IBM/Lotus

Blogging / ConnectED / Lotusphere / Personal / WordPress

Blogging anniversary – 7 years!

Yesterday marked my 7 year anniversary of this blog. It was in January 2008 I created my TexasSwede blog on BleedYellow.com, and in October 2012 I moved it to my own domain and switched to Wordpress hosting. My blogging frequency have been going up and down, based on what's been going on in the IBM/Lotus world as well as how busy or motivated I have been. Over the years I have written 404 blog entries (including this one), making it an average of almost 58 entries/year or close to 5 entries/month. So why am I blogging? I am not sure there is just one simple answer to that. I think it mainly have been a combination of wanting to share information I have gathered over the years , as well as wanting to be seen and/or recognized. The latter was more of a result of my blogging, not a reason in itself to blog, but it encouraged me to continue. I had started blogging a couple of times earlier using the different Domino based blogs available, but those attempts ended up being just one or two posts. The one exception was in 1995 when I "blogged" during a scuba diving trip to Egypt. I wrote a web diary every day on the IBM Thinkpad 701 laptop I brought with me and also added photos I took with an early Kodak digital camera (DC-40 I believe I used on that trip). I did not have any kind of internet access during the trip, so I uploaded the page and pictures after I got home. Also, as opposed to a modern blog, the oldest/first day was at the top, as in a more traditional narrative/diary. I lost the text of that diary since, but some of the pictures have survived. In 2008 I started blogging right before Lotusphere. I wrote a couple of entries the first few days, and I got good feedback on them, as well as several hundred views. So I got encouraged and continued. After about a month I got brave enough to start sharing code on my blog, and I also started using it as a way to expand on answers I gave to question in the developerWorks forums. The next year at Lotusphere more people recognized me from my blog, and that further made me feel like it was worth my time and effort to share information. Eventually my posts became less frequent. One reason was that it was hard to post code on the IBM Connections based blog, and only registered users could comment, limiting the public participation. Those were among the main reasons for my move to Wordpress in 2012, together with a desire to use my own domain. With Wordpress it was suddenly much easier to post code and embedded videos, and my blogging started up again. I could now also easily blog from my smartphone. I have been lucky enough that my boss let me blog more or less during work hours, and even publish code and information I generate for work. Usually I do…

4 Comments
January 19, 2015
ConnectED / IBM/Lotus / Lotusphere / Notes/Domino / Personal / Verse

One week to ConnectED 2015 in Orlando

Today it is one week until IBM ConnectED, the conference formerly known as Lotusphere (and briefly also as IBM Connect) opens the doors in Orlando. This might be the last year the Lotus faithfuls gather at Walt Disney Swan to drink from the firehose of knowledge, as Lotusphere used to be described. Back in 2006 (if my memory is correct), IBM announced during the conference that the company had renewed the contract with Dolphin & Swan until 2015, a year that then was far in the future. Now we are there, and I an convinced that IBM will merge Lotusphere/Connect/ConnectED with one of their other big conferences. This year we will see many changes. Some are already known, other we will probably see when or after we arrive. Some of the known ones: The conference will be smaller, the number of attendees have been limited to around 1500. The number of IBM:ers have also been reduced to a few hundred. The conference will take place (almost) in it's entirety at the Swan conference center. A few sessions have been listed on the official site as taking place at Dolphin, like BP101: @IF("Its Really Good";"It MUST Be Notes";"Must Be Something Else") 25 Notes on 25 Years of Notes! with Carl Tyler, Mat Newman and Alan Lepofsky. ConnectED is more technical than the last few years, with less sessions dedicated to case studies and panels, and more focus on the technical aspects of the products. The conference is one day shorter, ending Wednesday instead of Thursday. There will be no theme park visit/party, instead there will be a poolsite party Tuesday. The Sunday night welcome reception will take place on the Swan Lake Terrace, as well as in the new TechnOasis area, which replaces the solutions showcase and social café from the past. On a more personal front, some of my long-time friends in the Lotus/IBM/ICS community will not be attending this year, for a number of different reasons. They will all be missed. But many will still be there, and there are even several attending only the social events and not the actual conference. That is a sign of how strong the community is. I hope this will continue at whatever conference Lotusphere get assimilated into. The social part is the best part of the community. Like Volker Weber said a few years ago: Let me tell you something: life is about people, not about technology. Your friends will be your friends. And you will see them again. And again, and again. Technology changes, friendship lasts. In change, there lies opportunity. I am looking forward to the people of ConnectED 2015. And the technology. I am for example interested to learn more about the roadmap for IBM Verse as well as Notes/Domino on premises and in the cloud. I also hope to learn more about IBM BlueMix. See you in Orlando!

