Instant Technologies - Solutions for Lotus Sametime, Microsoft OCS, and Enteprise IM

Improving the Sametime Connect Web API (a bit) with a Dash of jQuery

2012-02-09T13:22:00.001-05:00

Previously, we discussed using some of the features built in to the Sametime SDK/Connect Web API to check the presence of a user, or in our case a queue, before initiating a conversation through an internal portal page. At a high level, our 'click to chat' web application needs to detect whether a Sametime Connect client is available, or whether we should initiate a conversation using our web client. We checked the user's presence before starting a conversation because we found, in some cases, that the Sametime web API wouldn't be able to tell if a user was online or not, and an attempt to launch a Sametime conversation to that user (or queue) would invariably fail, so we needed to launch our web client in these cases.

The previous blog post resolved a lot of our problems with presence detection, but it also uncovered some additional issues related to successfully detecting whether to launch our web client or the native Sametime client. More specifically, our custom Instant.detectPresenceOfUser(' [user] ') JavaScript function would work fine (and would return true indicating that Sametime could see the user online) and it should therefore be able to launch a Sametime conversation with that user. However, this is where the trouble begins; even though our code would detect a native Sametime client, the Sametime window would never appear and our web client would launch by default. In most test scenarios we would get the web client about 4 out of 5 times (even when the person had a local Sametime client installed). Clearly there was an issue in the API code for invoking the Sametime window.

Below you will see the code as it exists in the Sametime Connect Web API, the function is called sametime_invoke, it takes in a series of parameters which we will lay out below.

 var sametime_invoke = function(action, userId, params)  
 {  
      var d = new Date();  
      var url = sametime_servletUrl + action+'?userId='+userId;  
      if(params != null)  
           url += "&" + fixupParams(params);  
      url += "&time=" + d.getTime();  
      var imgObj =new Image();  
      imgObj.src = url;  
 }

First, the function requires an action, in our case, chat. Next a userId, following the same example as our previous post, System p. And last it takes in some optional parameters which we aren't using. So normally, our JS to invoke the Sametime client would look like this:

 sametime_invoke('chat', 'System p');

This would launch a chat conversation with the 'System p' user. Through our testing though, this sametime_invoke function proved to be deficient, working properly only a handful of times. Looking at the sametime_invoke function, it appeared as though the last two lines of the function are where the magic request happens to spring the window. Stepping through the function logically, we can follow it like this:

  var sametime_invoke = function(action, userId, params)   
  {   
    // Creates a new JavaScript Date object, this is used later to create a timestamp   
    var d = new Date();  
      
    // Forms the URL which it will post to, using the parameters we passed in (action, userId, params)   
    var url = sametime_servletUrl + action+'?userId='+userId;  
      
    // Looks to see if we have passed in parameters  
    if(params != null)  
       url += "&" + fixupParams(params); // Appends them to the URL  
      
    // Adds a timestamp to the end of the URL using the Date object (d) we created above.   
    url += "&time=" + d.getTime();  
      
    // Creates an image object on the page  
    var imgObj =new Image();   
      
    // 'Loads' the image using the URL we built. This makes a request to the URL, and should open the window.   
    imgObj.src = url;  
  }

The issue with inconsistent launching appears to come from the last two lines. The creating of the Image object, and staging the image request to the URL provided doesn't appear to be the best approach to this. It also lacks the ability to detect any failures, its essentially a blind post. That being said, all of the code leading up to those two lines, is very useful, and tells us quite a bit about what the Sametime client's servlet requires in order for us to make a POST (or in our case, for this article, a GET) to launch that window.

By visiting the URL that it builds (http://localhost:59449/stwebapi/chat?userId=Demo%20Sales&time=1328650958738, for our purposes), we get a launched Sametime client chat to our 'Demo Sales' queue, and we also get, in the browser, a response from the servlet, formed as parsed JSON (JSONP). This is very useful. This response (returnCode:200), lets us know that the servlet understood our request, was able to find the user, and launch the Sametime window. Unfortunately, this doesn't help us detect presence, so if the user is offline, it'll still launch the window, it will just error once it does saying the user is offline. So we will still need to do those presence checks up front using our Instant.detectPresenceOfUser function.

So, enough talk about it, lets re-write that sametime_invoke function using jQuery, AJAX, and a callback function.

 Instant.launchSametimeConversation = function (stid) {  
   var time = new Date();  
   var getUrl = 'http://localhost:59449/stwebapi/chat?userId=' + stid + '&time=' + time.getTime() + '&jsonp=Instant.handleResponse';  
   
   // Use jQuery to request the Sametime servlet URL. If a request makes it to the URL successfully, the servlet will return a code 200 and open the Sametime client chat with the user.  
   // We use the Instant.handleResponse() function as a callback to process the JSONP data object that the servlet hands back.  
   $.ajax({  
     type: 'GET',  
     url: getUrl,  
     dataType: 'jsonp',  
     jsonpCallback: 'Instant.handleResponse'  
   });  
 };  
   
 // A rudimentary callback function to handle JSONP data objects retrieved by the Instant.launchSametimeConversation() function.  
 Instant.handleResponse = function (data) {  
   if (data.returnCode === 200) {  
     alert('Success!');  
   } else {  
     alert('Failed!');  
   }  
 };

In the functions above, you an see that we follow the same approach initially as the bundled sametime_invoke function, but stray heavily once we are staged up.

First, since we are always using chat, and never using the custom parameters, we strip the function parameters down to just stid (the username) of the user we are chatting with. We bundle the rest of this into our getUrl variable, along with the timestamp. We did add something new though, you'll notice the '&jsonp=Instant.handleResponse' parameter at the end of the URL. This specifies our callback function to the servlet. Normally, jQuery handles this fairly well, but the Sametime servlet we are posting against seems fairly specific with how this needs to be formed, so we include it in the URL. We also include it into the jQuery $.ajax method.

Our callback function is very simple for this example. It could be made much more complex though, simply by providing extra checks for different return codes, and added functionality based off of those checks.

After rebuilding this function, and adding the callback function, we are able to have much more control over how we launch the Sametime client window, and are able to check for failures finally. This function also consistently launches the Sametime client chat window when expected and hasn't failed to do so yet. The only two requirements are to have a Sametime client logged in, and to have the jQuery library linked in to the page that will house the above functions.

I'll post screenshots of the success below, as well as a GitHub gist of the code. Reach out to me at zclancy@instant-tech.com with any questions/comments.

Integrating Instant Alert Manager for OCS and Lync with Email

2012-01-25T14:21:00.002-05:00

Instant Alert Manager for OCS and Lync provides a server based alerting engine and notification system for Microsoft Lync and Microsoft OCS. Our application is capable of dispatching a series of instant messages (IMs) to users - typically this is used to notify people who are running either Microsoft Lync or Microsoft OCS of some event (i.e. a system outage, the status of a help request, etc.).

We have developed Alert Manager with an extensible API - with the idea that other systems might want to dispatch messages using our framework. Recently, a prospective customer requested the ability to integrate an email notification system with our IM dispatching system. At a high level, our application will monitor a mail box and will immediately dispatch the messages to a set of online users running OCS or Lync - as the messages are received by the mail system. The idea is provide a single inbound notification bridge, via an email account, and then immediately alert the correct set of people using IM.

So, several days after the initial request, we have developed a new listening service that integrates our alerting system with a POP3 mail account. This new listening service will monitor a mail account and immediately dispatch inbound mail messages to an appropriate group of users who are online in either Microsoft OCS or Microsoft Lync 2010.

Here is a screen shot of the mail account - with a message pending:

This is a sample message - where the message is currently encoded as XML.

After the email is received, our new email listening service parses the message and dispatches the request to Alert Manager - where it is placed in queue for immediate delivery.

As soon as the message is placed into the dispatching queue, it is staged for delivery - awareness for the recipient(s) is verified, and then the message is delivered using either Microsoft Lync 2010 or Microsoft OCS.

Setting up a TrustedApplication for Lync 2010

2012-01-25T09:08:00.001-05:00

Open Lync Management Shell
Create TrustedApplicationPool

Run Get-CsSite. Note SiteId
Run Get-CsService –Registrar. Note Identity:Registrar:
Run New-CsTrustedApplicationPool –Identity [LyncServer] –Registrar [Registrar] –Site [SiteId]
Run Enable-CsTopology

Run New-CsTrustedApplication – Save these settings, as you will need them to configure BLM

ApplicationId: Supply a descriptive name here
TrustedApplicationPoolFqdn: The fully-qualified domain name of the trusted application pool created in the previous step. Can be found by running Get-CsTrustedApplicationPool
Port: Select a port to access the trusted application. Should be >1024. Be sure that the port is open on your firewall.
Run Enable-CsTopology to commit the changes
Run “Get-CsTrustedApplication > [some file name].txt” This will save the information you will need to configure BuddyList Migrator to a text file, as it is very difficult to copy from the Management Shell.

SetupTrustedApplicationEndpoint

RunNew-CsTrustedApplicationEnpdoint –ApplicationID urn:application:yourAppname –TrustedApplicationPoolFqdnappPoolFQDN –SipAddress sip:name@domain –DisplayName“Name”

Setup Certificates for the machine on which you will install BuddyList Migrator. If installing to the Lync Server, this can be ignored

Run mmc
Add the Certificates snap-in. Select “Local Computer”
Go to Personal->Certifcates
Action->All Tasks->Request New Certificate
Continue through the Wizard. Select “Computer” for the type of certificate.

Checking the presence of a user (or queue) in Sametime using JavaScript

2012-01-02T15:19:00.000-05:00

Recently, while tracking down a potential bug in one of our Queue Manager deployments, it was decided that we needed a way to check the presence of a logged in user through the Sametime Connect Web API. For instance, while on a website an end user clicks on a ‘Live Chat’ link, they are logged into a Sametime client on their computer, so we use JavaScript to talk to that Sametime client to get a bit more information. We check with the Sametime client to see if our ‘Live Chat’ support queue (user) is online, if the Sametime client can see that user online, we will start the conversation through their installed Sametime client, if it can’t, we will launch our branded web client so the conversation can still happen.

After reading through the Sametime SDK/Connect Web API documentation fairly extensively, I determined that there was no real official or right way of doing the above on the client side with JavaScript, so we’d have to improvise a bit, piecing different parts of the API together to get it to do what we wanted. Let’s look at some code.

The first thing we needed to do was wire up some Sametime livenames. According to the documentation, livenames are a UI representation of a contact; they display the online status using a status icon, and bold coloring of the contact’s display name. To do this, we include the getStatus.js JavaScript file; this file exists inside the user’s local Sametime client, and includes a lot of utility functions to deal with livenames/presence.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://localhost:59449/stwebapi/getStatus.js"></script>

The Sametime client listens on http://localhost:59449, so if the user currently has Sametime running, these files will exist for us to include in our HTML/JS pages.

The next step is to add some HTML links for the users which we’ll be checking presence on. For our use case, we didn’t want these links to appear on the page, we just wanted our JavaScript and the getStatus.js file provided to utilize them as needed, so I added a style=”display: none;” tag to the link to hide it. These links need to have the class=”awareness”, as that is how the getStatus.js file will pick them up when the page loads.

<a class="awareness" userId="System%20p" style="display: none;">Resolving contact, please wait....</a><br />
<a class="awareness" userId="zac" style="display: none;">Resolving contact, please wait....</a><br />
<a class="awareness" userId="test user" style="display: none;">Resolving contact, please wait....</a><br />

The userId=” {username} ” denotes the user which we are tracking presence of. In the example, we have System p (one of our test support queues), zac (my internal username), and test user (a non-existent user which will show up as offline).

After saving the file, we can access the HTML page we created. It will appear blank, but if we have Sametime running, we should be able to see some things under the covers in the browser. Using Firebug, we can see that the getStatus.js file has built up an array, called sametime_livenames, where it has stored a bunch of values about the users which we added to the page.

Now that we have these populated objects, let’s see how we can manipulate them to get a presence. In this example, we have three users; two (System p, zac) of them online, 1 (test user) that is offline. Now that we have sametime_livenames built up, we need to find the user’s presence. This took some serious digging on my part to find the differences, and good ways of doing this. I eventually settled on the fact that if the user is online, a “_properties” variable will be defined, if the user is offline, this variable doesn’t exist. Below is the Firebug output that lead me to this while testing.

sametime_livenames[0]._properties represents the first user we are tracking, System p, which is logged in.
sametime_livenames[2]._properties represents the last user we are tracking, test user, which is not logged in, and returns undefined.

So now we know what we are looking for to detect presence, but we need this to happen automatically when a user clicks a link, and have some custom logic to determine which chat client to launch, so let’s build our function to do this.

We will be using object literal notation since we don’t want our JavaScript to interfere with any other libraries the site we post to may be using.

