How To Access your IBM Connections Files Offline from your iOS Device

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Last week I attended a conference in Cambridge, MA where I got to see Andrew McAfee give the keynote. I never get tired of listening to Andy. He does a great job on stage keeping everyone engaged, he's funny, and definitely very passionate about this whole Enterprise 2.0 space (of course, since he coined the term! ).

Updated 24/Sept/2012: As of June 2012, the native IBM Connections mobile apps allow you to take files offline without depending on a 3rd party tool. For more info check this blog entry out.

That was my first trip in 9 weeks and it was a good reminder of how many people are still offline for most of their work days. Previous to my current role, I used to be part of the sales organization where I would only have access to the network about 20% of the time any given week.

While I was in one of my meetings I needed to access one of my files stored in IBM Connections and the connectivity was not that great. Luckily, I had an offline copy of the file which I could still use and show to my peers.

I figured this could be a tip I could share with many of the IBM Connections users out there so I created a quick video showing how to do this. The trick is to use a free app that you can find on the iTunes App Store called Fresh Docs. The app is made by Zia Consulting and works over CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services). As you may remember, IBM Connections introduced support for CMIS back in 2010. And this opens the door for many providers to integrate with Connections, such as this free app:

Download the app and feel free to test it against our own test environment called Greenhouse. Here are the settings you'll need:

Hostname: greenhouse.lotus.com

HTTPS: On

Port: 443

Service Document: /files/basic/cmis/my/servicedoc

Company Home: On

That should do it! Enjoy!

Social Business ROI ? Here's Yet Another Example!

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As you know, I'm one of the product managers for IBM Connections and one of my responsibilities is for our solution running in the cloud. I truly believe that one of the best ways to help organizations understand the value of becoming a Social Business is to learn from the successes of others. And at IBM we are actively documenting and highlighting the success stories of our customers.

One recent example is Newly Weds Foods, a Chicago based, global leader in food technology, needed an effective collaboration tool to bring its geographically dispersed team together, without the capital expense and staff needed to run an in-house solution.

With 27 plants all over the world, including the Philippines, China and Thailand, moving to the cloud made perfect sense. Newly Weds Foods chose IBM's LotusLive social collaboration cloud services to enable its culinary team to share information and ideas quickly and easily regardless of the time or location.

Culinary chefs use Profiles from IBM Connections to find and connect with other chefs around the world. They use Files and Communities within IBM Connections to share information from recipes to demos. They use Web meetings to share presentations and ideas with colleagues and clients, who range from retail stores, to mom and pop eateries to large national chain account restaurants.

The result? They are now saving 4-5 days per month in travel time, approximately 10% on airfare and travel expenses and they have sped communication response rate from days to hours. Working in different time zones is no longer a barrier to productivity and LotusLive's unique "guest account" model provides no cost access to clients so they can collaborate more easily on recipe ideas.

I truly believe that one of our differentiators is the "guest account" model and it's definitely something that our customers love. Who doesn't love free access ?

Check out this video with more information:



What are you waiting for ! Are you on your road to become a social business ?

Demo: IBM Connections and Notes 8.5.3 Integration

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In the weeks prior the release of Notes 8.5.3 I helped a colleague create this video which shows the various integration points between IBM Connections and Notes 8.5.3. As a refresher, Notes 8.5.3 entitles users to free use of IBM Connections micro-blogging, profiles, and file sharing.

In the past 2 days alone, the video has amassed close to 1,000 views. The demo shows the importance of Social Everywhere and how critical it is to drive adoption of a social business platform. Here are the integration points that are shown:

• Search for colleagues and files directly from Notes
• Invite colleagues to your network directly from Notes
• Update your status and participate in micro-blogging directly from Notes
• Share files with colleagues from Notes (without using email!)
• Drag-n-Drop email attachments into Files
• Drag-n-Drop files into emails without actually attaching to the email
• View your colleagues files

Here's the 6 minute overview.

As a reminder, you can get the free Files and Status Updates plugins from our Lotus app catalog.