0 Comments
January 19, 2015
Bootstrap / IBM/Lotus / jQuery / Notes/Domino

File Upload in Classic Domino Web using jQuery and Bootstrap

This week I was asked to create a simple web form where customers could fill out a few fields, attach two files and submit it for review. The document with the information and attachments are saved into a Domino database, so it can be processed thought the Notes client by the internal staff. These days I mainly use Bootstrap (and jQuery) to design the webpages, since Bootstrap makes it very quick and easy to get a nice clean look of the page. Using jQuery allows me to do some nice manipulations of the DOM, hiding and showing sections as needed for example, or disable the submit button until all required fields have been filled out. It has been a long time since I worked with the file upload control in Domino, and it was as ugly as I remembered it. But I knew I had seen some nice jQuery/Bootstrap file upload controls, so I located one that I liked in the Jasny plugin library. If you haven't already, take a look at those components! So how do I tie this control to the Domino file upload control? As so many times before, Jake Howlett and his excellent site CodeStore comes to the rescue. He wrote an article back in 2005 about how to fake a file upload control, and that code can be used as-is, and combined with the Jasny plugin. Here is what my code looks like after doing that: <div class="col-md-6"> <label>Producer Agreement</label> <!-- File Upload --> <div class="fileinput fileinput-new input-group" data-provides="fileinput" title="Attach file here"> <div class="form-control" data-trigger="fileinput"> <i class="glyphicon glyphicon-file fileinput-exists"></i>&nbsp; <span class="fileinput-filename"></span> </div> <span class="input-group-addon btn btn-default btn-file"> <span class="fileinput-new">Select file</span> <span class="fileinput-exists">Change</span> <input type="file" name="%%File.1" class="required"> </span> <a href="#" class="input-group-addon btn btn-default fileinput-exists" data-dismiss="fileinput">Remove</a> </div> </div> On the second file upload control I just change the name to "%%File.2". The form tag must have the encoding set to multipart/form-data, so this is what it looks like for me: <form name="SubmissionForm" id="SubmissionForm" action="AgencySubmission?CreateDocument" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data"> It all worked perfectly. I was able to attach the files and submit the form, and the files showed up in the Notes client. What I did not like was the dreaded "Form processed" message. I tried a few different things, using the $$Return field, etc. But nothing worked. To make a long story short(er), and without diving too deep into details, I had the form setup to render as HTML, not as a Notes form, thus using ?ReadForm to display it. But when I changed it to Notes on the form properties, the Domino server added it's own Javascript code to submit the form (in addition to extra HTML). I found out a way to trick Domino to "hide" that Javascript code, so only my jQuery/Javascript code was sent to the browser. Then I wrote my own code to do a HTTP POST submission of the form as multipart/form-data: $('form#SubmissionForm').submit(function(event){ // Disable the default form submission event.preventDefault(); // Gat all form data var formData = new FormData($(this)[0]); $('input').each( function() { formData.append($(this).attr('id'),$(this).val()); });…

