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IBM Connections 3.0.1 is supported on the following browsers:

Operating System	Browser
Windows	Internet Explorer 6 (except RSS feeds)
	internet Explorer 7
	Internet Explorer 8
	Mozilla Firefox 3.5
	Mozilla Firefox 3.6
Mac OS X	Safari 5
	Mozilla Firefox 3.5
	Mozilla Firefox 3.6
Linux	Mozilla Firefox 3.5
	Mozilla Firefox 3.6

As you can see this is a pretty comprehensive list, with the primary browsers across all the common OS platforms.  It represents a LOT of testing and support. However it is also a little, ermmm, tired at this point.  We have Internet Explorer 9 in common use, the Firefox release schedule has gone berserk in recent months and is suddenly at version 9 as well, and the huge elephant in the room is Google Chrome which according to some studies is now representing at least 25% of browser use.   This is not intended as criticism of IBM, they have a very very tough job testing the product against all the platforms and combinations and the browser vendors seem to be trying to outdo themselves with new releases and feature/functions at this point.  Whilst most enterprise-level customers (IBM's sweet spot, remember) are locked into versions of Internet Explorer pre-version 9 right now, one could argue that they are investing in the right platforms.  However, in my experience, an increasing share of Connections environments are being targeted at the non-enterprise customer (we have at least five such projects on the go right now), where no such control of browsers platforms is available.  Users will be using whatever browser they use for the rest of the Social web, and for the technically-astute that is going to be the latest releases of Chrome or Firefox.  The browser vendors (particularly Google) are also getting better at automatically upgrading user browsers automatically rather than asking for permission.  Put all this together, and wider and more recent browser support is becoming ever more critical day by day. [To compound the issue, I have a feeling that IBM expected the next version of Connections to at least be imminent by this point, and thus newer browser support is baked into that rather than the current release 3.0.1.  But with that version seeming to still be a little way off (I'm sure we'll hear news at Lotusphere), we need to work with what we have now.] So, why the title of the post? A story of two browsers? Well, I have some good news and some bad news... Let's start with the good news!  There have been some issues with Connections Files and versions of Mozilla Firefox since version 4.  Files would simply not load.  This has been a known issue for a while, and has been causing some consternation as whilst Firefox 3.6 is the latest supported release, so many users have upgraded beyond that version.  So, I am really really pleased that IBM has released an iFix for this issue which means that Files works in all current releases of Firefox once more.  3.0.1.0-IC-Multi-Files-HF1-IFLO58492 is what you need.  This is not yet on FixCentral, so contact our good friends in IBM support to obtain the fix package (and thanks to David McCarthy in IBM Dublin for making me aware of this news!). The not so good news... Whilst Google Chrome has been unsupported with Connections to this point, it has worked pretty well so far.  There have been some issues with rich text editing, but mostly it has been a fine experience.  I've used Chrome as my primary browser for at least a year and have not looked back.  However, this has changed in the last month with an automatic update for Chrome breaking support for Connections.  The issue again affects Files, with attempts to download files from the system resulting in a 'Duplicate Headers' message: This occurs in both Windows and Mac versions of Chrome.  I spotted this last week, and Chris Whisonant blogged it yesterday too. This Google forum thread suggests the issue is due to recent versions of Chrome being very sensitive to "Content-Disposition" in the response headers, and it seems to affect multiple software platforms.  It is possible that Google will change this, but in the meantime the only option is to avoid using Chrome with Connections Files.  I'll be asking IBM for a fix, but I'm not sure what their response will be given that there is no official support for the browser today. I'll let you know!

