Live blogging from DNUG/IBM Lotus Technical Conference keynote

May 15 2006

I've written this entry during the keynote from this week's DNUG/IBM Lotus Technical Forum event.  Tons of information covered in ninety minutes, with breakout sessions to follow with even more detail.  Sidebar note-to-self from the keynote: Don't flash vowe, his is bigger than mine.

Mike Rhodin gave an excellent high-level overview of the evolution towards the dynamic workplace.  Similar to the keynote he gave last week at Admin2006, the discussion was of the evolution to contextual collaboration, open standards interfaces, and composite applications.

Craig Hayman and Ron Sebastian followed with several technology updates.  Ron demonstrated the RSS feeds template for Domino 7.0.2.  He used the feeds database to create a feed from a standard, unmodified Notes discussion database.  The feed definition is a simple form.

In Ron's example, he posted an entry in the discussion that included an MP3 file.  Ron then switched over to Apple iTunes, included the RSS feed from Domino in the "podcasts" view, and promptly blessed the "iTunes client for Domino" to resounding applause.

Craig and Ron then moved on to cover the Lotus Notes access for SAP announcement from last week.  Better than a "Duet", in perfect harmony, they described the seven use cases that IBM is building for out-of-the-box integration between Notes 7.0.x and SAP:

  • Vacation/leave request
  • Time reporting
  • Contact management
  • Workflow integration
  • Report generation
  • Employee Self Service / Manager Self Service
  • Meeting scheduling

Ron even demonstrated how such an application can be accessed from a Blackberry interface, extending Notes/Domino workflow applications to the Blackberry platform (again to applause).  


The next section of the presentation featured Surjit Chana, Lotus VP of marketing, discussing real-time business, featuring Lotus Sametime 7.5.  Surjit's "brag chart" covered the success Sametime has had in market to date....noting, for example, that three of the top four most profitable companies in the world are using Sametime (Surjit asked the audience if they could guess the fourth, which lead to a laugh as some had a slow realization that said company isn't likely to be using an IBM product enterprise-wide).

Ron's next burst of applause was showing the extensibility of the Sametime 7.5 client.  First he accessed the same RSS feed from Domino via the Sametime client's extensible UI.  Then, in-line in a chat, he showed a programmable command that grabbed "@LatestSales" and pasted it directly in the chat.  The data grab happened to be from a back-end, but then Ron showed a similar capability (easily created) to grab an Excel spreadsheet section.

Ron concluded the Sametime section with a demonstration of an add-in from Avistar, an IBM business partner.  The Avistar plug-in for Sametime 7.5 adds full-motion video to a multi-way chat.  Ron showed a four-way video chat session, with very high fidelity.  More applause.

The next section of the keynote covered WebSphere Portal 6.  The user interface has undergone significant updating, including a streamlined action bar (which looks a lot like the launch bar coming in Notes "Hannover").  The out-of-the-box UI uses AJAX and a streamlined "web 2.0" experience to make portal navigation much easier.  

The very last section of the keynote featured Mike Rhodin and Ron discussing and demonstrating Notes "Hannover".  Announced last June at the DNUG/IBM event, Mike went into detail as to what has transpired since then.  Mike talked about "outside-in design" by focusing on the user experence first, and then making the architecture of the software match the design.  He also emphasized the open nature of the Notes "Hannover" platform.  Then came the big announcement -- The Notes "Hannover" release will include spreadsheet/presentation/word processing productivity tools supporting the newly ratified Open Document Format .  "We are going to provide an open alternative".  


I didn't cover everything that was in the keynote here.  For example, Craig and Ron discussed IBM Workplace for SAP® software, emphasizing the point that they had also showed SAP integration in Notes, Sametime, and WebSphere Portal.  Every additional piece of SAP integration caused a buzz in the room, because these capabilities bring a lot of the power of the SAP back-end to end-users in a variety of Workplace environments...almost all without coding.  Ron also highlighted Workplace Collaboration Services 2.6.1, WebSphere Portlet Factory, Activities, and the Linux version of the Notes client plug-in.  I'll write a lot more in the coming days about some of these other announcements and demos.

Ed Brill Karlsruhe, Deutschland Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [32]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  mark hughes  | 5/15/2006 10:21:16 AM

    I see learning on the drop down, is that Workplace Colab Learning? Or something else

  1. 2  Nathan T. Freeman  | 5/15/2006 10:37:59 AM

    "The Notes "Hannover" release will include spreadsheet/presentation/word processing productivity tools supporting the newly ratified Open Document Format"

    *BOGGLE!!!*

    Oh yeah... Notes is SOOOOO dead.

    That's kick ass, Ed.

  1. 3  Michael  | 5/15/2006 10:49:14 AM

    Looks like the "toolbar" is getting inpiration from latest MS Office look and feel ...which is quite good ;)

  1. 4  Brian Green  | 5/15/2006 11:24:19 AM

    "The Notes "Hannover" release will include spreadsheet/presentation/word processing productivity tools..."

