Die besten Tools für Lotus Notes

Ende Januar ist auf der > Computerwoche-Website ein Artikel mit dem Thema > Die besten Tools für Lotus Notes erschienen. Darin ist auch das Tool > PAVONE KnowledgeGateway zum zielgerichteten Ablegen von E-Mails im Kontext von Kontakten, Projekten oder sonstigen Objekten aufgeführt. Mehr Informationen über PAVONE KnowledgeGateway gibt es auf der > PAVONE Website.

Workflow-Anwendungen mit XPages umsetzen

Wie auf der > Powersphere im September angekündigt, ist mittlerweile die Version 10 von > PAVONE Espresso Workflow freigegeben. Hauptneuerung ist die Realisierung mit XPages. Dadurch können einmal entwickelte Workflow-Anwendungen im Webbrowser und IBM Lotus Notes-Client ausgeführt werden.

Der im Screenshot zu sehende Workflow Materialbeschaffung wird standardmäßig ausgeliefert. Weitere Workflows können mit dem grafischen Modellierungstool PAVONE ProcessModeler erstellt werden.

Die Umsetzung erfolgte basierend auf dem > OneUI, um möglichst wenig Abhängigkeiten zu einem speziellen User Interface zu schaffen.

Die Version ist in deutscher und englischer Sprache verfügbar, umschaltbar in einer IBM Lotus Notes Anwendung.

Weitere Informationen gibt es hier:  > PAVONE Espresso Workflow mit XPages. Der Download ist übrigens kostenlos, bedarf nur einer Registrierung.

Live blogging from Powersphere

Today, is the second day of the 10th > Powersphere in Paderborn (Germany). The first day was only for business partner. Today is an open day for everyone. Since I have no presentation today, I will try to blog some interested news. Ed Brill is the first time here in Paderborn. Unfortunately, Brent Peters is not here, due to illness. Hot topics are about IBM Lotus Notes and Domino, BPM and other things. Ed Brill will talk about the > Project Vulcan, Daniel Nashed will talk about > Lotus Traveler, Niklas Heidloff about mobile apps with XPages, Leo Westhues about Lotus Symphony. Besides these are some presentations about IBM Websphere Portal, LotusLive and Cloud Computing. So, please refresh this page during the day, since I will write down the news.

5:20 pm: End of the event for today. Tomorrow is the third day, but only for invited people.

4:30 pm: New session in the forum: > BPM in the Cloud. 2009 only 6 % of the companies uses business process models. Afterwards Artur Habel shows an introduction of workflow management with > PAVONElive.

4:10 pm: Back from a > session about grafical tools for Lotus Notes applications. Hady Mirian and Thomas Rychlik presented tools for designing the Organization structure or Project structure with the Eclipse Rich Client-based  > PAVONE StructureBuilder framework.

2:00 pm: Session from Niklas Heidloff about > mobile apps and XPages.

Transition effects without page refresh. Showed the > XPages Mobile Controls project, > XCamera (XPages with PhoneGap), > ImageViewer.

Works offline with the last 10 entries. Data will be stored locally in a SQL database.

He showed the new > XPages Extension Library. Very awesome! Controls will be deployed on the server. With the API the developer can develop own controls. More information on the > OpenNTF Blog.

12:20 am: Sitting in a > session from Daniel Nashed about Lotus Traveler. Some basics about Traveler.  Components: Traveler servertasks, servlet, LotusTraveler.nsf (documents can see in the Administrator client).

Two types of devices: a) Windows Mobile, Nokia S60 and Android (in future): Client download is needed. b) Apple devices: Only a profile is downloaded.

In Traveler 8.5.2 new Lotus Mobile Installer, which install and updates the clients

Deploying settings to users with Traveler policies. Settings are locked down on device for WM, S 60 and Apple devices. Pushed to the mailfile by default every 6 hours (speed up by tell adminp process traveler command).

Settings are written via Adminp to the profile. Policy settings are not used by Apple devices (ActiveSync does not support it). Security settings are supported by Apple devices. Security settings are very important. Settings for the devices are different. Important settings: Require device password and Wrong passwords before wiping device (for example 7 days). It is not possible to push specific policy settings.

12:10 am: Back from a > LotusLive presentation from Claudia Pölkemann. She spokes from “unglückliches Marketing” because of the product names from Lotus.. 🙂 16. Mio users of LotusLive due to acqusition of Outblaze. Concord will be a new tool “Web-Symphony” in which users can write documents and later work on spreadsheets together. A reference for LotusLive in Germany is the > Deutsche Aids Hilfe.