Notes Customers Now Entitled to IBM Connections Profiles and Files

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As you may have seen by now in Ed Brill's blog, today IBM is announcing a new entitlement option for existing Notes customers. With Notes 8.5.3, customers are now entitled to use IBM Connections Profiles and Files.

Seems like most people are excited with this announcement, as they should be! To me, the biggest benefit will be seen by the Notes users who will now be able to leverage Connections directly from their Notes client thanks to all the awesome (free!!) Connections plugins we have in our app catalog. For example, Notes users that didn't have Connections before, now will have the ability to:

• Hover over a name and see a user's business card
• Search for files and people
• See and post status updates
• Drag-n-drop Files from Connections into an email or vice versa

Of course, there are other plugins for Notes (e.g. for Activities and Bookmarks) so when a customer trades-up to the full IBM Connections offering, they'll even get more value from their Notes client. I've seen several questions come up as to how to install Connections (for those that have never done it). A tech note has been published which explains how to install only Profiles and Files with Notes 8.5.3.

As the entitlement states, Homepage is not entitled so here's how you would disable Homepage once everything has been installed:

1) Check out the LotusConnections-config.xml with the command LCConfigService.checkOutConfig("C:/temp","foo01Cell01") as documented here: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/Editing_configuration_files_ic301

2) Open the file with your favorite text editor

3) Find the text listed below (it'll be similar to this):

 

/homepage





3) Set the enabled and ssl_enabled parameters to false, for example:

enabled="false" serviceName="homepage" ssl_enabled="false">

/homepage





4) Check the file back in

5) Restart IBM Connections.

Homepage is now hidden from end users. I'm anxious to see even more users on Connections now with this entitlement!

Looking Back, Looking Forward

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Last year, it was officially signed on IBM paper that I would be moving to the IBM Social Software product management team (even though the move was actually back in September 2010). Thus, I figured I would share a bit about the last year and what I'm looking forward to see in the next year.

The past year has been a tremendously fun one. Travel has been significantly reduced (so I can spend more time with the family) and I've learned a lot about how the IBM business runs. When I joined the team, I took the reins for IBM Lotus Quickr Domino and today I also co-manage LotusLive Connections and IBM Connections (Files and Wikis).

During the past year I've had a lot of opportunities, such as:

• Working on the abstract selection process for Lotusphere 2011 (and presented there for the first time ever!!)
• Briefed various analysts such as Forrester where we were recently named Leader in their Forrester Wave. Also worked with Stowe Boyd to update the write up for IBM Connections
  
• Started planning for the next releases of Quickr Domino (more about this below) and worked to improve the documentation to make it easier to find information.
• Participated in the selection process for the new IBM Champions
• Worked towards closure of the LotusLive Connections winter release and have started planning next year's release
• Worked towards closure of the IBM Connections 4.0 plan and have started thinking about the next release
• Actively monitoring the IBM Connections Users community in Greenhouse, specially it's Idea list ;)
• Published various videos to YouTube (e.g. IBM Connections with embed.ly and creating custom icons for Connections)
• Participated in various conferences like Enterprise 2.0 in Boston and IMPACT in Las Vegas (and co-submitted an abstract with Suzanne Livingston for SXSW 2012. Hope we get selected!)
• Started working on content for Lotusphere 2012.
• Started blogging on Technorati to take the IBM message to a larger audience
• Started the Social Media Club in Puerto Rico (ok, not officially related to IBM, but a way to keep spreading the social business message)

This week I'm presenting the latest roadmap for Quickr Domino and I'll talk about the next two releases of the product. The roadmap will be presented to our internal sales folks as well as to our business partners at the same time. Once this happens, I'm expecting they'll start helping me spread the word with all of our current and prospective customers. Additionally, I'll be flying to New York to talk about some of the new announcements that will come out this week (more on that later this week)

Next week, I'll be participating at the IBM Leadership Alliance conference (something I didn't get a chance to participate on last year since I joined the team at about the same time). Looking forward to talk to some of our key customers and get even more content ready for Lotusphere 2012.