Focused on continuous quality improvement of offerings from IBM Collaboration Solutions, including Lotus, LotusLive and WebSphere Portal branded offerings, the purpose of this blog is to nurture and sustain a conversation with our customers about quality.
Signature Mortgage on LotusLive
Thu, Aug 25th 2011 9:10p Flemming T Christensen Would like to share a customer testimonial regarding LotusLive. We have received some nice press coverage in the past year for a very large LotusLive deal, the largest ever. But as this testimonial shows, LotusLive can add value no matter the size of the subscriber's organization.
What I find so interesting in this testimonial is the transformational power of the solution. This is literally a game changer for the subscriber, catapulting their services into the competitive leading edge. [read] Keywords:
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IBM Policy of Supporting N-2
Wed, Aug 10th 2011 11:12p Flemming T Christensen You may be familiar with the fact IBM Software Group has upped the minimum duration of software support from "3+2" to "5+3", or expressed in words: minimum 3 [now 5] years of support, with at least 2 [now 3] more years of support available at a charge. This better enables our clients to schedule upgrades at convenient times and not be forced to upgrade every few years.
An important extension of the IBM Software Support Lifecycle Policy is the statement that we will normally support N-2, me [read] Keywords: collaboration
domino
ibm
notes
sametime
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How to open a FREE Lotus Greenhouse account
Tue, Aug 9th 2011 8:13p Flemming T Christensen My colleague Ron Denham has put together a quick 4 minute video showing you how simple it is to open a FREE Lotus Greenhouse account. I want to share his video for two reasons: (1) Because a Lotus Greenhouse account lets you try out all our products without purchasing a license, and (2) because a Lotus Greenhouse account is needed to comment on entries in this blog.
If you don't already have a Lotus Greenhouse account, please listen to the video, create your account now, and start famil [read] Keywords: lotus
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IBM Virtualization Support policy
Thu, Jul 21st 2011 2:10p Flemming T Christensen From time to time, I am asked what virtualization environments specific products support. With the increasingly diverse choice of virtualization technologies available, it is natural for IBM to select some that will be supported across our portfolio, ensuring that multi-product solutions can leverage the same virtualization technology. So last year, IBM announced a virtualization support policy aligning virtualization support across our product portfolio. In addition, individual products or prod [read] Keywords: ibm
virtualization
136
When the use of metrics goes awry
Tue, Jun 28th 2011 11:14p Flemming T Christensen In the field of software quality, we rely extensively on a series of quantitative metrics to inform us of trends and performance. We need to be keenly aware that the very instant we set a target value for a metric, we are driving behaviors of the people we charge with achieving the target value. Through it all, leaders need to ensure everybody stays focused on what's best for our business and for our customers; and that excessive pressure to achieve those metrics targets don't interfere [read] Keywords: ibm
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Comparison of Connections and Sharepoint
Thu, Jun 23rd 2011 2:14p Flemming T Christensen Quality has multiple dimensions, but ease-of-use is undeniably a big part of how users subjectively evaluate software they work with. This comparison of IBM Connections and Microsoft Sharepoint gives an in-depth illustration of how our teams have worked to make IBM Connections easy and intuitive to use. Collaborating, sharing documents, or becoming a social business are all topics of the day, but as this video demonstrates, to ensure you choose the optimal solution, you have to go beyond the buz [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
lotus
microsoft
sharepoint
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IBM Champions for Collaboration Solutions announced
Wed, Jun 22nd 2011 2:14p Flemming T Christensen The IBM Champions program, mentioned previously in the blog, has completed the first set (2011) of reviews for the Collaboration Solutions area and today announced the 2011 Champions, see the Social Business Insights Blog entry. These 50 individuals are customers and partners (non IBM employees), who help evangelize our solutions in the field and build the community of users. They deserve our admiration and thank you for their dedication to excellent collaboration solutions, for their insight an [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
lotus
community
67
LotusLive Mobile Meetings beta now on Android as well as Apple and Blackberry
Mon, Jun 20th 2011 6:14p Flemming T Christensen The LotusLive Mobile Meetings beta application download for the Android platform has been added to our LotusLive Mobile program, such that the beta is now available on both Apple, Blackberry and Android. For an overview of all platforms, go to the LotusLive Mobile Overview page. If you are a LotusLive Engage/Meetings subscriber, and use either an Apple iPhone, a RIM Blackberry, or an Android mobile phone, please consider trying out the Mobile Meetings application. [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
apple
application
blackberry
iphone
mobile
rim
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Happy Centennial IBM & Wild Ducks
Thu, Jun 16th 2011 1:10p Flemming T Christensen Today marks 100 years since the founding of our company. Very few companies have made it that far. IBM continues to have a unique vision and impact in the world. Our commitment to quality and customer satisfaction in all that we do is naturally important to me as a quality engineer, but on a broader scale, it not just about better quality; it's about a better world. Our campaigns call that a "Smarter Planet" these days, but make no mistake: Our commitment to a better world has been ingrain [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
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Quickr Connectors now support 64-bit Windows and MS Office 2010
