The inside scoop on Lotus Sametime from the product management team | ||||||
| Sametime 8.0.2 Mac Client Now AvailableJohn Del Pizzo July 2 2009 10:32:14 AMThe Sametime 8.0.2 Connect Client for the Mac is now available for download from Passport Advantage. This is especially important for organizations with mixed computing environments looking to deploy Sametime Unified Telephony. SUT pre-req's the 8.0.2 client.
CDW: Special Deals on Plantronics Headsets with Sametime purchaseJohn Del Pizzo July 2 2009 09:53:13 AMCDW has a special offer for US customers who purchase (or have purchased) Sametime through them. Until August 21st, you'll get a free Plantronics headset for every five you buy! Eligible headsets include:
For more information, visit CDW.com, call 800-606-4239, email CDWpromo@plantronics.com or download the attached PDF file. CDW_SameTime_EndUser6 19 09G_loRez.pdf
Sametime Quick Tip: Controlling NotificationsJohn Del Pizzo July 1 2009 07:51:49 PMGaurav Chhabra asked:"In Sametime 8.0, its very annoying when the chat window pops up in front of all the windows and that to when you are in the middle of some important assignment. I think there should be some option under preference\notifications that would allow the user to select the kind of notification required. Popup or flash title in titlebar..just like v7.5" Thanks for the comment, Gaurav! There is a preferences setting to control exactly the behavior you are describing. Follow these steps:
Sametime QuickTip: Privacy ControlsJohn Del Pizzo June 30 2009 01:14:15 PMYou're working against a deadline on a key project. You need to be on Sametime to coordinate with your team... but you don't want to deal with other issues right now. How do you control who can reach you?Sametime Privacy Controls Sametime Privacy Controls let you determine:
Using Privacy Controls is simple. In the Menu Bar, go to Tools->Privacy Lists. Drag & drop names (or groups) from your Contact list into the appropriate control list (as show in the screen shots below). Click ok and you're done.
Sametime leader in latest Gartner IM MarketscopeJohn Del Pizzo June 30 2009 12:51:15 PMLast Friday, Gartner published their 2009 Enterprise Instant Messaging and Presence Marketscope and, for the third year running, Sametime received the highest possible ranking. They had some great things to say about Sametime Unified Telephony and the foundational role Sametime presence plays in IBM's cloud and social networking strategies. Unfortunately, we don't have the rights to publish quotes at this time, so you'll have to purchase the report to read the details.
Sametime Unified Telephony ShipsJohn Del Pizzo June 25 2009 09:00:16 AMIBM Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony was released yesterday -- a month earlier than the target date we announced at VoiceCon in April!Available now, IBM Lotus® Sametime® Unified Telephony software is unified communications middleware which integrates telephony across multivendor Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems and provides a unified end user experience, including integrated softphones; phone and IM presence awareness; call control and rules-based call management across multiple communications systems. By leveraging and extending existing telephony assets and unifying them with realtime collaboration tools, an enterprise can help users more easily find and reach each other and collaborate -- working smarter together to speed decision-making and business processes. Also available from IBM Global Technology Services are Converged Communications Services for Sametime Unified Telephony. These include strategy, assessment, architecture, design, integration and deployment services for SUT. Congratulations to the entire extended team! It is an impressive offering! You can learn more about Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) here:
New Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime solution goes liveJacques Pavlenyi June 24 2009 02:11:18 PMWe blogged about this particular IBM Research asset a while ago, but just this morning IBM Software Services for Lotus has announced the availability of a new solution called Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime that enables organizations to leverage virtual meeting spaces and highly interactive tools to support real-time collaboration.With Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime, individuals can use Lotus Sametime to invite colleagues to meet in a virtual world environment and use interactive tools such as brainstorming boards, action item and planning walls, virtual flipcharts, presentation/video/image viewers, and more. The virtual sessions provide for a more engaging experience than ordinary conference calls or Web conferences and enable geographically dispersed teams to meet online without sacrificing the benefits of in-person meetings. To see what Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime has to offer, we prepared a short video you can watch. You can also visit the IBM Software Services for Lotus Web site. As you may or may not know, IBM has been experimenting with using virtual worlds for business uses for quite some time. This is a continued extension of that business value discussion, with several companies and institutions very interested to learn how to better use these new tools, especially as younger workers continue to enter the workforce, bringing along their specific ways of communicating and collaborating with their peers. So a question for you: does your company currently use virtual worlds in any business capacity, whether internal such as training or meetings, or external such as branding? If so, how would you see this type of virtual world collaboration adding to what you do today? If not, is this the type of innovation that might make you rethink the use of virtual worlds within a business environment?
