Aug 212008
 

This year we are producing a few pre-conference session movies for Collaboration University to get you up to speed for the 3 days packed with intense training. From Rob Novak’s blog:

Our approach the past two years has been to quickly get the basics out of the way on the first day then progress rapidly into meatier stuff by afternoon. Even so, we’d get a few complaints from those who have more experience, because they already knew all the morning content. That worked “OK”, but this year with the delivery of these early sessions outside the confines of the three onsite days, we’ve found a great solution. Those who need and want the basics get them – and can attend all of these sessions on their own time – and those who don’t are not missing anything because we’re starting the conference at a higher level.

As an example, Carl Tyler put together this 5-minute segment of his pre-conference video on Installing and Configuring Eclipse for Sametime Plug-in Development. It is the prerequisite session for his live session on creating Sametime plug-ins (makes sense), and in the full session you can follow along and prepare your own machine to be ready to use those live materials. Enjoy!

Jul 052007
 

It is finally here, the Grand Finale! The eleventh and last Lotus Quickr template demo is here: QSite. Rob Novak puts it like this:

Now this is where I usually ramble on about the features and functions, their applicability to a business situation, and how wonderful your life is going to be as soon as we have the download database all ready. But to do so here would just detract from the big kahuna surprise we have in store for you with QSite. It’s been kept such a secret that my team and Satwik were the only ones who “really” knew what was coming…

Head straight to the demo of QSite and I’ll see you at Collaboration University!

UPDATE! I have added links to all the demos on the right side, so if you’ve missed any go check them out.

Jul 042007
 

The next to last Lotus Quickr Template demo is: QActivities. In QActivities, we have strived for a combination of an approachable, professional user interface and a base level of integration with Lotus Connections. Specifically, QActivities integrates with the Activities server, allowing the user to add any page in the Lotus Quickr place to an activity on the Activities server. This becomes very powerful when combined with the Lotus Notes 8 client and the embedded Activities sidebar. You can add a Quickr page to an activitiy, see it immediately in your Notes client, and launch the Quickr page form the context of the activity. Simple but very cool and effective and dare-I-say-it-again contextual collaboration.

In addition to a refreshed UI accomplished almost entirely with CSS – hence much faster – we’ve added some great features to Lotus Quickr like a list of the last 10 updated documents, a member list that searches for documents created by the member when clicked, and a nice little tab with place statistics!

You can see the demo of QActivities here.

Jul 032007
 

The eighth Lotus Quickr Template demo has been posted. This time it’s QIssues.

Similar in feel to QSurvey, the form creation process is very simple. A floating window lets you build questions for your issue form and submit them to build the form. There are a couple new types of questions not found in QSurvey, a member list and date control. Once the questions are built, you can move them around, define a layout (1, 2, 3 columns or a wizard) and – this is key – decide right at the form what kind of workflow to put submissions through. And of course, using the workflow engine we’ve bundled with several templates, you can define that workflow yourself.

You can see a demo of QIssues here.

Jul 032007
 

From Rob Novak’s blog:

For the seventh Lotus Quickr Template demo, you’ll see QMeeting, an organizational and planning aid for complex meetings. Not the 2-hour staff meeting or the 90-minute group conference call, those are better handled with your Notes Mail and Quickr’s native group calendar, respectively. The meetings that benefit most from QMeeting are those that make you tear your hair out – multiple agenda items, planned breaks, different people responsible for each agenda item, multiple electronic resources (attachments), and a timeline to keep. Examples of such meetings? Shareholder’s meetings. Conference tracks. Corporate retreats. Financial reviews. The big ones!

QMeeting lets you distribute responsibility for agenda items to individuals, or lets you manage agenda items as discrete elements as a proxy for an outsider, or even create them on the fly. Agenda items are the building blocks of complex meetings, and each can have its own “Owner”, resources, rich text, and set of appropriate attachments. So if John is in charge of Finance, let John manage the agenda item for the financial report!

The meeting manager – a person who puts together the meeting agenda – can then easily assemble an electronic meeting agenda that automatically computes time slots, adds breaks and lunches, and even includes online meetings. If someone hasn’t completed their agenda item, it can be added easily. Once the meeting agenda is built, it has direct links to each agenda item, and (this is cool) direct links to each attachment. This document becomes the easy access point for all meeting participants. In practical use, it can be projected and run by a person when the meeting is live in person, and used online when the meeting is managed via teleconference or Sametime. It becomes a nice adjunct to online meetings by storing all meeting “artifacts” in one place.

