The Connections Blog

Lotus Connections 1.0.x end of support announced

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Tue, 9 Mar 2010 08:24:43 +0100

I should hope that no organisation is still running Lotus Connections 1.0.x in production, but just in case, here are the details on support being withdrawn:

Software withdrawal and support discontinuance: IBM Lotus Connections 1.0

Effective on the dates listed below, IBM will withdraw from marketing, part numbers from the following product releases licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:

Program VRM Withdrawal Program release name
number from
marketing
date

5724-S68 1.0.0 04/08/10 IBM Lotus Connections V1.0.0
5724-S68 1.0.2 04/08/10 IBM Lotus Connections V1.0.2

Effective on the dates listed below, IBM will withdraw support from the following product releases licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:

Program VRM Withdrawal Program release name
number from
support
date

5724-S68 1.0.2 04/30/11 IBM Lotus Connections
5724-S68 1.0.0 04/30/11 IBM Lotus Connections

The end-of-support date of April 30, 2011, applies to Lotus Connections 1.0, 1.0.1, and 1.0.2.

So you have just over a year to get upgraded to Connections 2.5 - I wouldn't wait that long!

The man who should have used Lotus Connections 7 - tags and locations

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Fri, 5 Mar 2010 14:55:11 +0100

Another video in the series, this time "It's about being smart and productive. With tags and expertise location."

Two Lotus Connections 2.5 fixes you should know about

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Mon, 1 Mar 2010 06:19:22 +0100

Number one:

LO48384: WHEN USER HAS UID = MAIL ADDRESS, POPULATE_FROM_DN SCRIPT WILL CREATE DUPLICATE ENTRIES IN PROFILES DB.

Problem summary

When the 'uid' column is mapped to a value other than 'uid' then TDI will create duplicate entries in Profiles database.

Problem conclusion

Summary
In the SyncDBFromSource assembly line, the assembly line is hard-coded to use the work['uid'] attribute rather than the db_from_ldap mapping of the value. As a result, it tries to match the user based on the LDAP[uid] attribute, irregardless of the configuration.

Prerequisities
None

Install Instruction:
1. Backup the profiles_tdi.xml file in TDI 2.5 solution first
2. Unzip LO48384.zip to TDI 2.5 solution directory, and replace the changed file as below:
/profiles_tdi.xml

Ouch! Get this one on ASAP if you're not using 'uid' as your standard Connections ID.

And number two:

LO46073 Profiles: ATOM API breaks when 'reader' role is mapped to all auth

Abstract
ATOM API breaks when "reader" role is mapped to all authenticated.

Problem Description

To reproduce:

1. Map the reader role to all authenticated.
2. Attempt to access a 'read-only' Profiles ATOM API not using preemptive authentication such as the profile service document.

Expected result: prompted with basic authentication.
Actual result: prompted with forms authentication.

Conclusion
Towards the end of 2.5, an unnecessary security constraint was added to the web.xml that applies FORMs auth rules to the Profiles ATOM API. As a result, when the application is locked down, rather than returning a BASIC auth prompt, the application redirects the API callers to a forms login page.

Whilst pre-dating FixPack1 (2.5.0.1) this fix seems to need reapplying after the fixpack is installed. This is particularly important if you are looking to run the new RIM client for Lotus Connections or any other application that relies on the ATOM feeds to access Profiles content.

HTML tags in Lotus Connections Profiles rich text fields

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:11:26 +0100

Here's one that may well catch you out.

If you are running Lotus Connections 2.5, and have installed Fixpack 1 (taking your environment to 2.5.0.1) or else just the single fix LO46171, then you may begin to see HTML tags appearing in the 'About Me' and/or "Background' rich text fields. Updating these fields does not clear the problem. In addition, in certain situations the field seems to go into a read-only mode where updates fail.

To resolve this regression bug, there is a new fix - LO47280:

Earlier patch (LO46171) was incorrectly escaping richtext content as if it was text content. Added logic to respect difference between richtext and non-richtext attribute styles.

Note that as well as installing the fix using the UpdateInstaller, the Websphere profile TEMP directory must also be cleared/moved sideways.

Interestingly the LO47280 fix is available for Connections 2.0.1.0, 2.0.1.1, 2.5.0.0 and 2.5.0.1 so almost all current environments should have this fix installed. Thanks to Kieran Reid in the Dublin support centre for his help in resolving this one.