Sametime Quick Tip: Using Multiple CommunitiesJohn Del Pizzo June 23 2009 10:00:00 AMHow do Sametime users from different companies interact with each other? One way is through the Sametime Gateway, which allows for the exchange of presence status and simple text messages. But what if the users need more? What if they need voice or video chats? Or direct file transfers? Or they want to take advantage of the new drag & drop meeting invitations coming in 8.5? In that case, they might want to consider using Sametime's Multiple Community support.To oversimplify, think of a Community as all the Sametime users in an enterprise. (The name comes from the fact that the Sametime presence & chat engine is called the Community Server.) With the right permissions, the Connect client can log into multiple Community Servers. For example, I use this to simultaneously collaborate with colleagues inside IBM (through our internal community) and outside IBM through sites like LotusLive, Greenhouse and Bleed Yellow. In addition, a few customers and partners have invited me to join their communities directly. The nice thing about Sametime is that the Connect client provides a single, integrated view of all of your contacts across communities while giving you complete control over how you appear on each server. For example, the screen shot below shows that I have connections to five communities and am logged into four. I can log in and out of each one individually, as well as update my availability and set a custom status message for each. Or, I can use the "All" popup menu to control them as a group. Each community can also have a different icon, which will appear next to each user's name in the contact list or in the chat window. This way, you can always tell where someone is from. Of course, you can import custom icons, if you like. Adding a new Sametime Community is fairly straightforward. Click on the "New" button (just below the "All" button in the screen shot) and select "New Server Community...". You'll need the following information:
That's it. Give the Community a meaningful name, choose an icon (if you like) and you're done. You can edit and remove Communities from the Sametime Preferences panel. One word of caution: Each individual who can connect to your Community Server counts as a user and needs to be appropriately licensed. Contact your sales or support representative to discuss the most appropriate licensing structure for your needs. And remember, if you have Sametime Standard or Advanced, you can always use the included Gateway to share presence and simple text chats with other Sametime Communities, as well as most public IM systems.
Wainhouse Unified Communications and Collaboration Survey 2009Jacques Pavlenyi June 22 2009 06:14:42 PMThe folks over at Wainhouse Research are putting together their annual Unified Communications survey. They asked if we could include a mention in our blog, and thought it was a pretty reasonable request. With everything going on in the economy, it's always good to reset expectations based on what users, especially our loyal IBM users, are actually thinking.For your time and effort, they're offering prizes, too: a Blu-ray DVD player and amazon.com gift certificates. That's in addition to all those completing the survey getting selected highlights of the results. Click here to go to the survey page. Since we're at it, it's Open Thread Time: what do you think are going to be the key trends in the Unified Communications Marketplace over the next 12-18 months?
Sametime Quick Tip: Tabbed ChatsJohn Del Pizzo June 10 2009 04:11:05 PMHave you tried the Tabbed Chat interface in Sametime? It consolidates all of your discussions (including Persistent Group Chats and Voice Chats) into a single window. I find this especially important as individual chat windows can become "lost" across multiple displays and virtual desktops. When traveling I also appreciate need for less screen real estate on my laptop's 13-inch screen.To activate Tabbed Chats, go to Sametime Preferences-> Chat Window and check the box next to "Use tabbed windows for multiple chats". You also have the option of organizing the tabs across the top or down the side of the chat window, as illustrated below.
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