Almost time for the big HCL launch

Don’t forget  to join HCL live from Tokyo of the 4th of December at 9am Eastern, 2pm UK, 3pm European, 11pm Tokyo time (yes that is a lot of time zones) for the Global Launch of the next batch of HCL Digital Solutions software.

You still have time if you are quick to register here

Global Launch of HCL Digital Solutions Software Scheduled

Last night I recieved an exciting mail

Join HCL live from Tokyo of the 4th of December at 9am Eastern, 2pm UK, 3pm European, 11pm Tokyo time (yes that is a lot of time zones) for the Global Launch of the next batch of HCL Digital Solutions software.

As part of the global launch new versions of HCL Domino, Sametime and Connections – which is super exciting.  There will be live demos,  news and roadmaps and lots of other exciting things. Its just a shame its half a world away as I would LOVE to have been there.

The Agenda is looking pretty good – I have taken this from the registration page

  • Live from Tokyo Keynote: A Major HCL Milestone. These new releases represent our commitment to relentlessly modernize and innovate these products.
  • Myth Busters: “Domino is old. It’s uncool. It isn’t valuable to my business anymore. Connections is built for engineers by engineers.” We’ve heard them all. Let us show you why they’re wrong.
  • The CIO’s Imperatives for 2020: How are the most strategic and successful CIOs preparing for the next decade? Putting customers first and making IT the department of “yes,” for starters. Come learn what else is essential to leadership.
  • Domino V11: Why Modernizing Beats Migrating. Get ready to rethink what you know about Domino, and let us prove why V11 is the smartest choice for your current and future app-dev decisions.
  • We Hear You?: HCL Connections 6.5 = More Value from Your Investment. During the #LetsConnect customer jams, the Connections Ideas Lab and countless other points of input, we have been listening to you. With 6.5, we’re delivering even more value for Connections and laying the foundation for what’s to come.

I am very much looking forward to this event and will be avidly blogging and tweeting as it happens. You can register for the keynote here and share with your friends, customers and colleagues 🙂

HCL Connections – Our Future is Now

On Tuesday I joined the HCL Connections – Our Future is Now call, thank you Mat Newman for tweeting about it as I had totally missed this was on.

Wow there was a lot packed into that hour ..

The highlights for me were:

  • Tailored Experiences  and the community updates
    • Totally customisable spaces
    • Built with widgets
    • Lifecycle management (YES!)
  • The Road Map – so so much being delievered over the next 18 months
    • Connections 6 CR
    • Connections 6.5
    • 3rd Party Integrations
    • Connections 7
  • Lowering the TCO for the Componant Pack – Can not come soon enough for me

There is so much good stuff coming plus the news on Connections Cloud and the new offerings, I have written a full roundup over at the BCC Blog , so please check out the full posting there.

Connections migration DB issues

I thought I had already posted this but was remided by our slack chat today that I hadn’t. When migrating the Connections meetrics database from V5 to V6 there is an error that is thrown when the DB2 restore tries to run the upgrade command.

DB20000I The RESTORE DATABASE command completed successfully.
SQL2519N The database was restored but the restored database was not upgraded to the current release

The error related to the application heap size, and there is not enough space allocated to run the upgrade command.

Get the current heap size by running the following db2 command

db2 GET DATABASE CONFIGURATION FOR METRICS

You can resolve the issue running the commands:

db2 UPDATE DB CFG FOR METRICS USING APPLHEAPSZ 1536
db2 UPGRADE DATABASE METRICS

I set the APPLHEAPSZ to double the current one. I have also previously seen the same issue with the Cognos DB – which can be resolved in the same way

db2 UPDATE DB CFG FOR COGNOS USING APPLHEAPSZ 2018
db2 UPGRADE DATABASE COGNOS

I have seen this issue with both Connections V5 and 5.5 DB2 databases updating to V6 and this has fixed it for me (and now some others) .. when you google the error you don’t get much in the way of help, so hopefully this will help others who get stuck.

 

 

 

Connections adoption – full list of videos

Here are the full list of videos from the Connections adoption month campaign from IBM.

