From my mailbox

Thank you again, and please say a prayer for me (struggling with ST8.5… after one year passed
laughing at OCS for its cumbersome architecture it is sad to be hit by Nemesis…)

Just out of curiosity, what do you (or your customers) use Sametime for?.  The vast majority of my customers use Sametime only for awareness and chat.  Not meetings.  When chat/awareness is in, it’s loved but they rarely use it past these features.

Apologies for the lazyweb question, but
I have limited time with prepping for DANNOTES sessions today.  An
interesting question from last night.  Is there a way to have a "button/link"
that will pre-populate the sametime community details for a user into their
sametime client (or embedded 8.x notes/sametime client)?  We were
discussing how useful it would that after people register with a site,
they could have the details (not authentication details!) pre-populated
for them.  If there is a simple answer, can you point me to a link?

Live blog of David Marshak’s review
of the future of the product (Sametime next)

Sametime "8" to be released.
 Not a major release, but re engineered to run on the domino 8 server
(saves you having to keep an older server)

Will also support Mac Video, Office
2007 support and a few other extras

8.5/9.0 builds… are major architecture
upgrades of the Sametime server.

It is likely that the meeting server
and the chat server will separate as the chat server is very strong, but
the meeting server requires major re-work.

Chat with a "role"  For
example a person specified as the sales person…  This role can be
assigned to a user.

Community chats / persistent chat sites

Automated knowledge searching/mining

Skilltap (a feature in IBM already)…Question
gets posted to Skilltap, person can answer and the information is automatically
added to a FAQ.  The next person that asks the question can search
the Skilltap faq.  You can also rate the person that answers the question.
 This is currently being built into the connections product aswell

Instant screen sharing – peer to peer
based without opening an instant meeting (nice support feature for helpdesks).

Click to call enhancements – middleware
that will work with multiple back end connectors… call control and location
based call management

Context meeting support

New meeting UI

Chris Miller again

Extending the sametime client with plugins…
for admins

First of all, minimise the sametime
client using the minimise button… don’t use the X button

You can open a plougin using winrar
and modify it locally.  If you open the plugin.xml file you can modify
it directly.  Dropping in the jar file to the /plugins directory and
restarting the sametime client.

inside stconfig/community  client
document.  URL for UIM Provisioning:  (place in link to plugin)

Or in 7.5 – use policies – Sametime
update site URL… enter in the xml file for the update

You need to restart the entire server
or the stpolicy.exe file

The default policy puts everything into
sub policies – not editable… you should create a seperate "new"
policy for users.  BUT, you cant do that….it is still greyed out…

In ND8 you have a site update.ntf database,
you can point this as the update site (specified in the sametime policy).

The siteupdate database can also dynamically
check for updates on what was added to it.. (e.g. from eclipse).

NEVER CHANGE THE NAME of the site update
site… as this will stop the update plugins working

There is a ini variable to set on the
server to prevent users from manually installing plugins in sametime.  In
Notes clients, there is a dynamic policy to do this.

Plugins can be disabled.. by running
a plugin. uninstall.xml that will remove plugins that should not be there…
this is just out.  Chris will post more on this.

<rant>

If it is recommended to use Domino/Sametime
with LDAP as opposed to the domino directory (i.e. using domino/ldap directory)
why, oh why is it alwasy sooo much easier to configure stuff with Sametime
using the domino directory.

</rant>

Trying to figure a few things out here.
 Once I have it working, I will hopefully have a good Quickr/Sametime/Domino
SNTT post.

Chris,
Carl
and I did a podcast on ST7.5 a few weeks ago (my first).  It is available from iTunes or on Chris’ site.

As requested, I have pasted in some screenshots of the Sametime 7.1 client,
taken from IBM Presentations….. Is it just me that cant wait for this
badly needed upgrade!

I saw the sametime 7.1 front end today
(screenshots only guys).  WOW!.  Huge improvement and looks great!
 Stay tuned until I can get someone to let me publish them.

.. and I was really, really hoping for a new look for the Sametime client.
  The new client image is to the right.   It looks old and clunky
compared to the newer LCS clients and free messenger client software.  Its
a great product, but as ever Lotus will be hurt by the front end.  Carl
pointed the
lack of development of the GUI in the releases of Sametime since the beginning.
 Not much has changed here.  Sametime is the best corporate IM
product, but its the pretty front end that users will go for.   Lotus
has learned with Hannover
which looks amazing, and the integrated IM client is excellent, but the
dedicated client needs a revamp!

Update: – as I have been linked to by
Peter’s site now, I just want to clarify one point.  Presence awareness
in Sametime/Domino is not in question.  Run a 6.5x client and you
will see it everywhere.  In fact, this site will be IM aware in the
next few weeks, all using the simple code that comes for usage with sametime.
 You will be able to tell when I am working on my site (or even reading
it), and chat with me.  My post was about the thick client, thats
all.