The Connections Blog

Lotus Connections V2.5 Deployment Best Practices

Stuart McIntyre — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:12:35 +0100

Just in case you're not on the mailing list for this kind of Lotus Connections information from IBM:

You are invited to an IBM Technical Exchange Webcast call about Lotus Connections deployment best practices. There is no charge for participating. The topic and dial information for this call is:

Title: Lotus Connections V2.5 Deployment Best Practices

Date: June 23rd, 2010
Time: 10 am - 11 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: Click here: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21433894
Confirmation Code: CONNECTIONS
Please dial in 5-10 minutes early to allow time for registration of all participants before the presentation starts.

Open Mic calls are Question & Answer sessions with a panel of subject matter experts covering your questions without going thru a slide presentation.
Webcasts are slide presentations by a single presenter followed by Questions & Answers related to the material covered, as time permits.

You can submit your question in advance via our forum, "developerWorks Lotus Connections forum". Questions should be of general interest. Troubleshooting of specific problems should still be handled by Technical Support, not by Webcast calls. We will collect questions, which have been posted to the forum topic announcing the call, and address as many of them as possible on the call. We will also take questions not submitted in advance.

You will need to provide your name and company affiliation when dialing in. You will need a touch tone phone to be able to ask questions. The presentation will be recorded and (in potentially edited form) made available via the web page containing dial-in numbers above.

Issues with Oracle with Connections 2.5 RESOLUTION

Sharon Bellamy — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:43:26 +0100

IBM have now released new trigger code to resolve this issue.

The steps are simple

Stop the application
Backup the DB
Run through the code to remove the Trigger
Recreate the Trigger
Start the primary server and test
Assuming all is well start the other App Servers in the clusters

As yet IBM are unsure as to how they are going to release the fix as it falls out of the typical iFix scope.
If you are seeing this specific issue please contact the Lotus Connections Support team who will furnish you with the appropriate code to resolve the issue.
As soon as I have confirmation on how this will be distributed I will add what will hopefully be the final update to this on-going saga.

Big thanks to Kieran Reid at IBM and Andrew Frayling and his team at Cardiff Uni for assistance and support in resolving this issue. Great work all round.

New IBM Whitepaper - Measuring the value of social software

Stuart McIntyre — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:44:32 +0100

The "Measuring the Value of Social Software" white paper focuses on helping organizations answer the question:

How can we determine if our social software initiatives are successful and are providing the anticipated return on technology investment?

This white paper looks at how to measure the effectiveness and value of a social software initiative, what tools are available to capture key metrics, and what to take into consideration when establishing a measurement approach.

Contents

Why measure?
Defining objectives
Types of measurement
Measurement levels
Measurement tools
Sample reports
Creating a measurement approach

Authored by ISSL (IBM Software Services for Lotus), this new whitepaper (PDF) is a good first step to gaining some clear measurements on the value generated by social software deployments within an enterprise. Well worth a read.

Just one of the reasons why you should install FixPack2

Stuart McIntyre — Mon, 7 Jun 2010 15:11:07 +0100

Technical Description
Multiple vulnerabilities have been identified in IBM Lotus Connections, which could be exploited by attackers to bypass security restrictions or gain knowledge of sensitive information. These issues are caused by input validation and design errors in the Dojo, Community, Homepage, Bookmarks and Blogs components, and other unspecified modules when processing user-supplied data or when connecting to certain web sites, which could allow information disclosure, or cross site scripting and phishing attacks.

Affected Products
IBM Lotus Connections versions prior to 2.5.0 Fix Pack 2 (2.5.0.2)

Solution
Upgrade to IBM Lotus Connections version 2.5.0 Fix Pack 2 (2.5.0.2)

Definitely worth getting that FixPack2 on your system ASAP, particularly if your Connections environment is internet-facing.

Issues with Oracle on Solaris with Connections 2.5 UPDATE

Sharon Bellamy — Tue, 1 Jun 2010 09:17:17 +0100

At last it appears there may be a *real* fix for this .. IBM have changed the trigger code which should hopefully fix the mutating trigger issue we see when deleting files ..

I will be testing this today and if it works rolling it out to my live environment over the next week.