6 Comments
January 8, 2015
ConnectED / IBM/Lotus / Lotusphere

We are the IBM Champions

This morning I received a mail from IBM telling me that for the second year I was selected as one of the 96 IBM Champions. Last year I was very surprised to be selected and to be in the company of so many of the experts in the ICS/Lotus community that I for years looked up to and have been inspired by. I am extremely proud and grateful to have been selected again, and I will continue to post blog entries and code as a way to give back to the community. Many people (some of them are now fellow Champions) have been helping me in the past, and the last few years I have been trying to help others the same way. You can read the public announcement here. Oliver Heinz, the Community Manager for the ICS Champions, also shares some details about the selection process in a blog entry. I am looking forward to meet the other Champions (especially the 22 new ones for 2015) together with many other long-time friends at IBM ConnectED in Orlando in less than two months. See you there, I hope!   Here is the list of the 2015 IBM Champions for IBM Collaborative Solutions (ICS): Adam Brown Jesse Gallagher Olaf Boerner Andrea Fontana John Dalsgaard Oliver Busse Andreas Ponte John Head Patrice Vialor Andrew Barickman John Jardin Patrick Hope Arshad Khalid Julian Robichaux Paul Calhoun Benedek Menesi Karl-Henry Martinsson Paul Della-Nebbia Bill Malchisky Kathy Brown Paul Withers Brad Balassaitis Kazunori Tatsuki Per Lausten Brian O'Neill Keith Brooks Ray Bilyk Bruce Elgort Kenio Carvalho Rene Winkelmeyer Chris Miller Kenji Ebihara Richard Moy Christian Güdemann Kim Greene Rob Novak Christoph Stoettner Klaus Bild Rudi Knegt Daniel Nashed Laks Sundararajan Salvador Gallardo Daniel Reimann Liz Albert Sandra Buehler Daniele Grillo Luis Garza Sasja Beerendonk David Leedy Marcel Ribas Satoru Abe David Price Marion Vrielink Serdar Basegmez Eric McCormick Mark Calleran Sharon Bellamy Felix Binsack Mark Leusink Siggi Meyer Femke Goedhart Mark Myers Simon Vaughan Francie Tanner Mark Roden Sjaak Ursinus Fredrik Norling Martin Jinoch Stefan Sucker Friso van den Berg Masahiko Miyo Steve Pitcher Gabriella Davis Matteo Bisi Stuart McIntyre Gary Swale Mike McGarel Takeshi Yoshida Giuseppe Grasso Mike Ostrowski Theo Heselmans Handly Cameron Mike Smith Tim Clark Howard Greenberg Mikkel Heisterberg Tim Malone Jan Valdman Mitch Cohen Tony Holder Jean-Yves Fiou Mitsuru Katoh Ulrich Krause Jerome Deniau Nathan Freeman Wannes Rams

0 Comments
December 3, 2014
History / IBM/Lotus / Notes/Domino

Happy 25th birthday, Lotus Notes!

Today is the 25th birthday of Lotus Notes. It is the program responsible for me moving to the US, as well as being my career for the last close to 18 years. So, as you can see in the picture above, I am toasting this amazing software in IBM blue colors, courtesy of Curaçao Blue. Happy birthday, Lotus Notes!

1 Comment
November 27, 2014
ConnectED / Lotusscript / MWLUG / Notes/Domino / Web Development

Free Code – Class to read URL name-value pairs

Here is another little code snippet I want to share. I use it all the time in my Lotusscript-based Domino web agents, and I figured that other could benefit from it as well. It is just an easy way to check for and read the name-value pairs (arguments) passed from the browser to the web server by HTTP GET or POST calls. Put the code below in a script library, I call it Class.URL: %REM Library Class.URL Created Oct 9, 2014 by Karl-Henry Martinsson Description: Lotusscript class to handle incoming URL (GET/POST). %END REM Option Public Option Declare %REM Class URLData Description: Class to handle URL data passed to web agent %END REM Class URLData p_urldata List As String %REM Sub New() Description: Create new instance of URL object from NotesDocument %END REM Public Sub New() Dim session As New NotesSession Dim webform As NotesDocument Dim tmp As String Dim tmparr As Variant Dim tmparg As Variant Dim i As Integer '*** Get document context (in-memory NotesDocument) Set webform = session.DocumentContext '*** Get HTTP GET argument(s) after ?OpenAgent tmp = FullTrim(StrRight(webform.GetItemValue("Query_String")(0),"&")) If tmp = "" Then '*** Get HTTP POST argument(s) after ?OpenAgent tmp = FullTrim(StrRight(webform.GetItemValue("Request_Content")(0),"&")) End If '*** Separate name-value pairs from each other into array tmparr = Split(tmp,"&") '*** Loop through array, split each name-value/argument For i = LBound(tmparr) To UBound(tmparr) tmparg = Split(tmparr(i),"=") p_urldata(LCase(tmparg(0))) = Decode(tmparg(1)) Next End Sub %REM Function GetValue Description: Get value for specified argument. Returns a string containing the value. %END REM Public Function GetValue(argname As String) As String If IsElement(p_urldata(LCase(argname))) Then GetValue = p_urldata(LCase(argname)) Else GetValue = "" End If End Function %REM Function IsValue Description: Check if specified argument was passed in URL or not. Returns boolean value (True or False). %END REM Public Function IsValue(argname As String) As Boolean If IsElement(p_urldata(LCase(argname))) Then IsValue = True Else IsValue = False End If End Function '*** Private function for this class '*** There is no good/complete URL decode function in Lotusscript Private Function Decode(txt As String) As String Dim tmp As Variant Dim tmptxt As String tmptxt = Replace(txt,"+"," ") tmp = Evaluate(|@URLDecode("Domino";"| & tmptxt & |")|) Decode = tmp(0) End Function End Class It is now very easy to use the class to check what values are passed to the agent. Below is a sample agent: Option Public Option Declare Use "Class.URL" Sub Initialize Dim url As URLData '*** Create new URLData object Set url = New URLData() '*** MIME Header to tell browser what kind of data we will return Print "content-type: text/html" '*** Check reqired values for this agent If url.IsValue("name")=False Then Print "Missing argument 'name'." Exit Sub End If '*** Process name argument If url.GetValue("name")="" Then Print "'Name' is empty." Else Print "Hello, " + url.GetValue("name") + "!" End If End Sub It is that easy. If my proposal for a session at ConnectED is accepted, you will about how to use jQuery and Bootstrap to retrieve data in .NSF databases through Lotusscript agents, and I will be using…