Much needed and well-timed, the latest Customizing IBM Connections 'Redbook' content has just hit the Connections wiki:

IBM Lotus and IBM Redbooks publications have partnered to create wiki content that explains how to customize, develop, and extend IBM Connections 3.0.1. You can customize IBM Connections to fit your corporate branding and social media needs. This Lotus Redbooks wiki provides examples of how to customize the overall user interface, as well as blogs, communities, and profiles. This wiki also includes information about populating the IBM Connections Profiles database using Tivoli Directory Integrator, and using the IBM Connections API to accomplish goals, such as retrieving a person's profile. The intended audience for this wiki includes IBM Connections administrators, web developers, and others who are interested in the specific details of customizing and developing IBM Connections 3.0.1.

Whilst there is now plenty of content out there on the processes involved in customising the product (not least my own presentations on Slideshare etc.), it is good to see the volume of information pulled together in this effort, all relevant to the latest Connections release:

In this wiki, we discuss the following topics:

• General customization process
• Customizing the Home page
• Customizing strings
• Customizing blogs
• Tivoli Directory Integrator
• Customizing the Profiles and Communities business cards
• Customizing communities
• Using the API
• IBM Web Experience Factory
• IBM Mashup Center
• Microsoft Outlook Connector

Excellent work by the team (including good friend Rob Thatcher)... Link: Redbooks: Customizing IBM Connections 3.0.1

Answer: Query /homepage/web/jsp/about.jsp on your IBM Connections server, e.g. http://greenhouse.lotus.com/homepage/web/jsp/about.jsp: 'Release v3.0.1.0 build LC3.0.1_FP_20110817.0216' (Just for Simon and Dave!)

Useful 10-minute demo of Connections Profiles and comparison of social profile functionality with other vendors: This is a good effort, though it would be even better if it spent additional time comparing Connections Profiles to the other vendors' offerings.

Michael Ransley from JustNudge has released a fantastic twitter widget to extend the connections profile. The IBM® Connections Twitter widget allows a user to share their twitter feed from within their profile. The widget uses a profile extension to capture the twitter username and then calls the twitter API when a user clicks on the widget. An additional twitter tab is added to the user profile A new profile extention is added to hold the Twitter name The new tab is populated with the tweets Full details can be found here on the Just Nudge site: twitter widget for IBM Connections Just Nudge are partners with Collaboration Matters too and are happy to discuss your widget needs - contact Stuart for more inormation.

Version 3.1 of the IBM Connections app for iOS has shipped today, featuring the follow enhancements:

Universal app - new native iPad interface Ability to upload documents to the IBM Connections server from other apps that support the "Open In..." feature of iOS  

• Upload email attachments directly to the IBM Connections server  
• Enables round trip editing of documents. Allows you to download a document from the IBM Connections server, open it in another editor app, then upload the updated document back to the IBM Connections server

iOS 5 Compatible Fixed an issue with getting "Cannot Verify Server Identity" prompt for servers certificates from a valid certificate authority

I am hugely looking forward to using the iPad version: Thanks Baan and team!

Two very similar announcements from IBM today - I'm still trying to make sense of the differences between the two: IBM Connections Enterprise Content Edition V5.1.0 provides ECM customers with desktop integration and office document management in a social environment:

Connections Enterprise Content Edition delivers the following capabilities:

• Provides integration of office document management with social collaboration and full content management of both structured and unstructured content.
• Leverages familiar desktop applications to author, share, and collaborate on content anywhere.
• Allows you to manage and securely access all content types, including social and collaborative content.
• Extends your social capabilities and advantages to enterprise and industry environments.

Connections Enterprise Content Edition V5.1.0 is an integrated solution designed to provide extensive desktop and collaborative application integration between IBM FileNet Content Manager, IBM Connections, and IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors. It provides an office document management approach to enterprise content using existing desktop applications. Organizations can now create and leverage enterprise content with familiar applications. Connections Enterprise Content Edition V5.1.0 leverages powerful social tools and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) capabilities for creation and management of accurate and relevant content. Both office document management and social collaboration are merged into a single environment for management of all content with the same social and enterprise tools. Connections Enterprise Content Edition V5.1.0 is designed to provide the basis for your enterprise's social content community.