Go have a look at the QMeeting demo.

Jul 032007
 

Rob Novak has posted the sixth Lotus Quickr Template demo: QAnnounce. From Rob’s blog:

QAnnounce lets you put structure around the creation, edit, approval and archive process for any kind of “official” communication. The form is fairly simple, with the kind of metadata fields you would expect – a distribution date, a field to track the disposition of the document, and (something new) a field to track comments as each edit is made, and display them in an audit trail along with the name of the person making the edit, the disposition at the time, and the date and time the edit was made. Of course, we’ve included some flexible views to let you categorize the communications by disposition or category.

Go have a look at the QAnnounce demo here.

All the demos are now done. Check back here today for the postings!

Jun 202007
 

We have uploaded our fifth demo of our Lotus Quickr Templates: QIdeas.

Rob Novak:

The fifth Lotus Quickr template demo introduces QIdeas, an innovation and idea management template that probably has more uses than I’ve imagined for it. Visualize if you will the free-flowing nature of a wiki where revisions and enhancements to a concept and content are able to be made as simply as clicking “New Version”. Then to this collaborative model add the blog-like ability to let others comment on each version of the evolving document (idea in our case), and — this is key — making sure the comments are maintained in the context of the version with which they are associated. Not a free-flowing discussion about all versions, but very specific comments about the current version. An author might choose to incorporate those comments or not, but there is a record of when and by whom they were submitted.

Now that we’ve combined the concepts of a blog and wiki to collaborate, we have a platform on which to evolve business ideas and innovations to the point where they are worthy of submitting to some authority or group for “approval” or “review”. This is where the business construct of a workflow comes in, but it has to be flexible, manageable by the business user, and be able to be initiated at any time and not based on pre-set rules. The custom workflow engine we’ve built for these templates does just that, as you’ll see in this and four other template demos.

Enjoy this 17 minute demo of QIdeas

Jun 192007
 

The fourth Lotus Quickr template demo is posted. This time it is QProject, which contains enhancements to the tasks and notifications in Lotus Quickr, introduces a concept of overall and cross-project status, and implements an enhanced AJAX Gantt chart for viewing tasks and their relationships to other tasks. Relationships? Yes, with QProject you can declare task predecessors and dependencies! One to one, one to many, however you like. The major features include the ability to set these dependencies, visualize them through the Gantt chart, receive consolidated overdue task notifications, and (my favorite) automatically push out dates when a predecessor is completed late. Not that this ever happens, but…

The 16.5-minute demo can be seen here: QProject demo

Enjoy

Jun 192007
 

Lotus Quickr will ship June 29, 2007. Only 10 days from today. Here’s the release. The 4th and 5th bullet are what we at SNAPPS been working with for the last months.

# # #

IBM Lotus Quickr 8 Expedites Team Collaboration

Open, intuitive standards-based Web 2.0 tool eases users into a more collaborative work style
with comprehensive Lotus and Microsoft integration


Armonk, NY…June 19, 2007…IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announces the June 29th
availability of IBM Lotus® Quickr 8 software, an open standards-based team collaboration tool that helps teams inside and outside the company firewall easily and effectively work together across geographies, working styles and operating systems.

Lotus Quickr provides a rich set of team collaboration capabilities, including blogs, wikis and team space templates supporting a variety of business processes to get a collaboration project up and running quickly. Already an enterprise-ready team collaboration offering supporting both Microsoft and Lotus software environments, Lotus Quickr interoperability will be further expanded with a connector to Microsoft Outlook software currently expected to be released in a beta program for Lotus customers this summer.

Easy to use and install with an intuitive Web 2.0 interface, Lotus Quickr software provides an easy way to share a wide range of business documents and access libraries through plug-ins called “connectors”. These connectors let end users work in their familiar desktop applications without impacting their work patterns – and access Lotus Quickr content directly from IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Windows Explorer and Microsoft Office software.

Through a beta testing program conducted since early 2007, IBM has taken feedback from dozens of customers and partners to improve Lotus Quickr 8 to meet the needs of the connected workplace. The result is a clean and user-friendly interface designed to ease users into a more collaborative work style and increase visibility of materials and contributors.

