My frolleague Richard Voaden sent this article my way this afternoon…

Ian Watmore – who is now in charge of a Whitehall efficiency drive – gave a scathing assessment of the previous government’s IT record.

The article suggests that expensive IT projects made policies sound “sexy” and that certain suppliers had a vice-like grip on the world of Public Sector IT. As these articles often do, the idea of open source software is thrown in as a potential money-saver, suggesting that the UK Government relies too heavily on Microsoft products. Anyone for Symphony?

But this is my favourite part of the article…

His “personal” view, he added, was that Apple products, which he said he used at home, should also be used more in government.

Now hang on a second… the words “save cash” appear very near to the top of this article. While I might be considered to be a bit of an Apple fan-boy (while still being left unimpressed by the iPad) I wouldn’t agree that spending money with Apple wasn’t the best course of action in the middle of an economy drive. Has Mr Watmore never visited the Apple store? I know it’s hard to see the product details with every computer surrounded by tourists reading their e-mail and treating the place like a free and trendy cyber-cafe, but surely he must know that Apple products do tend to be on the pricey side.

Also, using something at home isn’t always a good reason to use the same item at work. For example, we own a Breville sandwich toaster.

Here in IBM-land we use Connections every day, often without thinking about it. I’ve got so used to it being there that it’s become second nature, but every now and again I stop to appreciate its value. And here’s a simple example.

About a week ago, I received an e-mail about the UK ODF Plugfest – I’ll let you visit the web site (if you’re interested) to find out what it’s all about. The question posed in the e-mail was “how are we [IBM] involved and are we getting any coverage from it?”. The assumption was that, because Symphony is part of my portfolio, I’d know all about the ODF Plugfest. The reality however was somewhat different – I’d never heard of it.

Not being the sort of person just to e-mail back with a “sorry, don’t know” I decided to dig a bit further. The web site itself really doesn’t describe what goes on, who attends, the remit of any attendees, the agenda… so wasn’t much use. But someone in IBM must know something about this… right?

Right indeed. I headed to the Communities in the IBM Connections deployment and searched for ‘ODF’ in the public communities. Milliseconds later the search results appeared, and top of the pile was a community named ‘Open Document Format Interest’. Sounds good. Inside the community were a number of bookmarks, documents, a wiki, an activity and – the key to the success in this example – twenty three members. I looked at the profiles of the owners – one was an ODF architect, the other an ODF program manager. And there was one other member I recognised, someone who in the past had answered a question relating to Public Sector in the UK. It looked like I was in the right place.

The first element of the community was a discussion forum, so I asked a question about ODF Plugfests and whether anyone had any knowledge or experience of what goes on at the event. Within a couple of days I’d received two responses giving me the answers I needed, and providing an interesting link about the push towards ODF in the UK Public Sector (which I bookmarked, of course).

And that’s it. I said it was a simple story, but Connections was key to finding the right people amongst the huge IBM population and collaborating with them.

Ooops, IBM Lotus Symphony 3, to give it its correct branding. Anyway, you all know the story with Symphony… spreadsheets, word processing and presentations, compatible with Microsoft Office and the Open Document Formats, it comes with IBM Lotus Notes 8.x (free support for maintained users) and Symphony can be downloaded separately and used free-of-charge.

I’ve been using Symphony 3 on Windows and Mac since the release of beta 2 back in February. It’s a huge improvement over version 1.x – but beta 3 is another leap forward. The Symphony web site lists a few things new to beta 3… ability to customise the toolbars, instant export to PDF, and a new plug-in to make your LotusLive files directly available.

But there’s something else that I love about Symphony, and it’s improved in beta 3. In all aspects Symphony shows a panel on the right-hand side which gives quick and easy context-sensitive access to properties for whatever you’ve selected. It’s an approach that’s so much better than endlessly going in and out of dialog boxes, and makes Symphony very easy to use.