    I just fell out of my chair!

  1. 5  Bob http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 5/15/2006 11:31:03 AM

    A few comments:

    The RSS Feed generator form says "Add additional tag libraries". The term "tag library" is incorrect. These aren't tag libraries, they're additional namespaces.

    Does the phrase "this screen shot shows the concept" indicate that this is a mockup or real code? The taskbar text and the window title don't agree (and there are a couple other glitches) which would lead me to believe that it's just an image, not code.

    If the UI toolbar is intended to look like the new ribbon in Office 2007, I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ;-)

  1. 6  Charles Robinson  | 5/15/2006 11:32:38 AM

    @2 - That's not really news, it was being openly discussed at Lotusphere 2006. The only thing that has changed is the ODF's have been ratified, which as far as I know has no impact on what IBM was planning to deliver anyway.

    @3 - Or perhaps the toolbars are finally being based on system-wide user preferences. I can hope, can't I?

  1. 7  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/15/2006 11:52:40 AM

    @5 it's real code - I created the screenshot myself out of an NTF this morning. But it's not the shipping version, of course -- several months to go, and UI will change in that time period.

    @6 see the press release...not yet on IBM.com but I will link it later today.

  1. 8  Bruce Elgort http://www.bruceelgort.com | 5/15/2006 12:14:14 PM

    "IBM Word Processor Editor" :-)

  1. 9  Ted Stanton http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/InsideLotus | 5/15/2006 12:14:52 PM

    @2 Check out this link for more on that at IBM. { Link }

  1. 10  Dan Sickles  | 5/15/2006 12:28:47 PM

    From { Link }

    "Three editors are provisioned with the Lotus Workplace Documents application:

    the word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation editors. These editors are

    derived from OpenOffice group ({ Link } efforts with a

    number of enhancements and customizations. File compatibility in general is

    also good."

    Good stuff. Can't wait for Post-Hannover Designer.

  1. 11  Keith Brooks www.keithbrooks.com | 5/15/2006 2:16:20 PM

    Are we coming back to a thin client? well, maybe thin isn't the word.

    iTunes client for Domino, I love it!

  1. 12  Max Nierbauer  | 5/15/2006 2:22:05 PM

  1. 13  Silvia Garcia  | 5/15/2006 2:50:37 PM

    I have no words...

    I already attended one session, at Lotusphere Madrid, that talked about ODF and Productivity Tools on linux... I loved what I heard there, but it sound to me like something far away.....and hard to achive...

    Now, I see that is closest that I thougt.... and it sounds even better..it is impresive.... I can not wait until have a beta and test it !!

  1. 14  Max Nierbauer  | 5/15/2006 2:54:34 PM

    The incredible Ed Brill. Not only you took the flight to Germany and held this great session with Kevin today. You also managed to blog this fantastic summary of an impressive 3 hour keynote at the same time... Respect!

    The show you guys delivered there today in Karlsruhe was amazing. I liked this "by the way, the presenation you are currently seeing is running on a Hannover client..." - click - switch from from full screen to normal and the whole audience was just stunned. You could hear a needle drop at that moment.

    So we've seen and heard a lot about the Hannover Client today. And you are definitely thinking outside the inbox.

    Perhaps you can also post some information about the Hannover Server? Or the servers (Domino, Application, Portal, Workplace,....???) building the infrastucture behind the Notes Client for the next sixteen years?

    ...to boldly go where no man has gone before ;-)

  1. 15  Andrew Kennel  | 5/15/2006 4:20:03 PM

    Great news on the Word Processing/Spreadsheet/Presentation.

    Any chance that you'll be including the Project Management app ? When you announced the 90 day trial of the Workpace client, the project management app was included. I was struck at the time of how wonderful it integrate with Notes tasks.

  1. 16  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/15/2006 5:05:20 PM

    For those looking for the link to the IBM press release...

    { Link }

    @14 thank you. Somehow I'm still awake at midnight. let's talk about the server in Rob Ingram's Domino session and/or Heidi Votaw's Notes client session.

    @15 no plans on the project management app at this time.

  1. 17  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/15/2006 5:09:10 PM

    Paul Mooney also live blogged the opening session, with pictures, too. See { Link }

  1. 18  Gerry www.fidax.com | 5/15/2006 7:16:05 PM

    Please, really want to see the Project Management app back into the client.

    For quick & dirty, i.e. simple reporting the app that was available for version 4 & 5 was an enormous time saver.

    Much management reporting on simple project progress was so easy and simple to do without having the drama of working in Project or cludging something in Visio or the like.

    Gerry

  1. 19  Carl Dellson  | 5/15/2006 8:48:48 PM

    Ed, are the SAP templates available for testing? We are not an SAP shop, though I would love to leverage some of the look and feel of the above Vacation Request into our inhouse systems...