4 Comments
November 20, 2014
Cloud / Connections / IBM/Lotus / Notes/Domino

October Community Webcast – Wednesday October 15

This Wednesday it is again time for the monthly ICS community webcast. This month's guest speaker will be Luis Guirigay, IBM SME for Social, Mobile and Cloud. Below is the description of the webcast agenda. Never before has there been more opportunity for IBM Notes Domino Enterprises! Join Luis Guirigay to learn about the latest tools that will help your company get the most of the Domino platform and increase your ROI. Step through all of the latest user experience options in IBM Notes, Domino, and iNotes, and Traveler that will take your company to the next level of social email. Step through the benefits and options to access mail and apps in the cloud and get the lowdown on the IBM Connections Cloud (formerly IBM SmartCloud) offering. Get the latest information on IBM Mail Next and how the Design Advisory Program is going. Read more here and register here.

0 Comments
October 13, 2014
Administration / Bootstrap / HTML/CSS / IBM/Lotus / jQuery / Notes/Domino / Open Source / Software

Free Software – Password Reset for Notes/Domino

Earlier this year I was asked to research some alternatives for a web-based password reset function at my work. One of the larger support burdens are users who forget the passwords, especially in the first few days after changing it. We have a 90 day password lifespan, then a new password need to be picked. Some users wait until the last minute, which usually is Friday afternoon right before they go home, making it very likely that they will forget the new password over the weekend. Another big group is auditors, who may come in every 6 months or so, and by then their passwords have of course already expired. I first looked at some COTS solutions from HADSL (FirM) and BCC (AdminSuite). They were both very competent, and in addition have several other functions that I really would like to have in my environment (like synchronization between Domino Directory and Active Directory). However, as my company is in a cost saving phase, I was asked if I could build something myself, so I played around a little, and came up with a small and simple application. The application contains two web pages. The first page (Setup) is where the user will setup the security questions used for password recovery as well as entering an external email address that they have access to even if locked out from the Domino account at work. This page is protected by regular Notes security, so the users need to set this up before they lose access to their account. The second page (Request)is where the user can request the password to be reset. After entering their Notes name, the user is presented with one of the security questions. If the question as answered correctly, the user can now enter a new password. If the question is wrong, another of the questions is presented to the user. I am also using regexp to make sure that the password match the requirement our organisation have for password strength. Both pages are built using Bootstrap (v3.2.0),  jQuery (v1.11.0), and for the icons I use Font Awesome (v4.2.0), all loaded from BootstrapCDN. I also use a few local CSS and Javascript files to handle older versions of Internet Explorer. The process steps were created using code by jamro and you can find the code here. By the way, Bootsnipp is a great resource to avoid having to invent the wheel again. There are hundreds of free snippets of code there to build neat Bootstrap functionality. When the user fill out and submit the setup page, a document is created in a Notes database. When the user need to reset the password, the security questions and answers are retrieved from that document. To prevent unauthorised access to the Notes documents, they use Readers fields to prevent them from being visible to anyone but the signer of the agents running on the server. This application can of course be updated with more functionality. Instead of allowing the user to pick a password, one could be generated by the server and sent through email to the address entered during setup. There…