// Detect presence of watched Sametime users
Instant.detectPresenceOfUser = function (stid) {
    user = stid.toLowerCase(); // Convert stid variable to lower case for switch statement

    switch (user) {
        // Check if STID is System p
        case 'system p':
            livename = sametime_livenames[0];

            // Check if user is logged in
            if (typeof livename._properties === "undefined") {
                return false;
            } else {
                return true;
            }
            break;
        // Check if STID is zac
        case 'zac':
            livename = sametime_livenames[1];

            // Check if user is logged in
            if (typeof livename._properties === "undefined") {
                return false;
            } else {
                return true;
            }
            break;
        // Check if STID is test user
        case 'test user':
            livename = sametime_livenames[2];

            // Check if user is logged in
            if (typeof livename._properties === "undefined") {
                return false;
            } else {
                return true;
            }
            break;
    }
};

The Instant.detectPresenceOfUser function is where we will return a true/false based on whether or not the user that we pass into the function is online or offline. The user gets passed in (ex. Instant.detectPresenceOfUser(“System p”);), the function converts it all to lower-case, and then passes it through the switch which determines what user we are looking for the presence of. Next, it checks that _properties variable, if it exists, the user is online, and the function returns true, otherwise, it returns false as it can’t see the user.

This gets bundled into our Instant.startChat function, so that we can have some logic about how we want to start the conversation. Now, if the website can’t see the user when a chat is initialized, it will launch the web client. In our case, the user may not be offline, just the site can’t see them, and the web client will bridge that gap.

Our full file of JavaScript utilities can be seen below. This includes checking whether the user is running Sametime, the presence detection function, and the function that can start a chat conversation from the web using Sametime.

Instant Profile Manager

2011-12-08T12:12:00.001-05:00

Have you ever wished that it was easier to switch between accounts in Microsoft Communicator?

Having to do this every time you switch accounts is less than ideal...

Here at Instant Technologies, we've been doing a lot of work of late around Microsoft Lync 2010. One minor, but irritating issue that we have faced is that there isn't really a good way to switch between accounts on the vanilla Lync Communicator client. For the typical Lync user, that's probably not a big concern, but in our development environment, it becomes irksome rather quickly, particularly since it is not possible to run multiple instances of the client at the same time. Some sort of tool to automate logins, and preserve more than a single set of credentials would be very helpful for in-house testing and development purposes.

We decided to spend a couple days ginning something up that we could use internally, and add another Microsoft API to our toolbox in the process. It's proven fairly useful for testing and development here, and so we have decided to release it to the community.

Instant Profile Manager in action

Features:

Stores log in credentials for an arbitrary number of Lync accounts.
Passwords can be stored, or, if you prefer, you can be prompted each log in.
Option to manually set the fully-qualified domain name of the server pool, so that you can easily switch between users on different pools.
Log in to a Lync account with just a couple clicks.

Here is a video demonstration of Instant Profile Manager in action. link

Setting up a profile in Instant Profile Manager

Requirements:

Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5
Microsoft Lync 2010 Communicator Client

Download Link: Instant Profile Manager (ZIP)

If you're interested in how we did it, read on...

Technical:
As it turns out, it is relatively simple to automate logins to the Lync Client, using the Microsoft Lync 2010 SDK (SDK, Docs). The heavy lifting is mostly handled by the LyncClient class, which exposes functions to sign in and out, and (although we haven't explored it yet) it would appear contact management and messaging are available as well.

We save the profile list as XML, to the current user's My Documents folder. It'a a dead-simple implementation, using the .Net XmlSerializer to handle transforming our list of Profile objects into XML for us.

Since the Communicator client sets a registry key (HK_CurrentUser/Software/IM Providers/Communicator/UpAndRunning), it is a simple matter to check, and then launch the client if it is not running. One caveat, for users with 64-bit systems, or who have installed Lync to a non-default location: You will need to edit ProfileManager.exe.config and set "PathToClient" to point at the location your communicator client is installed to.

We made an effort to also support OCS 2007 R2, as we also have a number of products that we regularly test targeting that platform, but by all indications, the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 SDK doesn't work, or at least not with the 3.5.6907 version we are using. Specifically, the IMessenger.Signin method doesn't seem to do any more than pop the client window up, regardless of the values passed as parameters. Perhaps this once worked, as there are a number of examples citing it (see Programming for Unified Communications, Chapter 3), but it is now marked deprecated, suggesting that IMessenger.AutoSignin() be used instead, which is wholly unsatisfactory for our purposes. While there appear to be some hacks one can do to make a Lync Client connect to an OCS 2007 R2 server, we didn't have much luck, and so had to abandon the idea of supporting 2007.

Queue Manager - New Charting Options

2011-10-06T18:00:00.002-04:00

In response to several customer requests, we are extending the measurements and reporting area of Queue Manager to support some additional charting options. One new option will be the ability to chart information based on a selectable date range.

For example, all queue traffic between the dates of October 1, 2011 and October 6, 2011.

Will produce the following chart - which may also be exported to Excel:

In addition to these new charts, the next update for the charting system will provide:

Dual axis charting (so you can chart 2 data sets - for example queue traffic v. % connected)
Ability to display all questions submitted before entering a queue (it would be cool to display trending topics)
Date selectable charts
New views to show connected/unconnected requests as well as resolved/unresolved requests
Charts to display cumulative chat time for experts as well as queues

Thank You SaskEnergy for a Great IMtegrity Case Study

2011-09-09T14:25:00.002-04:00

We'd like to send a special 'Thank You' to SaskEnergy for their help with our recent IMtegrity case study - focused on Sametime chat logging as well as Sametime charting and reporting.

As a company, we know that IMtegrity is an excellent application and is a great fit for customers looking to log and archive Sametime chat conversations. However, it's even more important when a customer uses their own words to express their experience with the product and their requirements.

So, thank you SaskEnergy for an excellent case study on Instant IMtegrity and your selection of IMtegrity as your Sametime chat archiving application. SaskEnergy is also an early adopter of Instant's Charting and Reporting suite for Sametime.

It was a pleasure working the entire team at SaskEnergy and we appreciate their support and encouragement.

Queue Manager Charting Updates

2011-09-08T12:28:00.000-04:00

Based on some recent customer deployments, we have added some features to our charting plaform and provided several new charts, and one new chart type, to our charting module for Queue Manager. In summary, we have added the ability to:

Capture and log usage metrics for both queues and experts
New charts to view usage metrics for queues and experts
A New chart type to layer 2 datasets in one chart
Several new charts to display comparisons of various metrics within one chart

Since many of our customers deploy Queue Manager within a help desk environment, one customer requested mertics to determine how long help desk experts spend in actual chat conversations with customers. We have therefore added several new charts that will provide metrics on chat duration, and usage, for both experts and queues.

Here is a sample chart that demonstrates the chat duration for a collection of experts. These new drill down enabled charts should provide a more detailed set of metrics on how long experts spend in actual chat conversations.

In addition to metrics on usage, we are providing the ability to compare 2 metrics within on a single chart. For instance, display the total number of conversations for a queue as well as the percentage of inbound requests that were successfully answered (Total Requests v. % Answered). We have added a new base chart type that will allow us to layer 2 data sets within one chart.

Here is an example of a chart that displays 2 sets of metrics

Queue Manager continues to gain great traction within environments that need a click to chat solution leveraging Lotus Sametime. With these new metrics, and chart extensions, we continue to expand our help desk platform for Lotus Sametime environments.

Social Communities and Collisions of Culture

2011-09-02T13:22:00.000-04:00

Like the phrase Web 2.0, the term Social is a loaded term with some room for interpretation. In a world where everyone is tethered with an IP address at all times, it becomes relatively easy to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time.

In the old days, like the early 1990s (well, pre 1990), email was pretty standard, but it was typically transmitted over modems that connected to various service providers and then blasted out, and took in, the mail packages for that period. In this semi-connected world, email made sense – and so did a plain old telephone call. This is probably what we refer to as the early Internet era.

In the next transition, most companies became constantly tethered to a service provider and simultaneously deployed internal networks throughout their organization. Here, the organization had a pretty stable collection of IP addresses, employees had internally assigned IP addresses, and folks could easily connect within, and across, organizations. This may broadly defined the Internet boom and bubble of the late 90s – extending through web 2.0.

In this new phase, everyone is tethered with an IP address at all times. Typically, most people have more than one IP address – one for work, one for a work phone, one for a personal phone, and one for their home. My 8^th grader has a phone that essentially provides him with an IP address at all times. At most times during the day, most folks probably have at least two, or possibly three totally different IP addresses that they can use to communicate. This tethering, and multi-tethering of IP addresses providing an inherently personal experience is what I consider social.

So, Social may be thought of a ubiquitous access to either one, or two, IP connections. This connection, or collection of connections, provides access to both a personal community and a professional community – active and available at all times. Applications are then pushed to various end-points (mobile, desktop, tablet, etc) to bridge these various social and personal communities. Currently, this explosion seems have focused on connecting (or reconnecting) fundamentally personal relationships and personal communities (i.e. friends from high school, colleagues from previous companies, classmates).

It is interesting to imagine what happens when we experience a collision of these various communities and networks – read differently, a collision of cultures. What takes place when the personal community collides with the corporate community – both operating in real-time? Does one fracture or absorb the other? What happens when the communities within a corporation are extended, or possible relocated, and placed into a personal or social space? How are new channels created in the corporate community to absorb, mine, and manage the personal networks that are developing in the social landscape? In this ‘post social’ space, these networks of networks collide, transform, are managed, created, and potentially shift from corporate, to social, and back again.

Lotus Notes as a Platform

2011-08-31T12:34:00.000-04:00

Recently, we have been exploring different software platforms as possible alternatives for our future development efforts. As with all platform choices, it's not an easy decision. However, as I have been thinking about this, I've had some soul searching around using Lotus Notes as a platform - which for all practical purposes, we have been using for many years.

These possible platform choices kinda look like this:
Spring + SQL variant
Spring with Groovy and Grails + SQL variant
Ruby and Rails
Node.js (maybe with CouchDB)
Microsoft .net + SQL Server and IIS

While I can debate the merits of all of these platforms, the one 'platform' that we are cautiously re-evaluating for future development is Lotus Notes. That is a bit strange, since Lotus Notes is inherently a platform - and a pretty awesome platform at that. Notes includes some great stuff - most of which is just starting to show up in other environments/platforms.

Let me count the things that I like about Notes (as a platform):

Fully functional and robust multi level security model - server, database, document, field level
A 'no sql' database without the pain of relational data models
A replicating database - that is really fast - even over slow connections
Internal directory management and hooks to all popular directories
Rich development environment including support for Java, xml, JS, Lotuscript, etc..
Nice deployment model (using templates and replication)
Server based management tools and very rich admin tools
HTTP stack - although the servlet container and other tools are dated
Ability to easily update development, testing, production environments by simply updating database templates and replicating databases
Stability and scalability

Here are many of the standard issues/platform consider impediments that we experience with Notes - most of which will familiar to folks in the Notes field.

We will only be able to sell into existing Lotus Notes shops
No good cloud based runtime model/hosting scenario - or good runtime model that works in 'non Notes' shops
Licensing is confusing and expensive
Young employees/prospective employees don't understand the platform or have any skills
I don't think IBM considers Lotus Notes as a viable platform and they (IBM) would like to see folks move to their industrial strength platform - Wepsphere

So, as we consider future platforms, and hear young developers espouse the virtues or Ruby/Rails, Spring, 'no sql' databases that just deal with name/value pairs, etc, I'm always brought back to the idea that many of these platforms are repurposes functionality that has been available in the Notes community for many years.

So, we will take the relatively safe approach and stick with Java, Spring, Groovy, JQuery, maybe some Grails, and then mount a standard SQL db under the covers. We will run under Apach/Tomcat and use standard libraries such as Log4J, Velocity, etc..

Peyton

Configuring Linux for the Notes API

2011-07-26T15:05:00.001-04:00

Recently, while installing/running some test Java applications, we came across the following error:

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: lsxbe (Not found in java.library.path)

This was on a box running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1, with Lotus Notes installed as well as the Java 1.6 Runtime Environment.

Running 'echo $PATH' showed that while the Java Runtime Environment was in our system/environment path, none of the Notes directories were. To do this we needed to add to the default path that SUSE provides each user. This is controlled in a few places, but, the safest place to make adjustments is inside the .bash_profile file (located in the users home folder, create this file if it doesn't already exist).

Here's how it looked after we created and added to it:

PATH=$PATH:/opt/ibm/lotus/notes
PATH=$PATH:/opt/ibm/lotus/notes/jvm/lib/ext
export PATH

After restarting our shell and running 'echo $PATH' we can see the new additions to our users path. Running the application gave us the same error as above, so we hadn't fixed it yet. After investigating more into Lotus Notes, we found some more things that needed to be added to our path.

Here's .bash_profile with our new changes:

PATH=$PATH:/opt/ibm/lotus/notes
PATH=$PATH:/opt/ibm/lotus/notes/jvm/lib/ext
PATH=$PATH:$NOTES_HOME
export PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/ibm/lotus/notes
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

After restarting our shell, the test application ran fine, and the exception above was gone. This was all done as the root user, to push this file to other users profiles, use this command from your home folder:

cp ~/.bash_profile /home/{username of the user}

Just replace after /home/ with the user name of the user to push the changes to.