  1. 20  Craig Wiseman  | 5/15/2006 8:55:10 PM

    iTunes on Domino. Hee HEE, quite a turn around from the old "emoticons are not professional enough for Sametime" attitue, eh?

  1. 21  Adam Brown http://www.isw.com.au/brownblog | 5/15/2006 9:06:02 PM

    That is huge. The productivity apps have been dancing around Notes for a couple of years now. Workplace and Portal have had similar things but adding them to Notes is an MS Office killer.

  1. 22  Tom Roberts  | 5/15/2006 9:09:57 PM

    My first thought when I heard about the native applications and ODF support was "can we store them as Notes documents?" Not attachments. Native Notes documents: field names, types, and values.

    From there, my mind started running about the implications of this, and what I'm thinking would be absolutely huge. Transforming a Notes Document to an ODF document could be an XSLT transformation. Likewise, the Notes Storage Facility would be a document repository (already is for Notes documents, I know, but I'm using document in this context to be an office productivity document), and XSLT could be used to transform the document to display as an ODF document, a Notes document, html, a pdf (via XSL:FO), or whatever other file type is desired/supported.

    Further, it might be possible to visually layout a form (Notes design element) and specify the form as a word processing template. Or possibly have a new design element: an XLST Transformation object. "Switch Form" could be "Apply Transformation" allowing any Notes Document (old or new) to be transformed to ODF, HTML, XML, PDF (yes, I know we can already do html and dxl). I haven't yet found a great (automated) XSLT creator, but if one were built into Notes Designer and generate the XSLT docs to map a Notes Document (think field names, types, and values only) to a Notes client form, ODF document or template, or any other supported file type, that would be huge.

    Not sure if this is on the radar for an early Hannover release, but it seems possible as something that could happen during the course at some point. Simply amazing. Thanks IBM!

  1. 23  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/16/2006 1:25:02 AM

    @18 soon, very soon. Certainly within the next two weeks for the initial five "use cases".

  1. 24  Wayne Weinheimer  | 5/16/2006 11:18:09 AM

    I would seriously look at not renewing our MS Office licenses if these productivity tools performed and file compatibility was not an issue. The pictures look great, I can't wait to see live code.

  1. 25  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 5/16/2006 1:38:16 PM

    @24 - this code is already shipping in Workplace 2.6. You can also download a stand-alone demo (not sure of the url to that). I beleive the editors in Hannover will be an upgrade from the ones out there now, but I use them on a daily basis. No file format issues ... PERIOD.

  1. 26  Nathan T. Freeman  | 5/17/2006 2:36:36 AM

    "No file format issues ... PERIOD."

    John, are you suggesting that the tools successfully CONVERT from existing MS Office files? That's the make-or-break point there. I don't care what format my new files are in... I care that I can get all my stuff in a single format.

  1. 27  Dave Harris http://www.wavysworld.com | 5/17/2006 10:45:39 AM

    Looking at stuff like this makes me realise just how much I love my job sometimes (or just how much of a geek I am).

    I can't wait to see this stuff in the wild.

  1. 28  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 5/17/2006 12:13:39 PM

    @26 - You know that is a bigger beast then a simple yes or no Nathan. Can OpenOffice save and open to office formats today, and you can pick what you want the default format to be. There is also code out there mass convert documents using OpenOffice code. I might even write an app for my next presentation that uses Notes to do that ;) ...

    Can you open any office document in OpenOffice? Yes

    Can you save any document into an office format? Yes

    Can you set the default format to save to? Yes

    everything else is user/company choice.

    John

  1. 29  mathew http://www.pobox.com/~meta/ | 5/17/2006 2:12:45 PM

    Will it have Domino Designer and Domino Administrator?

  1. 30  Nathan T. Freeman  | 5/18/2006 2:47:57 AM

    @28 - For the record, while I was posting a somewhat leading question, my ignorance was genuine. If the integrated productivity tools in Hannover are ultimately able to do something like scan my local harddrive and find all Office documents on it, convert them to ODF format, store them in an organized personal document library, and allow an easy way to share that into a general Domino environment, then that's a Game 7 World Series-winning grand slam. But I have no idea whether Hannover is going that far.

    As usual, you are working with more inside information about IBM's plans than the rest of us, so don't assume I have similar knowledge about forthcoming products. I probably never do.

  1. 31  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 5/18/2006 8:11:30 AM

    @30 ... I havent heard anything about Hannover doing what you talked about (scanning local physical drives, coverting, and storing them in some document library). OpenOffice has a great API and I bet IBM is working to expose much of that in the productivity editors. No reason that could not be a great app published on OpenNTF :)

  1. 32  Steve Castledine http://www.stevecastledine.com | 5/18/2006 11:19:38 AM

    @19 - Carl that look and feel is available via the Calendar form in your mail box design.