This solution (as far as I can ascertain) takes Filenet ECM and adds Social capabilities:

Connections Enterprise Content Edition V5.1.0 runs on the industry-leading content repository FileNet Content Manager V5.1.0. It leverages ECM performance, scalability, and security. On top of this enterprise base, Version 5.1.0 provides the additional social features needed for ECM users around desktop integration via the Lotus Quickr Connectors V8.5 and office document management in a social environment with IBM Connections V3.0.1. Both IBM FileNet Content Manager V5.1.0 and IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition V8.4.3 customers can purchase discounted add-on licensing to add social capabilities to their ECM environment. Connections Content Edition customers can obtain less restrictive ECM capabilities with discounted trade-up licensing to IBM Connections Enterprise Content Edition.

IBM Connections Content Edition V3 provides social software to build professional communities that connect subject matter experts with corporate enterprise content:

IBM Connections Content Edition V3, an integrated solution, enhancements:

• Enterprise document management and social collaboration are merged into a single environment to manage all types of content using the same social and desktop tools.
• Users can proactively manage content from within IBM Connections, providing support for corporate compliance requirements.
• Subject matter experts can create relevant and reliable content in real-time that is stored in your IBM Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repository and shared with your professional network.
• ECM content is accessible from social tools and desktop applications using the included Lotus Quickr Connectors.

Today's business environment is information and knowledge intensive. Today's social tools are designed to help you to leverage this exponential growth of information. Reliable content is essential, and connecting the right subject matter experts with the right content gives businesses real-time information in context - helping contribute to better business decisions made more efficiently. IBM Connections Content Edition V3 integrates IBM Connections' best-in-class social software with the IBM industry-leading Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform in a single affordable offering. This offering enables you to extend ECM services and function to a broad audience of business professionals using social software to help achieve their business goals. IBM Connections Content Edition features:

• Users of IBM Connections 3.0.1 can view, access, and manage corporate content and associated metadata stored in IBM FileNet Content Manager through IBM Connections Communities.
• The IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors provides the ability to access content from popular desktop applications. Lotus Quickr Connectors now support 64-bit Windows Explorer and Microsoft Office 2010.

My understanding is that this second announcement gives customers the ability to integrate ECM content into Connections, either in a new install or by trading up an existing Connections installation:

IBM Connections FileNet Content Manager Edition V3 is comprised of IBM Connections 3.0.1, a restricted license of IBM FileNet Content Manager V5.1, and IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors 8.5.0.3. For existing IBM Connections customers, the IBM Connections FileNet Content Manager Add-on to IBM Connections includes a restricted license of IBM FileNet Content Manager V5.1 and IBM Lotus Quickr Connectors 8.5.0.3. IBM Connections Content Edition V3 customers can purchase an attractive trade-up license, which give them more feature rich content management functionality and fewer restrictions (for example, the ability to extend their social content system to include broader enterprise content management functionality, such as records management, content analytics and collection, case management, capture and more).

These are both interesting product solutions. As I receive more information, I'll cover it here.

Susan Scrupski blogs about a tremendous case of serendipity leading to profit:

This vignette comes from our member Andrew Carusone at Lowe’s Companies, Inc. who told the story at our workshop this summer.  Lowe’s on-boarded 100% of its employee base to its collaborative platform, IBM Connections last year.  That’s every executive, store manager, retail clerk, and stock boy on the payroll.  The entire Lowe’s workforce of 289,000 employees have access to Connections.  What’s interesting is that less than 17,000 of these employees are salaried employees, and even less are members of the management team.  The challenge for the Lowe’s social business team is to inspire the employee base to turn to the platform in the course of their normal day’s work.  For some employees, it comes naturally. During beta tests, an enterprising Paint Department employee decided to try something new to demonstrate the ease of cleaning a Teflon paint tray.  She poured latex paint into it, let it dry, and then peeled the paint out whole.  She left both the paint “mold” and the paint tray on the paint counter.  Customers were amazed and delighted. Suddenly, she was sold out of the paint trays and shoppers were clamoring for more. The employee turned to all of her traditional channels to get additional inventory.  She accessed the company’s enterprise inventory system, however, like most major retailers, the business process tightly controls the amount of additional inventory employees can request.  After exhausting other traditional sources, the employee then turned to the Connections platform and asked “out loud” if anyone knew how she could get more inventory.  Funny thing happened.  Although everyone felt her pain on the inventory shortage, they started replicating her paint mold/tray demo in their stores. And guess what? Suddenly other stores were selling out of the paint trays too.  As interest in the thread and the display idea grew in popularity, sales skyrocketed.

