Intranet Journal
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Enhance Your Intranet with Sametime 7.5.1
IBM Lotus recently released version 7.5.1 of their Sametime collaboration products. I've written articles on Sametime releases before, but never really went into the details of what the software can do for you as a whole, or how it can tie into your intranet. Sametime is a piece of your collaboration infrastructure that can prove invaluable.
Lotus Sametime consists of two distinct pieces: instant messaging and web conferencing.
Instant Messaging
The instant messaging piece of Sametime centers around IM and presence awareness built into the Lotus Notes client, or the more full-featured Sametime Connect client.
The functionality for basic instant messaging between users is included with your Lotus Notes client license at no additional charge. If all you want is the ability for your users to do simple real-time instant messaging and see who is online via buddy lists then this is all you need. However, you can get a load of additional functionality by purchasing licenses to use Sametime Connect.
Sametime Connect is a separate piece of client software that runs on Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux. This software expands on basic instant messaging by including rich text, emoticons, file transfers, multi-way video conferencing, screen captures, voice chat and the ability to view business cards with contact information and photos of other users.
If you add an IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway server, you can even have the Sametime Connect client talk with external services including AIM, ICQ, Apple iChat, Google Talk, and Yahoo! Messenger.
How the servers work
There are a couple things to know about the server pieces of Sametime. First, if all you are doing is utilizing the built-in messaging capabilities in the Lotus Notes client, you can install a limited Sametime server. The limited server software provides all of the basic IM capabilities without access to more advanced IM features, or web conferencing. The limited server is what you need to take advantage of the free IM capabilities of Notes.
Then there is the standard Sametime server software. This includes the basic IM that the limited server allows and includes all of the advanced capabilities that the Sametime Connect client uses, as well as the web conferencing piece. This is licensed on a per-user basis.
Lastly, you have the Sametime Gateway software. The Sametime Gateway ties your Sametime community to the public IM networks. Administrators have control of what goes in and out to the public networks and who has ability to access them.
Once you have the full blown Sametime server installed and you purchase the appropriate licenses, you are then allowed to jump into Web Conferencing.
Web Conferencing
Web conferencing is a web-browser based meeting room where users can go through slides, share live screen info, chat, whiteboard and view live video and audio from presenters.
The benefits are fairly obvious. You could have users from all over the country (or the world for that matter) attending meetings without having to travel. The savings on airfare or hotels for a few employees can easily justify the licensing costs. Or how about training? A presenter could share their screen and show users how to use a piece of software. A help desk engineer could have a user show them what is going on in real-time on their machine. You can also record your meetings for later viewing. So, if you hold a training session on a piece of software, it can be saved for viewing by new employees later.
Another nice feature is the seamless integration into Lotus Notes. Instead of having users manually go to the web conferencing server, you can integrate your Notes calendaring and scheduling system to allow users to declare a meeting in their calendar as an online meeting. This allows users to live in their calendar as per usual, but set up online meetings easily.
Benefits
Obviously, integration with Lotus Notes is a huge benefit to going with Sametime, but you might be surprised to learn that as of Sametime 7.5.1, the software integrates with Microsoft Office products as well. You can be a Microsoft shop, and still tie into everything Sametime has to offer.
There are a few other reasons to consider it over the many public services. Foremost is security. Since Sametime runs on your own servers internally within your organization, it's more secure than sending information over the public IM and web conferencing services. Also, internal traffic is encrypted between endpoints to protect against anyone sniffing the traffic internally.
Administrators have the ability to lock down various pieces of Sametime based on back-end policies. You can enable or restrict most of the features the server and clients have to offer. This is something you cannot do if you just allow everyone in your organization to use public IM. Now if you want to allow access to the public IM networks, the Sametime Gateway allows you to do that, but in a very granular fashion. So it's about choice. You can tailor the security to your needs.
You don't even need to be tied to a machine to have IM capabilities. There are mobile clients that can allow instant messaging from your user's mobile devices as well. This can enable your road warriors with another tool to get access to people in your organization quickly.
Finally, the Sametime Connect client has a plug-in architecture to allow third-party add-on products, or to allow you to extend the capabilities yourself. There are products that allow everything from integration into phone conferencing systems and VOIP, to stock and weather info. You can even roll your own integration into your company's intranet and Notes applications.
Along with that integration, you also have the ability to integrate IM and presence awareness in your apps.
Awareness
There are two types of awareness. One is simply knowing whether a user is online using instant messaging. They may be in an available, away, or a do not disturb state. The second type does the same thing, but ties it into a "place." That place could be a web page or a Notes application.
The first type of awareness can be helpful in a variety of ways. You could make a Notes document library show the status of authors of the various documents. So, if you were looking at an HR document that was posted by John Doe, you could see if John was online and available to chat. If he was, you could initiate a discussion directly with John right then. Or, you could have a support page on your intranet with a listing of help desk personnel. If the help desk engineer was available, someone could initiate a chat from the web page.
Place based awareness is slightly different. Instead of having a fixed list of users, or an author of a document, this type of awareness shows you who is accessing the particular place at any given time. For example, if you place enable a wiki, you could go to any page in the wiki and it would show you who else is looking at that page at the same time as you are. This can be very advantageous for employees who need to collaborate on the same topics, or teams who tend to congregate in the same applications or web pages.
Lotus provides toolkits to allow your developers to add these features to your existing intranet infrastructure. You can tie in as much, or as little, as you desire. I think you'll find that once you start enabling users with IM and awareness, they will start clamoring for it in everything. Sametime is one of those applications that can show some real word-of-mouth growth within your organization.
Try it out
If you still aren't convinced that Sametime can really help your users, Lotus has a free 90 day trial available at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ls/lst/. Download it and roll-out a pilot. Be warned, it may be hard to pry it away from users once it's installed. I know from experience.
About this Series
This series of articles on intranet solutions with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino is intended to help readers understand the fundamental methodology and capabilities of the product and how to utilize it to deliver a feature-rich, secure, and functional corporate intranet solution. It will include implementation strategies, case studies, industry-tested tips and tricks, and, with your input, true value to the administrator or developer who wants to utilize IBM Lotus Notes/Domino technologies to deliver winning intranet solutions.
If you have any questions on the series, Lotus Notes/Domino, or if there's something you'd like to see addressed, visit the Intranet Journal Discussion Forum.
About the Author
John Roling is the Senior Groupware Administrator for a North American trade-show exhibit company and a certified Lotus Notes Administrator, Developer and all-around geek. You can keep up with him at his blog or drop him an e-mail at jroling@gmail.com.
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