Now running Sametime 7.5

March 14 2006

This morning, I had the chance to install alpha 2 of Lotus Sametime 7.5.  The install was quick and easy, and now I'm up and running on the new release....

Buddy list:
Image:Now running Sametime 7.5

Here we have the new buddy list UI.  A few things you notice right away --

  • Updated UI
  • Easy access to setting my current status
  • A location setting -- displayed to other Sametime users -- which can then be used for place-based awareness as well as location-specific services (what printers are available, conference rooms, and what's on the cafeteria menu)
  • A right click option to call, via VoIP services
and here was my first Sametime 7.5 chat. (three separate images -- had to chop out some of the chat)
Image:Now running Sametime 7.5
Image:Now running Sametime 7.5
Image:Now running Sametime 7.5

A few cool things to notice:
  • Tons of information about the person I'm chatting with -- full name, title, their Sametime status, and a picture pulled from our corporate LDAP directory
  • Alternating colors, and indented text, to indicate flow of the chat
  • Single click action buttons to add user to buddy list, add others to the chat, capture part of my screen and send it in the chat, call via VoIP, and send a file
  • Full text editing capabilities for my chat, including fonts, colors, and emoticons...and an in-line spell checker.
One of the most interesting things about the Sametime 7.5 client is that it has a plug-in architecture.  IBMers are already building plug-ins for things like polling, application sharing, and more.  I'll be watching the plug-ins page to see what else comes along as we get closer to release.

Lots of information about Sametime 7.5 is available now -- Link: Lotus Sametime -- The future is in sight >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Sametime 7.5  Add/View Comments [45]

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  1. 1  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 3/14/2006 9:54:41 AM

    Email address and name/ou/o in green type. The designers have left the building?

  1. 2  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/14/2006 9:58:03 AM

    The e-mail addresses are displayed as a "legacy" of my Sametime buddy list...as I add new people, it will display whatever I want about them. Is that your question?

  1. 3  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 3/14/2006 10:15:29 AM

    Will there be betas available of this Ed?

  1. 4  Rob McDonagh www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/14/2006 10:15:31 AM

    Me==Jealous.

  1. 5  Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 3/14/2006 10:30:51 AM

    Hmm, 'Paul Culpepper.' No relation to an old Whittman-Hart/marchFIRST/Cincinnati Office 'Paul Culpepper' that I once knew, is he? If so, tell him I said "hello." If not, well, never mind.

  1. 6  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 3/14/2006 10:50:48 AM

    No, that is not my question.

    Most of the people on one's buddylist come from groups in the address book. That was at least the case in all the Sametime communities I have seen so far.

    So the question is, how would they display? I hope it is just the full name.

    The other part of the "question" is, whether IBM will make Sametime look as good as the competition. And green bold text remembers me of Sametime legacy.

  1. 7  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 3/14/2006 11:10:14 AM

    @3 & @4 - Ditto! =)

  1. 8  Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 3/14/2006 11:24:23 AM

    I see your status, version and everything with an older client too, cool!

  1. 9  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/14/2006 11:29:48 AM

    @6 you can set the nickname of the displayed person to whatever. By default, new entries are displaying the person's full name from our directory.

    I'll pass the feedback about the green text on... it is just the buddy list, most of the usability enhancement requests i've seen have been for the chat window itself.

  1. 10  Steven Joseph  | 3/14/2006 12:51:48 PM

    My favorite color is green. Ed, please add one count to the "keep it green" column. Legacy != bad. This is also the reason that I stayed with R5 so long. :<)

    @6 In a personal group when you have both off-line and on-line folks displayed, the bold (green) text makes it very clear what their status is. If you use only public groups/lists, this is not an issue as off-line users are not displayed. But a large majority of our 6500 ST users have personal lists that they have built from pulling "buddies" from the directory (and most like Ed never change the default name from "Work"). You see off-line and on-line folks at the same time (I guess I lose some frequent flyer miles for that bad pun??)