Automatically Create Active Directory Accounts for Microsoft OCS

2011-03-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

In order to load test one of our Microsoft OCS applications, we needed to quickly create hundreds of test accounts for one of our OCS servers. First, we created the accounts in AD, then we simply highlighted the new accounts and provisioned the accounts for our OCS server.

Here is a small vbs script to create the sample users:

Set oRoot = GetObject(LDAP://rootDSE)

Set oDomain = GetObject("LDAP://" & oRoot.Get("defaultNamingContext"))
Set oOU=oDomain.Create("organizationalUnit", "ou=OCS Test Users")
oOU.Put "Description", "OCS Test Users"
oOU.SetInfo

For i = 1 to 200

       Set oUser = oOU.Create("User", "cn=OCSTest User" & i)
       oUser.Put "sAMAccountName", "OCSTestUser" & i
       oUser.Put "Description", "OCS Test User" & i
       oUser.SetInfo
       oUser.SetPassword "password"
       oUser.AccountDisabled = False
       oUser.SetInfo

Next

Wscript.Echo "Success, Check Active Directory Users and Computers - Remember F5"

Here is a screen shot of the test users:

After selecting all of the users in the explorer, we used the action to automatically provision the users for OCS - and selected the 'use SAM account' option

Sametime Chat Logging - Customer Feedback on IMtegrity - Excellent

2011-02-18T16:29:00.000-05:00

At Instant Technologies, we have many award winning Sametime products. However, it's wonderful to speak with customers running our Sametime chat logging application, Instant IMtegrity, and hear the great feedback and real world usage scenarios. This week, in a great conversation with a recent customer, I learned that IMtegrity is being used in a an environment where the application is logging more than 1,000,000 Sametime IM conversations per month. We have plenty of deployments that handle 10,000 conversations a day, but hear the words 'more than one million' indicated a huge leap.

In addition to the pure volume of the Sametime IM conversations moving through the system, the nicest feedback involved the compliments related to the installation and support. In the words of our customer, the installation took 'less than 30 minutes' and didn't involve any 'additional services, complex configurations, or technical support'.

In the words of our customer, 'IMtegrity is rock solid, highly scalable, and does exactly what it needs to do'.

One million conversations per month, zero outages, and a very happy customer.

This has been a great week at Instant

Instant IMtegrity 4.13 Released

2011-02-14T13:02:00.000-05:00

In response to a customer issue, Instant has released a point upgrade of IMtegrity, our Lotus Sametime chat logging and compliance application. Instant IMtegrity version 4.13 addresses an issue encountered importing image files.

The point release is available to existing Instant Imtegrity customers who are current on support and maintenance. Information is available on the IMtegrity product page:

What's new in Instant IMtegrity 4.13:

Fixed error "Subscript out of range (#9)" when importing chat log files containing images.

Fixed another instance of error "Font size must be between 1 and 250, or STYLE_NO_CHANGE

(#4364)" when importing files with HTML formatting.

What's new in Instant IMtegrity 4.12:

Fixed error "Object variable not set (#91)" when merging transferred files starting with an

!exclamation mark in their file name.

Fixed error "Font size must be between 1 and 250

New Manager Functionality In Queue Manager V4

2010-11-04T15:35:00.000-04:00

Queue Manager V4 is receiving excellent customer adoption and deployments. In response to recent customer feedback, we are pleased to announce that we have extended the way that queue managers can add, remove, and adjust queue staffing levels.

Our new 'Manager' module offers queue managers a real time dashboard that displays queue activity (both historical and real time) as well as current staffing levels.

Managers can see how many people are waiting for an expert, how many experts are available, and which experts are provisioned to help within the queue.

This updated functionality is supported in the V1B67 build of the database (October 28, 2010).

What's new in Instant Archive Viewer build 3.0.49 - 3.0.55 for Microsoft OCS

2010-10-01T14:39:00.005-04:00

Instant Archive Viewer for Microsoft OCS
Instant's Archive Viewer for Microsoft OCS is a very useful tool to search, retrieve, and report on conversations and content within the Microsoft OCS system. Visit our website for more detail:
http://www.instant-tech.com/Archive_Viewer_OCS.cfm

What's New in Build 3.0.49 for Instant Archive Viewer for Microsoft OCS?

Instant Archive Viewer for OCS Version 3.0.49 is now available and comes with a gamut of helpful enancements and fixes. Here are five new items that have been introduced.

1. Charting and Reporting

Instant Charting and Reporting for Microsoft OCS will create animated, interactive charts quickly and easily in order to measure traffic in your Microsoft OCS system. Display high level information organized by year or drilled down to the hour; Quickly filter usage by users and export them to Excel; View browser based reports from LCSLOG, LCSCDR, QOEMETRICS, ACDDYN and RTCCONFIG OCS database tables hosted from SQL server. For more information visit our Instant Charting and reporting for Microsoft OCS Web page at http://www.instant-tech.com/Charts.cfm

View Live Live Demo
Download Instant Charting & Reporting for OCS Datasheet

2. Improved Active directory browsing

We've made some small changes to the Active Directory picker. The Active Directory picker is available on the Extended Search and Discovery tab of the Admin page for browsing users and groups to access the Extended Search and Search and Discovery Page. It is also available for searching users/groups in active directory to search key words in conversations.We now allow administrators to choose how you would like to find the users in Active Directory via a drop down menu. The drop down menu has three choices: First name, Last Name or login name/samacount name.

3. Time zone differences between server and local machine

This small updated feature allows the Instant Charting for Microsoft OCS module to compensate for the local time zone of the local machine viewing Charts when there is a difference in time zone between the Server and local machine. It is a setting located in the Basic Settings tab of the Administrator options page.

4. Enhanced debugging

Debug will now capture all information including read-write access and connection information. This is very helpful for configuration of Instant Archive Viewer for Microsoft OCS.

5. New look and easy navigation

Instant Charing and Reporting for Lotus Sametime

2010-09-15T13:25:00.000-04:00

We are proud to announce that we have started shipping our Instant Charting and Reporting application for Lotus Sametime. The applications combines our experience developing a great charting and reporting system for our Queue Manager, as well as our experience developing a robust and scalable archiving application for Lotus Sametime.

The charting and reporting application provides 3 main components:
1 - Charting information and statistics captured by our IMtegrity database and archiving application
2 - Charting information provided by the Sametime ST Logs. This is mainly for historical purposes and displays a variety of useful Sametime statistics against a historical period
3 - Live usage metrics and data: This information is provided using the Sametime Statistics Servlet and displayed in real time using some excellent charting tools.

A live demonstration of the application is available on our web site. Please direct any questions, or inquiries, to sales@instant-tech.com

A broader overview of the application, with screen shots, data sheets, and other information is available at:
http://www.instant-tech.com/lotus_sametime_charts.cfm

Charting and Reporting for OCS

2010-07-29T12:04:00.000-04:00

Charting and Reporting for OCS is an XML based charting engine rendering statistics from your Office Communications Server in a cool flash bar graph or pie chart. The information is retrieved using SQL queries inside XML pages and viewed on pages hosted from the IIS webserver. The databases we are retrieving the information from are the LcsLog and lcsCDR, QoEMetrics, ACDDYN and RTCCONFIG. For more information on these databases visit the following links:

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/communicationsserversqldatabase/thread/433629ad-faa0-40b3-b0bb-42cb5c5dd8e5/

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd425133(office.13).aspx

http://www.ocspedia.com/Misc/NewDatabasesInR2.htm

Users may add, delete or modify all charts manually and may optionally apply an intuitive filter to customize the data into more usable, focused information using the interface built into the charting and reporting page. Here are some examples of charts we have been working on for a help desk call center, which we have applied said filter to access the Inbound/outbound queue data from a PBX calling system for a help desk:

Inbound Calls by Hour of Day

Inbound Calls by Day of Week

Average Duration of All Calls by Day of the Week

Calls by Hour of Day

For more charts and information visit:

http://www.instant-tech.com/Archive_Viewer_OCS.cfm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/instant-tech/sets/72157624471098721/

IQM V4 Feature Update – Inviting any user from the Sametime Directory to a Queue conversation

2010-07-10T06:16:00.001-04:00

This has been one of the most prominent feature request by our existing Queue users and evaluators. This allows the expert to quickly send invite to any Sametime user who would be subject matter specialist into a Queue conversation with a visitor.

The feature is available to experts via a Sametime plug-in. While in a chat conversation expert can quickly use the invite option as highlighted in the following screenshot:

Using the invite option will display the following dialog which allows expert to quickly search and pick any user from the Sametime Directory:

Once the users have been selected an invite to Multi party chat conversation is sent to the users

After the users accept the invite they are able to assist the visitor via the NWay chat window.

Amazon Cloud

2010-07-09T15:12:00.001-04:00

Amazon EC2 cloud computing has been very interesting and useful. I and others at Instant Technologies use these Amazon instances for testing and they have been very helpful to us in many ways. One pretty obvious advantage is that the server doesn't shut down every time a snow storm hits the area and knocks the power out. Another is that you don't have to maintain the server in a physical space, be it office or home and keep upgrading the machine or buy new machines each time our customers need testing on new software. For example, Microsoft now has a requirement for 64 bit machines for hosting their OCS software. If you are stuck with 32 bit machines in the office, then your machines quickly becomes obsolete. Another great feature is how I can stop and start these Amazon instances, and only pay (well...Instant Technologies pays), when there is a need to use them. I can take snapshots of drives and attach /detach them to any instance from any previous snapshot state using the very handy AWS Management Console, which once you get the hang of it can be very easy to use.

Also, please correct me, if I am wrong but there seems to be one very large disadvantage with Amazon. The problem is the tiny C drive you receive, when launching a large instance (64 bit machine). 10 gigs! Unless you are good at remapping things or moving space between drives and so on, which I am not, this is something that you have to live with. These large images are extremely expensive and are almost the cost of renting your own office, if you keep it running 24/7, so it really is a shame we only get this amount of hard drive space.

I am still learning and a lot of it, mostly learned through trial and error, unfortunately. There is one very important issue that came up, which may have been solved had I actually read the instructions. It's to make sure that before you bundle your images, to uncheck the "Use hexadecimal name for each instance after bundling". This setting is located in the Program files of the C drive. If you do not, your computer name will change after bundling and when you are ready to run the new instance, some references in your software will remain pointing to the original computer name. This can really mix-up some software configurations, namely the Microsoft Office Communications Server. Another thing, I've learned, is to take snapshots of drives. This became important due to having many important files that our Sql server had stored on two other drives. When you bundle an instance, it only copies the C drive, which means you must copy your D, E, etc. drives to a volume before bundling. There is probably a better way but I did this by just copying and pasting all files from each drive to a volume after attaching them and taking a snapshot of each. I then, have these drives as backup for the next instance I would like to launch.

Now, there are even more features, just introduced and a lot of things I've mentioned above may have changed or improved. There have been new tabs that include better handling of buckets and just a gamut of new stuff in the AWS management console that I have not played with yet and have no idea about...time to play catch-up once again but hopefully after reading some instructions first.

Sending messages to off-line users of Microsoft Communicator

2010-06-25T10:20:00.003-04:00

We are working on a solution to capture messages to off-line users of Microsoft Office Communicator. We would like to capture these lost off-line messages that are never sent to the intended recipient and store them in a Sql database before they become lost or are sent to email. When an offline user of these messages become active, we would then alert the user, similar to IM tools such as Yahoo Messenger.

We are working with MSPL (Microsoft Sip Processing Language), which is a scripting language used for filtering or routing SIP messages combined with C# to capture the message. For delivering messages, the UCMA API is used.

We have bumped into some hurdles for capturing the messages, for instance, we were able to capture the message and the user initiating the message to the recipient but the message seemed to be encrypted in a UTF-8 format. We found a way to decrypt this message using the Class library in C# called system.text.coding and is now readable in a plain text file.

Now that the hardest part is over, or so it may seem, we can concentrate on sending them to the recipient when he/she becomes online. We will need to monitor who becomes online and send these messages using a windows service. The good news is, we already have an application that monitors offline users and sends an alert to these users, when they become active. It is called Instant Alert Manager for OCS so this is not entirely new territory for us and has given us a head-start.

There is still quite a lot of work to do. For example, storing data in a Sql Database and creating tables to store the data and deleting the data after the information has been sent. Also, capturing messages sent to users in various states, ie., busy, do not disturb, be right back. What if, users are a way on vacation, what to do with these messages, should there be an expiration time and then have the messages sent to an email, etc., etc. Nevertheless, much progress has been made in a short time and we will continue to find the best solutions. We will continue to update our latest findings and possibly give more details as we progress.