In an attempt to completely alienate everyone who just comes to dadams.co.uk for humour and pedantry, here is the third part of our look at Notes 8.x composite applications. Our previous look at integrating Symphony spreadsheets with a composite application was a simple example publishing individual field values. Today we’ll get a little more complex. Just a bit. Please note that this example is hopelessly ripped off from this article from the Composite Application wiki – I make no apology for that as I’ve learnt some things by following that example and building my own.

This example features an employee database with the following details can found in the form and view:

• Employee name
• Country (set to a choice of England, Scotland, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden)
• Department (Sales, Marketing, Finance and Technical)
• Age
• Salary (recorded in $s to keep it uniform across the countries)

As in the last example I created a blank composite application and then added one form and one view, so basic stuff to this point. I then added a variety of records to bring into the results in the Symphony spreadsheet (which I also needed to create and make available in the file system). The spreadsheet itself can be modified as you build the composite application, there’s no need to do everything up-front. I created individual sheets to hold a table of Notes records, analysis of salaries and ages (maximums, minimums, averages and the size of the record sample), and counts of how many employees in each country and department – and then set up charts to show the results graphically.

As before, open the application in the composite application editor and drag in a Notes View Container – edit the component properties to select the view and set it to Java rendering. Then drag in a Symphony Spreadsheet Container and set the initial file to be the spreadsheet created earlier. Now, as in the previous example, we need to set the Selection Output from the Notes view – the difference this time is that we’ll be using some functions as well as straight field values. For example, we’ll be counting the employees from each country and department, and finding the minimum, maximum and average ages and salaries… like so:

Next we will decide where the outputs will sit in the Symphony spreadsheet. This is no different to the previous example – using the toolbar at the top of the Spreadsheet Container to assign the landmarks – apart from one clever trick. In this example we’ll be able to select multiple Notes records and see them reflect in Symphony. This is what creates the sample to find minimums, maximums and averages, and counts from the sample. These landmarks are created in the same way as before, the results landing in one cell each. But the data table needs to repeat, a spreadsheet row for each Notes record. To make this happen, for each Notes field you need to select a range… the values will then list downwards. Repeat for each of the available fields.

After setting up the Spreadsheet Container you just need to wire the two components together, as in the previous examples. This can be done via the dialog boxes, although with the greater number of wires required in this example it may be quicker to use the drag and drop functionality of the wiring view.

With the wiring done your application is finished, bar the finishing touches of page titles, icons and final layout of the spreadsheet. In previous posts I omitted details of how to set an application icon. This is easy to do, simply add a 16×16 .PNG image as a resource using Domino Designer. You can then edit the properties of the composite application and select the image. Bear in mind that if your composite application has multiple pages you can set an icon for each page.

Here endeth the lesson. As always, here’s a finished application (note the customised icon breaking the 16 colour limit of a standard Notes application icon) – just click on the image to reveal the big picture.

My previous post on composite applications turned out to be a bit of a mix-up because composite application guru Bob Balfe spotted that although I was using the new view container, I was still defining the wiring properties the old way. The good news is that now I’ve found out how to do ‘the new way’ it’s even easier.

So, today’s lesson in composite applications involves taking Notes data and pulling it into a Symphony spreadsheet, all within the neatly-packaged environment of a Notes 8.5.1 composite application. Hang on, I hear you say, I’m an Excel user… that’s okay, the spreadsheet can be an Excel file. Right, propeller hats on? Then we shall begin.

Like our last lesson, you’ll need to start with a standard Notes database with a view and a form. For my demo application I picked a scenario that would fit nicely into a spreadsheet, but would also let Symphony do a few extra calculations and display a chart. So mine contains the name of a sales rep, month and year, and targets and actual sales figures for cogs, widgets and bolts. The details aren’t too important but you should make sure that all of the fields you want to use are added to the view. Bear in mind also that you can do the whole thing in one NSF created as a composite application, or you can start with a standard Notes database, then create a new blank composite application and pull the design elements in. I did it all as one application. You’ll also need to create a spreadsheet – design it so there’s places for the data to sit and set up the chart in advance.