7 Comments
September 24, 2014
Connect / ConnectED / IBM/Lotus / Lotusphere

More on IBM ConnectED 2015

This morning Kristin Keene, Events Manager for ConnectED,  talked more about the upcoming IBM ConnectED 2015 in January at the monthly ICS Community webcast. IBM realized that the last few years they been swinging over too much to the business side, and is now going back to a much more technical conference. As I mentioned the other day, some tracks are new, some are renamed and some are gone. As an example, ChalkTalks replaces the old Birds of a Feather, but will take place throughout the day, not just morning and evening. The keywords mentioned was "smaller and more intimate". The conference will be at Swan only, to condense it and make it all in one place to make it easier to connect with IBMers and other attendees. Opening General Session will be Monday morning as normal, but in the Swan Ballroom. As opposed to previous years, the number of IBM attendees will be greatly reduced, to around 300. Most of them will be subject matter experts, speakers or staffing the labs. All IBMers will be invite only, not coming as regular attendees as in the past. The lab decisions are still a little bit up in the air, according to Kristin, but the Meet the Developer lab will be there as usual. The special event (previously an evening at one of the local them parks) will this year be more of a special party, as she put it. Registration for connect is already open, the call for abstracts just opened this week and close on October 10 (probably extended to October 15). The full agenda will be finalized on November 15, and the presentations are due on January 1 from the speakers who were chosen. Kristin also said that IBM does not consider this the last Lotusphere/Connect/ConnectED, but she does not know exactly what will happen after the contract with Dolphin and Swan expires after the 2015 conference. You can read more details here. Hope to see you in Orlando in January!

0 Comments
September 17, 2014
Notes/Domino / Software

Survey about Notes and Domino directions

PSC is doing a community survey about the direction of IBM Notes and Domino. John Head, Director of Enterprise Collaboration at the Chicago-based consulting company PSC Group explains that it's not about gathering data, the (optional) email address collected will only be used to notify about the result.PSC promises to share the full results publically. I am personally looking forward to see the result of the survey. You can take the survey at http://bit.ly/PSCXPagesSurvey.

0 Comments
September 16, 2014
ConnectED / IBM/Lotus / Lotusphere

IBM ConnectED agenda published

The agenda for IBM ConnectED (the conference formerly known as Lotusphere and IBM Connect) has now been posted. As previously announced, the conference is one day shorter than before, ending already on Wednesday. There are no jumpstart sessions listed for Sunday, but the Master Class sessions are returning that  day. The individual sessions have not been announced yet, the call for abstracts have not even ben sent out. So it will probably be at least a month or two until the list of sessions is announced. But expect a more technical conference and less marketing that the last few years. A new item on the agenda is TechnOasis. The way it is listed (together with the name) makes me believe this is the solutions showcase with a different name combined with the social café. If you look at the tracks, it seems like BoF (Birds of a Feather) has been renamed Chalktalk: Come one, come all! Chalktalk sessions are informal, interactive discussion groups for attendees to share ideas and experiences in an small group,  and open forum setting. Feel free to submit topics that interest you, either those you would like to lead, or topics and discussions that you'd like to participate in! As a reminder, attendees build the agenda by voting on all submissions and ultimately select the sessions that will appear on the agenda. So you'll be sure find something that's well worth your while! The Wednesday special event was moved to Tuesday evening in 2014, and it will again take place that day in 2015. The event is shorter, 7pm to 9pm, which could indicate that it may not be one of the parks like previous years. On the other hand, since the conference will be smaller the park may not need to stay open as late to allow everyone to ride all the rides. I have (in the past) left the Wednesday party around 9 or 9.30, so if a majority been doing that, it may save IBM some money closing the park earlier. I guess we have to see. Personally I am hoping for Universal Studios with the new extension to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter that was opened this summer. Read more here.  

