UPDATE! Last week a friend of mine asked me if I could try and find out where the IBM Connections plugin for Microsoft Outlook had gone. It was no longer available as a download in the IBM Collaboration Solutions Catalog. Turns out it has been pulled!
Where Did the Outlook Plugin for IBM Connections Go?
January 29th, 2019 | Posted by in Connections | IBM - (2 Comments)What to Do if Your IBM Connections Plugin for Outlook Goes Grey
September 7th, 2018 | Posted by in Connections | IBM - (1 Comments)Yesterday I upgraded Office 2016 manually on my computer. This because I changed my Office 365 subscription to a payment plan that gives me more apps, like Teams and Skype for Business. This made the IBM Connections plugin for Outlook stop working. But thanks to IBM, I managed to fix it. Here’s how you can do the same.
Using IBM Verse (and Notes) to Keep Track of My Traveling Plans
February 6th, 2017 | Posted by in IBM | Verse - (6 Comments)Don’t let the headline fool you. I also show you how you can do this in Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo and other email and calendar clients as well!
I’m a pretty disorganized person who had to force myself to become organized. And I have succeeded pretty well with it, even if I do have a few relapses now and then.
In the past keeping track of my traveling plans, tickets and hotel reservations was pure hell. Especially in the days with printed tickets. For the past 5 years I’ve been using my cell phone to keep track of everything while travelling. And I do not use one app for the hotel reservations, one app for the airline tickets and so on. I import everything into my calendar on my Android cell phone. I used to do the same on my good old Nokia N8, and you can of course do this on your Iphone as well.
First of all: You need an email and calendar application on your cell phone. Personally I’m using IBM Verse, but there are also several other apps for this, including Gmail and Outlook. The application will make it possible for you to read and send email directly from your phone, as well as read and update your calendar. I will show you two ways of updating your cell phone calendar with all of your travelling plans, tickets and reservations.
From the confirmation page
When you you’ve booked a hotel or flight online, you will get to a confirmation page after the order has been completed. Very often you will find a link, icon or button like this on the confirmation page:
Sometimes you will have to click on it to get suggestions for the various types of calendars and sometimes they will all be listed. In this example I’m using hotels.com. When I click on the button link pictured above I get this:
If your email client is not listed, click on ical Calendar. Since I’m using IBM Verse that’s what I have to do. A screen pops up where I have to put in my email adress:
Now hit Send.
No matter what method you chose above, you will now receive an email that looks just like a meeting invitation. Simply click Accept or Add to Calendar (or whatever it’s called in the email client you are using) in that email, and the reservation will be added to your calendar, with all the most important details (like reference number, addresses, times, dates and so on).
From the confirmation email
What I describe here will only work if you are sitting on a computer. As far as I know, this is not possible on a cell phone application.
Often when you get a travelling confirmation by email from an airline, or a reservation confirmation from an hotel, the email will sometimes contain a link or button that will look very similar to this:
Choose your email client. If you are using Google or Yahoo, it will open up your calendar and you will see a web form where you can add details and then confirm that you want to add this to your calendar.
If you choose Outlook or iCal (sometimes this will be called ics) you will be asked to save the ics file to your computer:
Open your email client. In my case I’m using IBM Notes since, as far as I know, this can’t be done in IBM Verse (which is the web version of my email) yet. Go to the calendar and find the import function. In IBM Notes it’s under File -> Import A file dialog will pop up. Choose .ics as the file type:
Navigate to the file, click on it and then click Import. You will be asked to confirm that you want to add it to your calendar. Do this and now it will be imported, with all the details you need.
In Outlook you import ics.files under File -> Open & Export -> Open Calendar:
A file dialog will pop up:
Navigate to the file, click on it and then click Open. A window for creating a new calendar entry will open. Here you can add additional details if you want. Click Save & Close to create the calendar entry.
Synchronisation
The beauty of all this is that you don’t even have to think about whether you add these entries in the calendar on your cell phone or in the calendar of your email client. The entries are synchronised, both ways, between your phone and the client.
Here’s how my travelling plans look in IBM Verse on my phone:
I can open one of these entries by clicking on it. If I click on my hotel reservation I will get the confirmation number, time and date for check in and check out, the address and contact information for the hotel and even details on how to cancel:
Pretty neat, eh? All your travelling arrangements on your cell phone.
PS! Most email providers also gives you the option to use an online web version of your email. This means that even if you have imported this in your local Outlook or IBM Notes client (or other calendar and email client) this will also be visible in the online web version! This means if you lose your cell phone, you can simply use a computer and log on to your email via web, get the details from your calendar there and then print them out or write them down.
Any ideas for even better ways to do this? Did you find any errors? Did you like this? Hate it? Please leave some feedback in the comments field below!
Whither IBM Part 2: Is Domino being silently killed?