Driving adoption of Lotus Connections

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Fri, 5 Feb 2010 06:12:43 +0100

One of the most common areas in which Collaboration Matters is asked to consult with our customers is to assist them with driving adoption of Social Collaboration tools - finding the right ways in which to encourage an organisation's users to embrace the new technology, to make it part of their regular working practices and thus to (eventually) change the organisation's culture towards being a more collaborative one.

You may ask why do you need to 'drive' the adoption of such tools when they are intended to be very intuitive to use, beneficial to the end user and to (in many cases) grow organically?

Put simply, because as individuals we're all busy and we're all different. We all have too much to do in too little time, have established methods of working, are continually being asked to take on more. That makes it hard to 'make time' to adopt new tools, even if they will prove more useful and thus make us more productive in the long run. Different? Every organisational culture and individual working practice varies and which adoption trigger works for one user (say, a 21-year old marketing intern in an advertising company) isn't necessarily going to work as well for another (a 50-something Operations Manager in a manufacturing business).

Done well, a plan to drive adoption will make your investment into Social Collaboration a worthwhile one, with high rates of use, employee satisfaction and real productivity gains. Done badly, social software could be seen as a white elephant - an experiment that never worked... We all want to avoid that scenario!

At Collaboration Matters we are steadily extending our portfolio of services to help our customers to drive adoption of all Social Collaboration tools, particularly Lotus Connections, and so I was interested to see that IBM had clearly identified the need to assist customers in this area too. There's nothing too ground-breaking in this new whitepaper 'Driving adoption of Lotus Connections', but it provides some common-sense approaches all the same:

Enterprise social software is gaining practical currency now as analysts' auspicious forecasts begin to be realized with the first wave of early adopters. This new class of software taps informal interactions and relationships among workers with complementary interests, skills, and knowledge, offering new ways to engage the collective intelligence of organizations towards achieving business ends. As such it represents an evolutionary advance in collaboration as a means to higher productivity and competitiveness.

The industry's first integrated suite of enterprise social software, IBM Lotus Connections, became available in June 2007. Featuring five Web 2.0-based components - Profiles, Blogs, Dogear (social bookmarking), Communities, and Activities — Lotus Connections provides a full palette of capabilities that help people find expertise and information and build new relationships based on business needs. Since coming onto the market, sales of this product have continued to be robust. And now there is a growing body of deployment tips and best practices new purchasers can employ to promote steady adoption and productive use of these tools in their own environments.

If you are thinking about bringing Lotus Connections into your organization in future or have already purchased it and are planning how to manage the introduction to your user population, read on for tips about getting started.

The whitepaper takes this methodology:

* Plan for success
* (1) Identify goals for the deployment
* (2) Pilot the application(s) being rolled out
* (3) Define and execute an adoption plan for the wider community
* Repeat

and then expands on each area, e.g.

(1) Identify goals for the deployment

Goals should be business goals, not just usage goals. That is, they should target specific business advantages that use of the new tools might be expected to yield because adoption of this software has to be driven by business need and culture - the technology alone cannot drive it. Any task, activity or process that can be accelerated, enriched, made more productive, cost-effective or innovative by people sharing what they know could be a suitable focus for goal-setting. Some examples might be to:

* Enable employees to locate expertise and information on topics they need faster
* Facilitate increased communication across teams, business units, geographies while reducing the burden on email, which is not designed to be a many-to-many communication platform
* Stimulate creativity to generate new ideas for products, services and go-to-market strategies
* Improve ability to respond more rapidly to customer needs and inquiries
* Reduce rework and improve quality of people's delivery materials
* Decrease the learning curve for new employees
* Make better decisions, knowing they were vetted by experts across the organization and reflect past experience

Goal-setting can of course be an iterative process, and there will be short-term and well as long-term goals. One way to approach the first round of goal setting is to think about groups of people in the organization who may be particularly well-suited to participate in a pilot, because the choice of a pilot audience can influence the selection of initial goals. You may want to identify your pilot population first and then mutually agree on the goals with them instead of doing it the other way around.

The document is well worth a read, if only to confirm your own approach to deploying Lotus Connections or other social tools.

Remember, unless your organisation is 100% staffed with tech-savvy, self-training, self-motivated, evangelistic knowledge workers (!) just 'throwing' tools such as Lotus Connections out there isn't going to work. You need to find the right methodology to make Social Collaboration a success, just as you would with any other IT investment or organisational change. If you'd like to find out more, get in touch.

