IBM Lotus Domino 8.5.3 server performance and IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 client performance
Saw this very nice - although very technincal - whitepaper on developerWorks on how Notes 8.5.3 has been optimized to reduce the number of transactions with the Domino server. A small little thing that I haven't seen mentioned before but which can have a big impact on your environment and users. Probably shouldn't be considered light reading.
"IBM Lotus® Domino® 8.5.3 and IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 have been optimized to reduce the transactions from the client to the server. These optimizations yield a reduction in server resources, thus lowering the Total Cost of Ownership. This white paper shows the reductions in processor and disk utilization achieved with large numbers of Notes 8.5.3 clients running on a single Domino 8.5.3 server."
IBM Lotus Domino 8.5.3 server performance: IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 performance
Searching Profiles programmatically
As part of IBM Connections you will find a big REST API that allows you to work with almost every part of Connections such as searching for profiles, managing files and working with communities. As part of our new product (see my previous post) I'm doing a lot with this API. Right now one of my favorite wiki documents is "Searching Profiles programmatically".
WAS profile creation on Windows Server 2008 64 bit
When installing Connections on Windows 2008 Server 64 bit the profile management tool doesn't work so profile creation is done using manageprofiles.bat/sh. The syntax is hard to remember so here it is for future reference.
Deployment manager:
c:\ibm\websphere\appserver\bin\manageprofiles.bat -create -templatePath ..\profileTemplates\management -profileName dmgr -profilePath d:\wasprofiles\dmgr -cellName LCCell01 -nodeName dmgrNode -serverType DEPLOYMENT_MANAGER
Application server:
c:\ibm\websphere\appserver\bin\manageprofiles.bat -create -templatePath ..\profileTemplates\default -profileName AppSrv01 -profilePath d:\wasprofiles\appsrv01 -nodeName appNode01
OnTime Group Calendar for Social Business
As part of the OnTime Group Calendar we're building a series of widgets for IBM Connections to allow easier collaboration - the more we collaborate the more we need access to accurate, updated, calendar data. This puts OnTime Group Calendar smack in the middle of the move to social business. We are getting ready to release the widgets as part of the product and we have the first demo ready.
The integration into the Profiles feature is easily understandable and shows the calendar of the user right there on the profile page as shown on the right. Click the image to see a larger version.
However the real power lies in the integration into communities. Here we bring the calendar of community members into the community is a text list UI and a full graphical viewer based UI as in the rest of our clients. For communities we are also offering a Social Scheduling widget to allow you to find available meeting times and book meetings with community members plus people you may only know based on tags (keywords) or location. Very powerful and possible due to the API offered for OnTime Group Calendar.
(click the image for a larger version)
Please note that everywhere the access to calendar data is only available if the querying user has sufficient access.
The demo below outlines how OnTime Group Calendar for Social Business brings calendar data into IBM Connections in the Profiles feature and in the Communities feature.
All videos are available on the ontimesuite YouTube channel.
Backup for IBM Connections communities
An excellent and a bit overdue addition to IBM Connections is better control over backup of communities. We're not talking fine grained control and integration with e.g. Tivoli Storage Manager but rather backup to and restore from ZIP-files. The asset has been added to the Greenhouse catalog and is described in the New backup & restore tool for IBM Connections Communities post on the Synch.rono.us blog.
Lotusphere 2012 session accepted
I'm very happy that the session I submitted together with Luis Benitez was accepted for Lotusphere 2012 in the Best Practices track. The session is titled "Easy as Pie - Creating Widgets for IBM Connections" and will be about how easy and powerful it is to develop widgets for IBM Connections. On the other hand I am a bit bummed that my JumpStart with Ryan Baxter on plugin development wasn't accepted and we do not get the chance to repeat the success from Lotusphere 2011. Bummer but that's how it goes.
See you in Orlando.
20% off OnTime Meeting Manager until December 2011
OnTime Meeting Manager is your one-stop organizer dedicated to making the process of organizing meetings quick and efficient, leaving you free to concentrate on what's central to your business.
Booking rooms for meetings or even teleconferences should be an easy process. Most people would agree on that. Adding catering to the booking should not be much harder. However often organisations find that handling this procedure is a lengthy process that absorbs much more time than imagined.
If you consider some of the hidden "time consumers" like handling the entire approval workflow for catering and facility management it becomes clearer why this is true.
OnTime Meeting Manager is targeted at turning the entire process from invitation, meeting attendance, delivering catering and at the end doing the cost accounting into one fully integrated process.
Tool of the day: websequencediagrams.com
Today I needed to draw a number of sequence diagrams and since I do not have a program installed for this I decided to look online. My search was successful and I was very happy to find websequencediagrams.com. What sets this tool apart from others is that you do not draw the sequence diagram but you write it. Just up my alley as a developer. Using easy syntax like the below you can quickly stitch a diagram together.
Alice->Bob: Go do it! Bob->Alice: Okay! Bob->Charles: Help me please! Charles->Bob: Done! Bob->Alice: Done!The above would yield this diagram.
There's a number of styles to choose between such as napkin, plain UML etc.
There are probably other such tools but this fit the profile and use case for me.