Mon, Jun 6th 2011 3:10p Flemming T Christensen It's a small step in the greater picture, but an important one. I have had several customers ask for this. The Quickr Connectors now support 64-bit Windows and Office 2010. See Mac Guidera's blog post on the topic, and visit Fix Central to download the connectors as Quickr 8.5.0.1_HF7. Feel free to post feedback regarding the quality of the connectors as comments to this blog entry. We're always looking for ways to serve you better. [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
quickr
mac
office
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Oracle contributing OpenOffice to Apache is good for Symphony
Wed, Jun 1st 2011 7:10p Flemming T Christensen Today, on June 1st 2011, Oracle announced (link here) that they have contributed the OpenOffice software to the Apache Software Foundation incubator. For IBM, Oracle's move fits well with our focus on open standards. The near future will reveal what actions will trigger each other like domino pieces, but one thing is for sure: You can expect to see a variety of organizations joining the OpenOffice project under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation and contributing to it. You can ce [read] Keywords: collaboration
domino
ibm
lotus
odf
symphony
development
eclipse
openoffice
oracle
wiki
What's better
Tue, May 24th 2011 9:13a Flemming T Christensen This is a fairly new blog, started just one month ago, so the visit count on each successive entry may rise from a combination of interest in the topic and more people becoming aware of the blog's existence. The prior entry "Why Sametime 8.5.2 is better" saw a very positive rise in visits. I cannot be sure how much of that is due to the topic, and how much is due to increased awareness of the blog, but I take it as a vote in favor of sharing that kind of information. Each new release proje [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
lotus
sametime
community
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Sametime 8.5.2 Improvements
Thu, May 19th 2011 8:11a Flemming T Christensen Yesterday we announced the upcoming availability of IBM Sametime 8.5.2 on June 10th 2011. Did you notice the slight change of the product name? I'd like to share some of the things we are excited about from a quality perspective in Sametime 8.5.2. A fuller account of all the new features in release 8.5.2 can be found in John Del Pizzo's Sametime blog entry. Here, I will focus more on the continuous improvement aspect of the release.
First of all, a third digit release is what we refer [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
nsd
sametime
community
integration
mobile
server
tivoli
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Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
Mon, May 16th 2011 6:11p Flemming T Christensen This 11 minute video summarizes the key message in Daniel Pink's "Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us". It is insightful and an interesting explanation of the motivation behind the open source software movement. And, oh by the way, I wish I could draw like that....
Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose describe some - but not all - of the ingredients in a successful breakthrough, whether in product features or in quality improvement. And software development being a team sport [read] Keywords: development
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LotusLive Application Sharing Optimization
Sat, May 14th 2011 8:15p Flemming T Christensen LotusLive Meetings recently implemented an improvement designed to bring you a better Meeting experience. Did you perhaps notice it already? An option to select how to optimize meeting performance, whether:
for the best image display quality, which you will want when sharing photos, for example, or
for faster performance which will often be sufficient if all you are sharing is slides with text and simple graphs, or if your audience i [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
lotus
application
community
network
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Samoa skips a day ahead
Fri, May 13th 2011 8:11p Flemming T Christensen Believe it or not, time zone definition changes are fairly common around the world, and we respond to quite a few of these regularly.
Samoa to jump forward in time by one day
The Lotus Notes calendar, for example, has built-in information about time zones and the associated Daylight Saving Time (DST) definitions. When those change, we supply an update (a 'fix') to ensure customers can continue to rely on accurate knowledge of time zone differences and what dates DST starts and ends i [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
application
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Planet Lotus blog aggregator
Thu, May 12th 2011 9:10p Flemming T Christensen This blog is now listed on Planet Lotus (http://planetlotus.org). All of you experienced Lotus bloggers know what Planet Lotus is, but I'll bet there are some, who are new to the blogosphere, who are not familiar with it. Planet Lotus is a blog aggregator. It's a web site run by a partner, so it's independent of IBM. When you register with Planet Lotus - see their site for specific instructions & criteria - they will consume your feed and build tables of recent entries from all t [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
lotus
planet lotus
planetlotus
planetlotus.org
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Keep Right
Wed, May 11th 2011 3:50p Flemming T Christensen Don't you just love instructions that are clear, unambiguous, well thought through, and never self contradictory? I for one am grateful for the effort of our Information Development colleagues, our technical writers. As designs are modified and optimized during a release project, they have a complex task of keeping the documentation accurate while delivering in time for release. This applies to both Help embedded in our products as well as web based information like wikis and more. Never und [read] Keywords: lotus
development
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Sametime 8.5.1 FixPack 1 check
Mon, May 9th 2011 9:58p Flemming T Christensen Tip: If you run Sametime 8.5.1 and believe you have applied FixPack 1 (FP1) to your system, please see this tip from Andy Yiu to ensure the FixPack is properly applied:
Do you really have Sametime 8.5.1 FP1 applied?
