundaries. This is where Quickr needs to compete with the ease of say MS Groove file sharing capabilities. The benefit that I see Quickr having over Groove is that Groove requires each user sharing to install Groove whereas Quickr is accessible from the browser.

The Symphony Connectors are also a big step.

Google Charts API & Lotus Notes

Adam Brown — Sat, 8 Mar 2008 23:49:24 +1100

If you havn't seen the Google Charts API then you should have a look. It really is a clever service that enables you for form a simple URL and the service will return a PNG image of the according chart. In forming the URL you simply add a series of parameters to define the chart format, colours, axis titles etc. You also pass your data set in the URL and wammo a cool looking chart is returned.

So I thought this was pretty neat as I was planning on implementing a Performance Scorecard type application in a Lotus Notes database. Basically I wanted to create a chart that a user could use to visually represent a KPI of billable hours vs hours available in a month. I was going to extend this to many more charts for different KPI's and was pretty excited at how easy to use the google charts api is.

However my plan has been thwarted!. Lotus Notes clients do not support png images! Yes I know amazing. You can import a PNG but this seems to convert it to a bmp. You can't refer to a png in an image tag to be viewed in a form or page for instance.

There seems to be a few SPR's logged with IBM on this topic:
SPR KSOA4CVSQG states that the Notes Browser does not support PNG files.
SPR MLAT5GSUAK states that a PNG does not display and has been closed as "not a bug".
SPR PBAO65AKFU is an enhancement request asking for future support of the PNG image format. Whenever opening a PMR to ask for PNG support refer to this SPR.

however it seems there is no immediate plan to support PNG.

So I thought I would post an idea on IdeaJam but found it is already there. So if you agree that this would be a good enhancement then please go vote for it.

The idea is here.

The big day!

Adam Brown — Thu, 3 Jan 2008 21:33:22 +1100

Well tomorrow is our big day. Tonight I have had a nice relaxing dinner with family and am now home with the Jessie dog. Jayne is with her family and the next time I see her she will be walking down the aisle. Everything seems organised so hopefully it will all go to plan. Most of all though by late tomorrow afternoon I will be the happiest bloke in town and will be married to a beautiful wife that I love dearly.

We will then be heading off for a couple of weeks on our honeymoon so we will see everyone late January!