Lotus Connections 2.5 to be supported on zLinux

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:29:19 +0100

This news was announced at Lotusphere during a session featuring a representative from the team responsible for putting Connections 2.5 into production within IBM. They themselves are running Connections on zLinux (i.e. on Linux on a mainframe) in order to get the scalability and performance they require. Here's the key elements of the announcement:

Support for Linux on IBM System z is being added to IBM Lotus Connections 2.5

Support for Linux on IBM System z is being added to IBM Lotus Connections 2.5. You can choose from a broad range of deployment options including Linux on IBM System z.

To order, contact your IBM representative, an IBM Business Partner, or the Americas Call Centers at 800-IBM-CALL.

Planned availability date
February 4, 2010: Electronic software delivery
March 5, 2010: Media and documentation

Note that this means that Connections will run on Linux on System z, not natively on the mainframe - there is a difference. Good news all the same!

Live Blog - KEY106 Social Collaboration Delivers Real Business Value

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:33:50 -0400

KEY106 Social Collaboration Delivers Real Business Value

My Lotus Connections hopes for Lotusphere 2010

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:33:11 +0100

Well here we are again, approaching another exciting Lotusphere event. Thoughts move to what aspects of Lotus Connections might be announced or clarified at this year's OGS, or at other sessions during the week.

At the end of Lotusphere 2009, we'd heard about plans for Connections 2.5 (dynamic communities, files/wikis, status updates and much more), RIM's plans for a new client for the Blackberry, and generally a lot of discussion of how well Connections was doing in the marketplace. Nearly a year later, we have Connections 2.5 (released in late August, phenomenally well received by customers and press alike, doing well with the analysts and having sold millions of new licences in late 2009) and RIM have just announced their Connections client for Blackberry 2.3.

All in all, 2009 was an awesome year for Lotus Connections - IBM promised a lot and delivered even more. Connections is as good a product as any in the IBM Software Group portfolio right now. We at Collaboration Matters are doing a massive volume of work for customers deploying, upgrading and enhancing Lotus Connections 2.5 installations, and I'd like to say well deserved 'Thank You' to all those in the Connections team at IBM for providing such a fine release.

So what do I hope to hear at Lotusphere 2010?

Details of Connections Next (one assumes 3.0). A number of journalists have already been briefed about an announcement of the next version at Lotusphere 2010, so that seems a dead cert. I would imagine that 3.0 will be less revolutionary than 2.5 was, with a more natural evolution of the features already in 2.5. In particular, I'd like to see:
- More consistency across the features, particular around administrative control and editorial management of content, notifications, UI layouts, ability to update status from all features and so on.
- An administration panel that covers all features, including statistics, trends, user counts, admin rights and more.
- An end user "account" or "preferences" panel that allows an end user to reset their password, change subscriptions, allow/disallow board comments, remove colleagues etc.
- The ability to have multiple networks of colleagues ("IT", "Strategy", "Football", "Social" etc) so that more control can be gained over status updates and notifications
- More granular control over access to content, particularly profile details.
- An unauthenticated homepage. The Home Page feature in Connections 2.5 is fabulous - I and all my customers love it! In some ways it is the ideal intranet site, except... unauthenticated users get presented with a sign in page and no content. There needs to be a Home Page that pulls together all the public content from the Connections environment, before the user logs in.
- Multiple blogs, activities etc. in a single Community
- Continued improvements to installation and upgrade procedures. This has been massively improved but there is still some way to go.
- More integration with the Notes client - all 8 services should be accessible from within the Notes client, particularly the update of status, upload of files etc.
Federation of multiple Connections environments - this is the *BIG* one for me. More and more organisations want to have multiple Connections deployments, whether for geographical reasons (users in Australia and the UK for example) or for multiple user types (students vs. staff, internal vs. extranets) or for special events/communities (conferences like Lotusphere!), and there needs to be a way to get Profile data in particular (though ideally more content from other features too) between the environments. If this is going to happen in Connections Next, I will be a very very happy man!
More info on how organisations are using Connections and justifying their investment in the technology. We need more use cases, references and advice on how to convince organisations to move forward with social technologies

and lastly?

How much you all enjoyed attending the two sessions I'll be co-presenting at Lotusphere 2010:

If you do attend either session, please come up and introduce yourself. I'd love to meet you!

Why social software?

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:01:52 +0100

Great new Lotus video on YouTube about social software in general and IBM in particular, such as IBM Lotus Sametime IBM Lotus Quickr and IBM Lotus Connections.

The Social Software Matrix

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:06:06 +0100

Now here's an interesting new site - SocialSoftwareMatrix.org:

This website is a resource to help you find the social software tool that fits best your company’s needs.

