IBM Lotus Web Content Manager 7 - What's New!

The next release of IBM Lotus Web Content Manager is due for release on the 1st Sept. There is a heap of new capabilities and an improved interface for creating content etc. Here is a list that I have gathered so far on the new features etc:

Projects
This is a great new feature that enables you to make changes to multiple content items and design elements and then to publish them as a group or "Project". Group changes can be made to items that multiple people are working on together. This is particularly useful for large site updates/changes where you want to preview all of the changes together.

This also has the impact for a lot of customers I suggest that they will no longer need a Staging server. Staging servers were typically used in scenarios where there were a lot of changes being made and you wanted to see them all before going live. All changes can be bundled together and previewed together. Large site changes can be done in parallel with day to day site changes

Projects are apparently easy to introduce to existing sites and content creation processes

Workflow
There have been some performance improvements here. Draft operations are as fast as operations on published items. Drafts can be made at anytime. Can save as draft outside of the workflow.
Workflow can be added or removed from all items. This means we can now have workflow for all design elements within a library.
Allows for multiple drafts for each item. This is useful when you are preparing some content for release which will be followed shortly there after with another release.
Offset date driven workflow actions. Ie process one week after date etc.
Return to previous workflow stage function

Authoring templates
New file resource type. These files can be rendered directly as well as being listed in menus and navigators.
Default Presentation Template for authoring templates
Taxonomy driven option selection fields

Syndication and Administration
Wizard to simplify setting up syndication.
Pending and failed items view for syndication in the syndicators admin portlet
Cross fix pack level syndication
System properties now editable via WAS resources in WAS admin console
Doc improvements

Structural Changes
Site Areas have replaced Sites at the top of the content library.
Folders-components, author templates, can be organized into folders with security inheritance. This will probably become the best practice for managing security of content/design items in a libary. You will set the security on a folder and then this will inherit to the items in the folders.

WCM Tags
Tags can now be entered with square brackets
Single property tag for accessing info about an item

User Improvement Enhancements
Significant user interface simplification
Web 2.0 built into authoring to accelerate content creation
Favorites and bookmarks. Favorites are context aware
Out of the box content. When you create a library it will prepopulate with basic site areas, templates, workflow etc. This should speed up the initial build of sites.
New clean look and feel for authoring portlet
Easier navigation and access to open items
Recent items. Persistent across sessions and client machines
Enhanced view filtering based on dojo popup.
Tag and design Helpers. To help add wcm tags to HTML and rich text items

What's new in rendering?
WSRP support
Remote actions supported.
Content page resolution filters
Tagging and rating out of the box

So all up it is a great new release and I am looking forward to leveraging the new capabilities.

Lotus Knows Sydney Airport

I was just walking thru Sydney Airport on my way to Singapore for the Portal Executive Summit conference and what do I find......

ISW Melbourne based Software Engineer - Lotus/WebSphere Administration & Development

Melbourne based Software Engineer - WebSphere Administration & Development

ISW has a new position for a Software Engineer at our Melbourne office. ISW is an Australian Software Engineering & IT Services company with a focus on IBM technologies. With offices located in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney, ISW has a growing national and international client base. ISW develops software solutions and provides IT services around IBM solutions for its clients and also develops and markets its own branded software products. ISW has been recognised thru awards by IBM and the industry as a leading IBM Partner nationally on a number of recent occasions.

This is a Melbourne based position as part of our national Software Engineering and Services team.

Majority of work to be performed in Victoria however some work may be required interstate.

Focus on IBM Software, particularly with skills/qualifications for both Administration and Development around WebSphere (WAS, WebSphere Portlet Factory, RAD) and solutions running on WebSphere (Portal, Connections, Sametime, Quickr, Commerce, Process Server).

Skills in Tivoli Security (TIM/TAM) Administration also very desirable. If you happen to also have some Cognos BI skills this would be great.

ISW has a great team of talented people and finding motivated and customer focused engineers is key to our growth. If you are looking to join a growing team working on great projects in a fantastic work environment then please get in touch. You can email me at abrown@isw.net.au



Wildfire 1.4 Released on OpenNTF - Mac & Linux now supported

I am pleased to let you know that we have just released Wildfire 1.4 on OpenNTF. This release finally fixes some of the issues we have had with the Mac and Linux clients as well as a few other requested improvements.

New features in WildFire V1.4.0
• Linux & Mac Support (including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, HTML Links etc)
• HTML Links open in Default Browser
• Facebook Authentication improvement
• Facebook Feeds from “Mobile Web”
• SocialText Signals improvement

So check it out and please provide feedback/report bugs/request new features and we will see what we can add for 1.5 down the track. You can get it at http://wildfire.openntf.org .

Integrating Lotus Connections with WebSphere Portal - Part 3

Ok so now for Blogs. In past entries we have integrated Homepage, Profiles, Communities, Search, Dogear, Wikis, Files, and Activies. Blogs initially proved to be a challenge but wasn't that much harder in the end.

The main differences with Blogs are that:

1) You need to use a slightly different script.

2) You need to update the JSP's but also the Blog Theme templates

3) You need to use wsadmin to update the timestamp and restart the server.

So the script to use is:

<script type="text/javascript">

    #if($model.getRequestParameter('FromPortal') == 'true')
  document.cookie="FromPortal=true; path=/";
    #else 
 if(testCookieForFromPortal()) {
  document.cookie="FromPortal=true; path=/";
 } 
    #end

    function testCookieForFromPortal()    {
        if (getCookieValue("FromPortal") == "true") {
                return true;
            } else {
                return false;
            }
    }
    function getCookieValue(cookieName)    {
        var retVal = "";
        var i = document.cookie.indexOf(cookieName);
        if (i != -1) {
            var iVal = i + cookieName.length + 1;
            var j = document.cookie.indexOf(";", iVal);
            if (j < 0) retval = document.cookie.substring(iVal);
            else retval = document.cookie.substring(iVal,j);
        }
        return retVal;
    }
    // the themeTemplateURL variable should be set to the URL defined
    // as the src attribute of the <script/> tag generated by the
    // WebAppIntegrator portlet.

</script>

Update the following files:

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-adminpage.jsp

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-embeddedpage.jsp

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-mainmenupage.jsp

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-simplepage.jsp

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-tabbedpage.jsp

Themes:

Update each Theme by adding the script to the _header.vm file . The themes are located in the blogs.was/themes directory.

Update Timestamp:

Next you need to update the timestamp for the configuration files:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ltscnnct/v2r0/topic/com.ibm.connections.25.help/t_admin_common_customize_postreq.html

and then restart the servers.

And that should be it!

So we now have all features with the ability to add the ?FromPortal=true paramater to the URL and the Top Navigation Banner will disappear.

Once this is all done integrating with Portal is really easy using the Web Page Portlet. Simply add the Portet to a page and point the configuration of the Portlet to the appropriate URL. When users access Connections within the Portal the top navigation automagically disappears and you can use the Portal navigation instead. I found setting the Web Page Portlet to a height of 1100 meant that you never get a scroll bar in the Portlet.

The next step for me to to try and do the same with the Web Application Integrator Portlet which will mean that we effectively wrap the Portal Navigation around Connections rather than use the iFrame that the Web Page Portlet method users. This is fairly easy but first I need to build our custom theme into the Web App Integrator. Might be Part 4!