Countdown....Kudos to You!

One of the things I really enjoy working with ISW is being able to come up with creative ideas and work with the team to deliver them into the market. Over the last few years ISW has punched out some great solutions such as Wildfire and iWildfire which has been great fun and has added some real business values to our clients and users.

Well over the last few months we have been working away quietly at one of the more interesting projects we have done. I am really excited about this one as I can see it really making a difference to how organisations adopt IBM Connections. I have had the pleasure of working with many organisations that have bought into Social Business and IBM Connections. A key part of any Connections implementation is driving user adoption within an organisation. We have a number of strategies around this but a key one is reward and recognition. I am not going to give it away right now but ISW's new offering will help take this to a new level. I have given a little preview to a few of our IBM Connections clients and they are very keen to give it a go so I think we have a great idea here.

We are just putting the final touches on the product now so I will have some more news shortly!

Let me give you a hint though.....Kudos!

Ignition for IBM Connections - Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane here we come!

Following on from successful events in Hobart, Sydney, and Melbourne, ISW is now running our IBM Connections Ignition Breakfast series in Adelaide (22nd Nov), Perth (24th Nov), and Brisbane (1st Dec).

This round table breakfast event has been a great series to date with some fantastic discussions on the REAL business value of Social Business and IBM Connections. I always find it interesting to hear from different organisations about the use cases they have for Connections and how they see the technology improving how they collaborate and work with their colleagues and communities. The session covers what Social Business is all about and outlines a series of use cases that demonstrate real business value. Full of live demo's we find it is a great way to progress people from "So why would I bother?" to "Now I get it!!". We spend some time on how to drive user adoption of Connections within organisations and show an easy path forward.

So if you want to hear about the business value of social software, learn some strategies on driving user adoption, or are in the process of implementing IBM Connections and want to hear about other organisations experiences then please register and join us! We have limited seats so get in quick!

ISW Social Ignition for Lotus Notes 8.5.3

For those that have not noticed yet IBM has just announced the release of IBM Lotus Notes & Domino 8.5.3. This is a great release and one that I know many clients have been looking forward to. You can find out all the information on the formal IBM Annoucement here.

Of particular note however is the following:

Entitlement to IBM Connections Files and Profiles, for no additional charge, allows you to tap into the knowledge of networks of professionals with a single click. This helps users to quickly find skills within their organization and to easily share content with other people and remove the need to send large files through email.

THIS IS AWESOME! ISW has been working with many clients implementing IBM Connections and now to have a entitlement to Profiles and Files as part of your Notes/Domino 8.5.3 licensing adds significant value at no extra cost. So as IBM are adding so much value ISW has decided we had better join in.

ISW are excited to announce a special limited time only Ignition offer on the back of IBM's release of Lotus Notes 8.5.3. The latest release of Lotus Notes includes, at no extra charge, license entitlement to two IBM Connections 3.0.1 features; Profiles and Files. What an opportunity for Notes customers to begin their journey as a Social Business! We all know Notes has been a social platform for many years but now this takes it to a whole new level.

In order to take full advantage of these Connections features, ISW has created Social Ignition, available until December 31st 2011.

What is Social Ignition?
Sure, IBM have given you ‘free’ access to these features, but we want you to enjoy the complete benefits that come from a professional, experienced installation and integration. Get started quickly without the hassles of learning how to install and implement Connections.

This limited time offer will get your Connections Profiles and Files installed and seamlessly integrated into your Notes environment at a pace we challenge you to beat.

$4,500+GST will get you set up either on premise or in the cloud. You will be enjoying your brand new social features faster than Mark Webber does a lap of Albert Park (well almost)!

To make it even better, clients that make the move this year will receive a free entitlement to ISW’s Wildfire Social Aggregator Sidebar Plugin and for clients that we really like a free entitlement to iWildfire ISW's iPhone and iPad App for Connections.

Don’t have the Infrastructure? Need some hosting?
That’s OK, we can do that too with full integration into your Notes/Domino environment. Just ask us for a quote on monthly hosting in the cloud.

