Running DAOS on Domino 8.5.1?  If so, then you need to know about this fixpack:

Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 1 Interim Fix 1 (8.5.1 FP1 IF1) - DAOS Fixes

Abstract

A series of DAOS (Domino Attachment and Object Service) issues have been identified and fixed by IBM. We recommend any customer running DAOS to apply this interim fix or release that addresses these issues. Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 1 Interim Fix 1 is available that addresses these DAOS issues.

 
Content

A series of DAOS (Domino Attachment and Object Service) issues have been identified and fixed by IBM. We recommend that any customer running DAOS apply this interim fix or a later release that addresses these issues. Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 1 Interim Fix 1 is available to address these DAOS issues.

The package can be downloaded from Fix Central:


http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/


8.5.1 FP1 customers can download and install Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 1 Interim Fix 1 to receive the DAOS fixes before 8.5.1 FP2 is available. Customers already running with a Domino hotfix for issues not listed below should open a PMR to have a combination hotfix built. The hotfix would be on Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 1, because that is a prerequisite baseline due to other DAOS content in that Fix Pack. The following table lists the hotfix versions per platform for this interim fix.


Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 1 Interim Fix 1 (8.5.1 FP1 IF1) - DAOS Fixes

Platform        Hotfix #

Windows - Domino 32 Bit        851FP1HF41

Windows - Domino 64Bit        851FP1HF45

Unix (AIX) - Domino 32 Bit        851FP1HF42

Unix (AIX) - Domino 64Bit        851FP1HF44

Unix (Solaris)        851FP1HF43

IBM i V5R4        L502818

IBM i V6R1         L602824

RHEL and SLES        851FP1HF46


The fixes in this Interim Fix will be included in the upcoming Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 2 and Domino 8.5.2 release.


This Interim fix addresses the following SPR's:


SPR         Description

JGIR7ZH7J2         Performance issue with DAOS Prune

JGIR7ZHW5S         Error: The DAOS catalog cannot be resynchronized after a synchronization

WSCN7ZS4HJ         Error: Log File Full after a synchronization

DROO7YXTC3         Fix for DAOS missing report to consult the daoscat.nsf

WSCN7YJHRH        Rebuild issue with daoscat.nsf and daos.cfg

RAGG7W5HBF        Error: Document attachment is invalid trying to send encrypted mail

JPMS7TXJXM         Error: GeneratePathArray. PANIC: LookupHandle: handle out of range

DROO7XBS9B         Error: Log file is Full errors when compacting a database into DAOS

DROO7YANZ6        Opening an object in a DAOS enabled database returns the error "array index out of bounds"

DROO7ZNPZ8         QUICK mode for DAOS Resync



These fixes are also included in upcoming 8.5.1 Fix Pack 2 and 8.5.2.


Check this link for status on fix pack / maintenance release availability:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/r5fixlist.nsf/%28Progress%29/851%20FP2



By: Stuart McIntyre | 1 Comments | On: 10 March 2010 18:11:41 | Tags:  daos  8.5.1  fixpack 

Along the same lines as the LotusWikis.com redirects I mentioned earlier today, you can now use LotusInfocenters.com to easily access all the Lotus product Infocenters:

Simply enter LotusInfocenters.com/'name of the product' and you'll get redirected instantaneously to the appropriate Infocenter, e.g.:

LotusInfocenters.com the list of all the Lotus/Portal documentation sites
LotusInfocenters.com/notes Lotus Notes/Domino infocenter
LotusInfocenters.com/domino Lotus Notes/Domino infocenter
LotusInfocenters.com/quickr Lotus Quickr infocenter
LotusInfocenters.com/sametime Lotus Sametime infocenter
LotusInfocenters.com/connections Lotus Connections infocenter
LotusInfocenters.com/symphony Lotus Symphony infocenter
LotusInfocenters.com/designer Lotus Designer infocenter
LotusInfocenters.com/appdev Lotus Designer infocenter


There are more redirects configured than listed above, so most links you try should work... Let me know if you need additional aliases added or that there are Infocenters that I've missed.



By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 10 March 2010 14:49:40 | Tags:  infocenters  lotus 

I don't know about you, but I love the Lotus product wikis - they're becoming treasure troves of useful information voluntarily entered by both IBMers and members of the community.  As the 'barrier to entry' of content submission is much lower than with the Lotus Infocenters, more relevant content gets added, kept up to date and modified according to best practice.  It's getting to the stage when we would struggle to do without them on most complex projects we take on.

So that said, what's the problem?

I cannot find the blasted things using a memorable URL
!

I tend to end up using Google to search for the individual wiki I need, even when I've been there multiple times in the past.  'What's up with using a bookmark?' I hear you ask... Well, like many consultants, I'm very rarely using my own machine as I'm expected to used the PC, VM or remote desktop session that my customer gives me, and so my bookmarks aren't always available.  To some extent, IBM doesn't help this as the name of the site isn't as simple as it might be (www-10.lotus.com) and the wiki database names are formatted differently for many of the products.

