The WildFire Is Spreading...And It's Hot! Update Your Status Across Multiple Networks From Lotus Notes!
A new OpenNTF project hit the ground running today and it is hot! I installed it this morning and think it's a great piece of work. The project is WildFire, a Lotus Notes 8.5 sidebar application that allows the user to update status messages across a ton of different social platforms. Networks supported in this initial release include Facebook, Twitter, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Connections and many more! While this type of client for allowing simultaneous updates of your micro-conversations is not new, the implementation, interface and integration with the Notes client is top notch. Installation was smooth and it worked as expected right out of the box. Having the ability to selectively update given services or all at once right from the Notes sideshelf is a great value proposition, especially considering that it's free!
Here's a screenshot of WildFire from my Notes client with the services I've configured so far. I love the fact that you are not locked into a single instance of a given service. For example, I have my embedded Sametime client configured for 7 different communities, and if I wanted to, WildFire would allow me to update my status across all of those.
Configuration of WildFire is extremely simple. Once installed, the application options appear in the standard Notes Preferences dialog. You simply add a new service and select the Account Type (Sametime, Connections, Facebook, etc.). Each account type can be given a unique name and it is this name that appears in the WildFire UI. For a given account type, the credentials required vary somewhat, but it is all very easy to understand. You can also group your various accounts together (e.g. Personal, Work, Friends, etc.). This allows you to selectively send that hilarious, NSFW video to your buddies from school but not to your work associates with just a single click. I especially like how it pulls in your information for Sametime from the communities you already have configured. Making it easy to get up and running quickly is a great user experience feature!
To update your status, you type your message, select the service(s) you want to update and hit the Post button. Simple stuff, but the simple tools are sometimes the best. I believe I'll find this over time to be a big time saver.
Check out some other screenshots of WildFire:
So who is behind this awesome piece of work? It's available on OpenNTF, the Lotus Notes open source community, courtesy of ISW, a Premier IBM Business Partner located in Australia. Thanks to Andrew Welch, Adam Brown, Joel Thirgood and anyone else involved in this great project.
There's a lot to like about this application and if you use more than one of the many social networking tools out there today, it is worth your time to check out WildFire.
Folder Name Issue Causing Java UI Rendering Problem In Notes 8 Mail File
I was working with one of my customers and was told about an interesting problem. They are currently in the process of upgrading to Notes 8.5.1 and so far, most of the client upgrades have been nice and smooth. One user had an unusual issue that was causing a bit of angst. After being upgraded and getting the new mail template, most of his folders were not visible in the UI. Here's what it looked like. Notice anything odd?
A quick check using File - Go To confirmed that the folders were indeed still in the database. However, this was the only way the user could navigate to these folders. Looking at the folders in the Admin client did not give us any additional information. Without digging into it too much, we first performed the normal triage procedures (compact, fixup, etc.). These did not yield any positive results. Neither did replacing the design or creating a new database copy. In fact, I went as far as to replace the design to something totally different, then replaced back to the mail template. Nope...same result. Time to get sleuthy.
I received a design copy of the database and began to look at it a little more closely. One odd fact was that some automatically generated folders that Mail Attender created were there, but that was it. These were prefixed with a "-", so I tried adding a new folder with a "-" in front. One worked (-A Test) and one didn't (-Test). Ah...interesting. This caused me to look at the navigation in a little more detail and I realized that the entire UI was not rendering. There should have been some additional options under the folders like "Archive", "Tools", etc. Since the first folder I created appeared under the folder list in the navigation pane but the other did not, this clued me in that perhaps Notes was hitting a folder name it did not like and that caused it to cease rendering the rest of the UI elements at that point. I opened the database in the Notes 8 Basic client and everything appeared fine, so I was pretty confident that this was a bad name or corrupted folder. Sure enough, when I opened the design, I found the offending folders.
There were two folders that used a nested name and each of them were wrapped in parenthesis. They were named:
-To Be Deleted\(-To Be Deleted)\(--ToBeAutoDeleted\Meetings)
-To Be Deleted\(-To Be Deleted)\(All Documents)
As soon as I renamed these folders to remove the parenthesis, everything started working as expected and the entire navigation UI was rendered correctly.
I started playing around a bit and it seems it is the second set of parenthesis after the second backslash that cause the problem. So,
Interface\(Matters)
doesn't cause things to break, although it still results in strange behavior in that "Interface" appears but doesn't do anything.
Interface\(Matters)\(Rocks)
breaks everything. No folders or additional UI elements below "Interface" show up at all.
Interface\Matters\(Rocks)
is OK, as is
Interface\Matters\(Rocks)(Hard)
But
Interface\Matters\(Rocks)\(Hard)
blows everything up again.
So...there you have it. Avoid making folder names with multiple levels that are surrounded in parenthesis when using the Java UI. I just wanted to document this in case anyone comes across it again in the future. I haven't checked if this is a known issue yet, but I'll be sure to pass it on to development.
The winds of change are blowing here at Interface Matters and in my opinion are way, way overdue. The only excuse I have is lack of time to devote to these changes (or at least lack of desire to devote the time since other things have been occupying my attention of late). I have been wanting to make some changes here for quite some time, and as the new year rolls around, it's probably as good a time as any to make the leap.
First, I want Interface Matters to expand beyond a single voice. This has always been my plan and I have just failed to execute. This site was never designed to be my personal blog. If it had been, I would have called it chrisblatnick.com. This is the reason I've tried to limit the amount of personal content and why more posts are article length rather than quick blurbs. My original vision was that this site would serve as a good resource for UI ideas for Lotus Notes developers, something that could be referred to now and again like a well-worn book on your shelf. Although I check traffic very, very infrequently, the notifications I get on occasion show me that people are still downloading the sample databases, so there must be at least some value here. The last couple of years have been light on content in this space, though, since I am not doing day-to-day development anymore. This brings me to the first change.
