• Read PlanetLotus regularly as there's lots of great blog posts about IBM Connections.  A search for 'Connections' yields a tonne of posts.
• If you're working with Connections yourself, even if it is just learning about the technology, post about IBM Connections on your own blog.  You can bet that if you are struggling with some fundamental concern or issue, there will be others that are in the same boat!
• Comment on blogs you read, join the conversation! I know from personal experience that just a quick comment saying 'Your post has really helped me, thank you.' means a great deal.
• If you're of a technical bent, take part in the IBM Forum for Connections.  If you can, answer other posts (even if it's just to say that you have seen the same issue).  If not, just make sure that you post your own problems as it all adds to the knowledge base for others.
• Join the LinkedIn group for IBM Connections.  This 1,700 strong community is fantastic whatever your background as there is a mix of technical and business-led discussions, as well as polls and lots of shared news and announcements.  There are even job postings on occasion!  Of course LinkedIn proves a great way to meet with 'non-community' folks as many will be present on LinkedIn even if they have never read a blog post or been to a LUG, so please do make sue you are involved in this group.
• Attend a LUG or an IBM event such as Lotusphere or the Social Business Roadshows.  There is nothing as invigorating as meeting other impassioned individuals face-to-face!  User groups are a great way to meet some of the key Connections advocates from inside and outside of IBM, and usually have at least a few Connections-focused sessions to aid your understanding of the product.  Possibly even better, there is the Social Connections user group which meets every six months and is 100% focused on IBM Connections content.  The next event is in Dublin in June, with future events planned for the Netherlands and the USA.
• Join the IBM Connections community Skype chat. Many of the other forums and discussion spaces work on an asynchronous basis - ask a question and wait a few hours (or possibly a few days) for a response.  The Connections Skype chat brings a community of Connections specialists to your fingertips.  Ask howto questions, clarify your thinking on a new customisation, ask for advice on adoption, even paste your log file snippets when dealing with a tricky issue!  If you'd like to be involved, just contact one of the current members and ask to be added - you can email me if in any doubt!
• Join the IBM Connections Users community on the Greenhouse, discuss Connections with other users and raise your suggestions for enhancements using the Ideation Blog feature!
• If you have development-related questions around IBM Connections, raise them on StackOverflow - a terrific way to reach beyond the typical IBM/Lotus developer community.

What hashtags should we use on Twitter and in blog posts for IBM Connections (in general) and for IBM Connections Development?

• #ibmconnections & #ibmconnectionsdev
• #ibmcon & #ibmcondev
• #ibmcnx & #ibmcnxdev
• #connections & #connectionsdev
• Something else

I am currently running a survey on how organizations approach user adoption for collaboration tools. Many people have filled out the survey in the past couple of months, but I only have 25 responses from organizations using IBM Connections. I know there are a lot more of you out there ... and I'm very interested to read the pulse on your approach.

Here's an offer for organizations with IBM Connections. If I can get more than 100 respondents using IBM Connections to complete the survey, I will run a special webinar just for IBM Connections customers on the survey results. The webinar will report on what organizations with IBM Connections are doing from an adoption perspective. If I get more than 200 responses, I will write up the findings in a report ... and give a free copy to every IBM Connections organization that completes the survey (and leaves contact details).

So, if you use IBM Connections ... please take the user adoption survey now.

Thanks much!

This document describes the recommended strategy and steps for applying maintenance updates to IBM Connections 3.0.1.

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

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

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.

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, 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.

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).

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.

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.

• 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!

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 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:

...

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

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.

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

• 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.