  1. 11  Rob McDonagh www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/14/2006 1:11:26 PM

    Another vote for the green. I like it. I also like the bold vs non-bold distinction for active users vs away users. I don't care that green is the same color used in the old ST client - the new one looks so radically different that I didn't even notice. And now that I'm aware, it's a little bit comforting, though I can hardly believe I'm writing that...

  1. 12  Sean Jennings  | 3/14/2006 1:26:29 PM

    I hope IBM will be making all the plug-ins freely available 'out of the box' as having to go to a website and download these will discourage some people (weird I know but its true). The GoogleMap demo I saw at the LotuSphere Event in London was impressive - I wonder if this will work with Sametime on mobile-devices such as Blackberrys....

    Any chance the plug-in source-code will be made available too? With perhaps an explanation of how they work in a DeveloperWorks article(?) or even a book or course on writing Sametime plug-ins? ;o)

    While users will love the new gui, but developers will love the plug-in possibilities!

  1. 13  Jerry Glover http://www.jerryglover.com | 3/14/2006 2:19:19 PM

    Looks great! Verry happy to see the availability chooser move to the top of the window (and the location there too). Ditto @11 on the green and bold.

    Regarding the chat window itself - if the top "header" in the window is displaying the full name (and pic, location info, etc.) of the person I'm chatting with, then using their fullname for each line of chat text is just wasting space. How about just the first name (or localpart of email/IM addy) or initials? Also, while having alternating colors on the name for each line is nice, I'd really like that to extend to having my chat text always appear in the font choice (style, size, color) I want a la AIM and Trillian. That makes it really obvious who is saying what in the conversation at a glance.

  1. 14  Rob McDonagh www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/14/2006 2:35:00 PM

    @13, re: shorter names - Yes! The current ST client wastes so much screen real estate on that. And what about referring to my name as simply 'Me' the way other IM clients do? I really don't need to see my own name. If you want to log the full names, that's great - but can we see shorter names on the screen please? Or will it simply show whatever I've defined as a nickname?

  1. 15  Almar Diehl http://www.domino-weblog.nl | 3/14/2006 2:43:56 PM

    And don't forget, a often requested feature: the ability to connect to more then one sametime community....

  1. 16  Simon Barratt http://apps.fmc.com/blog.nsf | 3/14/2006 3:10:15 PM

    Even in Sametime 3.1, you can turn on 'Use Shortnames', so that you don't see the ou/o elements.

    We rolled out the ST client pre configured to operate in that mode.

  1. 17  Rob McDonagh www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/14/2006 3:49:06 PM

    @16 *shakes head* And we now have even more justification (like we needed it) for my blogging alias.....

  1. 18  Roberto Boccadoro  | 3/14/2006 4:58:12 PM

    @15 - What you want is already there. I am currently logged on to two different ST communities.

    RoB

  1. 19  Chris Reckling http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog.jspa?blog=416 | 3/14/2006 5:01:01 PM

    @12 - Several sample plugins are being prepared and documented, with source. Not sure which ones yet, but some of those you've seen.

    Chris

  1. 20  Carlos  | 3/15/2006 12:54:39 AM

    "In-line spell checker" ???

    Is there an option to add your own SMS type dictionary ? eg: { Link }

    Another vote for green.

    "Green is the new yellow"

  1. 21  Hubertus Amann  | 3/15/2006 2:34:15 AM

    @18 - can you explain this, please. I just know how to handle 3 different Sametime clients at the same time...

  1. 22  Roberto Boccadoro  | 3/15/2006 2:55:21 AM

    @21 - Not much to explain, honestly. In the new 7.5 client there is the possibility of defining several "Sametime community provider", i.e Sametime servers. You can then log on to all of them and have a single buddy list that contains people from all the communities. In the next future there will be the possibility of integration with other IM systems, which means that you will be able to log on to communities based on Sametime and, say, AOL or Google using a single ST client.

    RoB

  1. 23  Nathan T. Freeman  | 3/15/2006 6:47:15 AM

    I can't believe that half this thread is about the green text. Fonts should be *configurable.* Period. This ain't rocket science, and there are a ton of other products that do this.

    I cannot conceive of any reason why IBM's product should continue to be outshined on UI by Trillian. And yet, even with the improvements I'm seeing here, there's no indication that it's going to catch up.