Queue Manage V4 Updates -

2010-06-04T14:33:00.002-04:00

This week, we have been extremely busy adding additional enhancements to Queue Manager V4. All of the enhancements are a direct result of customer feedback and customer requests.

By default, the system has been enabled to notify experts when a person is waiting in the queue. The broadcast options for the queue will determine the expert notification settings. We know that the notification system for experts is very important and we will continue to invest time, and design ideas, on this area.

In addition to sending IM alerts on Sametime, Microsoft OCS, and XMPP, we now also support the ability to alert experts using Twitter. If the expert is not online in an IM system, then we can send the expert a tweet and let them know that someone is waiting in the queue and needs help. Our directory system now supports some additional fields necessary for the Twitter support.

Updated web client so that it can be easily configured by the installation process. Now all files use relative path and settings are saved in a single file. This should dramatically improve the ability to quickly customize and deploy the web client

Updated the plug-in to support Sametime Connect 8.5. The updated plugin also supports server based text replies, the ability to accept multiple chat conversations, and the embedded monitoring panel. The monitoring panel has also been updated to show the high level queue activity as well as a drill down details level view of each queue.

In order to help provide experts with standard replies, we have added the ability to store, and manage, server based text replies within the administrative system. These server based text resources are integrated into the Sametime plugin.

The Sametime plugin retrieves the list of server based replies and provides the list to the expert using a custom icon:

Updated ITF so that newly created Queue comes online without restarting Apache.

Updating LDAP browser code to support sorting of entries

Added support for $surveyURL

More information on surveys will be available next week.

Peyton

Updates to Archive Viewer for Microsoft OCS

2010-06-02T11:53:00.002-04:00

We have recently made several updates to our Archive Viewer for Microsoft OCS. Most of these updates are based on customer feedback.

Within our scheduling and mailing system, we now support authentication via public AD groups. Several of our customers required keyword searches within groups and then schedule those keyword searches on a daily or weekly basis. Prior to this update, pubilc group queries were not supported. We now support scheduled keyword inspection against public groups defined in Active Directory.

Here is the initial search criteria

We then save the query to a project and have the ability to schedule the query:

We have also added a central landing page to help provide a more centralized user experience.

Instant Updates for week of May 28, 2010

2010-05-28T10:33:00.000-04:00

This has been a very busy, and successful week at Instant. As usual, we are working on multiple products - but all with an extreme focus on enabling our customers with improved enterprise IM applications.

IMtegrity, our high performance archiving and compliance product for Lotus Sametime, now support installations on Sametime 8.5 servers. Right now, this installation involves a very easy modification to the standard IMtegrity installation workflow. Keith has been busy with customer installations and so far all of our customers, and evaluators, are very happy. IMtegrity continues to successfully handle the Sametime archiving requirements for some of the largest financial service institutions in the world. Thanks Keith for a terrific job with these installations.

Instant Queue Manager V4 has experienced a series of updates this week. We have recently added a very nice installation process for the Apache server component and this has dramatically reduced the installation complexiy and overhead. This update is a direct result of numerous installation and our desire to save time - for both our customers and our internal engineers. We have also streamlined the Notes installation process. Our goal is to provide our customers with an installation process that can be completed in less than 30 minutes. Thanks to some exceptional patience, and assistance, from several wonderful people within a large financial company in Toronto, our installation process has dramatically improved this week. Thank you Chris and Fred!

We have also updated our Team Sessions Sametime plugin to support Sametime 8.5. We are starting to see an uptick in the Sametime 8.5 installations.

We are also seeing steady growth in the Microsoft OCS server deployments. We continue to improve our Archive Viewer for OCS and have recently added a much improved landing page, improved support for group level ACLs, as well as continued performance improvements. This week, we are pleased to welcome several new customers to our Archive Viewer community. We are currently working on a new charting and reporting module for Microsoft OCS and some screen shots will be posted shortly.

Some sample web based queues and bots

2010-05-26T12:28:00.001-04:00

Instant Technologies has been developing and deploying web based IM solutions since 2004. Our Queue Manager V4 supports a newly designed Ajax based web client that removes the earlier dependendcy on Sametime's ST Links toolkit.

The following examples demonstrate our new Ajax based web client interacting with a variety of prodcuts, such as:

IM help desk queues
Custom IM bots

These examples of Instant Technologies Bots show how they can be integrated with IBM Instant Messaging ("Lotus Sametime") awareness directly onto a webpage.

New Queue Manager Template Released

2010-05-03T12:48:00.000-04:00

We have released an updated version of the Queue Manager V4 template. This latest template supports all of the work that we have done in order to provide more detailed information on web based visitors. Information on web based visitors will now be available to experts, the framework applications, as well as the queue logs database.

We have also updated the charting and reporting system based on feedback from one of our favorite customers in South Carolina.

Here is the list of updates in this latest release:
QueueMgr Template Ver 2.20 May 03, 2010

1. Form 'ITAgentLogEntry' will have the following new fields

ITLog_CustomerIDTX

ITLog_BrowserVersionTX

ITLog_BrowserOSTX

ITLog_BrowserNameTX

ITLog_WebPageReferringURLTX

2. Added new view 'by Customer ID & Date'

Instant Queue Connections V1B32 May 03, 2010

1. Startup type property added to queue and interviews

2. Monitoring Panel update Version 1.0.12 26 APR 2010

3. Control Panel update Version 1.0.3 26 APR 2010

4. Added Public group support

5. New Monitoring Panel URL for experts

6. New URL for watched Queues

7. URL to Sync Public Groups

10. Support for new line in the text resources for Queue Properties XML

11. Added page to display the supported text variables

12. Passwords are encrypted in the UI XMLs

13. Added Support for LDAP based directories

14. UI related bug fixes

Instant Measurement Suite Template v1.14 Apr 21, 2010

1. Charts 'All Chat Logs\Open Conversations' and 'Customer\This Week' has drill down functionality

2. By Month charts have been sorted in calender order

3. Default chart for IQM will be 'Today By Queue'

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA REDCOAT BAND plays REM

2010-04-30T12:49:00.000-04:00

On a lighter note...As a fan of both the University of Georgia, and REM, this is a fun video - totally not related to enterprise IM, Sametime, or OCS.

IMtegrity Connector for Legato - Transfer Sametime Chat Conversations to Legato

2010-04-28T17:30:00.000-04:00

We have recently released our IMtegrity Connector for EMC's Legato application. The IMtegrity Connector for Legato provides the ability to automatically move Sametime chats, captured and stored in IMtegrity, to the exjournal.nsf database where they are imported by Legato.

For customers with Sametime and EMC's Legato, IMtegrity makes an ideal Sametime chat archiving application.

Many thanks to out joint IMtegrity and Legato customers who helped with the development, testing, and deployment. Specific thanks to Tim Browne and Jeff Lontz.

Jeff worked with us during our initial implementation and Tim Browne provided an excellent design and feature list.

Here is a brief case study on the deployment.

A shot of the Connector's configuration :

After the IMtegrity Connector is configured and turn on, the Lotus Sametime chat conversations are automatically moved, or copied, to exjournal.nsf

The following screen shot shows how the Legato based searching UI appears - after the Sametime conversations are migrated. Notice how the chat conversations are now searchable - just like email:

Peyton

Build V. Buy - Be Careful What you Wish For

2010-04-16T15:49:00.000-04:00

We develop software all day, every day, and it is generally pretty difficult. Therefore, I'm always surprised when I encounter a potential customer in a build v. buy mode.

On the surface, and at the white board, the build decision looks somewhat 'easy'.

The scenario typically unfolds in the following way:

A manager has articulated a requirement. A local developer, or team, has a few 'extra cycles' and should be able to create some specific base functionality in a few days or weeks. I call this 'the first 80% is easy'.

It can't be that difficult, since it just involves (pick one):

Capturing every chat conversation on a server - it's just some C++ and Notes API code
Routing inbound IM conversations to an expert - ti's just some Java and Sametime API
Creating a reporting system to search, report, export, and manage thousands of IM conversations - it's just SQL reporting

The developer has all of the necessary skills and it doesn't involve a 'real project', bug tracking, project maintenance, QA resources, extra hardware, or any other additional tools. Of course...it will - but that is 'downstream'.

In my experience, it's the final 20% of any project that consumes most of the time/money/effort....and the final 5% is really, really difficult.

Putting on my 'manager' hat, I would ask the following types of questions:

Can you achieve?

A proven, solution that doesn’t degrade the performance of the Sametime, or OCS server
A scalable application that can handle thousands, or tens of thousands, of concurrent conversations
Can the features match the core features of the commercial off the shelf offerings
What will be done in the future when we move to a new version of Sametime/OCS (i.e. in 12 months when we move to ST 8.5 who will update, test, and rebuild the application)?

Assuming that these things can be achieved, what is the size of the project team (with time estimates) that will be required to deliver this application? How will it be tested? How will bugs be found, tracked, and fixed? Who will maintain the application? For how long will it be maintained?

Ultimately: Why do we want to be in the business of recreating a product that is already available in the market, is already tested, and has the benefit of other customers, feedback loops, and multiple deployments?

Instant is now a Certified Microsoft Partner

2010-04-14T14:32:00.000-04:00

We are happy to announce that Instant Technologies is now a certified Microsoft partner. We recently submitted our primary OCS based application - Instant Archive Viewer for OCS - to a certfication program. Instant Archive Viewer for Microsoft OCS passed the certification review and we are pleased to be an official partner.

Microsoft was excellent to work with during this entire process and the benefits of becoming certified are immediate and tangible.

Video Overview of Lotus Sametime Based IM Queues

2010-04-06T21:20:00.001-04:00

Instant Queue Manager supports both broadcast and monitored based queues. In terms of product feedback, the ability for experts and help desk managers to monitor IM queues was one of the most requested features of our earlier Queue Manager.

In Queue Manager V4, monitored queues are a key component of the overall application. Here is a brief video covering the expert's perspective of the monitoring panel and the inbound queue traffic across multiple queues. The following video displays an expert using Lotus Sametime to retrieve a customer from a help desk queue.

Monitored Queues Make Debut in Queue Manager V4

2010-04-02T12:40:00.004-04:00

Monitored queues are one of the major features of the latest Instant Queue Manager V4 for Lotus Sametime. Our monitored queues provide a central point where experts (CSRs), manager, and administrators can monitor, and act on, any inbound IM queue request. For our customers running internal help desks, IT support centers, and sales enablement centers, the ability to expose Lotus Sametime click to chat functionality is seamless and scalable.

Customers start a conversation with a monitored queue either through a web based chat client (our new Ajax based chat client is fantastic), via an Instant Interview, or by starting a conversation with a queue in their Sametime buddy list.

However, instead of broadcasting the incoming customer request to a list of experts, the inbound queue request is managed, and exposed, using a nicely designed queue monitoring panel.
Using the queue monitoring panel, requests can be viewed, accepted by an expert using the experts Sametime client, or transferred to another queue.

Columns within the monitoring panel display the name of the inbound customer, their question, their wait time, and whether they are connected with an expert (CSR) or awaiting a connection.

A summary panel for all queue information provides administrators with summary statistics on total queue activity - including how many inbound requests are waiting for a connection, how many customers are connected with an expert, and the maximum wait time within a queue.

Queue Manager V4 - Measurements and Reporting

2010-03-26T15:54:00.000-04:00

Based on customer feedbackwe have completely redesigned the charting component for Queue Manager V4.

We now support 26 base charts which are dynamically presented. 5 of the charts support drill down displays.

Charts have been designed to present data on such items as queues, agents (experts), time periods, unresolved requests, and system load. Our high level goal is to enable executives, and design makers, with useful information queue activity, load, trends, and that the information immediately add value to the day to day operations of IM help desk queues.

Here is a brief (90 second) overview of the measurements and reporting area of Queue Manager V4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYY8PppZOhI

Load by agent for today:

Queue Manager 4 - On the Way

2010-03-26T13:19:00.000-04:00

After a very long development road, we are getting very excited to announce our newest release of Queue Manager V4. Queue Manager has a very loyal following and we have done a massive amount of work to include most of the enhancement requests in this latest version.

Here is a quick overview:
Charting and Reporting:
We have completely rewritten the entire charting and reporting system. With 26 charts (out of the box) and 5 enabled for multi level drill down, we think the charting system should be a huge improvement

Monitored Queues:
Our broadcast queues are useful, but based on early customer feedback, the monitored queues will be extremely helpful in help desk environments and large organizations. Monitored queues include a real time flex based dashboard showing all queue traffic.

Interviews:
Interviews enable a decision support tree to be provided to inbound customers before they interact with a queue. These IM based trees are customizable, extensible, and very easy to create. With our Groovy integration, customer can easily shift conversations from an interview to custom Groovy extensions.

Browser Based Configuration:
Our number one request. Queues, interviews, and all administrative tasks are now available from our browser based interface.

Supports Popular Enterprise IM Systems:
Built on Instant's enterprise IM abstraction layer, Queue Manager V4 supports Lotus Sametime, Microsoft OCS, and XMPP based systems.

