Per Henrik Lausten

One of the highlights from Lotusphere 2012 was the accouncement of the next feature release of Lotus Notes called Lotus Notes Social Edition.

Lotus Notes Social Edition features a new homepage with activity streams and embedded apps (embedded experiences) using open standards such as OpenSocial. From the Lotus Notes homepage a user can interact with an external application without leaving the home page (collaboratio in-context). Lotus iNotes (the web mail component for Lotus Notes) will also support activity streams and embedded apps. The new homepage looks similar to the activity streams in the upcoming IBM Connections 4.0 release.

XPages and the Extension Library Social Enabler toolkit can be used to implemenet applications that support activity streams and OpenSocial gadgets in order to create embedded apps. The Social Enabler Toolkit is currently only part of the OpenNTF release and will be part of Upgrade Pack 2.

Social Edition also features a brand-new and more simple UI for mail (for both the Lotus Notes client and for iNotes webmail):

In between now (8.5.3) and Social Edition we will see a 8.5.4 release with features required to be able to deploy the Social Edition upgrade on top of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.4. In 2012 we will also see the release of Upgrade Pack 2 (IBM supported Extension Library with new features currently only available in the experimental part of the OpenNTF Extension Library).

Lotus Domino 8.5.4 is planned to support SAML and oAUTH for authentication. With Domino supporting oAUTH it will be possible to bring XPages applications into the context of other applications.

Finally, the Lotus Notes app browser plugin for Firefox/Windows was presented at Lotusphere. This plugin is a lightweight Lotus Notes client in the browser that can run Notes client applications. This enables organizations to focus on implementing new XPages web applications and have their existing/old Notes client applications use the plugin.

Ed Brill from IBM has blogged about Lotus Notes and Domino Social Edition and also posted his "Messaging and Collaboration Strategy" session from Lotusphere on Slideshare.

Chris Reckling from IBM has blogged about the Notes and iNotes announcements from the Lotusphere 2012 OGS.

At the Lotusphere 2012 Opening General Session (OGS) and throughout the conference IBM showed the next version of IBM Connections (to be called IBM Connections 4.0?). My first impression of the next release of IBM Connections is that it looks really, really great! Among many things it features exciting new elements such as activity streams, social mail and embedded apps (using open standards such as Activity Streams and OpenSocial gadgets).

Embedded apps for activity streams can be created using e.g. XPages. An embedded app makes it possible for the user to take action directly from the invidual post in the activity stream (without leaving IBM Connections).

The integrated mail and calendar of IBM Connections (social mail) will support Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange as backend mail servers. This is an interesting move  that makes the underlying mail server in use irrelevant to the IBM Connections deployment.

IBM Connections 4 also includes community metrics (to track e.g. adoption rates), optional realtime group video chat using a plugin from Polycom, ECM library integration and realtime co-editing of documents, presentations and spreadsheets using IBM Docs (IBM Docs is currently in beta on IBM Greenhouse).

This is how I look

I am going to Lotusphere 2012 in Orlando - and I look forward to it!

Here are some of the things I plan to do and attend:

• B.A.L.D. (Bloggers and friends Annual Lotusphere Dinner) on Saturday
• Business Development Day general session on Sunday
• Welcome Reception on Sunday evening
• Opening General Session on Monday morning
• UK Night on Monday (if I can fake a proper English accent - and get the necessary UKLUG sticker on my conference badge)
• IBM Nordic dinner on Tuesday evening
• OpenNTF booth duty on Tuesday and Wednesday at booth 516
• The Lotusphere party at Sea World on Wednesday evening
• This Week in Lotus LIVE on Thursday morning
• Ask the Developers on Thursday
• The (someday famous) Lotusphere basketball game with teams of Lotusphere attendees, speakers and IBMers - arranged by Jon Mell. Time and place to be determined.

Look for me and let's see who says hi first See you there!

The XPages Extension Library project on OpenNTF was updated yesterday to version 853-20111215. This version matches the newly released Domino 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1.

If you want to use the OpenNTF version (and not Upgrade Pack 1) you can update your servers and clients using the update site method.

You can find the installation instructions for the OpenNTF version and for Upgrade Pack 1 on the Lotus Notes and Domino Application Development wiki.

Great news for XPages today: Notes/Domino 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 has just been released.

In short, Upgrade Pack 1 is an IBM supported version of the XPages Extension Library. This should help remove the fear of the Extension Library being open source that some customers have had, and thereby improve the adoption of XPages out there.

Upgrade Pack 1 is available on Passport Advantage as part number CI5GIEN.

Last week we held the 46th DanNotes conference. We had 80 participants and 7 speakers. Some of the presentations are available now as links on the agenda. Others will be added to the agenda later. We will also publish videos from the event once they have been edited.

On the agenda you can find links to the presentations by Chris Connor on XPages, Java, and Mobile - and links to the presentations by Ulrich Krause on compact, compress, DAOS and more. The presentation by Ulrich is also available on Slideshare.

The following presentations held by Stuart McIntyre and Niklas Heidloff have not yet been added to the agenda:

• Stuart McIntyre: IBM Connections - Bridging the Gap
• Stuart McIntyre: The IBM Mobile Collaboration Portfolio
• Niklas Heidloff: OpenNTF Overview
• Niklas Heidloff: XPages Mobile Controls

Niklas has blogged about the event - his blog entry contains links to the projects and controls that he showed in his sessions.

Stuart has blogged about his impression of the event. He even calls DanNotes for "the daddy of all user groups".

I look forward to the 47th conference which takes place in May, 2012. Let me know if you are interested in speaking at the event.

Last week at the DanNotes conference IBM offered certification tests at half the price. I took the LOT-951 test in record time between lunch and the developer BOF and passed with a score of 87.5%.

The test focuses on Domino Designer in Eclipse features, some @Formula and Lotusscript programming enhancements, and a lot of XPages. If you plan on taking the test, then rememember to have a look at the test objectives while preparing for the test.

Next up for me is the LOT-922 test which is required to upgrade my certification to the advanced level.

A quick blog post to let you know that last week I was invited to be part of This Week in Lotus episode 79 together with Stuart McIntyre, Darren Duke - and Gab Davis as the 2nd guest. We discussed Sametime, OpenNTF, XPages and very naturally the 46th DanNotes conference which took place the day after the recording.

It was great fun and I look forward to being a guest again sometime in the future. By the way, this was my 2nd appearance on the show as I was a guest on episode 24 too.

The beta version of XSnippets was recently announced by Niklas Heidloff on the OpenNTF blog. XSnippets is a code repository of useful XPages code snippets that OpenNTF contributors can contribute to. If you have useful code snippets then consider adding them to XSnippets.

I have added my first code snippet to XSnippets based on my blog entry on how to control the HTTP response status code in XPages:

As previously blogged my company PHL Consult and I support OpenNTF and open source. To further show my support I nominated myself for one of the 9 member director positions in the OpenNTF board of directors.

The board of directors for the newly incorporated OpenNTF has now been set and I am happy to have been elected to be part of the board (for one year). The new board had its first board meeting last Thursday and I look forward to be able to add value to OpenNTF.