Lotus Greenhouse adds Quickr and Sametime

June 6 2007

On yesterday's Lotus executive mid-year update, Mike Rhodin and Jeff Schick both mentioned the Lotus Greenhouse.  Greenhouse is self-described as:

Lotus Greenhouse is your platform to experience and influence the direction of the latest software tools and technologies that are being developed by IBM.
For the last few months, Greenhouse has been up and running with Lotus Connections.  Now the environment has been updated to include Lotus Sametime and Lotus Quickr.

Greenhouse is a great way for organizations to experience the latest in Lotus solutions and technologies.  If you're not already using it, you can self-nominate for Greenhouse access from the home page, or contact your Lotus sales team.

Ed Brill | Cambridge, MA USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [21]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Mika Heinonen http://siipi.com/mika | 6/6/2007 12:35:56 PM

    As a techno freak, I wanted to register at once, but the registering seems not to work, and it brings up a default R5 domino session authentication form.

    Is there any other way to get Greenhouse access, for example via an existing IBM ID?

  1. 2  JYR  | 6/6/2007 3:22:21 PM

    Hi,

    same thing for me. Never received my ID.

    JYR

  1. 3  Mike Brown  | 6/6/2007 4:06:58 PM

    "Our apologies...

    The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request."

  1. 4  Mika Heinonen http://siipi.com/mika | 6/6/2007 4:12:12 PM

    Dear IBM, I am willing to host your services in my own server hotel, just give me a few System p servers as recognition for your gratitude :)

    You will get full services, and immediate responses to any problems your customers might encounter.

  1. 5  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/6/2007 4:24:13 PM

    I should have made it clear -- you are applying for access, as opposed to registering on an automated system. It may take some time for your applications to be approved.

  1. 6  Mika Heinonen http://siipi.com/mika | 6/6/2007 4:30:37 PM

    Yes, I think clearmaking is a new challenge for everyone.

  1. 7  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/6/2007 4:34:02 PM

    When I click on the "provide us more information" link, I get a popup that says:

    Thanks for being interested in joining the Lotus Greenhouse. Our community is growing fast! We will be selecting and adding new participants as quickly as our environment will allow. So please fill in the necessary information in the self-nomination form below. We will be in touch very soon. Again, thanks for your interest.

    First Name *

    Last Name *

    E-mail *

    Company *

    Works in Firefox, at least.

  1. 8  Scott Gentzen http://www.scottandmargo.net | 6/6/2007 4:36:41 PM

    We broke it already? Bad thing (hosting collapse) puts a spotlight on a good thing (lots of interest?).

  1. 9  Mika Heinonen http://siipi.com/mika | 6/6/2007 4:40:51 PM

    It's still not clear to me. So, I should send manually an unformatted e-mail to some IBM sales representative?

    "If you're not already using it, you can self-nominate for Greenhouse access from the home page"

    >> Ok, that didn't work.

    ", or contact your Lotus sales team."

    >> I only know www.ibm.com as sales team, which I like very much. I don't like to be dependant on individual persons, but just have a one and only place to contact IBM for all issues.

    Ok, lets do this: I wait for more clarification, and if I don't get anything, I'll just contact some random e-mail from ibm.com :)

  1. 10  Stuart Bogom  | 6/6/2007 5:30:09 PM

    Ed,

    The screen you describe works fine - the problem happens after you click the 'submit' button. It goes to a 'server login' page requesting a userid/password. As if the application is trying to create a document in a database but an 'anonymous' user does not have rights to create documents there.

  1. 11  Mika Heinonen http://siipi.com/mika | 6/6/2007 5:47:04 PM

    @10 - Stuart, you're absolutely right, and that's what I said in @1 already, the R5 default session authentication thingy. Oh my, now I realize I made the same mistake, I didn't clearmake. What I meant is the ugly yellow Web Form with username and password :)

    The problem I'm seeing here can be basically traced back to a lack of testing. We have the same challenge, as testers just do what looks superficially OK, but they don't do the idiot proof testing, which means do everything wrong, click on everything you can, test everything. The testing should have been done already by the Lotus.Greenhouse team.