We believe that merely comparing features is the wrong approach towards selecting enterprise social software and this is why we compare the major products by evaluating them in a set of relevant business use cases, technological product dimensions and vendor qualities. Each rating is explained with a short evaluation text and screenshots give an impressions about how it is to actually use the tools. We will continuously extend the list of tools covered with a focus on solutions that are capable to act as a companywide internal or external social collaboration platform for medium and large sized enterprises. In addition we will publish updates about social software tools as well as Enterprise 2.0 related articles translated from our German blog besser20.de.

I really like the work they've done on this site so far, in particular the matrices themselves:

A really great start, and it helps of course that they are complimentary about Lotus Connections!

Tech Exchange Webcast: Upgrade and Migration from Lotus Connections 2.0 to 2.5

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Wed, 6 Jan 2010 07:26:17 +0100

If you're still running Lotus Connections 2.0, why? (all my customers upgraded to 2.5 last year...)

Seriously though, if you are still running Connections 2.0, this might be a very useful resource:

Webcast: Upgrade and Migration from Lotus Connections V2.0 to V2.5

Abstract
IBM Development and Support are hosting a Tech Exchange Webcast and call on the topic of "Upgrade and Migration From Lotus Connections V2.0 to V2.5".

Date: January 13th, 2010
Time: 9:00 am - 10:30 am eastern US time (2:00 pm GMT)
Webcast access: https://www.lotuslive.com/en/join?schedid=4419191

Audio by phone:
Toll free US: 866-803-2143
Toll call US: 210-795-1098
International Numbers: See list below
Confirmation Code: CONNECTIONS

For international dial-in numbers and more details, check out the invite page.

Lotus Connections 2.5 certification now available

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Sat, 2 Jan 2010 06:37:39 +0100

Lotus certification is pleased to announce the availability of the Connections exam: "Administering IBM Lotus Connections 2.5".

This exam permits certification in Lotus Connections 2.5 System Administration, earning the professional certification title: "IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM Lotus Connections 2.5".

Path for IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM Lotus Connections 2.5:

Pass Exam 987: Administering IBM Lotus Connections 2.5

To learn more about the resources currently available to help you prepare for this exam please follow the link above.

This test covers the following areas:

* Install and Configure
* Manage and Maintain
* Security
* Customization and Integration

View a complete listing of exam 987 competencies

As a member of the team that created this exam, I am delighted to see it into general availability. In upgrading the test from the 2.0.x version, we tried very hard to focus on real-world scenarios that the team (comprised of IBM consultants, IBM support staff and business partners) had experienced, on administration topics (vs information recall) and on aspects of the supporting products (WAS, RDBMS, TDI and LDAP) that solely related to Connections 2.5 admin.

I personally think its a very fair and comprehensive test of your knowledge, so if you want to prove you know Connections 2.5, now's your chance!

The man who should have used Lotus Connections - Stop the Music!

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 06:48:17 +0100

A seasonal reminder of the benefits of micro-blogging and Lotus Connections 2.5 status updates:

Twelve Things Your Mother Never Told You About Installing IBM Lotus Connections!

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:06:19 +0100

Ever considered rolling out (or piloting) Lotus Connections 2.5 in your organisation, but were scared off by the complexity, the system requirements or just the non-Domino-based technology that's involved?

Rob Wunderlich and Stuart McIntyre's Lotusphere 2010 session could be just what you needed:

Session track	Track Four: Best Practices
Session id	BP112
Session date	01/18/2010 (Monday)
Session time	1:00pm - 2:00pm
Session location	DL S. Hemisphere III
Session name	Twelve Things Your Mother Never Told You About Installing IBM Lotus Connections
Session abstract	It’s a classic case of the “bark is worse than the bite.” Installing Lotus Connections – admittedly – is a complex process, with many pre-requisites to be met, environment-specific decisions to be taken and almost endless opportunities for customization and integration. It might appear daunting at first; but don't fret just yet. This session will make it a whole lot easier! We'll use our in-depth real-world experience of installing Lotus Connections at many organizations in the US and Europe to explore a dozen lesser-known details of the installation process that are key to successful deployment. We’ll show tips and tricks, “cheat sheets,” install checklists and share the stuff that isn’t in the manual. Priceless resources! Stuff even Mom never told you!
Speakers	Rob Wunderlich Stuart McIntyre

As you can see, the date/time and room have now been allocated (Monday 1pm, Dolphin S. Hemisphere III), so make sure it's on your schedule if you're attending Lotusphere 2010!

