Lotus Connections Plug-ins for Lotus Notes, Microsoft Office and Windows Explorer (Part 2)

In part 1 I covered the integration between Microsoft Office and Windows Explorer and Lotus Connections.  Part 2 focuses on the Lotus Notes integration with Connections.   The Lotus Notes integration is currently supported in Notes 7, and Notes 8 Basic client only (Notes 8 Standard already has the Activities integration in the sidebar) support for Notes 8 Standard is due in a later release.  I installed the plug-ins to a Notes 8 basic client to test. After installing when starting Lotus Notes I was greeted with this screen A picture named M2 I am not sure what the point of this screen is since clicking OK performs the install and takes me to this screen A picture named M3 a restart of the client was necessary to see the toolbar and the bookmarks folder.  Following installation you need to configure the plug-in, all that is required to configure is the URL for each of the services, and your user credentials. A picture named M4 While there is currently only integration for Activities, Profiles, and Dogear, all five URL are required as a link to each service is added as bookmarks.  I hope in the future that this can be configured via policy so the user will not need to fill this information in. With the Activities integration you can either copy a notes document in to an activity, or you can create a document link in an activity. A picture named M5 again you have the ability to create a new activity on the fly. The Dogear integration is great as you now have the ability to add a Notes Database, View or Document in to Dogear A picture named M6 Links to Notes documents show up with the Notes icon in Dogear A picture named M7 This is a great extension to Dogear allowing Notes content to be bookmarked along with web sites. In the Office integration I was disappointed with the profiles integration, but in Notes they seem to have gotten it right, you can highlight a name and click the profiles toolbar icon, and you do get a nice summary (just ignore the fact that I do not have a lot of data populated in my profiles database yet) A picture named M8 Despite the fact that the plug-ins are not supported in the Standard (Eclipse based) client, I did install and try them, and for the most part they work.  The Dogear and Profile integration worked exactly the same as they did in the basic client, and Activities is already integrated in to the Notes 8 Standard client in the sidebar.  If you click on the Activities toolbar icon, it simply tells you to use the sidebar which makes sense since the sidebar has more functionality then the toolbar icon. A picture named M9 I would imagine the plan for the Standard client would be sidebar integration for Dogear and Communities similar to activities to allow both the ability to add data from Notes, as well as view and work with existing data. The toolbar icons are all simply calling agents in a database titled Lotus Connections Plug-in for Notes (ilc4ln.nsf) so the code is out there to view and I suppose modify to suits ones needs if you wanted to. The plug-in for notes will provide nice integration between Notes and Connections for organizations deploying Connections before upgrading to ND8, since I am running ND8 already I am looking forward to more sidebar components for Connections.

One Response to Lotus Connections Plug-ins for Lotus Notes, Microsoft Office and Windows Explorer (Part 2)
  1. null
    August 22, 2008 | 3:46 pm

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