November 7th, 2016 | Posted by in Domino | IBM | Notes - (29 Comments)Last week there was an online presentation co-hosted by TeamStudio and TLCC where IBM presented their roadmap for IBM Notes/Domino.
I didn’t listen to the whole thing, I skipped some parts, because I could basically read the slides. In addition, they didn’t present anything new that they didn’t present at IBM Connect 2016. Nothing! Except one thing: You can now also use Outlook 2016 with Domino. Yay…
To paraphrase a friend of mine in the Domino community: “They are killing it, man.” And I find it hard to argue against that. For the past three years, I’ve been telling people who said that Xpages was going to save Domino that they were wrong. And this latest roadmap (which is the same as it was in January in Orlando) makes me ask: Is IBM interested in saving Domino?
Now, the Notes client was never going to be saved. We all knew that, even if IBM never comes right out and say it. But when it comes to email, they want you to start using IBM Verse or they actually want you to start using Outlook. In a world where people want to run light clients and use handheld devices, a huge bloated client is not the way to go, so I’m not really complaining about that. But the seemingly lack of commitment to the Domino platform is glaring.
It’s time to start delivering on your promises when it comes to Domino, IBM. But what’s happening is just one slow and drawn out torturing of a dying beast. If you’re not dedicated to the platform, at least come out and say it. “It will happen at Connect 2017,” they say. What will happen? That you will say the exact same things you said at Connect 2016? And the Java version running on the platform now isn’t just outdated. It’s a sediment on the bottom of the ocean which still hasn’t turned into black gold, and never will. We have been promised a Java update for a year now, and it still hasn’t arrived. Neither has any of the other stuff they promised.
One of the things that makes me want to say that “this is it, folks,” is the way IBM now lets you use Outlook with Domino. What’s basically happening is that IBM is saying: Connect Outlook to Domino, have the entire .nsf mail file downloaded to an Outlooks .pst file and then you can just move that pst file onto an Exchange server or up into the Office 365 cloud. They are even eliminating the need for a huge migration project, like a move from Notes to Outlook used to be.
My employer is, like 99% of the rest of the world, using Office 365. Mail is a part of the Office license, which basically means we are currently paying for two different mail platforms. In a time where we are struggling financially (I’m currently made 50% redundant), and we have to cut costs, what do you think we are going to choose? Staying on a platform where the company making it won’t make a commitment? Or go with the company which is constantly developing and refreshing their platform, and also makes integration and single sign on between all their products a default functionality?
Domino will remain in my company as an application server, because we are still running lots of Notes applications. However, we are currently webifying them and using anything but IBM technology to do so, apart from the nsf files which, for the time being, still will be on Domino.
Oh, well. See for yourself, and tell me if I’m wrong:
And here are the slides:
So, How About that IBM Verse?
May 18th, 2015 | Posted by in Domino | Email | IBM | Notes - (8 Comments)IBM finally released IBM Verse on the world back in April, after much hype beforehand. In short: IBM Verse started out as IBM Notes 10 but evolved into a web mail client which offers a whole new way to sort, search and keep track of emails, appointments, contacts and content. This video gives a nice demonstration:
I’ve got an IBM Verse account, but since it’s not integrated into our solutions at work, nor with my private email, I really haven’t used it that much. The strength of IBM Verse is that it’s tightly integrated with IBM Connections and IBM Sametime. All are tools that we use at our company.
At work we are using IBM Notes 9.0.1 for a lot of things, including email and calendar. However, I’ve been testing the Outlook 2016 client, and it blows Notes mail out of the water. It’s really, really good. Outlook calendar has been better than the Notes calendar for years, but even the email part is now quite excellent in Outlook. Also the web version, not to mention the mobile app, are very good.
Why am I mentioning this? Because the integration between Outlook, Skype for business, Sharepoint and other solutions, combined with their new mobile client will make it even harder for IBM to both counter the moving that a lot of companies are doing from IBM to Microsoft. It will also be much harder to convince new customers to move over to IBM.
In that light, it’s not a smart move to:
1) Not deliver what we were promised with Verse (as this article from Red Pill points out).
2) Still use the standard web version of the calendar instead of the new Verse interface.
No matter how much I love Domino and old IBM products, the world is moving on. And I’m an atheist when it comes to my tools. If MS comes up with a better client, with a good mobile app as well as a nice web interface, I can’t keep my users in the dark. Especially now that we are moving our Notes applications to the web, where we only use the .nsf files for data storage while the web interface are running on other platforms. We are also contemplating moving from Sametime to Lyn…sorry…Skype for business, but IBM is actually doing an effort to keep us on Sametime.
IBM has a lot of challenges ahead. IBM Verse shows good promise, but promise ware is not good enough. The only reason Microsoft got away with promise ware for so long was that they managed to get into a monopoly situation in a time where that was actually possible.