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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

How To Get The Latest Social Media Counts

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While in Argentina, Marcelo showed this cool dynamic infographic that shows you the latest social media counts in "real-time", in the last day, last week, last month or last year.

Unfortunately, I found out about it after my Social Business presentation. I think it would've been nice to show this to the audience so they get a sense, again in real-time, as to the massive amounts of activities that are going on in the different social networks out there.

There's also an iPad app you can try and download: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/social-media-counts/id392861163?mt=8%20# . You can read more about it here. It looks like this was made available back in January, but I just stumbled upon it. I think I missed it in all the Lotusphere #ls11 rush.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Improved Quickr Documentation Now Online

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Recently, I've been working very closely with the development team to improve the documentation available around Quickr. As a practitioner just before taking on this role I had some ideas on how to improve the documentation. To that end, I met with various customers and business partners at Lotusphere '11 #ls11 and asked for feedback on how to improve the documentation. Today, I'm glad to announce that we have several new documents out there that you may want to check out.

First, there's a new step-by-step guide on how to deploy Quickr. The Quickr 8.5.1 server installation and basic configuration document gives you everything you need along with screenshots to start from 0 and get something up and running as quickly as possible. So if you are new to the Domino world or to Quickr, this document is certainly the one for you. Or if you are thinking of doing a Show-N'-Tell session at Lotusphere, then this is a good one to take screenshots from.

Second, I've asked the team to create a document that outlines the Best Practices for File and Page Migration From Quickr 8.2 to Quickr 8.5. This is in response to feedback that I heard not only at Lotusphere but based on the discussions going on in the Quickr Forum. Hopefully, this will help everyone who's planning a migration from Quickr Domino 8.2 to Quickr Domino 8.5.

Next, the Performance Tuning Guide for Quickr Domino 8.5 has also been made available. This guide should have everything you need to ensure that your server responds as fast as possible.

Fourth, it's now easier to see which languages are supported by Quickr Domino. To see the list of all 28 languages into which we have translated the product, check out the Selecting a different language document.

Finally, the API documentation for Quickr Domino has been updated. I've asked the development team to provide more examples and more documentation on how to use these services so we can get even more developers creating cool stuff for Quickr. Right now, phase 1 of this documentation update and there are 3 more phases which you will see rolled out in the coming days.

And there's one more thing... We are also working on creating a document that outlines the Best Practices for Customizing Quickr Domino. This document should be available very soon. It will contain a lot of examples of customizations that you can do and where you should do these customizations so as you upgrade to future releases of Quickr, you don't have to re-do a lot of the work.

Hope these new documents make your lifes easier and if there's anything else you would like to see, let me know in the comments below.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

How To Customize the CKEditor in Quickr for Domino

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Last week I was asked how to customize the rich text editor that's embedded in Quickr for Domino. For those of you who don't know, the rich text editor included in Quickr for Domino is CKEditor.

So back to the task at hand. The request that I got was how to add the HTML source view to the rich text editor. The HTML source view allows someone with HTML knowledge to go in and customize the HTML or even used advanced HTML code to add more advanced content to the page.

I remember that I'd seen this tip out somewhere so I reached out to the social web. I eventually found out that the tip was shared in the Skype Quickr chat. This is a group chat of IBMers, business partners and customers who are all interested in Quickr. I believe the chat was initiated by Stuart McIntyre who also runs the Quickr Blog.

In the chat I found my answer and I figured I would share it with you in case you ever need something similar.

To add the Flash toolbar button to insert movies into the rich text editor:

Make the following change to this file:

data\domino\html\qphtml\html\common\qrdconfig.js

in Line 111 change from:

['Image', 'Table','Link','Smiley'],

to

['Image', 'Flash', 'Table','Link','Smiley'],

To add the HTML source view into the rich text editor:

in Line 119 change from:

['HorizontalRule', 'SpecialChar', 'Blockquote','Anchor']

to

['HorizontalRule', 'SpecialChar', 'Blockquote','Anchor', 'Source']

An Alternate Method

The method above has one difficulty... it must be re-applied every time you install a fixpack. Rob Novak has shared with us an alternate approach that won't get overwritten each time you install a fixpack:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Here's how to do this without being susceptible to fixpack overwrites. Quickr Domino, being based on Dojo 1.3.2 and using widgets to render itself, now has a widget registry that is extensible. You can modify a file called widgetRegistryConfig_ext.js in order to instruct Quickr to use alternate widgets. So instead of changing the qrdconfig.js one directly, you can modify this file and tell it to use your own.

