Category: Technical

Tech stuff

Posted on

Official list of IBM 2019 Champions

Although the IBM Champions were announced just before Christmas the official list has now been published.

Super proud to be included in this illustrious list again. I am in a handful of champs from the ICS brand that have been champions since the program started in 2011  for ICS.

The program selects Champions annually based on individual contributions that go beyond the scope of a person’s job, so that we can recognize and reward those who give so generously of their time, effort, and energy.

 

 

 

This will be the last year that ICS as a brand is part of the IBM Champion group as of course the software is moving over to HCL later this year. Hoping the guys over there do a similar thing as it has strengthened the community. It’s been a blast and I am looking forward to the future.

The full post and list can be seen here on the IBM Community Blog

 

Posted on

HCL announce PartnerConnect Program

In the midst of all the news (or non news as they can’t really talk too much about the deal) of the HCL acquisition of ICS from IBM, the awesome people at HCL have announced the HCL PartnerConnect program. Registration will be open in January.

A quote from the announcement
“HCL will continue the critical partner ecosystem model. We believe that all our product groups rely on highly technical experienced partners with great market presence.”


Partners have always been a massive part of the Collaboration Solutions ecosystem and this is great news that HCL are going to carry this on.
Looking forward to to finding out more about this when registration opens.

Posted on

HCL to acquire key IBM software

I woke up to the news that HCL tech are going to acquire select IBM software products – This is big news

IBM already had a partnership with HCL where they would develop the code for IBM – Notes and Domino were among this group.
HCL have injected a massive amount of enthusiasm with thier aggressive development plans and release cycle for Notes/Domino which has given the Community a shot in the arm that it needed.
But the news was trickling out slowly and a lot of Domino customers are already moving mail off the platform – HCL are not backwards in coming forwards and they have budget to market – ICS was a tiny fish in a very big IBM pond so now it may get the attention it deserves.

This deal is still ongoing and may not be completed until mid 2019 and is subject to change, but these are the solutions on the table

  • Appscan for secure application development
  • BigFix for secure device management
  • Unica (on-premise) for marketing automation
  • Commerce (on-premise) for omni-channel eCommerce
  • Portal (on-premise) for digital experience
  • Notes & Domino for email and low-code rapid application development
  • Connections for workstream collaboration.

Of course there was already a partnership set up for some of these products, when the deal goes through these will be HCL products not IBMs.

I am super excited for this .. all of the tech I have worked with over the last 20 years from an IBM standpoint is in this list – I am especially excited about the future of Commerce. I spend 8 happy years as a WebSphere Commerce admin and consultant and it is still my favourite product to work with (I may need to brush up on some commerce skills now) .. We have already seen the possitive impact of HCL working with Notes and Domino and the new products they are spinning out of it (HCL Places being one of them). I have high hopes for Connections, Commerce and Portal – I am really looking forward to seeing what the furture will hold.

The press release can be found here

and the Register’s take on the deal

Posted on

Social connections round up

So a quick round up of #soccnx
Connections isn’t dead.. Long live Connections. And although the emphasis recently has been on the Domino 10 there is lots of work in the Connections space happening.

IBM are planning on releasing CRs instead of big releases. The plan is twice a year for on prem and up to quarterly, as most customers find it way easier to implement a fixpack change than a full migration/update to a new version. This is a great idea and I do agree that it’s the best way forward.

Connections customizer is the way to go for changing things – look and feel, functionality and it is possible to make huge changes without touching the underlying code – but its Linux only same as the component pack (type ahead, orient me and elastic search) – and an extra box (or 2) for windows customers will be required. It is very powerful and although I was sceptical to begin with I agree this is the way to go. It may involve some extra skills being required for Connections admins and a bit of sell to get the extra hardware, but worth it.

No news on docs, really but CR3 if3 of docs is the latest and it will be updated in the same way as connections.

Connections 6 CR3 has a bunch of cool changes for the look and feel including extra community file views and some cool visualisation features – this will be tested as soon as i get a chance.

Lots of emphasis on using the component pack (Linux only as above) but this has replaced the pink vision previously.

Other news – the awesome guys at ISW have a new version of boards coming – this quarter for cloud, next quarter for on prem – which includes new views for boards including a calander view. Can’t wait to see this.

Ephox is now Tiny not as in small as in the tiny editor. New versions of textbox.io and the tiny editor will be available soon for Connections and other Web apps – exciting times & the aussie party is back at Think 🙂

The guys at AppFusions have a great set of tools for integrating teams that work in. Connections and Office365 – I want to give this a try as I can see many customers that could benefit. Hogne gave a great presentation on this which I will share the slides from.

So all in all its been great.. The community is thriving.. Connections is alive and kicking and long may it continue

Posted on

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

Posted on

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

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Engage is next week!

It has come around really quickly – it feels like only a few days ago that we were at Think or Social Connections 13, but It is that time of year again and Engage is almost upon us.

On Tuesday & Wednesday 22-23 May approx 400 people will be setting sail on the SS Rotterdam for Europe’s biggest ICS user group.

It is looking to be a packed agenda with 66 sessions + 19 round tables, 94 speakers, 42 champions presenting (and 60 present)!

 

Tim & I will be speaking on Wednesday (23rd) morning at 8am !! (thanks Theo) – Best practises for deploying Verse on Premise (VoP) – find out more on our BCC Events page.

 

Here is the amazing venue for the conference – more information can be found on the Engage page – hope to see you there 🙂

Posted on

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.