My solution?

LotusWikis.com

Simply enter LotusWikis.com/'name of the product' and you'll get redirected instantaneously to the appropriate wiki, e.g.:

LotusWikis.com the list of all the Lotus/Portal wikis
LotusWikis.com/notes Lotus Notes/Domino wiki
LotusWikis.com/domino Lotus Notes/Domino wiki
LotusWikis.com/quickr Lotus Quickr wiki
LotusWikis.com/sametime Lotus Sametime wiki
LotusWikis.com/connections Lotus Connections wiki
LotusWikis.com/symphony Lotus Symphony wiki
LotusWikis.com/designer Lotus Designer wiki
LotusWikis.com/appdev Lotus Designer wiki
LotusWikis.com/lotuslive LotusLive wiki


There are more redirects configured than listed above, so most links you try should work... Let me know if you need additional aliases added or that there are Wikis that I've missed.

Hope this helps some of you be more productive when searching for Lotus content - to be honest it's fulfilling a selfish need of my own, but if it helps the community then all the better!



By: Stuart McIntyre | 9 Comments | On: 10 March 2010 11:45:42 | Tags:  lotus  wikis 

Whilst Collaboration Matters is best known as a Lotus partner, and for our work on Lotus Connections specifically, its worth restating that we are focused on social collaboration adoption, not on one particular vendor's tools.

To that end, we are also a partner of Jive software, and love the work they are doing with their SBS social suite and particularly their new Ideation ideas management product.  This new ad gives an overview of where they're headed with their latest release...

What if work could be SOCIAL again?



By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 9 March 2010 22:09:00 | Tags:  social  jive  sbs 

If an organisation becomes a Lotus ISV, i.e. builds products and solutions on the Lotus portfolio of products, IBM has certain unwritten expectations (they're probably written as well, but I can't find them on Partnerworld)...

Expectations that probably include:

  • That the code written will be reliable and secure
  • That the product will not be marketed in a way that conflicts with Lotus' own marketing
  • That the product will keep up with support for new versions of the Lotus products

All fairly reasonable from where I'm standing - the ISV benefits from the relationship with IBM and there is a quid pro quo to be maintained in that relationship.

Of course, IBM/Lotus is also a Lotus ISV - they build products that rely on Lotus Domino as the framework for collaborative functionality - e.g. Lotus Quickr services for Domino and Lotus Sametime.

My reason for writing this post is that I feel that the final point listed above is not always maintained by Lotus itself, and I think at times, this damages the reputation of the Domino portfolio.  

An example of this is Quickr 8.2's support for Lotus Domino 8.5.1.  There has been a long-running forum discussion about this issue, with IBM's formal response being:
Lotus Quickr 8.2 has not undergone complete System verification test with Domino 8.5.1. While development and test are not aware of any issues specifically related to the Domino 8.5.1 code stream, IBM has not performed sufficient testing to declare the latest Domino maintenance release supported.

The Domino 8.5 embedded version included with Quickr 8.2 continues to be the fully tested and supported Domino platform for current Quickr customers.
This stance causes significant issues in many customers Collaboration Matters works with and supports, as they either already have, or plan to upgrade their entire estate to Lotus Domino 8.5.1FP1.  

I do recognise that testing a large product such as Quickr on every release of Domino is a significant task, and also that IBM's support of so many languages and platforms does make the Lotus products different to the average ISV's, but I still see this as something that can and should be improved.

So readers, what do you think - is Lotus a well-behaved Lotus ISV?



By: Stuart McIntyre | 1 Comments | On: 2 March 2010 07:08:54 | Tags:  contentious  lotus 

Remind you of anyone?

XKCD: Devotion to Duty



By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 22 February 2010 17:23:56 | Tags:  xkcd  sysadmins 

Interesting move by Salesforce.com - clearly looking to expand their solutions to compete with offerings from LotusLive and Microsoft amongst others:

CRM software vendor Salesforce.com has rolled out the beta version of its Chatter application, which is designed to integrate enterprise collaboration with cloud computing and social networking, for around 100 customers to try the software on their existing infrastructure.

The company has designed the software in an attempt to compete with IBM's Lotus Live collaboration tool and Microsoft's SharePoint software, by offering Twitter/Facebook like social communications integrated with enterprise software to allow a better communication flow between the employees of an organisation.

Commenting on the launch of beta test version of Chatter, Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com said in a statement that “Consumer internet services such as Facebook and Twitter have shown us better ways to collaborate. Salesforce Chatter changes the collaboration in the enterprise, without the cost and complexity of software.”

According to the official statement released by the company, Chatter enterprise collaboration tool is designed to allow employees to create their business profiles that will contain their contact details, work history and their respective areas of expertise.