Assuming you now have a composite application and the form and view ready (don’t forget to add some data), edit the composite application and pull a Notes View Container from the Component Library palette onto the blank application. Edit the properties of this component – under Component Settings select the view from your Notes database and set the rendering technology to ‘Java’. Press OK and let the view appear.

Open up the Component Properties again and go to the Selection Output tab to declare the data that you want to pull from the view into the spreadsheet. Add a new property, name it (e.g. Month for the first one), select ‘Formula’ as the type, and then in the Formula column select the Notes view column to grab the data from. Add another property, and repeat until you’ve included all of the Notes view columns. At this point you can go to the Advanced tab and check that all of these new assignments are set to be wireable – by default they should be. Click OK.

Now you can add a Symphony Spreadsheet Container – drag it into the application workspace, place it wherever it will fit best and open the Component Properties. Set the name of the spreadsheet file (including the path) and click OK. Now comes the clever bit… we’re going to specify where the data from the view is going to land on the spreadsheet, and this involves the bar along the top of the Spreadsheet Container. For each data element specify a name and then the cell where the data will land, and then click the cog-shaped button. It will look like this…

Repeat for all of the values. After doing this, look at the Component Properties and go to the Landmarks tab – you’ll see all of your new landmarks created and listed. All that needs to be done now is to wire the two containers together. Click on the yellow plug icon at the top of the Notes View Container. Select your first available property (say SalesRep) – the target component will already say Symphony Spreadsheet Container – set the action to ‘Set SalesRep’ and click Add Wire. Repeat for all of the properties, then click OK.

That’s it… you can now tidy up with page names and making sure your spreadsheet looks okay. In true Blue Peter tradition (us Brits will understand that), here’s one I created earlier with not a scrap of sticky-back plastic in sight… click on the image.

Datamation have announced their ‘2008 Products of the Year‘ winners. As it’s only February I feel it might be a trifle early to assess the whole of 2008, but it’s probably like the Brit Awards 2008 where they announce the best of 2007 (but without the booze, drugs and egos).

A few mentionables among the winners… Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 won the Enterprise Linux category (there can’t be that many potential winners there, surely), the Apple iPhone’s mantelpiece gets a shade heavier, and IBM’s Innov8 wins the Business / IT Alignment category “by a landslide”.

However, most notable for me is the winner of the Office Productivity Software category… IBM Lotus Symphony. This win is described as “a major eyebrow raiser” and “a huge upset”. An upset for who? I’m not upset about it. This just shows that some people are prepared to be bold and break free from the perceived norm. If this were just a vote for open standards, you might have expected OpenOffice to grab the honour. The page promises to provide in-depth coverage of the winners over the next few weeks, so hopefully we’ll get to see why Symphony took the crown.

First bit of news… I’ve recorded yet another video, this time for VNU. It was an interview-style video, mainly about the Lotus brand and Notes 8, but also touching on other parts of the portfolio. I did it in one take, but we did another so they could get some flexibility in the final edit. A bit quicker than my ZDNet performance.

Secondly, my frolleague Brendan Tutt is this week’s star of ZDNet talking about social software… specifically, although not mentioned as per the rules, Lotus Connections. Brendan is a modest man, but I think you’ll agree he does a great job, a very polished delivery, on this subject. Click on the piccie to access this masterpiece.

Finally… oh I love this. The power of viral marketing. It’s a bit of a poke at the Redmond giants and an advert for Lotus Symphony all in one. Check out “Tired of Feeding the Machine?” on YouTube. You might be interested to know that there have been over a quarter of a million downloads of Symphony since it was first announced, and those downloads are continuing at a steady rate.

And while I’m at it I might as well mention that I’m now running Notes 8.0.1 (beta 1). A few new things (like e-mailing a Symphony document directly from the toolbar, and the mail quota indicator), it has Sametime 8 built-in (nice) and all-in-all it seems a bit more zippy and responsive than 8.0 (and this is on a old laptop which I’m using while my T60 is being repaired).