  1. 12  Keith Brooks http://kbmsg.blogspot.com | 6/6/2007 7:04:02 PM

    Perhaps it is authenticated to only internal domain individuals?

    I tried to register at it a while back, don't recall ever receiving anything.

    Will try again of course because I think the idea is a good one, if we can all get in.

  1. 13  Stuart McIntyre http://quickrblog.com | 6/7/2007 12:40:14 AM

    It worked for me back when I registered directly after Lotusphere.

    @11 This is more of an operational issue than a lack of testing. It certainly has worked until very recently. I have just tried it again now, however, and the default login prompt for Domino does appear...

  1. 14  Axel Janssen  | 6/7/2007 5:50:17 AM

    I hope to receive my id to take a look on the system in the following days or weeks.

    This looks like early adopters and open for the whole planet. I can understand that it doesn't scale user-populationwise like google, because those lotus-products are targeted for intranet-use.

    From my subjective perspective especially the positive reviews from analysts I like (redmonk) makes me want to invest time to dig a bit deeper. I find the general direction more conclusive than 1 or 2 years ago.

  1. 15  Mark Barton  | 6/7/2007 6:54:25 AM

    We were lucky and our very helpful local sales representative arranged the access for several of us. Credit where credit is due, Stefan in UK sales has really been proactive in supporting us get the message across to the business about the new Lotus releases.

    I have to say Quickr is outstanding and almost eclipses Notes 8 in the wow department ;-)

  1. 16  mark hughes  | 6/7/2007 7:43:18 AM

    I too am getting the domino login, does anyone know if the form is actullay submitted?

  1. 17  Scott Gentzen http://www.scottandmargo.net | 6/7/2007 8:39:40 AM

    I just checked up on the registration for this morning. It's working now.

  1. 18  Kevin Mort  | 6/7/2007 1:21:18 PM

    Registration just worked fine for me, as I would have expected.

    The funny part though is the whole Partnerworld company ID deal. LOL Let's see, I know of at least three different ones for us...

    K.

  1. 19  Mika Heinonen http://siipi.com/mika | 6/8/2007 12:51:06 PM

    Thanks for fixing the Greenhouse membership request page, whoever did it, it works now.

    I wanted to educate myself on all the different memberships what IBM offers, and it seems there's quite a lot of them out there. This is how I understood them:

    AlphaWorks: A group which gets to see, test and comment on the newest IBM prototype technology. { Link }

    Lotus Greenhouse: Same thing as IBM AlphaWorks, except that it focusses on Lotus' products.

    Passport Advantage Express: a 1 year contract with IBM which allows you to download the purchased product, and some of it's earlier versions, plus all the incremental updates, patches, and companion products for it (you can only see/download the products which you are allowed to use).

    Passport Advantage: same thing as above, except for a longer time period? Possibly with quantity discount (eg. 3 years: cheaper than 3 x 1 year contract).

    PartnerWorld: Apparently a group which consists of IBM Business Partners, and provides a large web site collection with all kind of services and offerings from IBM.

    Business Partner: Usually someone who sells IBM's products and services, like a reseller or dealer. But it seems also ISV's and other "partners" can aquire Business Partner status with IBM, possibly also huge customers, especially if they are Notes-house companies (=large companies who use Notes and Domino as their main Enterprise e-mail, application and collaboration system).

    Did I forget some major group/membership status?

    Correct me since I'm wrong anyways more or less :)

  1. 20  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 6/8/2007 1:23:57 PM

    @19 - You forgot developerWorks { Link } . All of the ones you list except the partner stuff use the same credentials for access.

  1. 21  David DeWell  | 6/8/2007 11:52:19 PM

    To Note: Lotus Greenhouse has been going through upgrades to the server software this week. I had a business partner that forgot their password to Greenhouse and it took a day or two longer than normal to process. Just be patient.