As we continue to finalize plans for the next release of Quickr, we want to make sure that we are listening to all of our customers and deliver the best product that meets the demands of our customers and beats our competition. To that end, I've created a survey to quickly gather feedback from all of our customers.
Between now and March 25th, I would like to request ~8 minutes of your time to go through and answer some quick questions. This survey will help us understand how our customers are using Quickr.
Also, while I have your attention, I also wanted to let you know of a webcast that's available which covers our strategy for integrating ECM and Collaboration. If you haven't seen it yet, here's the replay:
To access the survey, please click here and log in with your IBM ID. I really really appreciate your time and support. And remember, please complete the survey today! (or by March 25th)
I recently stumbled upon a quick interesting tip in one of our internal blogs which I thought would be extremely valuable to share externally. The tip documents how to embed the Lotus Connections search into the navigation for WebSphere Portal. And by looking at the code snippet below, this could also serve as a launching pad to embed Connections search into other pages regardless of the technology behind them.
So here's our goal:
The following code snippet was added into the Portal JSPs:
<%-- Renders the search widget in the banner --%> <div class="lotusSearchContainer"> <div id="themeSearchBoxContainer" class="wptheme-searchBoxContainer"> <div id="themeSearchBox"></div> </div>
<script type="text/javascript"> dojo.addOnLoad(function() { var c = {}; c.connectionsUrl = "${wp.themeConfig['resources.urls.connections_base']}"; c.proxiedConnectionsUrl = "${wp.themeConfig['resources.urls.connections_base.proxied']}";
In this case, c.connectionsUrl and c.connectionsUrlProxied point to the absolute URL of the connections server and the same but proxied through the WPS AJAX proxy. We generate the values of these at JSP execution time from a config variable in WAS admin console, but of course you can hard-code these if you wish. In our case the URLs look something like this:
I’ve heard several times the need to customize or control how emails are sent by Lotus Connections. In one example, there was a need to blacklist certain users so that they wouldn’t receive an email notification.
The general pattern for influencing how emails may be delivered is to override the default SMTP transport with your own version that inspects the message and makes any modifications before it is sent ( you can modify the actual message, the recipients that it's going to be sent to, etc). In this instance, the transport would look at all the recipient email addresses and remove any blacklisted ones. How it determines what is blacklisted could be done in any number of ways (e.g. members of a community, an LDAP group, a CSV file, etc).
Here is a skeleton of the overridden transport class:
package example.smtp.transport;
import javax.mail.Address;
import javax.mail.Message;
import javax.mail.MessagingException;
import javax.mail.SendFailedException;
import javax.mail.Session;
import javax.mail.URLName;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeBodyPart;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMultipart;
import com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport;
public class ExampleSMTPTransport
extends SMTPTransport {
public EESMTPTransport(Session session, URLName urlName) {
super(session, urlName);
}
/**
* Override the default sendMessage so that we can modify the outgoing
* email message as we need.
*
*/
@Override
public synchronized void sendMessage(Message message, Address[] recipients)
throws MessagingException, SendFailedException {
// Modify the message here…
// This will send it
super.sendMessage(message, recipients);
}
}
So how do we get this installed? Here's the general process:
Update the following file with the name of your overriden transport class
Add the file to the /lib directory on all nodes
Create a javamail.providers file in /java/jre/lib .
The file should contain a single line: "protocol=smtp; type=transport; class=example.smtp.transport.ExampleSMTPTransport" (without quotes)
In the WAS admin console go to Resources -> Mail -> Mail Providers -> Built-in Mail Provider (Cell scope, first one) -> Protocol providers -> smtp
Change the Class name to the name of your transport class e.g. example.smtp.transport.ExampleSMTPTransport
Click OK, Save changes, sync nodes, restart all servers
Yesterday, I was invited to do a quick presentation to an internal group of IBMers on why I blog and the value that I've received from blogging at IBM. I was limited to just 10 minutes, so I had to do something that was sweet, short, and to the point. There are so many stories that I've told before that it was hard to pick something that could be impactful.