1 Comment
September 12, 2014
Connect / ConnectED / IBM/Lotus / Lotusphere / XPages

#ThrowbackThursday – JMP 101 from Lotusphere 2012

I recorded this video of the session JMP101 IBM Lotus Domino XPages JumpStart at Lotusphere 2012 in Orlando. The conference, later renamed IBM Connect and now renamed again to IBM ConnectED, will take place again in January 2015. Perhaps this video will get you inspired to do some XPages development, or you can show it to your boss as a good example of what you can learn at ConnectED. Hope to see you in Orlando in January!

0 Comments
September 4, 2014
IBM/Lotus

Nominations for IBM Champions are now open!

The nominations for IBM Champions for 2015 is now open. If there is someone in the ICS (IBM Collaborative Solutions) community whom you want to show appreciation for their work, go here and nominate him or her. You can only nominate non-IBMers. So who is deserving to be an IBM Champion? Well, you can see the a list of qualifications here. It could be people helping out on Stack Overflow or in the developerWorks forums, or people evangilizing ICS products and solutions by speaking at conferences or sharing their knowledge through blogs, videos or other means. If someone in the community have been helping you in the past, consider thanking them by submitting a nomination, if you think they match the qualifications. You can see the list of current champions here. Remember, existing Champions don't get renewed automatically, they need to be nominated again. You don't have to fill out all the information on the submission form. Fill out as much as you can, better an incomplete nomination than none at all! Nominations close on September 17 at 5pm Eastern time. So get yrou nominations in before that.    

0 Comments
September 2, 2014
Connect / ConnectED / IBM/Lotus / Lotusphere

IBM ConnectED 2015 – registration open

IBM ConnectED, the conference formerly known as Lotusphere and Connect, has now opened the registration for the 2015 event. The "early bird" conference fee is $1,595 and on October 4 it goes up to the full price, $1,795. This is less than Lotusphere/Connect in the past, but the conference is also 20% shorter at 4 days instead of 5. The cost per day is actually less than previous years, if you look at the full price (if I did the math right).  

1 Comment
August 19, 2014
Administration / IBM/Lotus / Notes/Domino

Lotus Notes at my work threatened by Microsoft bug

  The company I work for is owned by a large multinational corporation, and we are one of the few places not using Outlook/Exchange, but Lotus Notes. We have a substantial investment in custom applications written for the Notes platform, and with the deep integration between applications and email, we want to stay on the platform. However, earlier this year, a threat against Lotus Notes reared it's ugly head. Executives at my company were sent meeting invitations from Outlook by other executives in other companies in the group. Some executives received the invitatiosn fine, and could accept/decline, while other got just a plain text email or even blank email. I was tasked to research this, and it seems to be an issue on the sending side. If the sender have the recipients address in their Outlook contacts, the invitation is sent in one format (rich text), if the recipient is not found, it is sent as MIME. So the mail with the invitation is sent in different format by Exchange, with different MIME types (text/calendar vs. text/plain). It is actually easy to replicate the issue. Send a meeting invitation from Outlook to a Notes user not/never listed in the Outllok contacts. It comes across perfectly: Then add that same address to the Outlook contacts and send another invitation. It comes across as a balnk mail, with only the message disclaimer from Exchange visible: There is an IBM technote about this, but there is no solution listed. IBM simply suggest contacting Microsoft. There is a workaround, but that involves all Outlook users changing the default outgoing mail format from rich text to plain text, or to edit this on each single contact. I even had a couple of users here (who also had Outlook mail accounts) try that. It worked in some cases, but not always. And this is not going to work, thousands of users (or at least several dozen executives) will not make all those changes just to accomodate a small Lotus Notes shop like us... I am continuing to look for a solution, but it has to be one that we can implement on the Domino mail server(s) here. I found a suggestion to add TNEFEnableConversion=1 to notes.ini, I am having my administrator implement that right now, so we will see if that helps. But if that does not fix it, or I can't come up with some way to process the incoming meeting invitations and fix the MIME type, I can see a number of executives working really hard on getting rid of Notes (at least for mail) here. And that will happen soon... So, anyone got any ideas?   Update 08/07/2014: I found out that TNEFEnableConversion=1 was already enabled on our mail server, and had been for several years. It seems to also be related to winmail.dat being attached to incoming Outlook mail. I have opened a support ticket with IBM as well. Update 2 08/07/2014: Within a couple of hours I got the following response from IBM regarding my support ticket (PMR…