9:55 am: Ed Brill comes on the stage. He speaks about the strategy of Lotus Notes and Domino.

TCO Analysis for messaging services: IBM Lotus Notes and Domino is 52% cheaper than Microsoft Office 2007

Collaboration desktop: Web 2.0 integration with Tungle, LinkedIn, Gist, Doodle, TripIt, Salesforces.com, eproductivity and others.

He shows some Sidebar plugins: LotusLive meetings, Travelling information from TripIt. Shows a live demo of Tungle.me and the integration in Lotus Notes. Very cool.

Updates in Notes 8.5.2: Startup improvements, more LotusLive integration, consistent window behavior for XPages in the Notes client, multithreated replication, saving mail entries to a file and some others. Some Calendar and Contacts enhancements. DAOS capabilities were improved.

More tools for developers and partners should be available in Domino 8.5.x.

Talked about XPages (as an example IdeaJam).

Lotus Traveler support for Android client/Windows 6.5 client will be available in 2H of this year.

Talks about LotusLive and LotusLive Notes.

Talks about Lotus Protector for security and mail encryption.

9:50 am: PAVONE announced the new release 10 of PAVONE Espresso Workflow. It is based on XPages. Some more infos: > Build workflow applications based on XPages.

9:40 am: Introduction to > Biotic CRM, which is based on the Lotus Notes/Domino-based CRM solution PAVONE Sales. Biotic CRM uses Structogram.

9:30 am: Jürgen Zirke (CEO PAVONE AG) starts the Powersphere with some presents for some customers.

8:47 am: The openning session starts at 9:30 am. Afterwards at 10:00 am Ed Brill will talk about the Lotus Notes and Domino Product strategy.

8:40 am: Powersphere is in the > Arosa Forum in Paderborn and we have sunshine… 🙂 A nice view about the buildings of the city.

The good and bad about new Lotus Notes/Domino releases

As you can read in many blogs today, IBM has > announced the new release 8.5.2 of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino. Every new release is a good news, since it shows that the development go further and the product will be improved. On the other hand, each release means that every IBM Lotus Notes/Domino-based application has to be tested whether it runs with the new release. Since I work for an > ISV which has some IBM Lotus Notes/Domino-based applications in his portfolio, it means a lot of work. In some of our applications (for example > TimeTracking and > Project Management) we use Java applets as main components. Unfortunately, we have to change the code of our Java applets nearly in each release of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino. I do not know why, but sometimes they did not run with the new releases. A bad example was the release 6.5.4, which was very unstable and we had several problems with the Java applets. Without code modifications the applets run well in 6.5.3 and 6.5.5. But of course the Java support in 8.5.x is much better than in 6.x or 7.x releases. So I hope, that we have not too much work if we test the applications with the new 8.5.2 release.

Passed the Test

Today, I have passed the > IBM Lotus Notes Domino 8.5 Application Development Update test. I found the test difficult since I have not developed several XPages applications before. But now I’m happy that I’m a IBM Certified Application Developer – Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.

Article about Lotus Notes, SAP and Alloy

In an e-mail from the > LotusUserGroup.org I found a link to an interesting article about workflows with Alloy: > Implementing custom workflow decisions in Alloy 1.0 by IBM and SAP.

IBM Certified System Administrator & Application Developer for Release 7

Of couse, I’m a little bit too late, but today I had my last Lotus Notes/Domino 7 test. It was the > LOT-702 for System Adminstration Update. Some weeks ago I made the LOT-701 Application Development Update test. I’m an Application Developer & System Administrator for release 4, 5 and 6, but this was the most complex test for me. Since I had no training materials about system administration, I learned only with the > Self Test preparation test. Unfortunately, many questions in the test were not covered by the preparation test. But at the end I passed the test. The recertification tests for Lotus Notes/Domino 7 will close end of April, 2009.

New videos

I found some new videos about Lotus software and collaboration topics.

First, IBM has a new channel on Youtube.com: > Collaboration4you.

Second, > CollaborationMatters has added a great > LotusLive.com ad to Youtube.com.

Third, > PAVONE has a new channel on Youtube.com: >PAVONEtv.

Fourth, a new flash with five videos about advantages of the usage of Lotus Notes/Domino-based products: > Navigator (Found on PAVONE Media Center.) (Only in german available.)