Lotus Connections 2.5 FixPack 1 now available

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:44:58 +0100

FixPack 1 for Lotus Connections 2.5 has been released, rolling up the 50 or so fixes that have been made available so far for the current release of Lotus Connections.

The is a detailed technote covering the fix list and installation instructions

Fix List and installation instructions for Lotus Connections 2.5.0 Fix Pack 1 (2.5.0.1)

Question
What issues are addressed by Lotus Connections 2.5.0 Fix Pack 1 (2.5.0.1) ? How do you apply this fix pack to upgrade to a Lotus Connections 2.5.0 Fix Pack 1 level?

Answer
This document contains instructions on how to apply this fix pack to upgrade to a Lotus Connections 2.5.0 Fix Pack 1 level. It includes important notes, fixed defects, prerequisites, and installation instructions.

Table of Contents:

* Important Notes
* Defects fixed
* Prerequisite information
* Installation instructions for a single-node (stand-alone deployment)
* Installation instructions for a network environment (cluster deployment)

Key details are that:

all customisations must be backed up prior to applying the patch, and restored afterwards
a specific Update Installer version must be used: The WebSphere Update Installer for Lotus Connections Version 2.5.0.1 is required. (ID: download.updii.2501.multi.00001, File name: LotusConnectionsUpdateInstaller.zip)
in a clustered environment, downtime is still required to apply the patch for the time being

I'll be applying this to a customer system in the next couple of days so will let you know how it goes...

New Lotus Connections-related XPages controls on OpenNTF

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:02:00 +0100

Niklas Heidloff has blogged about some interesting new additions to the OpenNTF site:

Sample for Domino HTTP Proxy and Integration of Lotus Connections in XPages

We've published a new reusable XPage control. With this control you can see bookmarks of a specific user from Lotus Connections.

This sample is interesting technically since it uses the Domino HTTP proxy server to perform Atom requests to the Connections server directly from the client side Dojo JavaScript.

Here is the entry in the Apache catalog, here the project, here the documentation and here the zip file with the release.

and:

New XPage Controls: Lotus Connections Business Card

Similarly to the Sametime name XPage control we've published two more controls to OpenNTF - inline Connections business card and pop up business card.

Here is the entry in the Apache catalog, here the project and here the documentation. You can download everything as one zip here.

It's good to see some of IBM's own internal development projects relating to Lotus Connections making it out to the community via OpenNTF - this kind of tool can only assist adoption of these tools within customer environments, as well as more tightly integrating multiple Lotus products (in this case Connections and Domino/Notes) thus meaning that they are more difficult to remove by competitive vendor solutions. A good thing all-round!

I have heard suggestions that there are more Connections plug-ins in the pipeline for OpenNTF - I sincerely hope this is the case!

The man who should have used Lotus Connections - Episode 5: Activities

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Tue, 8 Dec 2009 14:09:01 +0100

More great work from Jean-Francois...

IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 book now available online

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 11:54:14 +0100

Written by a team of IBM authors, including Suzanne Minassian Livingston, this is the new Connections 2.5-specific IBM Press book:

This is the Rough Cut version of the printed book.

The Practical, Complete Guide to Leveraging the Power of Social Networks with Lotus Connections 2.5

The first book to cover the newest version of the breakthrough product from IBM Lotus: a product with a built-in audience of 150,000,000 Lotus Notes users worldwide. This book includes practical techniques for building dynamic networks of coworkers, partners, and customers that promote innovation and business agility and authoritative guidance for business and technical planning, deployment, integration, and much more. Social networking is the newest frontier in business collaboration, and IBM's Lotus Connections 2.5 gives businesses the tools they need to make the most of it–easily, securely, and cost-effectively.

In this book, a team of IBM Lotus Connections experts thoroughly introduce the newest product and cover every facet of planning, deploying, and using it successfully. The authors cover business and technical issues and present IBM's proven, best-practices methodology for successful implementation. The authors begin by helping managers and technical professionals identify opportunities to use social networking for competitive advantage–and by explaining how Lotus Connections 2.5 places full-fledged social networking tools at their fingertips. IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 carefully describes each component of the product–including profiles, activities, blogs, communities, easy social bookmarking, personal home pages, and more. The book contains practical coverage of administering Lotus Connections 2.5 and detailed guidance of integrating and extending Lotus Connections 2.5.