I will attempt to get some confirmation if this code will be fixed in all new fix packs and APARS - watch this space and hopefully some great news

Lotus Connections 2.5.0.2 (Fixpack2) now available

Stuart McIntyre — Fri, 28 May 2010 22:29:37 +0100

The patching process for Lotus Connections 2.5 has been getting ever more complex and time-consuming just recently, what with Fixpack 1 to apply, then over 100 (yes, that's one *hundred*) individual fixes to install once Fixpack 1 was done. On some slower systems, applying FP1 then the individual fixes has taken well over 12 hours to complete. Not great for system availability in non-clustered environments.

For that reason alone, I am delighted to see Fixpack 2 is now soon to be available. This technote details the fixes included and the installation instructions.

Key details are that:

there is a new Lotus Connections Update Installer WebSphere Update Installer for Lotus Connections Version 2.5.0.2
there is fix to TDI that must be applied manually
all customisations must be backed up and then reapplied.

Update: It looks as though the actual Fixpack itself is not yet available to download from FixCentral, but should be there soon and can be downloaded from this link.

The man who should have used Lotus Connections 8 - Micro-blogging

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Thu, 20 May 2010 07:31:39 +0100

Another great effort from Jean-Fran�ois Ch�nier - The man who should have used Lotus Connections 8 - Micro-blogging. "It's about being smart and productive. With microblogging."...

IBM launches new Lotus Connections Measurement and Reporting service

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:27:35 +0100

Many organisations have now moved past the pilot and deployment phases of their Lotus Connections projects and are looking at means to justify their expenditure and to measure ROI.

There are various means to do this - using user surveys, measuring time savings and productivity improvements on a user-by-user basis are current favourites - but there is definitely room for new ideas, solutions and services in this area.

IBM has just launched a new service to accompany its' Atlas social graph service, the Reporting Tool for Lotus Connections and the Measurement Framework for Social Software:

Are you getting the highest ROI from your Lotus Connections investment? Are you reducing costs, improving service, communicating better or collaborating more efficiently?

With this solution you will be able to measure the value of your investment. You will receive the IBM Software Services (ISSL) Reporting Tool for Lotus Connection and Measurement Consulting Services to help you develop a framework to measure the value of your Lotus Connections investment.

Reporting Tool for Lotus Connections
The Reporting Tool for Lotus Connections enhances and extends Lotus Connection's built-in reporting tools:
Snapshot and trend reports showing adoption, usage and system metrics across all the Lotus Connection features.
Simple web-based visualization with bar charts, line charts and tables. Easily view adoption rates for key Lotus Connections features based on days, months and years.
Export metrics to Brio, Excel, Crystal Reports and others.

The Measurement Framework for Social Software
In addition to Reporting Tool, we provide consulting services to help you define your measurement approach.
The measurement approach includes multiple categories of measurements including vitality, capability and business value.
We provide you with multiple techniques for uncovering the links between metrics and your business drivers.
You will be able to quantify the adoption rate of Lotus Connections, analyze and remediate adoption gaps and understand the contribution of social networking content.

Highlights
Trend & Snapshot Reporting: 30+ Bar, Line, Tabular reports across all Connections features.
Easy Export: Export data to 3rd party reporting solutions.
Installation Services: We install the Reporting Tool.
Measurement Consulting: We assist you in developing your overall measurement framework using Reporting Tool metrics and other measurement sources.

As an IBM/Lotus Business Partner, Collaboration Matters resells and integrates ISSL offerings into our own solutions and service offerings when appropriate, and therefore will be interested in finding out more about these new tools and services. Whilst it would definitely be preferable for this kind of functionality to be included in the product itself, there is a void to be filled, so look out for more information as we have it.

Experience Lotus Connections

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:59:38 +0100

The Lotus IDC team are doing great work at the moment, including the release of a number of new product demos and tutorials on YouTube entitled "Experience Lotus".

I recently posted about the video "Setting up a project team space using Lotus Quickr " over on The Quickr Blog, and now there's two new videos for Lotus Connections 2.5, "Tapping into the community using Lotus Connections" and "Tracking project milestones using Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr":

Nice work, Joyce and the team!

Installed Lotus Connections 2.5?

Stuart McIntyre — Wed, 5 May 2010 09:45:02 +0100

Have you performed a Lotus Connections installation and used the Lotus Connections documentation to assist you with the installation process? IBM wants your feedback!

Take the Lotus Connections Installation Documentation survey from now until May 12, 2010. It should take only about 20 minutes to complete, and you have the option of taking the survey anonymously.