Here is a screen shot of the charting system:

Queue Manager 4 Overview

2010-03-25T11:00:00.003-04:00

This FAQ will provide useful pointers to various entries on Instant Queue Manager 4.

The following are the high level areas:

Installation
Broadcast Queues
Monitored Queues
Charting and Reporting
Administration
Interviews
Bot Development

Groovy Templates in our IM Framework

2010-03-23T13:33:00.003-04:00

As part of our instant messaging abstraction layer, we are making extensive use of Groovy and some Groovy constructs.

While our 'connectors' to the various IM platforms (Lotus Sametime, Microsoft OCS, XMPP) are all built using Java, our business logic and higher level applications are generally constructed using Groovy. For example, our Interviews and Monitored Queues were all developed in Groovy using our Java based API to the various IM systems.

Since we are now completing the monitored queue area of our latest version of
Instant Queue Manager, we are adding some finishing touches to the text portion of the application.

Luckily, Groovy templates are making this very easy. Here is a background article from IBM on Groovy templates: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-pg02155/

Our idea is that we will enable Groovy based template syntax in our our queue definitions and then simple route the text resource through the Groovy template engine in order to provide real time text substitutions.

Working on a 35,000 user vpuserinfo.nsf conversion

2010-03-02T14:58:00.002-05:00

For the last several months, we have been using our Buddy List Administrator, and our vpuserinfo.nsf conversion routines, to migrate 35,000 users within a large Sametime environment.

This conversion has been a bit more complicated than some of our earlier conversions since:
We are remapping all 35,000 people from one network ID to another
We are dealing with multiple Sametime clients
The Sametime buddy lists are stored in both the field 0 (zero) and field 8193

As with most projects, there are some new paths to cross. For example, we have recently discovered some differences in the header for the 8193 field that created some issues in our earlier 'dry runs'. We have now resolved those issues (after an all morning byte by byte analysis session) and we are waiting for the actual cut over.

Our goal on these conversions is 99.9999% success rate. Ideally, when a person logs into their Sametime client on Monday (following a weekend conversion) they will see their exact buddy list - but with new user IDs and display names (both of which are changing on this conversion).

The most difficult part of this project has been the consolidation of the various mapping tables into one coherent lookup table. The customer is provided us with various (7) directories - all of which we are normalizing in order to provide a master lookup table.

Lotus Notes has been an excellent data repository and has provided a very quick, and easy, storage device for all of this data. Our import routines also leverage Lotus Notes and the ability (using some Lotus Notes agents) to read data from Microsoft Excel (XLS) files.

This has been a challenging project, but we continue to add more knowledge to our Sametime buddy list conversion process and our code base for these conversions continues to grow.

Seeing some problems with Sametime 8.5

2010-03-02T09:12:00.003-05:00

We are running one of our development environments on Sametime 8.5. We use both Domino HTTP, a very nice Domino based web application, and Sametime. Unfortunately, we are seeing a rather large number of crashes on our Sametime 8.5 server. Are other customers or developers seeing this behavior?

We are thinking about backing down our Sametime 8.5 server to Sametime 8.02 in order to help with stability.

Instant Queue Manager - Best Unified Communication and Collaboration Solution at IBM Lotusphere 2010

2010-02-09T12:13:00.002-05:00

Instant Queue Manager was honored by IBM for the second consecutive year! It won 'Best in Lotusphere Showcase' at Lotusphere 2009; this year it won Best Unified Communication and Collaboration Solution.

Read our press release on winning this prestigious award....or read it directly from IBM.

If you want to increase employee productivity, improve your customer service, or shorten your sales cycles, you need Instant Queue Manager.

Balsamiq Mockups - Better Than Paper

2010-01-15T00:12:00.005-05:00

I frequently want to quickly 'mockup' a sample page, dialog, or even application. Typically, I start with a pencil and pencil. However, with teams distributed around the country, and world, pencil and paper mockups are just too difficult to share.

I've tried Visio, paintbrush, bamboo pen pads, taking pictures of my mockups, and snagit. However, no matter how much I try other tools, I keep coming back to paper.

Balsamiq Mockups has the potential to offer the best of both worlds. It's a very clean, easy to use, flex/air application that enables very quick mockups. Typically, in a mockup, I'm striving for placement, layout,and broad concepts. This is where Balsamiq shines. The images are 'simple' enough to leave enough room for imagination.

Cool tool...http://www.balsamiq.com

Looking forward to Lotusphere and 2010

2010-01-12T18:21:00.002-05:00

2010 should be an exciting year. There are signs that the economy has finally turned a corner, our customers are very busy, and we have some new software that we are very excited about showcasing.

Lotusphere is a great kickoff to 2010 - and we are looking forward to meeting with our customers, seeing friends, and taking a pulse of the Lotus/IBM community.

If you are at Lotusphere, please stop by our booth and say hi. In many cases, Lotusphere is the one time during the year where we physically meet with, and talk in person, to our partners and customers. It's also a great place to share stories and renew friendships.

See you in Orlando

Peyton

Cisco migrates to XMPP/Jabber

2009-10-01T07:00:00.002-04:00

Some recent updates in the IBM Sametime blog (http://www.thesametimeblog.com/sametimeblog/sametimeblog.nsf/dx/ciscos-big-news.htm) indicate that Cicso is migrating (internally) to Jabber and XMPP. That's a reasonable move and one that further indicates that there are really key platforms in the enterprise IM and presence space. Of course, Lotus/IBM Sametime was the early favorite, then Microsoft delivered several impressive releases of their SIP plaform (LCS, OCS, OCS 2007) and with Cicsco, the XMPP protocol still has a lot of life.

We are embracing all three major platforms. The next release of our bot platform, help desk and routing application, and entreprise IM queue management app will support Sametime, Microsoft OCS, and XMPP - all on the same code base. Also, any custom extensions developed in our scripting platform will also support all three platforms.

What does that mean for our customers?

Bots (such as Active Directory lookups, sharepoint searches, ldap directory) will be able to focus on the business logic and process - and target any platform with only one line of additional code.

Our help desk application will support all platforms and accept inbound connections from any platform, and route to an expert on any platform. So, an inbound XMPP connection may seeks experts running on xmpp, Sametime, or OCS

Custom applications developed in either Java, or our scripting layer, will have the ability to listen, broadcast, and interact with all three platforms.

Interview Manager Extensions

2009-09-24T14:37:00.004-04:00

As we continue to migrate our earlier applications to our new framework, we have bene adding in the ability to easily create application extensions. These application extensions include the ability to:

Leverarge our framework to create Sametime, OCS, and XMPP based bots
Define custom IM Interview based bots that will provide a user with a decision support tree (in IM)
Provide a simple scripting framework to extend our platform for custom applications.

We have selected Groovy (http://groovy.codehaus.org/) as our scripting language. The more we use Groovy, the more powerful it becomes. Of course, when Groovy is matched with our IM platform, any Groovy based (or Java based) application will run against all 3 major IM platforms with little, or no, modification.

Groovy Web Console

2009-08-11T21:09:00.002-04:00

Here is a neat little site that provides a web based Groovy console with the ability to run Groovy scripts. It is deployed on the Google App Engine (very cool idea).
http://groovyconsole.appspot.com/

Just for fun, here is a little groovy script to read a CNN feed. This is also running as a bot within our environment:

def url = "http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss"
println 'The top three news items today:'
def items = new XmlParser().parse(url).channel[0].item
for (item in items[0..2]) {
println "${item.title.text()} - ${item.link.text()}"
println item.description.text()
println '----'
}

Instant Bots - Now with Groovy

2009-08-11T18:02:00.002-04:00

Over the years, Instant has developed Sametime bots in Java, .Net, and VB. We have also created OCS bots in VB and .Net. These have all been fun projects.

However, nothing matches the pleasure of developing IM applications using groovy.

Groovy is light weight and just plain fun. I'm especially impressed with XMLSlurper - which makes dealing with XML painless (well, actually productive).

Here is a little weather bot developed in groovy.

1: Let's login to Sametime

public weatherBot() {
super()
registerAndLogin("ST", "stserver.instant-tech.com", "weather bot", "");
}

2: Let's say Hello when we receive an IM:

public void ImReceived(ITFIMEvent ImEvent)
{
super.ImReceived(ImEvent)
String msgType = ImEvent.getMsgServiceType()
String prefix = "Welcome to the Instant Weather bot. Please enter a zipcode:"
MsgServiceInterface myService = getMsgService(msgType)

myService.sendText(ImEvent.getSenderId(),
prefix ,
ImEvent.getConfigId())
}

3: Let's return the weather (with a little help from XMLSlurper)

public void ImTextReceived(ITFIMEvent ImEvent)
{
super.ImTextReceived(ImEvent)
String msgType = ImEvent.getMsgServiceType()
MsgServiceInterface myService = getMsgService(msgType)

def baseUrl = "http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss"
String zip = ""
String outPut = ""

//def zip = '03824'
zip = ImEvent.getText()
def url = baseUrl + "?p=" + zip
def xml = url.toURL().text

def rss = new XmlSlurper().parseText(xml)
outPut = "Your temp is " + rss.channel.item.condition.@temp + " and conditions are: " + rss.channel.item.condition.@text

myService.sendText(ImEvent.getSenderId(),
outPut,
ImEvent.getConfigId())
}

Interesting Flex on Grails Book

2009-08-11T17:55:00.002-04:00

Here is a link to a very interesting Flex on Grails book.
http://sites.google.com/site/flexongrails/

In researching our next platform, I'm impressed with Grails. Grails seems to create a platform where applications are developed with few lines of code, they use very efficient components (i.e. groovy), and the focus is on a high quality applicaiton built on industry best practices.

As we extend our UI from Notes, we will take advantage of both Grails and Groovy.

ext GWT Explorer Demo

2009-07-02T14:27:00.002-04:00

Here is a little demo application of the ext GWT framework.
http://extjs.com/explorer/#

Here is a very cool little sample of a desktop environment:
http://extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/desktop/desktop.html

Comparing PHP vs. Asp.Net

2009-06-29T16:36:00.003-04:00

Here is a pretty good comparison of PHP v. ASP.Net.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/columns/hull_php2.html

The hitchhikers guide to PHP
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/php_experts/index.html

Technical Brief - Lotus Sametime Advanced

2009-06-26T11:06:00.003-04:00

The technical brief described in our last post is now available. This brief compares and constrasts ST Advanced's persistent chat and broadcast capabilities with those found in Instant Team Sessions and Instant Queue Manager.

Read the brief here.

Sametime Advanced - Notes from the field

2009-06-25T08:49:00.002-04:00

We've now completed a number of PoCs in which customers compared Sametime Advanced to the capabilities of Instant Team Sessions and/or Instant Queue Manager.

It appears at first glance that ST Advanced has a low buy-in, but the feedback from the field indicates a high total cost of ownership over time. ST Advanced requires a minimum of five separate servers (and more likely double that number, if you require redundancy). Which also means you need the technical competency to maintain and manage all those servers - Websphere, Websphere MQ, Websphere Event Broker, DB2 Enterprise server, DB2 Net Search Extender - over and above your Sametime and Domino server.

For all of that cost and complexity, what do you gain? The main reasons to deploy ST Advanced are persistent chat, broadcasting, and screen sharing.

Instant Team Sessions provides comparable persistent chat capabilities, while Instant Queue Manager matches most of ST Advanced's broadcast features (the two exceptions are broadcast alerts and polls). Instant Queue Manager actually offers a lot of important functionality not available in ST Advanced: Support for both internal and external users via the ST Connect client and/or ST Links; intelligent routing of requests to the relevant subject matter experts; automatic issue escalation to improve first-call resolution rate; automatic metric tracking for management reports (eg, wait time, time to resolution, etc); and much more.

The best part is that you don't need to deploy any extra hardware or learn and maintain any additional technical skill - all you need is your existing Sametime/Domino environment.

Customers who have done the cost/benefit analysis are invariably choosing Instant Team Sessions and/or Instant Queue Manager over ST Advanced.

We are preparing a technical brief to help you make your own cost/benefit analysis. We will post new of its availability to this space as soon as it is ready for publication.

TwitCaps - watch the world of twitter

2009-06-24T18:47:00.002-04:00

In researching some development platforms (PHP, Groovy, Grails, etc..) I stumbled on a Grails testimonial page. Since we also want to integrate PHP with mySQL, Grails looks very useful.

After reading a few testimonials at : http://grails.org/Testimonials I started clicking around and found a very nice little twitter app. It allows the real time display of photos as they pass through twitter.

It's like watching 100 new cell phone pictures every 20 seconds, from all over the world, with all sorts of content. The UI is clean, the app is fun, and it's interesting to watch snapshots of time across the world.
http://twitcaps.com/

IM Queues in Different Languages

2009-06-24T12:25:00.003-04:00

Many of our Queue Manager customers deploy internal help desk IM based queues in order to support their internal employees. These IM help desk queues allow employees to immediately locate an expert, typically in IT, to help resolve a problem (i.e. issue with phone, laptop, project, password, etc..).

