As a techie and developer, one of the things that I really appreciate about Lotus Connections, is its ease of use and how fast someone can extend it.
Case in point, a customer recently asked me to add a Facebook widget to the Lotus Connections Home page. I knew there were several Google Gadgets out there for Facebook. Therefore, I followed the instructions on how to run a Google Gadget as a widget in Lotus Connections and created my own Facebook iWidget. Total work effort? 10 minutes.
iWidgets are powerful
Now, because Lotus Connections widgets can be hosted anywhere, I uploaded the widget to my domain. Since the widget has already been "developed" and "deployed", all you have to do is add it to your Connections' Home Page. To use the widget in your Lotus Connections deployment, simply add this widget:
This process literally takes 1 minute and is documented here.
Re-use is such a beautiful thing
Why reinvent the wheel? Why code something that already exists? While other vendors may have an extensible home page where you can add widgets, they force you to code the widget from scratch! You don't have to! Lotus Connections gives you the power to deploy any of the ~45,000 Google Gadgets, that somebody already coded for you!
Let me summarize: 10-15 minutes to wrap a Google Gadget into an iWidget. 1 more minute to deploy that iWidget into the home page. Total effort: ~16 minutes. No coding. No Java. No JSPs. No APIs to learn.Simply 1 XML with 2 lines of code and 1 HTML with 1 line of code.
A true social networking home page is born
By deploying existing gadgets into the home page, you are creating a true social home page. One that provides not only the recent updates from someone's internal social network, but also one that provides the most recent updates for someone's external social network! Now imagine what that's going to do to your adoption rates!! That's right, they are going to skyrocket!
Is Facebook not your favorite external social provider? You don't have 15 minutes to create the iWidget wrapper for the Google Gadgets?
No worries! All you really need is 1 minute! I have wrapped the following Google Gadgets into iWidgets for Lotus Connections:
- MySpace: http://blog.lbenitez.com/widgets/myspace/MySpaceGoogleGadget.xml
- FriendFeed: http://blog.lbenitez.com/widgets/friendfeed/FriendfeedGoogleGadget.xml
- Twitter: http://blog.lbenitez.com/widgets/twitter/TwitterGoogleGadget.xml
- Flickr: http://blog.lbenitez.com/widgets/flickr/FlickrGoogleGadget.xml
updated 13/Apr/2009: Other widgets you may be interested on:
- XSLT iWidget: http://www.lbenitez.com/2009/03/xslt-iwidget-for-lotus-connections.html
- iNotes iWidget: http://www.lbenitez.com/2009/03/inotes-iwidget-for-lotus-connections.html
- IdeaJam iWidget: http://www.lbenitez.com/2008/12/ideajam-iwidget-for-lotus-connections.html
Enjoy!
Seeing is believing
Wait, what's that? You still don't believe me that it takes less than 1 minute? Let me show you!! Click here to see a full-screen demo!
What else would you like to see? Let me know and I can expand this Lotus Connections iWidget Catalog!
P.S. The devWorks article is a bit long, but the core of the article is this section. If you follow the instructions in that section, you can get your own Google Gadget up-and-running in 10-15 mins.
Nice but if I am reading the instructions correctly, this requires an administrator to add this widget. When will the capability exist for an end-user to add their own widgets? (like the Notes client)
ReplyDeleteVery cook Luis. I didn't realize you can just host the widget on a web server and just consume it into Lotus Connections.
ReplyDeleteVery cool and well done to make it simple enough even normal people could do it.
ReplyDeleteBut yes how would joe user do it if they are prevented from editing their page?
Luis,
ReplyDeleteI just love your integrations posts!! Very cool...
Not a programmer, but I'm sure it's as easy as you write.
Keep up the good work - maybe one day, you'll be a PM as well ;-)
Anonymous/Evangelist,
ReplyDeleteThe customers that I've talked to like this approach because they still maintain some kind of control as to what can be added into someone's Home page (similar to how a Portal admin controls which portlets are available for a user to add to their page).
Have you been receiving requests from your customers to allow end-users to add any widget?? If so, I would like to hear it. If there's demand for it, I can push for it internally.
Sid/Dvir, glad you liked it!
Hi Luis
ReplyDeleteGreat post. What I would like to see is an IBM page that has a number of widgets already built (like an App store) that I can go and copy and use (of course, changing a few lins or script to personalize it).
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteI agree!! I would also like to see something like this actually hosted at the IBM.com site. In the meantime, I've taken the lead and started to host them :) . If you come up with a new widget, let me know and I'll add it here.
Also, I'm thinking (hoping?) as more and more people start using Lotus Mashups, perhaps IBM will start hosting solutions here along with the other Lotus solutions...
Hey Luis. This is awesome. The 1-minute video was the kicker!
ReplyDeleteIt was great seeing you tonight. I look forward to co-evangelizing with you!