This kind of incident just wouldn't happen with traditional email or teamroom-based collaboration.  Social Business solutions like Connections open up the opportunity for viral communication. What kinds of serendipitous events could occur at your business were IBM Connections to be available?

The big news today is that the latest release of IBM Lotus Notes & Domino includes an entitlement to deploy and use IBM Connections Profiles and Files for all users that have a qualifying license.  Here's what the Notes & Domino 8.5.3 announcement letter says:

Lotus Notes 8.5.3 helps you quickly locate the people and content you need through integrated access to social tools from IBM Connections. This release provides an entitlement to the Files and Profiles features of IBM Connections 3.0.1 to customers with these licenses :  

• IBM Lotus Domino Enterprise Client Access License
• IBM Lotus Domino Messaging Client Access License
• IBM Lotus Domino Collaboration Express License
• IBM Lotus Domino Messaging Express License

As a Lotus Notes customer, you can now deploy and access the Files and Profiles features of IBM Connections at no additional charge. Access to the Files feature allows users to easily share content with other people and remove the need to send large files through email. It also allows you to socialize content you create, allowing people to easily find it, make recommendations, and share with other people. Profiles helps users find the people they need by searching across the organization's content using tags to identify expertise, current projects, and responsibilities. It socializes skills, interests, and organizational structure for others to discover and benefit from.

Of course, if you are already a Connections customer then you'll already understand the benefits of these new social features.   However, that is not to say that these new entitlements are automatically irrelevant to you.  Many of the organisations that I work with have all their office and manual workers licensed for Notes/Domino but only have a subset of the users licensed for IBM Connections.  This announcement would allow, at no extra charge, the ability for the rest of the population to get access to Social Profiles and to social file sharing within the Notes client.  In particular, this could release massive gains for a workforce to more easily find expertise within the organisation, and to shift the load of attachments from Notes/Domino into the improved sharing functionality of Connections Files. This new entitlement was discussed at length on a call yesterday, including the following clarifications:

• Access to Profiles and Files will be permitted from the Notes client, web browser and mobile devices (including the new IBM mobile native apps).
• Homepage is not included (so no activity streams etc.).
• TDI and DB2 are entitled as part of the offering, limited to use with the Connections features (though both may already be included in a limited form with Domino anyway).
• The Connections infrastructure is not limited to any particular number of PVUs, just as with the full Connections offering it will be flexible to serve the number of users licensed.
• There will be an upgrade path from this limited entitlement to the full Connections product, details due to be announced later this month.
• If a customer is already licensed for Quickr for the Notes/Domino users then, then they will have access to Connections Profiles, Files and Wikis (as Files and Wikis have been part of the Quickr license since 2009).
• There is currently no out-of-the-box technical means to limit Notes users to just these features on a existing Connections instance whilst other users have the full suite.  I'm sure that we can be creative!

As I said on my original post over on the Collaboration Matters blog, I see this as a massive massive deal for IBM Connections.  Whilst Connections has been hugely successful as a product (and leads the market), it still has reached only a minority of Notes/Domino customers.  This announcement opens up the option for these customers to try Connections in a meaningful way before upgrading to the whole suite as the benefits and value are realised. Already Collaboration Matters (in the UK, Europe and USA) and ISW (in Australia and Asia Pacific) have announced services offerings to get these new features deployed in a fast cost-effective manner.  I hope that customers take this opportunity - there is no time to waste!