Since many of our customers have global operations, we frequently see these IM queues supporting various geographic areas and languages.

The basic text resources of a queue are easily defined in our application - so it is easy to specify specific text responses. In order to completely support additional languages, we also provide a base resource xml file where all additional text resources may be specified for a queue.

How to run asp.net on Apache

2009-06-17T21:13:00.002-04:00

Here's an interesting little article on running asp.net on Apache.
http://weblogs.asp.net/israelio/archive/2005/09/11/424852.aspx

HP C1580 is giving me a headache

2009-06-17T20:54:00.004-04:00

Generally, I love HP printers. However, my little photosmart C1580 has been a painful experience.

Let me count the ways:

HP is constantly downloading updates to the drivers and other stuff on my machine. In Vista, this is creating a situation where I'm asked constantly to grant access to the HP updating app. Please...it's just a printer and I don't want to be notified on a daily/weekly basis that you have updated something. I just want to print reports, occasional emails, and other stuff.

The Photosmart seems to burn through color ink. When this happens, whenever I print, I receive a dialog box asking to print in black. After I OK this dialog, the printer also forces me to confirm that I will only print in black. This is taking place during every print job. Since 99% of what I print is black/white, this 2 pronged combination of prompts (that force a reply) is painful.

Recently, my little printer just stopped printing. It would flash some series of error lights (and never really throw an error message). After 30 minutes of browsing web sites, I found some articles on giving the printer a hard boot (I had other ideas involving a window). Here is one of those articles: http://www.mlnarik.com/jewel/2009/05/21/how-i-fixed-my-hp-c5180-printer/

Earlier today, one of the ink cartridges ran out of ink. The small panel on the printer indicated that I must replace the cartridge, but did not provide the name of the color. Instead, it provided a small square with the color the cartridge to replace. I'm not color blind, however, the color didn't match any of installed cartridges. Just a name would have been very helpful.

In network mode, the printer is always grabbing a new IP address, and this breaks all installed printers configured on multiple machines. Sure, I understand DHCP, and I know the little fella needs an address, but it's painful to constantly reconfigure desktops just to 're find' the printer. I've now assigned a static IP address to the printer (whew)

I have always been a strong believer in HP - this printer has me rethinking that position.

Peyton

Good wiki on ST Advanced

2009-06-17T12:00:00.002-04:00

Here is a nice wiki on ST Advanced that we uncovered while working on a white paper to compare Sametime Advanced with Instant Team Sessions and Instant Queue Manager.
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/advanced/

Many of our evaluators are requesting a paper that describes the differences between Sametime Advanced and the products from Instant. The core difference typically involves the infrastructure requirements to run each product and the maintenance costs associated with each deployment.

Peyton

Instant Archive Viewing for Microsoft OCS 2007

2009-06-05T10:40:00.002-04:00

More good news on our product line for Microsoft OCS R2. We have recently added a few new customers to our Microsoft focused lineup. The customer case studies are in the works, but both customers experienced extremely smooth evaluations (thanks Keith) and were a pleasure to work with.

Smooth installations, immediate customer support, and a rich feature set are proving to be very useful as our customers look at solutions to provide archiving, search and discovery, and end user searching for their Microsoft OCS 2007 installations.

Instant IM Disclaimer App for Sametime Gateway

2009-05-27T12:02:00.004-04:00

Intstant developed the internal Sametime IM disclaimer application in response to several IMtegrity customers and their need to notify Lotus Sametime users that their conversations may be recorded and monitored.

Since we are involved in Sametime Gateway deployments, we have also been receiving requests to create an external IM disclaimer application to notify external users (i.e. Yahoo, AOL users) that their conversations may be monitored and recorded. This week, we are announcing the first in a series of applications for the Sametime Gateway.

Our Sametime Gateway IM disclaimer application is a server based gateway extension that monitors all external IM conversations and provides an IM disclaimer notification to external users (typically running Yahoo, AOL, or Google).

The Instant IM disclaimer application for Lotus Sametime may also be configured to notify internal users that their Sametime IM conversations may be monitored.

We have had requests to included regular expression filtering (in order to prevent certain combinations of phrases from passing through the Lotus Sametime IM gateway) so that will be the next application to be included in this grouping.

Amazon iPhone Application

2009-05-22T11:52:00.002-04:00

Earlier this week, I was in my local Best Buy where I was looking for a new belt holster for my iPhone (in addition to a new wii game for an upcoming birthday).

In the iPhone accessories aisle, I spotted a potential holster candidate. Hmmmm...looks good, not too expensive. Let me see what the reviews on Amazon look like.

From there, I did something that has now become a habit. I started the Amazon iPhone application, searched for the product, located the product on Amazon and then read the reviews. With 80% negative reviews, including numerous accounts of the belt clip breaking within 2 weeks, I was no longer enamored with the holster on the shelf.

However, while still using the Amazon application, I quickly located another holster on Amazon, read the reviews, and then purchased using 1 click.

I spent a total of less than 5 minutes inspecting the product on the shelf, reading reviews from Amazon, and then purchasing a competitive product from Amazon.

iPhone and Amazon make a very nice combination.

Peyton

Experience Cleaning Malware Infected Box

2009-05-19T10:41:00.000-04:00

The answer to “how to clean a machine that’s been massively infected with malware” is, in one word, Perseverance. I had even, at one time, given up completely on the process, and was certain I’d have to blow away and re-install the computer from scratch, but I stuck it out, and was able to eventually solve the problem.

Here’s the story:

My wife has a decent IBM Thinkpad T42, running Windows XP SP3. It had a copy of Norton Antivirus, but that had fallen out of date (and she’s not a very good “safe surfer”, which made it even harder). Her computer had gotten infected with Virtumonde.sci. This particularly nasty piece of malware hides in several places in the computer, and is hard to eradicate.

The evidence she’d contracted something nasty happened right after she accidentally clicked on a page that “looked” like a normal Windows Explorer pane, but was actually a hot link to a downloaded Trojan. The Trojan, containing the Virtumonde.sci code, executed, and made several insidious changes to her system… In fact, I’d only ever seen one piece of malware harder to remove, and that’s saying a lot (I’ve seen a lot of junk in my day!).

Well, my first job was to get SpyBot Search & Destroy. I highly recommend it and it’s free, but I recommend you support the developer by donating. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just fire up Internet Explorer and go download it. The thing about Virtumonde is that, what it does is hide in your computer and download OTHER malware that you have to contend with. Most of these involve clickjacking and pagejacking in Internet Explorer.

Luckily, I’d downloaded and installed both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox on her computer a couple of months ago (I don’t care for IE), so I fired up Chrome and went looking for Spybot. I downloaded it from download.com, and installed it on her computer.

The initial run of the software took forever, interjected with sounds of “You’ve won!” or “Contact us for your winning number”, or some other such drivel, from web pages being served up in the background on her computer, which had been taken over by a piece of malware that Virtumonde had called into existence. This other software fired up IE clients in the background (hidden), and sent them to pages containing web ads, including vocal ones (ARGH!!!!).

After running Spybot, which takes a while, I had several hundred things for it to fix. It fixed 99% of them, but there were five or so elements (malware, registry entries, etc), that it needed a reboot and rescan to try to eradicate. So I did that.

That fixed 4 of the problems, leaving me with just one. I performed the reboot and rescan process again, but was unable to get that dang thing removed. On my contemplation of ritual suicide, I thought about the “Tools” menu in Spybot. These help me by showing me what Browser Helper Objects (BHOs), ActiveX objects, startup elements, processes, etc. are set up on the machine. Of course! I could go there to figure out what the deal was.

So, upon scanning the BHOs, I found some things that didn’t look right, and I deactivated them (I didn’t remove them, yet, because I wasn’t sure if they were bad or not, at this point). I did the same thing for browser help pages, host file information, and other elements. But what really jumped out at me was the recurrence of a program in the process list (like what you see in Task Manager, but with more information). It would disappear when I killed it, but come back a few minutes later. That meant that something else was re-calling it into existence!

Going through the help for the different pieces of malware, I found that Virtumonde hides in a web page that is coded to be the background page for Windows “Active Desktop”. So it’s basically always running, and gets loaded on system startup, but not from the “Run” or “RunOnce” registry entries. So I went to my display properties to change the background… and couldn’t! The ability to change the background was grayed out! Why in the frak would Microsoft make it so that this couldn’t be adjusted easily is beyond me, but it’s simply stupid.

After doing some research, and comparing my wife’s settings to mine (I have an identical laptop), I figured out what the registry entries were for “Background” and it’s settings in the registry, to have it editable, and not use the Active Desktop.

I rebooted the computer and re-ran the scan, but it kept coming up with new and interesting pieces of malware every single time! I finally figured out that Virtumonde had downloaded and installed the malware I was seeing NOW on the previous reboot, before I removed it. Therefore, to ensure that nothing was compromised, I rebooted in Safe Mode, without networking support, and re-ran Spybot.

While it was running, I checked the registry, to see if anything jumped out at me… and something did. I noticed that there were waaaay too many users for the system, and they had funky user names. And several pieces of malware that used Winlogon or Run / RunOnce entries in the Registry, were doing it from these other, nonsensical user names. I decided to just eliminate them.

They weren’t in the Users control panel applet, so I switched back to the registry to simply delete them. That turned out to be easier said than done – the permissions were all set to read-only, and on some of the entries, even after I’d set the permissions otherwise, I couldn’t delete them. Very frustrating, but not crippling, so I checked in on Spybot.

I had to eventually run Spybot several times, but it finally came up clean! Woo Hoo! I had finally slain the beast… or so I thought…

…I rebooted the computer into regular mode, and told my wife I had it fixed. Five minutes later, all kinds of ads started popping up on her computer. The malware was back.

Despondent, I contemplated if it would be simpler to beat myself to death with her computer or re-install the operating system (a tough choice). I decided that the simple solution was to ignore it… for now.

Fast forward 1 week, during which time my wife has been using my computer to do all of her internet surfing. Now, you remember me mentioning that she’s not exactly the safest surfer in the world? Yeah… well, this concerned me to no small degree. I mean, if she wants to use her computer on the internet in an unsafe manner and gets bitten for it, that’s her choice. But not mine! She knew that was the best way to get me to work on her computer (and she was right). So I tackled the problem again yesterday afternoon…

I again used my favorite tool, Spybot Search & Destroy. I started immediately from Safe Mode, logged in as Administrator (which no one uses on her computer, so there’s less crud in it), though, and disabled every single Startup entry, including ones that I knew were OK (baseline). I ran the checker, and had it remove all of the malware it could find. I rebooted several times during this process, finally getting not one, but two clean bills of health from Spybot before I continued to my next plan.

Next, I started the computer in Safe Mode, and logged in under my wife’s account. I again ensured that there were no Run, RunOnce, WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI, Background, Classes, or Winlogon elements being loaded by checking the Startup Items in the Tools menu in Spybot. I then ran the checker.

The first time, it came up with a problem, but it was just a cookie – no big deal, there. I rebooted, checked the startup elements again, and re-ran the checker, and it came up clean. I then did it AGAIN, and it again came up clean.

“All Right! I’m on a roll!”, I said, and decided to take the plunge. I rebooted the computer, and let it start up normally, under my wife’s user account. I had set Spybot to run on startup (the only thing set to run at startup), and it went along it’s merry way. Man, it’s interesting how much longer that scan takes on “normal” rather than “safe” mode!

However, when it was done, another perfectly clean bill of health! I rebooted one final time, re-ran Spybot one final time, and still showed no malware!

So, finally, I re-enabled the startup elements that I KNEW were good (like the Trackpoint controller, etc), and rebooted, and then re-ran the scan one final time.

Finally clean, I shut the computer down and went for some liquid refreshment – well deserved, I believe.

May this help you in your struggles with the lowlife black hats in our industry…

Todd Fuder

Notes 8.02 Hanging

2009-05-14T17:34:00.003-04:00

We are seeing a bunch of cases where the Notes 8.02 client is hanging on start up. Usually, immediately after the authentication dialog, the Notes client will just 'hang' with an hourglass. Of course, on a customer site, or even internally, this is a problem.

One solution, which is immediate and very satisfying, is to start the client with:
nlnotes.exe instead of notes.exe. Ah....problem solved.

There is also a setting that appears to work, although we have not used it yet - which is to add this to the notes.ini
ENABLE_EARLY_AUTHENTICATION=0

How to run asp.net without IIS

2009-05-12T19:09:00.004-04:00

We are looking at some applications where we support both Lotus Sametime and Microsoft OCS - but provide a nice web UI. It's a frequent dilemna: Java or .net. For this application, I'm inclined to use .net - mainly because there are so many great charting components.