Take the survey yourself and forward the link to others you know who have performed a Lotus Connections installation. This is a great opportunity to get your thoughts and opinions heard. Your feedback and suggestions will help drive changes to our Lotus Connections technical content. Also, continue to stay tuned for future usability evaluations on some of our other products that we will be conducting throughout the year. We look forward to hearing from you!

There's only a week left to get your feedback into the team, so why not take the survey today?

Enabling notifications for IBM Lotus Connections Bookmarks within the IBM Lotus Notes client

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:48:27 +0100

Based on the feedback of the customers and end users that I speak to on a daily basis, the features made available via the integration of Lotus Notes and Lotus Connections are still under-utilised and in many cases, misunderstood.

Notes 8.5.1 has given us a lot of 'out-of-the-box' integration points, such as the pop-up business card from Connections in email views, the ability to take Activities offline and the integration of Connections search from the Lotus Notes search field. Some of these are very visible to end users, whilst others are more difficult to find.

One such feature is the ability to bookmark Notes documents (emails, discussion thread, Team Room documents, blog posts etc) directly into Connections bookmarks from within the client:

This is a brilliant way to share Notes data with the wider community, without having to post around doclinks or long Notes URLs, and of course works for those that do not use Notes mail but have access to Notes resources. However, at present it is not possible to notify others of these new bookmarks direct from the Notes UI - one would need to copy and paste the Connections bookmark URL into a new message and send that to community members of a mailing list.

Fortunately, there is a whitepaper written by Christof Luecking and Manish Kataria that has just been published detailing how to enable notifications on the Add Bookmark dialog within Notes:

It would be nice to simplify this process and automatically notify people, as is done from the Connections Web UI. In fact, there is a hidden feature in the Notes 8.5.1 client that takes care of this. The new mechanism allows you to specify the people who should be notified when creating the bookmark.
Enabling the new mechanism for your Notes client

Follow the steps below to enable this feature:
1. Browse to your Notes installation and then navigate to the
\framework\shared\eclipse\plugins location. For example, on Microsoft� Windows� this location could be:
C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\framework\shared\eclipse\plugins\
2. Search for a plug-in named com.ibm.openactivities.client.common.service
3. Edit plugin.properties under of this plugin, changing the property “dogear.disable.notification:” to dogear.disable.notification=false
(NOTE: ‘dogear’ is the former name of the Connections Bookmark service)
4. Restart the Notes client.

A new field titled "Notify Users" displays below the Description field. The new field supports type-ahead and uses the LDAP information from the Connections Activities service. You can also manually add any email address, separating multiple email addresses with a comma.

An incredibly useful feature just got even better - hopefully this will be included out of the box in Notes 8.5.2/Connections 3.0.

New LinkedIn widget available for Lotus Connections

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:29:46 +0100

I've been waiting a while for the LinkedIn widget for Lotus Connections to become available, so wanted to make sure that everyone saw this announcement from IBM:

IBM and LinkedIn just boosted social networking in the enterprise with a new widget which offers Lotus Connections users instant access to LinkedIn profiles.   Big Blue's latest addition to its widget catalog is a plug-in that integrates LinkedIn's professional graph, information used to define people's connections and relationships, with IBM Lotus Connections social software for business. The new widget allows users to enhance their Lotus Connections Profile with information from their LinkedIn profile.   

LinkedIn is an online network of more than 60 million business professionals in more than 200 countries. With the new LinkedIn widget, users can access the world's most popular professional network directly from Lotus Connections. With this widget, IBM is combining the best of business and professional social networking sites, making it easier for users to access and view LinkedIn professional profiles with just one click from within Lotus Connections.

  “IBM's integration with LinkedIn demonstrates our commitment to providing social software solutions based on open standards that instantly connect people with information,” said Jeff Schick, VP of Social Software, IBM. “Through these integrations, we are making it easier for enterprises to maximize the use of and derive value from social software.”  The Lotus Connections Profiles service permits a user to share their contact information, report to chain, and details they provide in their About Me section on the Profiles page. This new widget permits a Lotus Connections user to include information from their LinkedIn profile in their Lotus Connections profile. Some examples of LinkedIn information that can be included on a Lotus Connections Profile include: job experience, education, honors and awards, personal interests, Web sites, number of recommendations and specialties.   The plug-in can be easily added to a user's Lotus Connections Profile and gives each user control about how much they would like to share from their LinkedIn profile.