  1. 24  Adam Gartenberg  | 3/15/2006 6:58:58 AM

    @22 - One additional comment on the multiple communities. While Sametime 7.5 will be able to log on to multiple communities, Sametime will be connecting out to AOL, Yahoo, etc. via the forthcoming Real-Time Collaboration gateway and not connecting directly from the client. (The gateway can also be used to connect multiple Sametime, SIP, other communities as well).

  1. 25  Josef Prusa  | 3/15/2006 7:28:47 AM

    Any signs of a Linux server? Running Domino on SUSE and would like to install Sametime server the same way.

  1. 26  John Foldager  | 3/15/2006 9:09:12 AM

    Hi Ed,

    do you know if it will be possible to fx. "Log off" of a group?

    Say... if I have a group of business relations and a group of customers, I might want to log off from the group of customers or visa versa. Maybe even have a status of "Logged off" in one group, "To lunch" in another, and "Online" in a third?

  1. 27  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net/ | 3/15/2006 9:25:06 AM

    @26 I don't know the plans for the final release, but I can tell you that there is currently (in 7.5 alpha) a new setting for "Enable the following people to see me as Available even when my status is set to Do No Disturb". So it is not quite "granular status on a per group basis", but I think it is step in the right direction.

  1. 28  Jorn Bijnsdorp http://www.domino-weblog.nl | 3/15/2006 3:46:03 PM

    I had the chance to install Sametime 7.5 as well. In this release chat is disabled for buddies displaying mobile online. But since Enterprise Messenger for Sametime in BES 4.1 is available now, it should be possible to chat to these users as well. In the old days where only the STEP version of Sametime was available for the BlackBerry, it was indeed very unlikely for someone to respond since there was no sound. But Enterprise Messenger for Sametime in BES 4.1 is just great!

  1. 29  David Price  | 3/15/2006 5:35:48 PM

    Has there been any announcements on the approximate pricing for the Lotus Sametime 7.5 Real-Time Collaboration Gateway? As I understand this will become the preferred way to connect SIP communities and is the only way to connect to AOL, Google and Yahoo. There are other benefits such as allow/disallow.

    Will I still be able to use SIP between Sametime communities or will I need the gateway?

  1. 30  Adam Gartenberg  | 3/15/2006 8:19:37 PM

    @29 There will be no additional charge for the Real-Time Collaboration Gateway for Sametime customers. In addition to allowing the connectivity to the Public IM networks, the RTC Gateway will replace the existing SIP gateway, and so will be needed to connect multiple Sametime communities.

  1. 31  Adam Gartenberg  | 3/15/2006 8:28:15 PM

    @25 A linux server is on the roadmap for Sametime, but will not be available with Sametime 7.5.

    @26/27 Exactly - you will be able to set visibility/do not disturb settings by assigning "everyone but..." settings (e.g., I appear as do not disturb to everyone but my boss, or to my project team, etc.). We will not have granular status per group (to appear online to some people, busy to others, do not disturb to still others), but I do like that suggestion.

    @28 While I can't personally vouch for interactions between the Sametime 7.5 Alpha and the BES server, I have used Sametime 7.5 to exchange IMs with people using IM on their BlackBerry using a WebMessenger client, and have received IMs from people using Sametime 7.5 while using WebMessenger on my BB. This is definitely something that will work with the BES server when Sametime is GA - please feel free to get in touch with me directly with more details on your situation.

  1. 32  Charles Robinson  | 3/16/2006 10:37:52 AM

    Is there anything that shows what the new features are in the limited use version of Sametime? Will it have all the same features as the Sametime Connect client, minus the application sharing, etc.?

    @31 Not having Sametime on linux is a gaping hole in the product line. IBM went to a lot of trouble to announce partnerships and crow about how they were embracing linux, but the support across various products is extremely spotty and confusing.

  1. 33  John Foldager  | 3/17/2006 5:06:48 AM

    @32 I hear you. We're running IBM Server i5 and Linux servers and we're always the last ones to get the new features. When will Sametime 7.5 be available on these platforms and when will DB2 support be available for Domino R7.x?