“IBM has developed an extremely competitive content and collaboration product with the ability to be extended and customized to meet specific business and industry needs,” said Daniel Lieber, president of Innovative Ideas Unlimited, Inc. “The Lotus Quickr interface is clean, consistent, and straight-forward. We found it to be very efficient for working with collaborative content and accomplishing tasks in a personal, workgroup, departmental, or enterprise environment.”

“Lotus Quickr integrates key Web 2.0 capabilities, such as blogs & wikis that expand the type of collaboration possible, and it provides a breadth of integration across everyday applications from Microsoft & Lotus delivering ease of access to content,” said Ken Bisconti, Lotus vice president of messaging and collaboration software. “This flexible tool bridges gaps in working styles and technical savvy — appealing both to workers embracing Web 2.0 internet content tools such as blogs and wikis along with those who are more comfortable accessing content from the familiar Microsoft Windows Explorer interface.”

Key benefits of Lotus Quickr include:

  • Web 2.0 features that enhance usability: IBM has incorporated Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) into Lotus Quickr to deliver an intuitive, integrated and high performing graphical Web-based user interface. This interface includes dynamic action menus that can be accessed through a right click, and easy drag and drop features to seamlessly move documents into team spaces. Lotus Quickr provides the ability to publish and consume Atom-based news feeds, publish team blogs, use the built-in wiki technology for creating content, and to assign tags and permalinks to content. It is easily customizable and extensible without requiring programming skills.
  • Support for open standards, providing customer choice of vendor: Customers are free to mix and match products as they desire. Lotus Quickr integrates with Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007, Microsoft Windows Explorer on Windows XP and Windows Vista, IBM Lotus Notes 7 and 8 (with planned support for Lotus Notes 6.5) and Lotus Sametime 7.5. Lotus Quickr supports Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari browsers, providing Web access from Windows, Linux, and Macintosh desktops. In addition, IBM currently plans to release a beta version of a Lotus Quickr connector for Microsoft Outlook this summer. IBM also currently plans to release migration and coexistence tools that will allow users to access content in existing Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange public folders via Lotus Quickr’s web 2.0-style collaborative user interface, or to migrate that content out of Microsoft repositories into Lotus Quickr, where it can be easily accessed and widely shared.
  • Easy-to-use features that can be rolled out across enterprise: Many past efforts to create project spaces have been either difficult to use or were not enterprise-ready. Lotus Quickr makes it easy for any team member to get up and running with easy instructions on how to get started, a clean and simple user interface, tutorial style wizards that guide the user. Lotus Quickr also features helpful pop-ups that remind the user when they can opt to place a document inside a shared place rather than send it as an attachment to others.
  • User-driven enhancements that reduce information overload and errors that come with sharing documents among team members through email: When documents are sent from a single user to a group for feedback, the process of tracking edits and changes over email can be inefficient and prone to error. Lotus Quickr allows check in and check out of documents to prevent simultaneous editing and versioning to track changes. In addition, wiki technolology provides an in-place Web editing option with history so a user can revert back to an earlier version of a page. The wiki and library views support posting comments about documents that are viewable in a pop-up screen by rolling the mouse over a document.
  • Business application templates that provide immediate out-of-the-box value and support of common business processes: Lotus Quickr includes business templates, such as a meeting place, project management, image repository, dynamic surveys and more. All templates are customizable, allowing users to easily change the look and feel and add pre-built components, such as a team blog, a project calendar, or an announcement page.
  • Future enhancements to Lotus Quickr include integration with IBM’s enterprise content management (ECM) systems. Customers will be able to use Lotus Quickr to collaborate on content and seamlessly leverage the world-class capabilities of IBM FileNet P8 and IBM DB2 Content Manager software to manage that content.

Lotus Quickr Pricing and availability: Prices will be announced at the time of availability on June 29. For more information, visit: ibm.com/lotus/quickrIBM, the IBM logo, DB2, Lotus, Notes, Quickr and Sametime are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
FileNet is a registered trademark of FileNet Corporation, in the United States, other countries, or both.

Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.

Other company product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

The information above is based on IBM’s current product plans and strategy, which are subject to change by IBM without notice.

Jun 152007
 

Today I added a really cool plug-in for my blog. Instant podcast for all my post entries. It is all done by a free service from Odiogo. It adds this image, , at the bottom of each of my posts. When clicked it will read the contents of the post to you. Super cool. It does take a little time for Odiogo’s servers to parse the text and to create the mp3, but if you click on any of the posts below this one it should work. UPDATE: This post can now be heard as well. You can also go to a podcast page with all the latest posts by clicking here .

Enjoy