To find our more about the offer, visit ISW's website. Or contact us in Australia on 1800 456 001. Or you can tweet me at adambrownaus.

IBM announces Vantage for IBM Connections and IBM Sametime

I often receive questions around governance and compliance for IBM Connections. Also for many years clients have had requirements around compliance for IBM Sametime. Being able to track who said what and when; real time review and capture based on keywords, phrases etc; or to just be able to find information is a legal discovery process, are important requirements for many organisations.

So IBM seems to have addressed some of these areas by partnering with Actiance to release Version 1 of Vantage for IBM Connections and IBM Sametime.

Vantage for IBM Sametime and IBM Connections provides a compliance solution that is up-to-date on the dynamic and interactive communication channels a social business leverages. No matter how small or out-of-context a remark or comment might be, every post can be captured and put into the larger context of a holistic compliance solution for the social business.

Additional compliance capabilities of Vantage for IBM Connections:

• Automated logging of all IBM Connections end-user events (wikis, blogs, forum, activities, communities, profiles, bookmarks, and files)
• Real-time content inspection by keywords, lexicons, restricted phrases, regular expressions, user, type, and date range, that helps enable compliance personnel to easily locate relevant data, and helps to significantly reduce risk by allowing organizations to remove inappropriate content quickly
• Logs and archives original format and images of posts within IBM Connections; real-time review in the context of how they were posted in chronological order that helps to make the legal discovery, review, and reporting process simpler and less costly
• Simple creation and enforcement of granular policies on which content to capture that helps enable organizations to more effectively manage their compliance program
• Global and group role-based access control helps strengthen and simplify an organization's ability to comply with regulations

Additional compliance and security capabilities of Vantage for IBM Sametime:

• Real-time monitoring with alerts of instant messaging and content within file transfers
• Real-time reporting and archiving, granular content filtering rules and event auditing
• Real-time inspections that trigger alerts based on phrases, keywords, or regular expressions significantly reducing risk
• Virus and malware scanning of file transfers
• Creation and enforcement of ethical walls between users and groups
• Monitoring, logging, archiving, and feature controls for federated public Instant Messaging (IM) networks
• Global, group, and employee role-based access control that helps strengthen an organization's ability to comply with regulations
• Monitor, record, export instant messaging, group chat, IBM Sametime Advanced FAQ, announcements, and meeting activity to help ensure that all relevant communications can be retrieved when needed
• Security-rich, intuitive web-based administration and reporting of detailed usage by log in, message count, time interval, and IBM Sametime events
• Content inspection and drill down by keywords, user, type, and date range that helps enable compliance personnel to easily find a precise piece of content
• Create and enforce granular policies of which content to capture that helps allow organizations to effectively manage their compliance program
• Through content filtering, helps prevent data leakage over IBM Sametime and federated public IM platforms

Vantage for IBM Connections and Vantage for IBM Sametime are critical components designed to help all organizations, regardless of industry protect corporate brand and reputation, ensure ethical practices, and maintain compliance with regulations and legislation.

More information on the annoucement can be found here.

This need for better compliance and governance is not isolated to IBM's social platforms but it is good to see IBM reacting to provide a solution in this space.

IBM Connections 3.0.1 Duplicate Emails

There is an issue with clustered environments of Connections 3.0.1 where the Daily and Weekly emails are sent multiple times (once for each node in the cluster). This issue existed in 3.0 (See here) however was resolved with and iFix LO60006 however the same problem exists with 3.0.1.

Upon downloading LO60006 from Fix Central and trying to apply it the update installer indicates that it is not a supported iFix on 3.0.1.

With a little assistance from my good friend Dave Hay I was able to find out that a version of LO60006 existed however you need to request it specifically from IBM via a PMR. Simply tell them you need the 3.0.1 version of the iFix and they should email it to you.

Once the correct iFix was installed problem of Duplicate emails was resolved!