I think I first fell "in love" with blogs when an amazing connection happened while at a customer site. You see, I was trying to get some integration going, but couldn't make it work. A colleague that happened to be working at the same customer, saw the blog entry and helped me get it done the next day! You can see the whole story here or check out this video:
Another of my favorite stories about blogs, was when I got to know Alan Lepofsky through one of my blog entries. The story is all about how blogs help me gain knowledge and just share knowledge. You can see that story here. I'm also a big believer that blogs can even help you grow your career. John Pape agrees and he has created a great post on 5 Ways Blogging Can Help Your Career.
So I decided to take an approach where I mention how I started (I started as an anonymous blogger back in '06) and the barrier of entry I faced. I've mentioned this before, so you may know that I **was** a firm believer of knowledge is power (more on this later). From there, I transitioned and told the story of how I was a consultant at the same time doing the very same thing that George Clooney does in Up In The Air. This helped me describe my pain point: disorganized, too many emails, too many things going on, etc... I believe that's a pain point that a lot of people can relate to.
It's no secret that IBM has empowered its employees to blog and use other social media tools. To me, blogs have resulted in tremendous benefits such as reduced email, increased productivity, career growth and more (slide 6). To IBM, there have been even more amazing benefits (slide 7). So far, I've tracked more than $6 million in closed sales opportunities thanks to my blog!
What I've come to realize is that Knowledge is not Power, but rather Knowledge Shared Is Power. In fact, I even found a site which gives the mathematical formula to show you this is true. Using all those data points together, I created this presentation which is perfect for 10 minutes.
I think it's clear that empowering your employees is key to becoming a Social Business, which is exactly what I talked about in the previous blog entry.
There's been tons of buzz around social business, social media, social marketing, social software, Web2.0 for Business, Enterprise 2.0, and all the other keywords out there. Is it a fad? No. It's here to stay and it's here to transform organizations. Ok. So now you say: "Transform organizations... that sounds nice, but ..." Aha! I know what you are going to ask me: "What's the real business value behind it?" You are probably concerned that "Social Business" just means bringing a Facebook-like tool into your enterprise where your employees are going to do what? Play games? Post photos of that party? Share videos about cats (or other cute animals)? Note: I'm not a cat person, but cats do seem to be popular out there.
IBM's Vice President for Social Business & Lotus Sales and Evangelism, Sandy Carter, sums it up well. A Social Business:
embraces networks of people - It's not about B2B or B2C. It's about P2P (person-to-person) to create business value.
is engaged and has conversations online with its customers, employees, suppliers and embraces
is transparent and is ready to be open to ideas and capitalize on those
removes boundaries both inside and outside so that your people reflect your brand
is nimble because they are engaged and transparent (see #2 and #3 above) and can make quicker business decisions
These characteristics lead to accelerated innovation and stronger business results and are reflective of standout organizations in their respective industries.
By now, you've attended Lotusphere 2011 #ls11 or maybe even watched the livereplays of the keynotes. And after watching the video above you are now convinced that you must become a Social Business. But how do you go about doing that? Sandy Carter had a great session at Lotusphere which explained this. Sandy created a framework called the Social Business Agenda: a 6-step process on the steps you need to take to become a Social Business. Of course, the 3 minute video doesn't do justice to her 1 hour presentation at Lotusphere, but it's a great introduction into the concepts.
If you want to learn more, Sandy Carter is going to be hosting a webcast this Thursday March 3rd, 2011 along with JeremiahOwyang from Altimeter Group. The webcast is titled Why Be Social? If you are not following Jeremiah Owyang, I strongly encourage you to do so. He always has insightful information he's sharing in his blog. To register for this week's webcast, click here.
I would also like to know, do you think there's anything missing in her plan?