The easiest way to do this is to find the widgetRegistryConfig_ext.js file which is initially empty and located in:

data\domino\html\qphtml\widgets\resources\

Then, make a copy of the above referenced qrdconfig.js in another location relative to the html directory, such as:

data\domino\html\snapps\

Make the modifications to the COPY of the file you just made as indicated in your post - not the original.

Next, we need a controller to tell it to load our copy, so we copy over the file:

data\domino\html\qphtml\widgets\page\field\ckRichText.js

Into our new directory structure:

data\domino\html\snapps\widgets\page\field\chRichText.js

How do we override it? By using Dojo's provide-require-declare methodology (long subject) in our copy of this file. Near the top, just before the renderedit: function() we add the following:


dojo.provide("snapps.widgets.page.field.ckRichText");

dojo.require("quickr.widgets.page.field._ckRichText");

dojo.declare("snapps.widgets.page.field._ckRichText", [quickr.widgets.page.field._ckRichText],

Then the rest of the code remains standard until the end where we add the following:

dojo.declare("snapps.widgets.page.field.ckRichText",
[snapps.widgets.page.field._ckRichText],
{


}
);


So now we've told Quickr to a) use our ckEditor.js file, and b) consume our qrdconfig.js file, all we have left is to tell the widget registry it all exists. So we use the widget registry to force it to load the copy whenever it encounters the instruction to load the original. Add the following code to widgetRegistryConfig_ext.js (remember it was blank before):

{
registerWidgets: [
{
type: 'REGISTERMODULEPATH',
name: "snapps",
path: "/snapps"
},
{
type: 'GLOBALREPLACE',
source: "quickr.widgets.page.field.ckRichText",
use: "snapps.widgets.page.field.ckRichText"
}
]
}

The GLOBALREPLACE type is what does all the magic.

Interestingly, a module path can be an actual path (like the \snapps one we added under html) or it can even be a Domino database to make widgets portable and replicable over clusters

-=-=-=-=-

Enjoy!

Monday, March 21, 2011

How To Build a Status Update application for Facebook, Twitter and Connections using Portlet Factory

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Because I've shared so many Connections coding tips and how-to's, I'm often asked to help provide some guidance on how to create an application from scratch that integrates Connections with product X.

This video came to my attention last week and it's pretty cool. It starts with a demo of what the application is (a portlet that can simultaneously update your status in Connections, Twitter and Facebook, if enabled by the end user).

There are several things that really stand out in this demo. First, I really liked how the video shows that you can use the standard Java library provided by Twitter. Second, the demo shows how this same application looks like from an iPhone (or any mobile device) with no additional coding. The only thing that had to happen was to add the 'mobile theme' in portlet factory and voilá.

Enjoy!

Friday, March 18, 2011

Evangelizing Social Software in Argentina

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This has been an amazing week in Argentina. I got in on Tuesday morning after taking the red eye in. On Tuesday, I had several customer meetings that went very well. They asked about where other customers are seeing value in social software and potential ROI.

I also got a chance to meet a bunch of IBMers from Argentina from various places within IBM: Sales, Services, Hardware, Software, etc. They all came in to a BlueIQ session where I presented the value of social software from my perspective as an IBMer and the value they can get from social software. I even talked about how to grow their careers at IBM using social software.

For those of you who don't know, the BlueIQ program at IBM aims to create ambassadors in every area of IBM to help evangelize the value of social software. With their help, the program aims to get as many IBMers as possible using social software to collaborate and make their lives easier (using Connections, of course).

Here's the presentation that I used:

Wednesday I had more customer visits and they also wanted to more about referenceable customers and ROI. I shared some of the success stories that IBM customers have shared with the world. Thursday was a lot of fun because it was the IBM Software Solutions Forum. Think of it as Lotusphere, but with all the brands mixed in. I got tasked to do the collaboration keynote. The session was titled "Smarter Collaboration: Anytime, Anywhere through portals, social, and mobile". I've also shared the presentation and you can find it here (though the demo is not included):

After the event was done, it was time to pack up and head back home. There was some bad planning on my part because Thursday was St. Patrick's Day and it turns out there was going to be a huge street party that I had to miss. In all, it was a great trip. Argentina, let me know when you need me back