 

Video List

IBM Connections Tip #1 – Build your network
IBM Connections Tip #2 – Advertise your skills
IBM Connections Tip #3 – Update your status every day
IBM Connections Tip #4 – Bookmark in Connections
IBM Connections Tip #5 – Stop sending files in emails
IBM Connections Tip #6 – Stop doing work in emails!
IBM Connections Tip #7 – Co-create with Wikis!
IBM Connections Tip #8 – Create a self help forum
IBM Connections Tip #9 – Follow wisely!
IBM Connections Tip #10 – Check your activity stream daily
IBM Connections Tip #11 – Only create mission driven communities
IBM Connections Tip #12 – Lead by Example
 

Graphic List

Connections Adoption Month – midway update

Connections Adoption Month – midway update

So we are half of the way though Connections Adoptions month (july 2018) and if you have been following the IBM_ICSsupport  twitter account, you will have noticed some videos and tips these have also been posted over on the Connections Cloud Collaboration blog.

These videos are between 1 and 2 mins each and are bite size chunks on the 12 Winning social habbits with IBM Connections. I have collated these videos into a list (which I will append with all of the videos once they are published) and any of the other social posts around this subject.

The videos are great ways of introducing users on how IBM Connections can help with their day to day tasks. Personally I spend a lot of time in IBM Connections, the internal BCC one, Customer Connections systems, IBM in the Cloud (NA and CE Connections Cloud), the ICON UK Cloud Connections – I use connections a lot! There are so many times that we have shown how doing some of these simple tasks can help make people more productive – there has been many “AHA!” moments 🙂

Grab the videos, share the images (in a number of langages) and get your users engaging .. 😀 If you think there are languages missing let us know and we can ask IBM to translate the graphics.

Happy collaborating

 

Video List

IBM Connections Tip #1 – Build your network
IBM Connections Tip #2 – Advertise your skills
IBM Connections Tip #3 – Update your status every day
IBM Connections Tip #4 – Bookmark in Connections
IBM Connections Tip #5 – Stop sending files in emails
IBM Connections Tip #6 – Stop doing work in emails!
IBM Connections Tip #7 – Co-create with Wikis!

 

Graphic List

It’s IBM Connections Adoption Month woo hoo

I have been a little quiet on the blog as I have been working on a number of Connections related projects and today I see that IBM have designated July as IBM Connections Adoptions month. You can read a brief post about it here.

IBM have produced a fantastic info graphic – (the link to download the large PDF is attached to the image) – we winning social habbits with IBM Connecitons

I have written about this over on the BCC blog as we have lots of articles to help with adoption and offer connections services.

I LOVE IBM Connections – and have done since it was first thrown in my direction as “you know about that WebSphere stuff” almost 10 years ago now. I use connections every day, my customers love it and so do our ICS community .. lets lead the way with showing this awesome software some love and helping people get stuff done.

GDPR and IBM Connections / Docs On-Prem

At IBM Think back in March, the Connections Offering Management team promised us some information to help with GDPR compliency. The Connections Cloud information has been available for a while and the On-Premises docuemtation was on the way.

Today my friend and fellow IBM Champion Roberto alerted me to the technotes that are available.

IBM Connections: http://bit.ly/cnxGDPR

IBM Docs: http://bit.ly/docsGDPR

There is a new section in each of the knowledgebases entitled Managing personal data in accordance with GDPR – see here for Connections and here for Docs (note the docs section mostly points to the Connections KB).

The technotes refer to a number of standard tasks that should be configured as part of the install and configuration process – such as using SSL for HTTP traffic, disabling anonymous access etc.

I am sure that this information will evolve as time goes on, but its a great start.

Which version of IBM Docs to I have installed?

This morning, after a bit of attempting to work it out for myself .. I ask my good firiend and co speaker Roberto Boccadoro if there was a simple way to work out what version is installed?

WebSphere, Connections and the HTTP Server / Plugins etc all have command line options to find what version (and fixes) are installed and unfortunately its not so simple with docs ..

If you have kept the install files handy you can check but finding out the iFix version under the install\DocsApp directory where there is a handy file called ifix-version.json.

which gives you the iFix version .. which is just a number, 7, 15 or 25 etc. but how does that collate to which Docs version, CR and iFix you have installed?

Roberto has made a searchable list to make it simple to see what iFix version relates to which Docs version.

See Roberto’s awesome blog post here – and thank you so much my friend for doing this as it will save a bunch of time 🙂

Connections 6 CR1 is now available

As promised by IBM we have got it in November (so thanks Connections Team ) …

The full Fix list can be found in this technote here – IBM Fix List for Connections CR1

You can download it from Fix Central here – IBM Connections 6 CR1 download

Included in CR1 are all the day 1 fixes and the fixpacks from June – along with a bunch of other fixes, enhancements and preperations for Connections Pink

 

Current Status – Patching Dev 🙂 will let you know if i see any issues.