Best Practices to ensure a smooth upgrade to Sametime 8.5.2 and 8.5.2 IFR 1

Martin Leyrer  2012 February 12 18:52:04

• Before starting the upgrade process
• Making backups
• After the upgrade is complete

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Folder names are now public in the 8.5 template

Martin Leyrer  2012 February 12 18:47:44

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Open Mic Webcast: Troubleshooting SMTP inbound and outbound issues

Martin Leyrer  2012 February 5 22:55:10

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Using the Lotus Notes Install Cleanup Executable (NICE) tool

Martin Leyrer  2012 February 5 22:49:40

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Open Mic Replay and Q&A: Understanding and Troubleshooting Unread Marks in Notes/Domino

Martin Leyrer  2012 January 27 09:17:48

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What’s this 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1?

Martin Leyrer  2012 January 22 16:14:00

Most of us look forward to the latest release of Notes and Domino. We park on the download pages, constantly refreshing the browser in hopes to be one of the first ones to get the latest and greatest. Version 8.5.1 becomes 8.5.2, which then becomes 8.5.3, which then bec . . . hold on . . .

What's this 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1?

Welcome to the new world of Notes and Domino upgrades. IBM has moved to an upgrade pack model, where you can install new features without having to upgrade the entire client. Version 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 is the first release to follow this new approach, so what do we get in this "not-a-release"?

The main emphasis is on XPages. The Domino XPages Extension library, previously only available on OpenNTF, has now been pulled into the official supported Notes client. In my opinion, this is a big deal. It's been great that IBM has officially backed the OpenNTF version and contributed/fixed/enhanced many of the features there. But too many organizations don't want to install software that is not "officially" from the vendor. This update pack fixes that issue, as well as adding new functionality on top of it.

IBM has also added a new REST API called Domino Data Services, to allow you to get your data served up more easily via JSON. Given the ease of manipulating JSON via JavaScript or Java, you should be able to get much more creative (or generate less code) to create new application features more quickly.

Finally, the Teamroom and Discussion application templates, two workhorses of the Notes/Domino world, have been updated with XPages-based features to support mobile usage. Given the significant move to mobile-based platforms such as smartphones and tablets, this opens up a whole new target audience for these applications, and it should be even easier to roll these out in more situations with fewer compromises in terms of functionality.

Pete Janzen has a good write-up of the new Update Pack on developerWorks.
You can also check out the official update pack information.

If you're focusing on XPages and/or mobile development, this is one upgrade that you won't want to miss out on.

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Upgrading Sametime System Console to 8.5.2 IFR 1 fails during installation

Martin Leyrer  2012 January 22 16:06:13

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Open Social

Martin Leyrer  2012 January 22 15:59:18

This is a new word to many of you so I am going to steal a couple of lines from Wikipedia about this open initiative. Google was a major partner in launching these common APIs back in 2007.

"OpenSocial is public specification that defines a component hosting environment (container) and a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for Web-based applications. In more recent times it has become adopted as a general use runtime environment for allowing untrusted and partially trusted components from third parties to run in an existing Web application."

The OpenSocial Wiki is a great place to see how apps are built and get the specifications on how integration will begin. OpenSocial has containers to gather information on people, relationships, groups, application data, media data and more. There was an area that is being moved into what you have heard called Activity Streams. This is key to you as an administrator, when thinking about topology and integration that will occur.

Recent changes include the inclusion of oAuth 2 support. Picture this as an alternate form of authentication besides the Domino Directory. While its current state does not support you moving your Domino public/private key structure, you could use alternate forms of authentication and data inclusion for users against public social networks that support oAuth.

One last beginning part for this issue is the idea of templates. We know how they function in Domino, and OpenSocial has the same schema developed. OpenSocial Templating (OST) lets developers make templates and then change code as needed when deploying a gadget. This is a simplified way to think about how your developers can build and deploy OpenSocial Gadgets (think databases) into your environment.

Look for more in this series as I try and include topics that will help you see the direction IBM is including in future business plans.

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Learning XPages with Stephan Wissel

Martin Leyrer  2012 January 6 16:42:42

This entry is my reference for the collection of learning materials around XPages and adjacent technologies. I get asked a lot and in the spirit of sharing I make my recommendations public. There are a number of
technologies and skills touching XPages, so it looks like a long list, but you don't need them all to get started.

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Improving IBM Lotus Notes Client 8.5.x performance and stability: An IBM Field Service Engineer’s report

Martin Leyrer  2012 January 6 16:28:43

In this white paper:

• Introduction
• Operating system performance
• Addressing hard drive indexing
• Addressing hard drive fragmentation
• Improving Windows cold boot startup / boot storm duration
• Client-level performance
• Conclusions
• Resources
• About the author

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