The LinkedIn plug-in for Lotus Connections is available to customers for download from https://greenhouse.lotus.com

Issues with Oracle on Solaris with Connections 2.5

Sharon Bellamy — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:00:00 +0100

There is an issue when running Connections with Oracle on Solaris
Symptoms of the problem are you can not delete certain files and / or the files widget from communities

The error in the logs is - table FILES.MEDIA is mutating

08/02/10 00:01:00:569 GMT] 0000005d Library E EJPVJ9166E: Unable to delete the library with id b855660b-d6bc-4b19-891f-2087aa3d9a0c. [UserImpl@26ce26ce id=64377ea3-e571-4323-922a-dc0723fead36 directoryId=2BE4B3FF-4AB4-48FF-9B83-73689537A16A]
java.sql.SQLException: ORA-04091: table FILES.MEDIA is mutating, trigger/function may not see it
ORA-06512: at "FILES.PKG_MED_DOWNLOAD_UPD", line 45
ORA-06512: at "FILES.MED_DOWNLOAD_UPD_S", line 2
ORA-04088: error during execution of trigger 'FILES.MED_DOWNLOAD_UPD_S'

at oracle.jdbc.driver.DatabaseError.throwSqlException(DatabaseError.java:112)

We have since discovered (thanks to Kieran Reid in Connections Support for doing the leg work) that this is an issue with Oracle 10.2.0.4 on Solaris - the triggers have an issue which is fixed in 10.2.0.5 - which is a big no no as far as connections go. There is a fix that you can apply to 10.2.0.4 that will resolve the problem.

From support.oracle.com search the knowledge base for 4574851
You should get three results, select the third match
Click on the link for Patch.4574851
Select the 10.2.0.4 release for the Solaris platform
Download, install and test.

*NOTE* this fix is only available for SPARC not x86

So far this appears to have fixed the issue on the backup of the Prod database (I have put a stand-alone LC25 in front of it to test which involved all sorts of DB hacking to get it to work - not recommended unless you are desperate for a quick test). I am hoping to schedule moving our prod DB from x86 to SPARC applying the patch and then plugging my LC25 cluster into it.

Changing the title on the Connections 2.5 Homepage

Sharon Bellamy — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:46:55 +0100

Changing the title on the homepage is a bit of a pain .. The steps are as follows :

Make a back up copy of the COMPRESSED homepage.ear file from the deployed application config

ND - < was ROOT >\profiles\< profile> \config\cells\< cell Name >\applications\Homepage.ear\Homepage.ear

StandAlone - < was ROOT >\profiles\< profile >\config\cells\< cell Name >\applications\Homepage.ear\Homepage.ear

extract it to a temp folder ie D:\temp\extracted\homepage

find the dboard.common.jar and extract that to a temporary folder i.e D:\temp\extracted\Dashboard

drill down into the extracted file >

> com/ibm/lotus/connections/dashboard/nls/

and find the file jsp_resources.properties

change the jsp.homepage.title = < "your new title" >

change any instances of "IBM Lotus Connections Home Page" in this file to < "your new title" >

save and close the file

do the same for any additional languages that you are supporting

re-compress the dboard.common.jar and copy the newly edited compressed version into the extracted directory of the homepage ear file.

re-crompress the homepage ear file

stop all server instances that are running the homepage application replace the newly edited and compressed homepage.ear file in the deployed application config

you will also need to replace the newly edited dboard.common.jar in the installedApps folder on your primary / standalone server.

< was_root >\profiles\< profile name >\installedApps\< cell name >\Homepage.ear

once the servers are restarted they will use the new title in the homepage app

and as if by magic it will appear

Quick Tip - Lotus Connections and LDAP Page Size

Stuart McIntyre - Connections — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:30:20 +0100

Just a quick and dirty tip...

I'm working on a new Lotus Connections 2.5 environment, mated to Active Directory. When it came to populating Profiles, the Collect_DNs script was pulling 1000 names out of the directory before stopping with a "LDAP: error code 4 - Sizelimit Exceeded" error. It appeared that the maximum number of results returned by this AD configuration was 1000 records, and thus the collect process was falling over on the 1001st record.

Thankfully, the TDI import process allows for this using the LDAP Page Size attribute specified in the profiles_tdi.properties file. Simply set to the maximum number of records your LDAP repository will return, e.g.:

source_ldap_page_size=1000

and the Collect_DNs.bat/sh script will complete successfully.

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.