  1. 34  John Foldager  | 3/17/2006 5:11:04 AM

    @26/@27/@31 I think IBM could get a really really cool (no doubt that it will be but it could get even better) product if it was possible for us (the little business partners) to get alpha and beta versions to try out.

    My suggestion to set different status'es to different groups could be extended with settings to automatically set all groups (or individuals) to "Busy" or "Occupied" and have the individuals who is currently in a conference see "me" as "Online".

  1. 35  Roberto Boccadoro  | 3/17/2006 8:06:11 AM

    @33 - your second question. General availability of the NSFDB2 feature is in Domino.next; in 7.x timeframe it will remain in limited availability as it is now.

    RoB

  1. 36  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/17/2006 9:00:56 AM

    As for the questions about Sametime 7.5 beta....

    There is a beta release coming in April -- contact your IBM rep to nominate you for this beta. While IBM is aware of the interest, there is no decision yet on an open (public) beta. I'll update if I hear anything further.

  1. 37  Charles Robinson  | 3/17/2006 11:44:43 AM

    @33 I was told at Lotusphere that NSFDB2 would be available for iSeries in the 7.02 release, Q3 06. I don't know if that is general or limited availability.

    @36 Ed, What about those of us who have no IBM or Lotus rep?

  1. 38  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/17/2006 12:56:55 PM

    @37 - 1) It was (likely) beta availability. 2) You must have an IBM rep somewhere, but if not, send me an e-mail @work (ed_brill at us dot ibmdotcom.) and I'll see if I can submit you.

  1. 39  John Foldager  | 3/21/2006 7:47:24 AM

    @35/@37(1)/@38(1) Would "Domino.next" mean Notes R8 in this case? If so... then I (and I know some other gues too) have a problem with a couple of customers. We have sold Domino R7 to several customers on the i5 platform (iSeries, AS/400) based on the previously feedback by IBM that DB2 would be supported on all R7 platforms; not on all at first, but in one of the upcomming .1/.2 releases. I'm 100% "blue" when I adress my customers, but this is definetively a show-stopper for us if the support is not comming until a major new release! Our customers have faith in us and in our sayings...

  1. 40  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/21/2006 9:27:30 AM

    John, Not to take this too off topic, but we should talk off-line. Since the NSFDB2 support for iSeries isn't even in beta today, I'm not sure how expectations would have been set that it would be in a .01 or .02 (there are no plans for a .1 or .2). Please mail me and let's discuss how to approach.

  1. 41  Rafael Vogel www.cyberlynxx.com.br | 3/29/2006 3:52:12 PM

    Ed,

    Did you just installed the client 7.5 or the server too?

    If only the client, wich version of ST are you using? What works and what not?

    Thanks,

    Rafael

  1. 42  Brian  | 3/21/2007 10:12:32 AM

    I just installed the Sametime 7.5 client. Our servers have not yet been upgraded. I love the new client and features.

    I have only one complaint/question at present:

    Is there a way within the chat window to resize the columns so the names are not always cut off. You can resize the chat and typing areas to allow for more room in either, but you can not resize (as far as I can tell) the name/chat columns so that the names within the chat are not cut off all the time.

    Is it possible to do this?

    Thanks,

    Brian

  1. 43  Chandra  | 8/6/2008 4:38:38 PM

    I was using Sametime 3.0 for a year before installing Sametime 7.5. I was just happy to see that it automatically saved all the chats. After a while my MSN messenger got an upgrade. Since then Sametime 7.5, I can not see whatever I type in the send box. I can see after I hit the SEND button. It is pretty irritating not seeing what you type. Does any one seen this issue? Is Windows Messenger the real culprit here? Appreciate your honest feedback. I uninstalled Messenger, but still no use. I am back to Sametime 3.0 for now. Thanks for your help.

    Chandra

  1. 44  Sylvia http://nowebsite | 8/16/2010 9:46:14 PM

    Chandra, I have the same issue you described with several of my users.

    But I have not identify a common factor to determinate the root of the problem.

    Even worst, I can not find any information in the web.

    Did you get the solution?

    Thanks a lot.