Prices are as follows:

Online, PDF and Print Bundle USD $53.98

Online and PDF Access USD $27.99
Print Book Pre-Order USD $39.99 USD $27.99

Link: Safari Books Online - IBM Lotus Connections 2.5: Planning and Implementing Social Software for Your Enterprise

Important new Lotus Connections 2.5 fix for TDI scripts

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Fri, 4 Dec 2009 07:24:58 +0100

As you will be aware, Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) plays a massive role in any Lotus Connections system. In combination with a number of custom TDI assembly lines (or scripts) shipped with Lotus Connections, it is responsible for importing users into the Connections Profiles system, populating their data from LDAP or other systems, synchronising changes that occur and even deleting users and their data when they are no longer needed.

It is therefore very important to keep up to date with TDI patches...

This one is new this week:

LO46673 Profiles: Recommended ifix for TDI scripts for LC2.5

Recommended ifix for TDI scripts for LC2.5.

Problem Description:
This ifix fixed the following issues:

1. Unable to use function to map extension attribute from LDAP.

2. sync_all_dns is hard coded to match on the $dn.

3. sync_all_dns.bat is failing when an existing user has his or her first or last name changed in LDAP (Domino 8.5).

4. Sync_all_dns does not update a Profile field if the corresponding LDAP field is empty.

5. A new property named perform_deletion_for_sync is added in the profiles_tdi.properties file to control the delete action when perform sync task.

All these individual fixes are important of course, but for me, no.5 is the answer to many a prayer whilst on customer sites deploying and upgrading Lotus Connections systems. Here's why - when added to the existing 'perform_deletion_for_sync' option, the new 'perform_deletion_for_sync' parameter has these possible values:>sync_updates_show_summary_only=false
perform_deletion_for_sync=true
will perform the deletion.

sync_updates_show_summary_only=false
perform_deletion_for_sync=false
will not perform the deletion.

sync_updates_show_summary_only=true
perform_deletion_for_sync=true
will not perform deletion.

sync_updates_show_summary_only=true
perform_deletion_for_sync=false
will not perform deletion.i.e. the Connections administrator now has much more control over what happens when a sync_all_dns update is run and a user has been removed from LDAP.

You might be able to tell that I'm really really pleased about this addition... I advocate leaving users in Profiles after they have left the organisation in order to retain some data about them (usually via a 'leaver' profile type) and so this helps a great deal.

[ Thanks to Mitch Cohen for pointing this one out. ]

Lotus Connections 2.5 floods out of the TAP to go live in IBM

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Fri, 4 Dec 2009 06:47:45 +0100

When talking to customers about the deployment of Lotus Connections, and in particular the rollout via Pilot groups of users, expansion by word of mouth, and evangelism by mavens/connectors, I find myself regularly referring to IBM's own use of its 'Technology Adoption Program' (or TAP for short) to launch research projects to small groups of self-selecting and nominated users.

Of course, the TAP has played a key role in the development of Lotus Connections, right from the days of the Blog Central and W3 Blue Pages, through Ventura (the development codename for Connections) through to beta versions of Lotus Connections 1.0, 2.0 and 2.5. The use of Connections in IBM has been focused on the systems deployed within the TAP for the past 3-5 years.

My good friend and IBM Social Software Evangelist Luis Suarez blogs of the next phase of Lotus Connections deployment in IBM:

Well, today is that historical moment. I am very pleased (And incredibly excited!) to share with you folks out there that overnight Lotus Connections on TAP was successfully migrated into IBM’s full production environment within the IBM Intranet. And everything has gone very smooth. The performance has been amazing all along and, like I said, this is just a new beginning for all of us IBMers.

This move into that full production environment means that from here onwards IBM’s 500k employee population will be using Lotus Connections as their strategic knowledge sharing and collaboration tool. As far as I know, that is the largest deployment of enterprise social software behind a corporate firewall. And along with the recent announcement that the instance of Lotus Connections on http://ibm.com/communities has moved to version 2.5 in a production environment as well we are witnessing very exciting times on what’s still to come, indeed!

So next time someone asks me how real social computing within the enterprise is, I guess I won’t have to walk very far. In my own house, after a couple of years of testing the ground, playing extensively with the various options, exploring a new world of opportunities in knowledge sharing and collaboration, there is now this social software tool called Lotus Connections that is being used by 500,000 people (Potentially), helping them take their day to day productivity into new heights.

This is exciting news for everyone that has an interest in the use of Lotus Connections within IBM, or its development in general. Congratulations to the team involved.