By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 18 February 2010 14:18:32 | Tags:  salesforce  lotuslive  cloud 

The Apple Store

Rumours seem to suggest a new dual-code i7-based Macbook Pro. I hope so!



By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 9 February 2010 12:22:28 | Tags:  apple  store 

Now here's a great case-study...

The Social Media Examiner takes an in-depth and very appealing look at IBM's social media strategy, and is surprised at what it finds:

“Be yourself.”  It’s one of the rules of social media. If you’re blogging, tweeting or Facebooking for business, be real—or you won’t be followed.

Yet, how do you pull off “authentic” while maintaining the company brand message?

It’s tough enough for a small business. What if you’re #2 on Business Week’s best global brands list, with nearly 400,000 employees across 170 countries?

At IBM, it’s about losing control.
As a 'semi-insider' (a business partner that works with IBM on a daily basis) it's easy to lose site at just how innovative IBM is at times.  The article takes a fresh look from the outside at IBM's take on social media, and it brought it back to me how 'out there' IBM's approach really is:
No Policing

IBM does have social media guidelines. The employee-created guidelines basically state that IBMers are individually responsible for what they create and prohibit releasing proprietary information.

But the document lacks any mention of brand messages or values.

Nor does IBM corporate regulate employee social media activity. Only three people hold social media roles at the corporate level, and oversight isn’t part of their jobs.

We don’t police. The community’s largely self-regulating, and so there hasn’t really been a need to have someone go about and circuit these boards and blogs,” Christensen said. “Employees sort of do that themselves… And that’s worked wonderfully well.”
But it seems to work:
The Payoff

IBM invests in creating its own social media tools. But it’s earning that back by monetizing some of those as part of the IBM product portfolio. The other part of the investment equation—employees’ time—doesn’t seem to be a concern, according to Christensen.

That’s because collaboration and knowledge make IBM what it is. And that’s a company with $12.3 billion in earnings on more than $100 billion in revenue with a 44.1% gross profit margin in 2008.

Christensen says to date there’s not an effort to tag a return on investment to its social media efforts.

“I think if you’d ask any senior executive at IBM, ‘How important is it for our employees to be smarter?‘, inherently they understand that these tools can play in helping with that,” Christensen said. “I don’t see myself rarely or ever having that hard conversation on the value of engaging employees in these spaces.”
A super article and one well worth passing around to others in your organisation, particularly if you're still at the stage of formulating a social media strategy or social computing policy.



By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 5 February 2010 07:00:44 | Tags:  social  ibm 

Interesting statements from Gartner (and yes, I was being selective when I grabbed that quote):

Gartner Reveals Five Social Software Predictions for 2010 and Beyond

Analysts Share Best Practices for Embracing Social Networking at Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit 2010, 9-11 March in Baltimore and 15-16 September in London

STAMFORD, Conn., February 2, 2010 —   “A lot has happened in a year within the social software and collaboration space. The growing use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook by business users has resulted in serious enterprise dialogue about procuring social software platforms for the business,” said Mark R. Gilbert, research vice president at Gartner and co-chair of the Portals, Content and Collaboration (PCC) Summit. “Success in social software and collaboration will be characterized by a concerted and collaborative effort between IT and the business.”

Gartner offers five key predictions for social software:
1.        By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.
2.        By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.
3.        Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.
4.        Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.
5.        Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

For more information on each of these predictions, check out Gartner's site.

What do I think?

I would say that numbers 1 and 2 are right on the money.  Micro-blogging is being adopted at an incredible rate, and is one of the reasons why the latest Social Collaboration platforms such as Lotus Connections 2.5 and SocialText Signals are taking such a hold in the marketplace.  Both predictions also validate IBM's vision in Project Vulcan, bringing the traditional means of collaboration and communication (email and IM for example) into a Social interface.

I'm not so sure about prediction 3.  I struggle with the idea of Social Media Initiatives - to be it sounds like the kind of terminology used by organisations and marketing agencies that actually don't understand social computing.  Social Media is becoming ubiquitous and has a part to play in every marketing or sales initiative. Having a Social Media Initiative is missing the fact that this should be completely integrated with every other aspect of an organisation's sales and marketing efforts.

Prediction 4 is interesting, particularly given the iPad announcement last week.  Users of Smart Phones and iPad-style devices will become ever more dependent on features like predictive text, gestures, built-in GPS and 3G and so on, and so the old model of desktop of laptop devices chained to a network has to change. 70% is ambitious though...

Number 5 seems very conservative to me - already plenty of forward-looking organisations are using social network analysis to help with performance reviews and organisational improvements. This will only expand over time.

Do you agree?



By: Stuart McIntyre | 2 Comments | On: 4 February 2010 13:47:26 | Tags:  social  email  gartner