About the Book
The Practical, Complete Guide to Leveraging the Power of Social Networks with Lotus Connections 2.0
IBM® Lotus® Connections 2.0 gives businesses all the tools they need to make the most of social networking—easily, securely, and cost-effectively. Now, a team of IBM Lotus Connections experts thoroughly introduce this breakthrough product and covers every facet of planning, deploying, and using it successfully. IBM Lotus Connections 2.0 covers both business and technical issues and presents proven best practices for every step of the implementation process.
The authors first help you identify your best opportunities to use social networking for competitive advantage and demonstrate how Lotus Connections 2.0 places state-of-the-art social networking tools at your fingertips. Next, they carefully describe each component of the product, including profiles, activities, blogs, communities, “dog-ear” bookmarking, personal home pages, and more. They present practical coverage of administering Lotus Connections as well as detailed guidance on extending and integrating it.
Whether you’re an executive, IT manager, or technical professional, this eBook has all the information you need to put social networking to work—and deliver powerful, quantifiable results.
Coverage includes
Assessing the potential value of social networking to your business
Building dynamic networks of coworkers, partners, and customers that promote innovation and business agility
Understanding the core services Lotus Connections 2.0 provides and the unique way in which they integrate
Leveraging Lotus Connections’ consistent multitiered architecture
Successfully planning for technical infrastructure and organizational change
Walking through a best-practice installation and configuration process
Building effective communities for employees with shared interests
Using blogs to improve communications and overcome organizational silos or time zone differences
Helping individuals and groups organize their work through Activities
Performing administrative tasks such as customizing look-and-feel, collecting statistics, and troubleshooting
Using plug-ins to integrate with Lotus Notes®, Microsoft® Office®, Outlook®, Windows® Explorer, Lotus Sametime®, and WebSphere® Portal
Displaying useful, up-to-the-minute information with prebuilt widgets
Utilizing Lotus Connections’ REST-based API to create new integration points and build custom applications
Table of Contents:
Foreword xix
Acknowledgments xxiii
About the Authors xxv
Chapter 1: Social Networking Concepts 1
Chapter 2: Introducing Lotus Connections 2.0 21
Chapter 3: Lotus Connections Architecture 47
Chapter 4: Deployment Planning 79
Chapter 5: Install Planning 117
Chapter 6: Using Lotus Connections 163
Chapter 7: Administering Lotus Connections 197
Chapter 8: Extending Lotus Connections to Other Applications 243
Chapter 9: Using the Lotus Connections API 277
Chapter 10: Plug-ins and Widgets 307
About the Author :
Stephen Hardison is an IBM® Certified I/T Specialist with IBM Software Services for Lotus®. He is responsible for the design, implementation, operation, and assessment of large-scale collaborative solutions using Lotus Connections, Lotus Domino®, and WebSphere® Portal. He lives near Austin, Texas. Stephen joined IBM in 1999, and has worked in the Information Technology industry for over 20 years. He has international experience, having worked on several worldwide deployments of IBM solutions in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
David Brooks is the technical lead for IBM Lotus Connections activities and a key contributor of the IBM Lotus Connections Technical Leadership team. In this capacity, he is responsible for the design and development of the Activities service. Previously David was the technical lead for IBM Lotus Connections Dogear and evangelized social bookmarking as a key concept in IBM’s entry into business-ready social software. David has worked for IBM and Lotus for 7 years. In this time, he has also worked on the development of search and expertise in WebSphere Portal, Lotus WorkplaceTM, and Lotus Discovery Server®.
David Byrd is an IBM Senior Certified Executive IT Architect with IBM Software Services for Lotus from Fayetteville, Georgia. He has been an IBM/Lotus employee for close to 10 years in a number of consulting positions covering various technology areas. David has a deep background in virtually all areas of Lotus products and technologies covering areas ranging from low-level API development to collaborative application architectures, security architectures, and messaging architectures. His current focus is on Lotus Quickr¿, as well as other collaboration technologies and associated deployment within enterprise customers. He has worked with Lotus Notes® and Domino for over 15 years. David has authored several books and technical articles during his tenure with IBM.
Gary Wood is a Field Support Engineer with Lotus Field Support Services (FSS). In that role, he has been responsible for troubleshooting applications for some of the largest Notes/Domino installations worldwide, as well as providing training on the latest technologies from Lotus. He has been working with Notes and Domino since R3 with the past 10 years spent in consulting roles focusing on application architecture and development for various divisions within IBM. Gary has worked on a variety of international assignments, from Canada to Venezuela and the United Kingdom to Malaysia.
Saurabh Calla is an Advisory IT Specialist with IBM Software Services for Lotus. In his current role, he is responsible for designing, implementing, and customizing Lotus Connections solutions for various clients. He has been with IBM for 5 years. Prior to joining Software Services for Lotus, Saurabh worked with the Notes/Domino L3 development team handling customer-critical situations. Saurabh has also published an article dealing with new quota functionality in Lotus Notes.
Tim Speed is an IBM Certified Systems Architect with IBM Software Services for Lotus (ISSL). In that capacity, he is responsible for designing, implementing, and supporting various engagements with our clients. Tim lives in Denton, Texas. He has been an IBM/Lotus employee for over 12 years in a variety of networking, technical, hardware and software support, and consulting positions. He has been working with Notes and Domino for over 16 years, focusing on administration roles and infrastructure. Tim also has international experience with working on infrastructure engagements in Spain, Brazil, France, Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, UK, and Indonesia. Tim has also published more than 12 technical articles and 8 books.
Michael Martin is a certified Senior Managing Consultant in the Messaging and Collaboration Practice for IBM Software Services for Lotus (ISSL) group, focusing on organizational development, change management, and social software adoption. He has consulted with many international companies on the global deployment of organizational changes related to technology implementations. He has provided consulting services for organizational analysis and design, communications strategy and deployment, training strategy development, leadership coaching, social network analysis, organizational culture analysis, and stakeholder management. He has over 32 years experience in manufacturing and service industries, including 24 years in line management and management consulting. He has published one article on collaboration and organizational culture.
Suzanne O. Minassian has held a variety of roles within software development, including development, design, user research, and now product management. Suzanne is currently the product manager for Lotus Connections, a social software suite for businesses and organizations. In the role of product manager, Suzanne has worked to define the overall product strategy, develop and drive the product requirements with engineering and design, work with customers and partners to shape the product, and publicize the product through demonstrations and presentations at numerous industry events. Suzanne began her career at IBM in the Collaborative User Experience Research group as a user researcher on the Unified Activity Management project and a developer and usability specialist on the Reinventing Email project. Currently, Suzanne holds an MBA with a concentration in Human Factors in Information Design, and she has a strong interest in collaboration technologies and personal and business productivity tools.