Some IBM technotes definitely go into the 'Interesting - may prove useful in the future' category.  This one on IBM Connections search ranks highly for geekiness...

Question When you search all IBM Connections components, the results are returned based on relevance. How does Connections determine which documents are most relevant? Answer The simplified explanation is the more times a search term appears in a document, wiki, blog article etc. the more relevant that content becomes. The search is built on top of Apache Lucene, as are most of IBM's search components. Detail of the Apache Lucene project can be found here: http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/index.html Here is the formula that is used in Connections 3.0.x: http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_4_0/api/org/apache/lucene/search/Similarity.html

The linked document describing the Similarity formula might help next time you are waiting for a flight or struggling to sleep:

The score of query q for document d correlates to the cosine-distance or dot-product between document and query vectors in a Vector Space Model (VSM) of Information Retrieval. A document whose vector is closer to the query vector in that model is scored higher. The score is computed as follows: ...

;-)

Whilst the release of fixes and fixpacks for IBM Connections 3.0.x has been mercifully slower than with Connections 2.5, there is still a steady stream of key updates that you should at least evaluate for use in your environment. Today sees CR3 updates for all the Connections 3.0.1 applications:

Fix:	Description:
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-BLOGS-CRLO63035	BLOGS: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-COMMUNITIES-CRLO63039	COMMUNITIES: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-HOMEPAGE-CRLO63044	HOMEPAGE: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-FORUM-CRLO63047	FORUM: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-SEARCH-CRLO63045	SEARCH: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-ACTIVITIES-CRLO63031	ACTIVITIES: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-PROFILES-CRLO63043	PROFILES: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-DOGEAR-CRLO63042	DOGEAR: CR3 FOR LC301
3.0.1.0-LC-Multi-NEWS-CRLO63046	NEWS: CR3 FOR LC301

If you haven't updated your Connections 3.0.1 environment yet, this might be a set to consider...

At Lotusphere 2011, IBM and Actiance announced a partnership to develop compliance solutions for both IBM Connections and IBM Sametime.  Today, those solutions were announced to the market:

Vantage for IBM Connections V1.0 and Vantage for IBM Sametime V1.0 enable security and policy management controls, beyond the native IBM implementations, that are designed to help social organizations remain compliant with key regulatory and corporate governance requirements. Vantage, provided by Actiance, an IBM Business Partner, is the industry-leading security, management, and compliance solution for unified communications and collaboration platforms. Through tight integration with IBM Connections and IBM Sametime, Vantage delivers granular security, reporting logging, and archiving controls for content posted within IBM Connections and IBM Sametime environments. Vantage for IBM Connections captures and reports social conversations, posts, comments, and files that have been shared between IBM Connections users for eDiscovery purposes. Vantage for IBM Sametime enables real-time management, reporting, and security alerts augmenting IBM Sametime's native functionality. It enables granular policy setting, ethical walls, message hygiene, malware prevention, and content archiving for eDiscovery purposes as well.

Available today, these solutions are tremendously exciting, particularly for Connections customers that have desired more control and auditability for their social platforms:

Vantage for IBM Connections V1.0 monitors and captures conversations, posts, comments, and files that have been shared between IBM Connections users. Vantage for IBM Sametime and IBM Connections provides a compliance solution that is up-to-date on the dynamic and interactive communication channels a social business leverages. No matter how small or out-of-context a remark or comment might be, every post can be captured and put into the larger context of a holistic compliance solution for the social business. Additional compliance capabilities of Vantage for IBM Connections:

• Automated logging of all IBM Connections end-user events (wikis, blogs, forum, activities, communities, profiles, bookmarks, and files)
• Real-time content inspection by keywords, lexicons, restricted phrases, regular expressions, user, type, and date range, that helps enable compliance personnel to easily locate relevant data, and helps to significantly reduce risk by allowing organizations to remove inappropriate content quickly
• Logs and archives original format and images of posts within IBM Connections; real-time review in the context of how they were posted in chronological order that helps to make the legal discovery, review, and reporting process simpler and less costly
• Simple creation and enforcement of granular policies on which content to capture that helps enable organizations to more effectively manage their compliance program
• Global and group role-based access control helps strengthen and simplify an organization's ability to comply with regulations

The products are licensed per user via Passport Advantage but pricing information is not yet available. My comments:

• This solution is much needed and very exciting.  Connections helps organisations do business and collaborate in a more flexible and informal way, but that doesn't mean that security or compliance can be discarded along the way.  This solution helps maintain these aspects without impeding the free flow of social content.
• Actiance (formerly Facetime) have a great reputation for their IBM-based solutions, and what's more, are keen members of the Lotus community.  I am delighted for them to have brought these solutions to market with IBM, and wish them great success.
• Hopefully this is the start of a successful and profitable ISV market for IBM Connections - we need other ISVs to step up to the plate with solutions for analytics, backup/recovery, monitoring, CRM and more.  Clearly IBM is betting on Connections being a central pillar of their Social Business strategy - a vibrant ISV community is an essential aspect of a successful platform.

[If you'd like more information, or a proposal for implementation of the Vantage solution in your business, please contact us.]

The second Social Connections event has been scheduled and registration is now open! The Date... Social Connections II will take place on 9th December, 2011. It will be a one-day event with a formal agenda running from 9am to 6pm, with an informal social gathering scheduled for the evening. The Location... Cardiff University have graciously offered to host the event. They have a wonderful conference facility known as the Glamorgan Building, formerly the offices of the Glamorgan County Council, which is just a 10 minute walk from the city centre and railway station. The building is splendid, and the rooms we will be using have many of their original features including oak-panelling, oil-paintings and more - an anonymous hotel this is not! There are many hotels close by, including the Cardiff Hilton which is just a two-minute stroll away.  For those travelling in, Cardiff Central Station is only a 10 minute walk or taxi ride away, and Cardiff Airport is well connected with the major airports in Europe. The Agenda... Details of the agenda will be made available nearer the time (when sessions and speakers have been selected). However, some aspects are certain:

• There will be a mix of great speakers from IBM (including from the Connections product management team in the US), business partners and customers
• We will cover business, technical and management aspects of IBM Connections, as well as having a few wildcard topics thrown in as well
• Most sessions will be 30 minutes long, keeping the high-tempo and varied topics that were such a success at Social Connections 1
• We will mix up the session types even more than we did at the first event, with seminars, Q&A panels and unconference sessions
• All sessions will be recorded and made available for replay, and all presentations will be uploaded to Slideshare

So what next? Book Friday 9th December in your diaries! Register now!  Do this ASAP as we expect attendance to be even higher than it was for Social Connections I, and we have limited availability. Once your registration is approved (a manual process), you will receive an email with confirmation for the event and your login and password for this site.   If you are interested in speaking at the event, submit an abstract - either at the time of registration or later, just log back into this site to do so.  We are looking for great sessions that cover Connections (either technical or business-focused), Social Business and other topics that would be of interest to existing or prospective Connections customers.  In particular, we would love to have some great customer case studies to learn from.  Remember that in most cases, sessions will be 30 minutes in length. Lastly, if your organisation is interested in sponsoring Social Connections II, get in touch. A limited number of sponsorship packages are available, so you'll need to be fast.

The Detailed System Requirements document for IBM Connections 3.0.1 has been updated in the last week, with the most notable change being: Yes, Connections 3.0.1 now has been validated against a newer release of WebSphere Application Server, 7.0.0.15, on all supported operating systems (just Windows is shown here). This is a big deal for a lot of environments where more than just Connections is run on the WAS platform, e.g. Sametime 8.5.2 is supported on 7.0.0.15, as is Portal 7.0.1. If you are already running Connections 3.0.x on WAS 7.0.0.11, then no need to worry - that release is still supported...  This is a good way to do things - Connections 2.5 rooted a lot of organisations on WAS 6.1.0.23 for a very long time, so good to see IBM validating new framework releases within Connections releases now.