Cool, thanks for the post, keep up the good work
ReplyDeleteLuis, a good summary of how to work with widgets. Can you tell me though when I create my own simple widgets and deploy them the body of the widget says 'Loading' but nothing seesm to happen. Does this ring any bells ??
ReplyDeleteHey anonymous,
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that there's an error in the widget definition XML file. Make sure that you are using FQDNs (fully qualified domain names). Also, if you are using LC v2 and Firefox v3, you may want to upgrade to Lotus Connections v2.0.1 as there's a Firefox v3 fix for it.
Hope this helps. If it doesn't please provide me with more information (platform, browser, widget information, etc)
Hey Luis... This is mike... I think you talked to Andria and were going to lend a hand to help me with the widgets... I have tried the ones you have posted here on the site but our company blocks them... can you let me know what all widgets you have hosted? Also I just don't seem to get the whole google gadget thing... I mean you go to the site and there is a page of gadgets there I click on one and choose to get the code and its in a js format
ReplyDelete(Could not post example)
And then there is the gadget wrapper... I just don't see how it all comes together. Care to post a step by step :)
looking forward to talking to you.
Adding your hosted widgets would be the fastest way to get what we need quick, but I need to know how to add the google gadgets as well for future changes.
Hi Mike, I currently have about 6-7 widgets. Most of them are just Google Gadgets that I have wrapped into iWidgets. Others are for Sharepoint integration, but require a purchase of a BP solution (CorasWorks). The Google Gadgets that I have are: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, FriendFeed.
ReplyDeleteYou should be able to click on each of the XML files above, and download those files into your Lotus Connections server. Once you do that, you should be able to host the widgets on your own deployment.
Here's a great article that describes, step-by-step http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/connections-gadgets/. It's quite long cause it's very detailed, but the important section is this one.
Let me know if this helps. Talk to you next week!!
Hi Luis,
ReplyDeleteMy company had IBM come out and set up a Connections 2.0 sandbox for us to test in. I've used the links you provided to create the facebook/twitter so on widgets you provided in your blog post. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. When I get one that does work, if I navigate to another window, like Activities, when I come back to home the widget is blank.
Any Suggestions?
Renee, my guess is that your Connections server is sitting behind a firewall with no direct access to the internet. Is this right ? If so, you may want to download and copy the widget's XML and host it internally. You can put it in the same server where Lotus Connections is running.
ReplyDeleteHope this helps. If you need further assistance, don't hesitate to contact me.
Luis,
ReplyDeleteI tried adding your twitter widget to my Connections 2.5 setup today and I am getting this error: com.ibm.lotus.connections.dashboard.catalog.impl.CatalogAdminService doGet CLFRQ0273W: An error occurred when trying to check this URL: http://blog.lbenitez.com/widgets/twitter/TwitterGoogleGadget.xml
I've tried adding a googleGadgetWrapper widget that I deployed internally also and am getting the same error. Any thoughts?
I was able to ping your blog.lbenitez.com host from my connections server so I think I should have connectivity to it.
Chuck,
ReplyDeleteThat URL works fine for me. Does your Lotus Connections server have access to the Internet? If not, then you'll need to copy the XML and HTML files so that they are local to your Lotus Connections server. You can download them from the Greenhouse widget catalog: https://greenhouse.lotus.com/home/html/product.jsp?p=catalog
Hi Luis,
ReplyDeleteI have a customer who wants to replace a dated corporate directory search application with Lotus Connections 2.5. The connections out-of-box UI will need to be customised, along with additional functionality such as an add users to a list for export. They are also running portal 6.1.
So my question is should I customise the Connections application and use iWidgets to develop the required functionality, then integrate it into portal using the web app integrator. Or should I build portlets (using WPF) to build the required functionality? What has been your experience with customers who have integrated connections and portal?
Thanks,
Bill
Bill,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure exactly what they want to customize, but Profiles, the user directory, is extremely configurable and almost never needs any customization. However, if you do find the need to customize it, espeically if you are going to do a lot of customizations, I would recommend instead to create custom portlets. That way, as you upgrade Lotus Connections, your changes are not lost.
Does this help?
Thanks Luis.
ReplyDeleteThe customer are trying to use Connections to replace an existing search application, so are looking to replicate the same functionality (such as exporting a user list or present an organisation chart view of employees).
Their current requirements are really only using the profile search capabilities of connections (not the social aspects such as tagging, status, etc).
The question I probably need to aske them is whether they want the existing search like for like (portlets in this case) or are they willing to use the Connections standard interface and get all the social networking benefits.
Right, if they want to use LC UI, I would recommend adding any extra functionality via Iwidgets. For instance, you could create an iwidget to generate an org chart and another to export users.
ReplyDeleteI just found out you can also set up 1-way cross posting from a Lotus Connections blog to Facebook Page by using the Facebook app NetworkedBlog to subscribe to the Connections Blog's RSS feed. Very nice.
ReplyDelete