7 Comments
August 5, 2014
Connect / ConnectED / IBM/Lotus / Lotusphere / Technology

ConnectED 2015 – Smaller and shorter but more technical

If you read the official IBM announcment for ConnectED 2015 posted by Mat Newman, you will notice a few interesting details. First of all, the event is shorter than previous years. It starts on Sunday and ends on Wednesday instead of Thursday. On Sunday IBM has scheduled the Leadership Alliance meeting, which previously been held in the late fall in Boston. This is of course much more cost efficient for business partners, esxpecially international ones, who only have to pay one airfare and one hotel cost. But it also means that business partners who are invited to LA have to choose between presenting at the Sunday JumpStart sessions and attend the Leadership Appliance meetings. In the past, Sunday has also been the day for the Business Partner Day, hopefully IBM is not putting that on the same day as well. Second, the conference will be held only at Walt Disney World Swan, not at both Swan and Dolphin as in previous years. This indicates a somewhat smaller conference. The Swan ballrooms combined can seat about 2700 people, with the other meeting rooms seating an additional almost 1000. So a qualified guess is that the number of participants will be limited to around 3000 or just above, assuming the keynote/OGS will still take place in the Dolphin. However this is not that much less than Lotusphere/Connect in the last few years. The labs and the sessions we all come to love ("Ask the Developers", "Ask the Product Managers", "Gurupaloza") will be back, and I would be very surprised if there will not be a product showcase of some kind. There are also more interactive elements planned, like roundtables. Third: ConnectED will be more of a technical conference, similar to the developer conferences IBM had back in the 1990's. It will be bigger than a LUG (Lotus User Group) conference, but have a much more technical agenda than Lotusphere and Connect in the last few years. In my mind, this is a good thing. Perhaps less catering to press/analysts, "suits" (CEO/CFO type managers), project managers and similar non-technical crowds and more to the hard-core developers and admins who actually use the products. Personally I think this is a good move by IBM. Separate out the non-technical attendees and focus on the technical side, instead of mixing technical and strategic sessions in a big messy conference. I am excited about ConnectED 2015, even if I am suspecting it will be the last conference in Orlando. Some years ago (2006? 2007?) IBM announced that they had renewed the contract for the conference (back then still called Lotusphere) until 2015. With so many other IBM conferences merging together and taking place in Las Vegas, I would not be surprised if Lotusphere/ConnectED will suffer the same fate in 2016. I hope not, as Dolphin/Swan is a more intimate setting, where people can meet and socialize in the evening (as well as a day or two before the conference). With IBM pretty much taking over "Swolpin" (Swan and Dolphin) during that last week…

8 Comments
July 24, 2014
Administration / IBM/Lotus

Recover lost SSL keyring password

About two years ago, our Network (as well as Domino) administrator left the company after 10 years. The other day our SSL certificate for one of our websites expired, and we wanted to use a newer wildcard certificate instead of a server specific certificate. The problem was that we did not have the password for the keyring file (keyfile.kyr) used on the server, either the admin did not document it (which does not sound like him) or the document with the password was lost/we could not find it. So what to do? We thought about creating a new keyfile and start over, but these days the certificate authorities (like Verisign, Thawte and Go Daddy) use 4096 bit SHA2 certificates as root certificate, which IBM Domino does not support (and don't plan to support). The recommended solution is to use the IBM HTTP server as a proxy in front of the Domino HTTP server, since that one supports SSH2. So we could not go this way right away (we probably will do it eventually, though), as we just need the SSL certificate up and running on the server right away. Our administrator came up with a way to get the password for the keyfile, assuming that you have the corresponding .sth file (which we fortunately had). The instructions are below, in case anyone need them in the future. To recover a Lotus Domino keyring password you need a Lotus Domino server where you have admin access to and the *.sth file which fits the *.kyr file. If you have both you can perform the following steps: Bring down the HTTP task via: tell http quit Open the domino console and enter: set config DEBUG_SSL_ALL=3 set config SSL_TRACE_KEYFILEREAD=1 If you now bring back your http task via: load http you should see a line similar to: ReadKeyfile> Recovering password from stash file ReadKeyfile> Password is xxxxxxxxxxx You now have the password. You can now simply restart the server to remove the temporary notes.ini settings.

3 Comments
July 24, 2014

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