The readme file accompanying FP1 could have been clearer. Although the IBM installation manager installs the files onto your server, you still need to commit the changes to the environment. Andy describes how to do this, via the Sametime Cluster Guided activity, or via the WebSph [read] Keywords: ibm
sametime
server
websphere
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Notes lock-out with embedded Sametime
Fri, May 6th 2011 7:11p Flemming T Christensen I serendipitously ran into unexpected behavior of my embedded Sametime client on a machine running Notes 8.5.1. I locked out the screen by pressing F5 as I was getting up to go to lunch. After pressing F5, my Notes client will not let me open or send mails, nor will it let me access or write anything in any of the already open Sametime chats. That's expected behavior. But before leaving my desk, I noticed that my manager opened a chat window with a question. Not wanting to let her wait until [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
notes client
sametime
eclipse
laptop
network
office
password
security
wireless
workspace
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Dinner at the Venetian
Tue, May 3rd 2011 9:26p Flemming T Christensen What does dining on a cruise ship have to do with the quality of Collaboration Solutions? Plenty, if you're willing to translate, as quality transcends both the restaurant user experience and the software user experience.
My wife and I recently decided an offer for a Spring Break cruise was too good to decline. We were ready for a break, and the price was right. So we boarded in Miami and had a wonderful break cruising the Caribbean. One night we decided to dine in one of the Italian resta [read] Keywords: administration
collaboration
domino
ibm
lotus
notes
applications
development
server
tivoli
websphere
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IBM Champions Program
Thu, Apr 28th 2011 9:24a Flemming T Christensen Please see the announcement of the IBM Champion Program now covering IBM Collaboration Solutions as well. Through this program, IBM recognizes individuals who help evangelize our solutions in the market. IBM employees are not eligible for this recognition; The Champion award is to recognize our customers and partners. (IBM employees are allowed to nominate champions, however). If you know someone, who does an outstanding job evangelizing our solutions, please consider nominating them for this aw [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
lotus
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Boomers, Generation X'ers and Millenials all welcome
Wed, Apr 27th 2011 11:10p Flemming T Christensen Quality is everyone's job. None of us is as strong as all of us. You've heard the catch phrases. In quality software engineering, they are true. One of the purposes of this blog is to open the conversation about quality to all customers and partners, regardless of which generation they belong to and how much experience they have with our software. I once hired an intern, who discovered a key flaw in a major test harness less than a week after she started. And this was a harness used by a [read] Keywords: ibm
enterprise
networking
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New Course: LotusLive Notes in a hybrid environment
Wed, Apr 27th 2011 6:58a Flemming T Christensen News tip: Our education team has just released a free, self-paced course on LotusLive Notes in a hybrid environment. A hybrid environment allows integration between your on-premises Domino systems and the cloud. Replicating your Domino Directory to the cloud provides for a seamless integration between environments. So rather than replacing existing Domino infrastructure with cloud based offerings, you can leverage the cloud based offerings as an extension of your existing on-premise environment. [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
notes
applications
integration
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What does Quality mean?
Mon, Apr 25th 2011 8:54p Flemming T Christensen Since this blog is focused on quality, it seems reasonable to start with a description of what the term means to me, in relation to software. I am NOT asking readers to adopt my definition of quality, or to limit your comments based on my definition. In fact, I would like to hear how you define the term.
What does software quality mean to you?
To me, delivering quality software means simultaneously providing:
Code with the right features (capability) & with the features done right ( [read] Keywords:
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Welcome
Mon, Apr 25th 2011 8:11p Flemming T Christensen Welcome to the Quality Collaboration blog, offering a conversation about continuous quality improvement of offerings from IBM Collaboration Solutions. The purposes of this blog are to:
help our customers (via hints & tips) drive more value from licenses and subscriptions
gather feedback from readers on quality topics
share information about our continuous improvement effort
share customer success stories
develop a conversation with our customers about achieving and maint [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