Hot on the heels of the Android and Blackberry apps, we finally have the official IBM Connections app for iOS: Initially for the iPhone and iPod touch, this is IBM's app for accessing IBM Connections data on Apple devices.  Whilst the app will work on the iPad in 2x mode, full support for that device is coming later.  It requires iOS 4 or later. Great to see these apps live and available for free (yes, did I mention, FREE!) download.  Nice job Baan Slavens and team...

The new Blackberry native app for IBM Connections 3.0.1 is now available (see this previous post for more details of the new apps for Android, iOS and Blackberry)

IBM Connections is social software for business. It enables you to build a network of colleagues and subject matter experts, and then leverage that network to further your business goals. With its integrated suite of tools, you can share and discuss ideas, work collaboratively on presentations or proposals, plan and track project tasks, and much more. IBM Connections is a web application that is deployed on a company intranet to promote collaboration within the company. The IBM Connections mobile application extends access to company data to employees who are on the go. Use the mobile application to perform common IBM Connections tasks with a minimal number of steps. If IBM Connections is deployed in your company, you can download this application and log in using the same credentials as always. (The server must be running version 3.0.1 plus the July 2011 mobile update or higher and the mobile application must be installed on it. Check with your IT administrator if you aren't sure.)

Compatible with: BlackBerry 9100 BlackBerry 9300 BlackBerry 9330 BlackBerry 9650 BlackBerry 9670 BlackBerry 9700 BlackBerry 9780 BlackBerry 9800 BlackBerry 9810 BlackBerry 9900 BlackBerry 9930 The app needs Blackberry OS 6.0.0 or higher.

One of the major enhancements in IBM Connections 3.0.1 was the addition of integration with IBM Filenet and Content Manager repositories.   Given that few of the organisations we work with have Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems, I had thought that these new features were of limited interest to Collaboration Matters.  However, Louis Richardson has just released a new video to YouTube that shows off some of the business value that can be gained from bringing ECM systems into Connections (and social collaboration environments in general): My comments:

1. I'm impressed at the level of integration available, making it easy to retain the control of ECM data with check-in/check-out etc, whilst still being easy to use by novice Connections users.
2. This is an area where IBM's broad suite of middleware offerings allows it to develop solutions that go beyond traditional social tools, and therefore ahead of many competitors.
3. Louis does a tremendous job of explaining and demonstrating the solution.
4. Having both Connections Files and Connections ECM ('Content Library') options available to users and community owners could be confusing - why use one over the other etc?  I would imagine that when ECM is enabled, many organisations would disable Files to push users down the more formal content management route, but that leaves a gap for information sharing outside of communities.
5. There have been lots of questions about the future of QuickrJ alongside Connections.  The introduction of ECM integration into Connections communities covers many use cases (though not all) where QuickrJ has been a good fit.
6. FileNet and Content Manager have (in my experience) previously been pretty complex and heavy pieces of infrastructure, particularly for smaller organisations.  If ECM is only required for integration with Connections (or Quickr), it would be great to see these solutions offered as appliances or with an easier means of deployment.

IBM has submitted native mobile IBM Connections applications for Android, iOS and Blackberry to the respective app stores for those platforms. Mac Guidera and Luis Benitez (both product managers in the IBM Social team) were first with the news over the weekend.  Mac:

In an effort to bring the value of IBM Connections to everywhere knowledge workers are collaborating, we have been producing plug-ins, add-ons and extensions for may client applications, such as Notes, Outlook, Office, Windows, Rational Team Concert and Portal. To date our mobile interface has been through smart phone browsers, but that changes today.

