Quickr 8.1 New Features

Quickr 8.1 has just been released. The announcement letter is here.

The new features are:

New features in Lotus Quickr Standard 8.1

• Usability enhancements to the browser experience:
• Improved navigation and breadcrumbs throughout
• Streamlined context menus
• Simplified check-in/check-out and version control
• Single-page member management
• Note: These usability enhancements apply to Lotus Quickr services for Domino
• Lotus Connections integration:
• From a Lotus Quickr place, access an individual's Lotus Connections profile (in place of the "person card")
• Lotus Notes 8.0.1 connector:
• View and access Lotus Quickr places from the Notes side shelf
• Drag and drop attachments and entire e-mail contents
• Lotus Symphony connector:
• Context menu within editors to contribute and share content in Lotus Quickr places
• Microsoft Outlook connectors:
• View and access Lotus Quickr places
• Drag and drop attachments and entire e-mail contents
• Personal file sharing:
• Streamlined place for an end user to store important files and share them with others
• Available separately (with the Lotus Quickr connectors) as Lotus Quickr Entry
• Administrator enhancements:
• Policy settings for places (maximum size, days inactive before locking)
• Easy-to-use browser interface for administrators with improved reporting
• Note: These administrator enhancements apply to Lotus Quickr services for Domino.

New features in Lotus Quickr Entry 8.1:

• Simple personal file sharing improves personal productivity and reduces space required for e-mail attachments.
• Single personal place for storing and sharing content accessible from any of the Lotus Quickr connectors or a Web browser.
• Content moves seamlessly from Lotus Quickr entry places to standard Lotus Quickr team places.

I am particularly looking forward to having the Notes 8.0.1 sidebar connector. I have been using the beta sidebar for a while and it is great but was always a little buggy (which you would expect off course). Now that it is released I will be able to get all our staff using it. I think that this feature alone dramatically increases the usability of the product for file sharing. It is so simple and accessible having Quickr in your sidebar.

The other thing I am interested in understanding better is the Personal File Sharing feature. Not quite sure how this works yet but am interested how easy it is to share files across boundaries. This is where Quickr needs to compete with the ease of say MS Groove file sharing capabilities. The benefit that I see Quickr having over Groove is that Groove requires each user sharing to install Groove whereas Quickr is accessible from the browser.

The Symphony Connectors are also a big step.

Google Charts API & Lotus Notes

If you havn't seen the Google Charts API then you should have a look. It really is a clever service that enables you for form a simple URL and the service will return a PNG image of the according chart. In forming the URL you simply add a series of parameters to define the chart format, colours, axis titles etc. You also pass your data set in the URL and wammo a cool looking chart is returned.

So I thought this was pretty neat as I was planning on implementing a Performance Scorecard type application in a Lotus Notes database. Basically I wanted to create a chart that a user could use to visually represent a KPI of billable hours vs hours available in a month. I was going to extend this to many more charts for different KPI's and was pretty excited at how easy to use the google charts api is.

However my plan has been thwarted!. Lotus Notes clients do not support png images! Yes I know amazing. You can import a PNG but this seems to convert it to a bmp. You can't refer to a png in an image tag to be viewed in a form or page for instance.

There seems to be a few SPR's logged with IBM on this topic:
SPR KSOA4CVSQG states that the Notes Browser does not support PNG files.
SPR MLAT5GSUAK states that a PNG does not display and has been closed as "not a bug".
SPR PBAO65AKFU is an enhancement request asking for future support of the PNG image format. Whenever opening a PMR to ask for PNG support refer to this SPR.

however it seems there is no immediate plan to support PNG.

So I thought I would post an idea on IdeaJam but found it is already there. So if you agree that this would be a good enhancement then please go vote for it.

Clear Your Desk!

A few more IBM end user marketing videos.

IBM Lotus Sametime 8 Entry and Standard Edn

IBM are releasing on 3rd Dec IBM Lotus Sametime Release 8. They now have Standard and an Entry edition.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22698.wss 

Notes 8 Video

IBM seems to have really taken to YouTube for promoting Notes & Domino 8 with another new video. This one is about the Notes 8 client. It is quick but does highlight some of the new features in Notes 8.