However, I don't want to limit our deployments to just shops where they run IIS. Here is a background article on asp.net and running without IIS.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163879.aspx

An article on Cassini: http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/30771
Article by Eric Pearson: http://geekswithblogs.net/ericpearson/archive/2005/11/25/61201.aspx

Sametime Buddy List Adminstrator and AdminP

2009-05-08T14:13:00.002-04:00

We are wrapping up our integration efforts to connect our Sametime Buddy List Administrator with AdminP. This is a result of large customer where they need to have rename activities automatically populated to Buddy List Administrator.

More info next week with screen shots.

Good Microsoft Article on OCS Tabs

2009-05-08T11:36:00.002-04:00

Many of our customers deploy our Instant Archive Viewer for Microsoft OCS using 'in place' tabs within the OCS client.

Here is a good article on configuring OCS tabs with OCS R2:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd425110(office.13).aspx

Picture from Lotusphere 2009 Accepting Best in Show Award

2009-05-06T14:37:00.002-04:00

Here is a nice picture of a few of the Instant folks (Peyton McManus and Todd Fuder) accepting the best in show award.

http://picasaweb.google.com/IBM.SWG.Events/2009LotusAwards?authkey=Gv1sRgCM7x_Mr_gJ2O4AE&feat=email#5297894616560589906

Lotusphere is always the best place to meet our customers, hear new ideas, and have 4 days of fun with our customers.

Instant Team Sessions 3.1 Now Supports Linux

2009-05-06T13:22:00.004-04:00

Recently, a large customer requested that we support Linux (well, Ubuntu) with our browser based client for Instant Team Sessions. With Team Sesssions 3.1, we have added supported for Linux to our browser based client.

In version 3.1, we have also updated the Sametime plugins to work well within the Notes 8.5 client - another customer request.

I've attached a screen shot of ITS 3.1 (Instant's persistent chat environment for Lotus Sametime)

Instant Search and Discovery for OCS R2

2009-04-30T09:13:00.005-04:00

We have recently celebrated several successful customer deployments against OCS R2 of Instant Archive Viewer for OCS. We have been working on the updates to support OCS R2 and we are pleased to have real, successful, deployments of our search and discovery (and archive viewing) application for OCS.

Of course, we continue to learn about new table structures, settings, and behaviors of OCS R2, but so far, we have been able to quickly adapt to every situation that we have encountered with a customer deployment.

We will continue to post FAQs about our deployments.

IMtegrity 4.08 is now available

2009-04-30T09:08:00.003-04:00

We have recently posted an updated build of IMtegrity to our web site. The updated build is 4.08 and includes several updates for some large evaluations and customers. Generally, this update continues to enhance our support for 3rd party email archiving platforms (such as Legato) as well as extend support for animated emoticons.

As always, the updated features are a direct result of customer input and we appreciate the great ideas and input.

We believe that we have an fantastic chat archiving and discovery application for Lotus Sametime and our experience with customers, evaluators, and resellers continues to reinforce our outstanding product. Information is available from: http://www.instant-tech.com/IMtegrity_Archives.cfm

AdminP Integration with Buddy List Administrator for Sametime

2009-04-24T14:28:00.003-04:00

We are currently working on 2 features for our next point release of our Buddy List Administrator for Lotus Sametime.

First, we are adding AdminP integration. This is a direct custom request. We expect to have the initial build working next week. Of course, it will connect our Buddy List Administrator (BLA) database and engine with AdminP. This will allow our Sametime Buddy List Administrator to automatically process a variety of AdminP request - such as rename requests.

Secondly, we are adding the ability to add a public group to every one's buddy list within a public group. So, this will enable our customer to quickly push a public group to 'all employees' and then stage bots, help desk queues, or other IM agents within this public group.

Informaton on our Buddy List Administrator for Lotus Sametime is available here:
http://www.instant-tech.com/Buddy_List_Admin.cfm

New Features for Team Sessions V3.1

2009-04-24T14:24:00.002-04:00

We are currently working on some updates to Team Sessions. In addition to some minor tweaks to the plugins, we are developing the ability to store (and copy) the archive history and room content to an external discussion databse.

The ability to essentially synchonize both the Sametime persistent room chat (and content) with an external Notes dicussion database makes a lot of sense - and it is the latest customer based requirement.

Screen shots should be available next week.

Team Sessions V3 - Selective Replication of Rooms

2009-04-16T12:39:00.010-04:00

Team Sessions V3 provides native support for Lotus Domino as the data storage system for both the storage of the persistent chat rooms as well as the configuration of the Sametime persistent chat environment.

From the early days of the Team Sessions design, we wanted to develop a Sametime persistent chat environment and platform that leveraged the replication and security systems of Lotus Notes/Domino with the presence and chat functionality of Lotus Sametime. Over the years, leveraging Lotus Domino as the storage, configuration, and security system infrastructure has been a tremendous advantage.

One of our larger deployments of Team Sessions (also known as IPWar) has over 500 rooms hosted on multiple Sametime servers. Typically, our ITSessions.nsf database (which provides the web UI and storage system) is replicated across the various Sametime servers. However, our customer requested a way to have certain rooms not replicate - and therefore create rooms that just stay hosted on one of the two servers.

Fortunately, since Team Sessions uses Domino as our storage and configuration environment, this was a fairly trivial item to implement. We simply created a custom replication formula for the database.

Suppose for example we have 2 servers Server1 and Server2 and ITS database on each server have chat room names prefixed with sr1 and sr2 respectively like

sr1: IT Help Desk, sr1: UK Suport

sr2: Logistics and sr2: Centrix Review...etc.

Now the goal is that when both databases gets replicated then we should not see the room prefixed with sr1 on Server2 and vice versa. The selective replication formula for Server1 will be SELECT !(@Begins(txtChatPlaceDisplayName; "sr2"))

Good Background Article on AdminP

2009-04-15T10:31:00.003-04:00

Here is a nice background article on AdminP. We are currently updating the Instant Buddy List Administrator to support AdminP - so there might be other useful background links appearing...
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-AllAboutAdminP_1/

More information on building a custom request handler:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-Custom_AdminP_Handler/index.html

The Buddy List Administrator handles a host of Sametime buddy lists tasks - such as

Pushing Sametime public groups to users
Renaming people and updating all buddy lists
Deleting users from all buddy lists
Pushing buddy list fragments (public and private groups) to people
Migrating buddy lists to OCS

AdminP integration has always been requested - and now we are connecting them.

Instant Team Sessions V3 is Gold

2009-04-10T10:52:00.002-04:00

For the last 8 months, we have been working on a major update to Instant Team Sessions (our persistent chat platform for Lotus Sametime). In addition to completely updating the web user interface, we have added some very slick Sametime plug-ins, a rich server based alerting system, tons of other enhancements, bug fixes, and UI tweaks.

One of our initial benchmarks was to reduce the installation time from approximately 4 hours to under 1 hour. During the development cycle, we modified the installation target to under 30 minutes. Three weeks ago, I was at a customer in San Diego and assisted a partner with a Team Sessions installation. We were able to install Team Sessions - including downloading from our site, in 26 minutes. It was a rewarding experience - and one that belies all of the work, simulated installations, group installation reviews, and team effort that went into streamlining the entire process.

The entire Team Sessions V3 has this level of attention and focus. So, I'm thrilled that we have resolved the last known customer issue (an HTTPS issue for a large defense organization) and I'm looking forward to sharing the Team Sessions V3 experience with new customers, evaluators, and partners.

Peyton

IMtegrity 4.08 Now Available

2009-04-09T17:32:00.003-04:00

Based on some recent customer feedback, we are proud to announce our latest set of new features for Instant IMtegrity Archives (our Lotus Sametime server based archiving and search and discovery application). These latest features are included in our IMtegrity 4.08 release. All of the features are a direct result of customer or evaluator requests - so we know they are important.

Here is the list of new features:
GIF animations are now shown animated when chat log documents are viewed in a Lotus Notes Client and/or web browser.
Added support for PNG files
Action Rules: Custom subject, header and footer text in notification emails can now include log field values by using {%fieldname%}, {$fieldname$} or {#fieldname#}
New Rule Criteria option: You can now perform Directory lookups to search chat participants person records.
New Action Rule option: You can now copy arbitrary fields from the chat log document into notification emails.
New Action Rule option: You can now attach the source XML log file to notification emails.

Information on IMtegrity is available at: http://www.instant-tech.com/IMtegrity_Archives.cfm

Masters iPhone Application is Great

2009-04-09T09:12:00.002-04:00

The Masters is a always an exciting event, with a beautiful course, great shots, and lots of drama (always positive). This year, with the addition of the Masters App for the iPhone, it will be easier to follow all of the action, see live feeds from selected holes, view the leaderboard, and preview each hole with a recorded flyover.

The iPhone application points to the future of television. It incorporates live video feeds (you pick which of 3 holes to watch), immediate access the leader board - as well as the course layout and great looking flyovers.

After reading about the application in the NY Times, I had the app installed on my phone in less than 3 minutes. The live feeds were the initial reason I downloaded, but after looking at the leader board (with pairings and tee times), highlights from the par 3 competition, and the course overview I was impressed.

Live video, course context and hole previews, and a live leader board (and I can select what I want to see).

Nice job IBM and the tech team at the Masters. This will be a great weekend.

Sametime Moderated Chat for Large Meetings

2009-04-08T11:08:00.002-04:00

This week we will announce a Sametime moderated chat offering. The Sametime moderated chat application is designed to host large (200 to 4,000 person) meetings where executives and experts reply in real time (with the help of moderators) to questions from participants.

For example, the CEO of a 4,000 person government agency would like to host quarterly 'all hands' meetings. All employees join the online meeting and any person may submit a question. A moderator reviews the questions and submits (in real time) questions and issues to the CEO - who replies to the entire audience.

The Sametime moderated chat application is designed to host large scale, moderated meetings such as investor discussions and company meetings.

Our Instant Team Sessions will continue to fill the requirements around persistent chat rooms that host 5-40 people on a daily basis - without the need for moderation.

Informaton on the Instant Moderated Chat Room application is now available at:
http://www.instant-tech.com/Moderated_Chat.cfm

Receiving an alert in the Microsoft Office Communicator client

2009-04-07T12:42:00.003-04:00

Receiving an alert in the OCS client
Originally uploaded by Instant Technologies

Today we had an excellent meeting with a customer looking to provide OCS R2 based alerts to 5000 workstations. Our Instant Alert Manager for Microsoft OCS includes the necessary features and it was a pleasure providing the demo.
The Alert Manager provides a server based alerting system to quickly deliver alerts, or message, to users online with Office Communicator. The alerts may also be scheduled to be delivered at a certain time and date.
The Instant Alert Manager is a nice complement to many Microsoft OCS deployments. With the recent release of Microsoft OCS R2, we are seeing a fairly significant increase in OCS inquiries. Here is a quick overview demo of the server interface.
Information on Alert Manager is available here:
http://www.instant-tech.com/Alert_Manager.cfm

Sametime Server Based Disclaimers - Even When Server Based Archiving is Not Enabled

2009-04-07T12:23:00.003-04:00

We recently had a conversation with an existing Instant customer. They are large manufacturing company with plants throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

They have Lotus Sametime servers placed around the world and use Instant Queue Manager to connect employees with instant IT help desk support. Their queues are in multiple languages and they have been a consistent partner with great Queue Manager feedback and ideas.

As part of our Sametime 'disclaimer promotion', they contacted us to discuss how to provide server based disclaimers to all of their employees. To our surprise, they do not have any server based archiving enabled (ala IMtegrity). However, since Lotus Sametime can now capture and store conversations using the Samtime client, they need to notify all employees that it is possible that their chat conversation may be recorded. This is especially important for EU based employees where safe harbor provisions may apply.

It now appears that our Instant Disclaimer application has traction in environments where any type of archiving (server based or client based) is active. In addition, we received some excellent ideas for providing the disclaimer text in multiple languages (based on the language of the user) and we are looking at providing this enhancement.

Instant welcomes a new customer - and some new updates to IMtegrity

2009-04-03T11:56:00.004-04:00

It's always pleasure working with new customers, prospects, and and evaluators. As we continue to expand, our reach becomes a bit broader and we encounter new organizations, teams, and people, Each and every relationship is a bit different, but they are all centered on trust and providing real value. We are happy to have the Asian Development Bank as a new customer and I look forward to their ideas, enhancement requests, and feedback.

We have also recently completed a set of enhancements to IMtegrity (our Lotus Sametime chat archiving application) in order to support some requests from a current evaluation. These enhancements include some extensions to the IMtegrity action rules to support customized subject messages, the ability to easily attach the XML transcript to a e-mail notifications, and several other features to support advanced integration with the EMC Legato system.

Instant Disclaimer for Lotus Sametime Install Overview

2009-04-03T06:22:00.003-04:00

We are in the early, but very successful, stages of a promotion around our Instant Disclaimer Service for Lotus Sametime. We have recently been including the disclaimer application as part some recent IMtegrity deployments, and Monique wanted to provide the product to a broader Lotus Sametime audience.