Luis followed up with more detail:

On Friday, IBM submitted 3 native mobile applications to the most popular mobile app stores: Android Market, iTunes App Store, and BlackBerry's App World. The native mobile applications bring IBM's social software platform, IBM Connections, to the mobile world. IBM previously supported mobile access via the mobile's browser, although various business partners had created their own iOS apps for IBM Connections.

All three versions of the app were submitted at the same time but each app store will take its own time in approving the app. Hopefully, the three apps should be available within the next few days for all users. Moreover, IBM has done a tremendous job ensuring that all three apps have the same capability.

Continuing with their Social Everywhere strategy, IBM has also made all apps available for free.

One of the things that you'll notice is that now the ideation and media gallery modules are natively available in the mobile apps. Now, you can vote on ideas, comment on ideas, and manage the ideas while on the go. As well, you can take pictures and upload pictures while at a conference and immediately share them with your colleagues through the app.

Luis also includes screenshots from all three versions:

iOS (note the app will also run on iPads in 2x mode):

Blackberry (requires OS6):

Android (requires 2.2 or later):

At this time, only the Android version has been approved and is listed in the store. The other clients will come as soon as they are approved. My comments: 1.        I have been following these new clients through the development process as we are part of the Mobile DP program.  It has been exciting to see IBM's vision for these clients develop rapidly to this first released version.  For a first effort at official native clients, I think they have done a great job. 2.        IBM at first seemed very reluctant to embrace native mobile apps, with just a few (almost skunkworks) efforts such as the developerWorks Connectrions client and the LotusLive Meetings client making it out to the market.  I heard a suggestion or two that this was down to the IBM lawyers struggling with the iOS App Store Ts&Cs, however I'd also think this was down to the sheer development effort required - a single mobile-focused web UI is much more cost-effective to develoip.  This delay did give third parties time to get their own apps into the marketplace (such as mLinked and iWildfire) and I now feel a little sad for these guys given their extensive and expensive projects to support the IBM Connections platform.  However, I do think it is best for the IBM Connections customer base that IBM offers official supported apps. 3.        Whilst the apps do not cover all aspects of the Connections user experience just now, they seem to be a great start.  I hope that the focus will continue through future versions to ensure they are kept up to date. 4.        The Blackberry client is clearly a replacement for the ill-fated chargeable Blackberry client that seemed to languish after 2.5, and was removed from Passport Advantage last month.  I got some flak for publishing that article, but wouldn't it have been great if the announcement highlighted that this client was coming in less than three weeks! 5.        Nokia users will need to continue using the Connections mobile web interface for now.  Given my experience with customers, I don't think this will be an issue... 6.        The mobile apps require a specific version and fixpack or above: 'The server must be running version 3.0.1 plus the July 2011 mobile update or higher and the mobile application must be installed on it.'  Best get up to this release ASAP!

The IBM Connections 3.0.1 Files Plug-in for Lotus Notes provides the following features:

• Upload files for your own use or to share with others
• Drag and drop an attached file or a file from your desktop to Files
• Drag and drop or copy and paste a file from Files to your desktop
• Send an HTML link to a file
• Search for files
• Sort files for easier browsing
• Open Connections Files in a browser

  The IBM Connections 3.0.1 Files Plug-in for Lotus Notes supports:

• IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 (latest fixpack)
• IBM Lotus Connections 3.0
• IBM Connections 3.0.1
• Lotus Notes 8.5.1 FP5
• Lotus Notes 8.5.2 FP1, FP2*, FP3 (FP3 is recommended)
• Microsoft Windows XP SP3 (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista SP2 (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 (32-bit, 64-bit toleration)
• Apple Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6  (New in this release)

Yep, you read that right - support for OS X.  This is a very big deal! Downloading now (and thanks to Jon for the heads-up!)

IBM's Rene Schimmer talks to Abby Johnson of WebProNews about IBM Connections and the partnership with Actiance, delivering a new compliance offering for social business: Interesting discussion...