The application makes a nice addition to most Sametime deployments - especially if there is server based archiving enabled (ala Instant IMtegrity). Quite simply, the application runs as a server application and monitors all logins to the Sametime server. When a user logs into the Sametime server, our application provides a text based disclaimer message (customized by the admin) to each user. It's very useful and has seen strong interest with IMtegrity customers.

Here is a brief overview of the installation steps - which should give Sametime admins a good idea of just how easy this will be to deploy.

We have also posted to Youtube...which allows for a slightly longer video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHNtS6rEMEo

Good move to Salesforce

2009-04-02T09:12:00.004-04:00

Several months ago, we moved from Entellium to Salesforce. So far, the move has been very positive. The core Salesforce functionality is excellent, the user interface is well designed, and the support has been great. There were some bumps moving our data from Entellium to Salesforce, but the Salesforce data loader was very helpful.

We are looking for ways to integrate our applications (Queue Manager, Agent Framework bots) with Salesforce as well as other ideas related to the integration of Salesforce with Lotus Sametime and Microsoft OCS.

The Salesforce platform is very compelling - as is cloud computing. We are a small company, but we continue to leverage external, outsourced, providers for core (maybe commodity) applications such as email, CRM, and collaboration portals.

I'm curious how other people see the 'mashup' of internally hosted enterprise applications (i.e. Lotus Sametime, SAP) with external applications such as Salesforce.

Can/will everything move external?

Lotus Museum

2009-04-01T20:13:00.003-04:00

A fun blast from the past for all of the Lotus folks. This link:
http://www.lotusmuseum.com/pages/AmiPro
has a bunch of fun stuff from the early 90's when Ami Pro (Samna) was a new Lotus acquisition.

As a product manager for Ami Pro, Word Pro, and a bunch of other stuff, the Ami Pro pages hold a lot of fond memories.

Peyton

Integrating Sametime STLinks with LPTA tokens

2009-04-01T12:24:00.005-04:00

We are preparing a short guide, based on a recent customer deployment, of some tips related to integrating Sametime STLinks with a portal using LPTA.

We learned a few useful tips and we will be sharing these later today.

Sametime Wiki

2009-04-01T11:55:00.003-04:00

Another nice resource for Sametime developers and admins.
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/stwiki.nsf/

Initial release of Archive Viewer for Microsoft OCS to support R2

2009-03-27T10:11:00.003-04:00

We have delivered our first release of OCS Archive Viewer to support R2. The migration to OCS R2 was a bit more involved than we expected, but we have made the necessary changes to our UI and queries and things look like they are running well.

The LCSLog updates are complete and there are also some new tables to support – specifically for CDR maintenance.

We are waiting on customer feedback and expect to hear about deployment of the Archive Viewer starting on Monday.

The next release, after the R2 updates, will focus on performance related to our search and discovery queries as well as some more embedded support for Ajax and group chat.

IMtegrity Web Overview

2009-03-26T17:18:00.002-04:00

IMtegrity Web Overview
Originally uploaded by Instant Technologies

Instant IMtegrity provides server based chat archiving for Lotus Sametime servers.

IMtegrity installs a customized stchatlog.dll which replaces the standard stchatlog dll provided by Lotus and IBM.

The server based archives are stored in a Notes database that provides authenticated access, both a Notes and web based UI, and extensible inclusion and action rules.

IMtegrity 4.07 also supports the ability to archive file transfers.

Additional information is available on the IMtegrity site:
http://www.instant-tech.com/IMtegrity_Archives.cfm

Team Session within Notes and Tear Offs

2009-03-26T16:21:00.001-04:00

Team Session within Notes and Tear Offs
Originally uploaded by Instant Technologies

Another entry with the movie demonstrating the Team Sessions integration with Lotus Notes.

Team Sessions integrated within Lotus Notes

2009-03-26T13:38:00.005-04:00

Here is the latest movie showing how our Instant Team Sessions client is integrated within the Lotus Sametime client - hosted within Lotus Notes.

Of course, our application is a Sametime plugin that is designed to work with Sametime 7.5 and Sametime 8.x

Lotus Sametime Disclaimer Application

2009-03-26T13:31:00.005-04:00

Many our customers would like to enable disclaimer text to external parties via the gateway. We will use the Sametime Gateway SDK to enable this interation.

Our current login notification application works with the internal Sametime community and monitor all login events taking place on the Sametime community.

Useful Sametime Blog

2009-03-26T13:21:00.003-04:00

here is a link to a useful Sametime blog:
http://www.thesametimeblog.com/sametimeblog/sametimeblog.nsf

Some useful information on Sametime, the Sametime APIs, etc...

Native Archiving in Lotus Sametime Advanced

2009-03-19T09:14:00.002-04:00

We've recently had a number of customers express confusion over the native archiving capabilities (or lack thereof) in Lotus Sametime Advanced. Hopefully the information below will clarify the issue.

Lotus Sametime Advanced does not include any native chat logging capabilities. IBM does offer a free Developer Sample Program, but (as is clearly stated in the API documentation) it is not supported. Nor is it suitable for use on a production server—as illustrated by this list of critical tasks the Developer Sample Program cannot perform:

- It is not ‘feature complete’ (it is rudimentary sample code only)
- It is not supported by IBM
- It is not scalable nor efficient, thus rendering it unsuitable for enterprise use
- It does not capture file transfers
- It does not log images and emoticons in-line with chats
- It does not support periodic logging of long chats
- It does not provide encryption
- It is not integrated with Lotus Notes (it writes text files only)
- It does not include a flexible rules-based engine to automatically notify compliance officers according to pre-defined rules
- It does not tag chats containing pre-defined keywords

“Lotus Sametime Advanced only offers backup of the persistent chat database. Lotus Sametime Advanced does not do archiving of non-persistent chats via the Sametime Community server.”
- Rob Ingram, Senior Product Manager, Lotus Sametime

Roku and product installation success

2009-02-24T08:55:00.003-05:00

Last night, at the urging of a friend, I installed my first Roku device. Roku (www.roku.com) is a small box that delivers on demand Netflix movies to your TV.

The setup (from box to activation) was less than 10 minutes. That includes connecting the HDMI cable, the small power adapter, and activation with Netflix. That experience reinforced my belief that most product impressions are made within the first 15 minutes. After successfully installing, configuring, and using Roku, I'm a believer.

I'm also a believer that product installation and configuration is a true litmus test for a well designed product. I've had similar experiences with my iPhone, iMac, and Tivo. Add Roku to the list.

For Instant, during a recent product cycle on TeamSessions, we focused on the installation and configuration experience. Our goal was to take a 3 hour process and condense it to less than 30 minutes. At a recent customer deployment in San Diego, I witnessed first hand that our efforts were successful. A customer deployed our Sametime persistent chat rooms http://www.instant-tech.com/Team_Sessions.cfm (from download URL to chat room usage) in less than 26 minutes (we were both timing the process). Of course, installation and configuration are only one benchmark for design, but from where I sit, the first experience speaks volumes about the entire product philosophy.

Peyton

Best in Lotusphere Showcase Award at IBM Lotusphere 2009 for Instant Queue Manager

2009-02-16T14:18:00.002-05:00

In case you missed the news (and we've been yelling it from the rooftops), Instant Queue Manager won the Best in Lotusphere Showcase Award at IBM Lotusphere 2009.

More than 40 companies submitted entries for this prestigious award, from which IBM selected seven semi-finalists for a live judging showdown on the trade show floor. Instant Queue Manager was up against some innovative competition but managed to come out on top thanks to a dynamic product demo and a very strong reference from a major financial services organization that uses Instant Queue Manager to deliver real-time customer service to their clients via Sametime and the web.

Read the full press release here.

Or read the case study on the deployment that helped us to win the Best in Lotusphere Showcase Award for 2009.

Screenshot slideshows and recorded demos

2009-01-07T14:47:00.002-05:00

We've been taking advantage of Flickr and YouTube to provide our prospects with self-service access to screenshot slideshows and recorded product demos. Our goal is to help our prospects decide if our enterprise IM solutions meet their requirements at the earliest possible stage of their investigations.

Screenshot slideshows are now available for all products; the recorded demos will be made available over the next week or two. (The demo for Instant IMtegrity Archives for Lotus Sametime Archiving is already posted.) In both cases, you can access these new resources on each product's main page in the green content column on the right of each page.

Upgrade from your existing Sametime archiving system to Instant IMtegrity Archives

2008-12-19T08:58:00.002-05:00

Once could be an accident. Twice could be coincidence. But thrice is a trend.

We've had a number of customers come to us for help replacing their existing Sametime archiving system. We actually published a case study on one such project.

Simply put, no other archiving solution is as tightly integrated with Sametime. IMtegrity’s native Sametime design eliminates the need for additional proxy servers and external databases to deliver these key architectural benefits:

* IMtegrity is integrated with Sametime’s native chat logging facility
* IMtegrity uses familiar Lotus Domino data storage and system maintenance
* IMtegrity uses Notes .NSF as its data storage system to leverage existing access control lists, administrative policies, and training

We are offering competitive upgrade pricing to make it even easier to switch to Instant IMtegrity Archives - 25% off list price. For many companies, this means you can deploy IMtegrity for less than the cost of renewing support with your current vendor.

Check out the full press release for more details.

Read Michael Sampson

2008-11-14T12:43:00.002-05:00

If you seek insight and guidance on the leading edge of collaboration for and between people across time zones and across your organization, then you need to meet Michael Sampson. He's just published a book on effective use of SharePoint in team collaboration, and he writes a great blog.

Why does the NFL love parity?

2008-10-14T12:08:00.002-04:00

CNNSI's lead on last night's Giants-Browns recap was "You gotta love parity in the NFL."

(For the benefit of you non-football fans, a struggling Cleveland Browns team stomped a New York Giants team that many pundits described as the NFL's best.)

Why is it a good thing if, on 'any given Sunday', any team can fully expect to defeat any opponent? Parity is defined as equality, and to me that equals mediocrity. Why strive for excellence when merely being average gives you a fair shot at making the playoffs?

In software, parity is the mortal enemy of innovation. Google wouldn't have become Google if Larry Page and Sergey Brin had been satisfied merely to achieve equality with Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com, and all the other search engines they overtook.

Here at Instant, we live to innovate. We never stop seeking competitive advantages. We continually deliver clever new features to increase our lead over our competitors.

Other vendors might be satisfied with parity; we most certainly are not!

Can't send email to our Congresswoman, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter

2008-10-02T13:37:00.003-04:00

I'm sure that the communication between members of the house and their constituents is very brisk; however, I find it very frustrating that after numerous attempts, I can't send an email to our rep.

Apparently, there is no mechanism to simply send an email to Rep Carol Shea-Porter. Instead, in order to get a message to Rep. Shea-Porter, people (her constituents) must visit her web site and then post a message.

In normal times, I would find this merely an added step that is not necessary. However, today, I find this both annoying and disconnected from the tools that I use to communicate with customers, vendors, and friends.

Here is what I receive when I attempt to post a message concerning my thoughts about the current financial rescue package:

Immediate productivity from new Sametime users

2008-09-22T09:39:00.002-04:00

One of the interesting things about releasing a product - any product - into the wild is watching customers use it in innovative ways.

Instant Buddy List Administrator was originally intended to help Sametime admins maintain centralized control over the accuracy and integrity of an organization's buddy lists. But then a major defense agency surprised us by fronting Buddy List Administrator with a web-based questionnaire, the answers to which would automatically provision each new user with a custom buddy list relevant to their role and mission.

Pretty cool, yes?

Each user is productive from the first minute they're activated in Sametime. And untold hours of administrative overhead has been eliminated - a key consideration when you're rolling out Sametime to 100,000 users.

Check out the full case study at http://www.instant-tech.com/case_studies/Solution_Spotlight_-_Instant_Buddy_List_Administrator.pdf

Instant Referral Rewards Program

2008-09-10T15:16:00.001-04:00

Calling all Friends of Instant Technologies! Do you miss an Instant product that you used in a previous place of employment? Or do you know someone who could benefit from an Instant product that you’re currently using?

If so, we want to thank you for recommending us.

From now through end of year, we will reward you with a $200 Best Buy certificate for every referral that results in a purchase of one of our products. All you have to do is contact us to register your referrals; our sales team will take care of the rest.

Note: We respect corporate policies that prohibit employees from receiving vendor incentives. If your company has such a policy, we will pass your referral reward along to your employer in the form of a $200 price deduction.

Thank you for your loyalty and support!

Thinking of building an OCS archive viewer?

2008-08-28T13:18:00.002-04:00

We work with a lot of companies that have deployed Microsoft OCS and then discover they need a solution for viewing past IM conversations. In some cases the requirement stems from regulatory compliance issues; in others, it is legal discovery or internal usage policy auditing and enforcement.

Whatever the reason, some companies decide to address their needs with an internal development project.

We've compiled our experience (and theirs) into a 'build or buy' white paper. If you're thinking about building your own OCS archive viewer, you need to read this document. You can download it for free from our white paper library.

Posted by Dan.