I'm looking to expand the authorship of Interface Matters and I'm looking to you out there in the Lotus community to help me. I believe there is a lot of richness and value in getting multiple viewpoints on user interface and user experience concepts, and I'd love for this to be the place to get it. There are many innovations happening in the collaborative development space lately and along with these new technologies (e.g. XPages), there are new design and interface challenges. I hope we don't fall into the same trap we did with Notes client apps and make every XPage look exactly like OneUI. I hope these other voices are out there and ready to step up and share with the rest of us. So, the concept is simple. If you have an idea for an article that would fit the mission of Interface Matters and you would like to have it posted here, just send me an e-mail and we'll put it on the map. For now, I'll maintain editorial duties and will still contribute too, but I'd definitely love to open Interface Matters up to more contributors. I've tested the waters a bit in the past with a guest author or two and think it works quite nicely.
That brings me to the second change. I would finally like to move this blog to the Domino platform. I originally started using Blogger because I wanted to explore what other blog engines were out there and Blogger was one of the most popular. I never changed because quite frankly it is so simple to use, but along with this move to mutliple contributors, I'd like to finally design a decent looking blog template. To do so, I need to ask a couple of questions:
1. Any suggestions for Domino hosting?
2. I might open up the design to someone that wants to tackle it. Hmmm...perhaps a contest? Any thoughts?
I really do hope to hear from some of you. I think this site has more potential that it's been showing lately and these updates might just be the thing to spice it up a bit.
With that, I'll sign off and wish you all a fantastic holiday season!
I've always been a fan of performing tasks as efficiently as possible and eliminating the drudgery of those tasks that don't add a lot of value to my work or personal life. One of those tasks which is a necessary evil is the maintenance of paper-based documents. Everyone has them...bills that need to be paid, bank statements, tax documents, owner's manuals, receipts. As much as possible, many of us have tried to digitize these things so we don't receive them as paper in the first place. I've pretty much successfully eliminated any kind of bill coming to me in the mail and have turned every monthly payment into an automated one. Technology is a great enabler for managing a lot of this "stuff", but if you are like me, you probably have a legacy of paper filed away in some part of your house. For me, my paper legacy takes the form of two file cabinets full of the paperwork that makes up my life since I started college. A great majority of the paper is content that I will never likely have to revisit, but feel the need to keep in case it is required for some reason. Financial and legal documents seem to be the most prevalent in this category. In the 10 years I've been in my current house, I've never had to go to the file cabinet and physically pull my mortgage papers, yet there they are, taking up valuable space and stuffing the drawer so it makes it harder to get to the stuff I really do need to see. Earlier in the year, I decided to start tackling the paper problem in my house. Ironically, as a collaboration architect working with Lotus technologies, I've helped many companies eliminate paper from business processes through the years, but never really took action on it in my own life. The cobbler's children and all...
Anyway, in order to get rid of paper, I knew that I would have to digitize it and then store it in such a way as to find it as easily as I could find information in my physical file cabinet. To do this, I would need a scanner. Now I've had a flat-bed scanner for many years, but I understood from using it that it was in no way up to the task of digitizing my life. The process of individually putting each page of a document on the bed would be far too cumbersome to manage in a timely fashion. No...what I needed was a scanner than provided a paper-feed mechanism and that could handle paper fast. From doing research over the years, I had one and only one device in mind and the only reason I hadn't pulled the trigger yet was cost. That device was the Fujitsu ScanSnap and let me tell you, it is the best money I have ever spent on a piece of computer hardware, bar none. My only regret was not having picked this thing up sooner. To do it justice, I don't just want to explain the ScanSnap, I want to show it to you. More on that in a minute.
So I recognized a problem: too much paper. That was the first step. Now I needed to make an actionable plan to deal with it. That's where the ScanSnap came in. I started using it to scan papers in when they came in the mail. As soon as I came across something I needed to keep (my monthly bank statement, for instance), I digitized it and stored it on my hard drive and then shredded the document. Ah...a great feeling. I've been doing this for several months now and it has been very successful. However, nagging at the back of my mind (even though it was on my Someday/Maybe GTD list) was the massive task of tackling those file cabinets. Over the Thanksgiving break, I finally took the plunge and mapped out my paper processing workflow. This is my first attempt at the process, and I'm sure it will be enhanced and refined over time. In any case, based on a couple of e-mails I received in regards to my tweets about "Operation: Paperless Office", I thought I would share a video with you on how I am doing this. This also gives me a chance to showcase the Fujitsu ScanSnap, which I think is just a phenomenal device!
First up, here is a brief note I made when I was thinking through the process. (Yes...I believe in the power of prototyping and visual rendering even when I'm not doing application development!).
It turns out that so far this is working nicely. The following videos describe the ScanSnap functionality and show you my paper processing workflow in action. A couple of notes about the videos. First, I have a face for radio and a voice for print, so try to ignore the narrator and focus on the content. Second, I used my son's Flip video for this rather than my hi-def camcorder. I was kind of giving the Flip a trial run to test some things out and after going through the entire process, I thought it flowed pretty well and I was afraid if I tried to re-record it to be more "professional" then it would just come off feeling scripted and contrived. What you get here is me just trying to describe the process as if I was talking with you face to face. Take that as you will. :-)
As you'll see if you check out the videos, another important component of my paper processing workflow is Dropbox. This service is an excellent way to replicate data across systems and functions as a temporary to permanent backup system. With it, I feel comfortable knowing that I can destroy a document as soon as the ScanSnap captures it. Dropbox provides a free and premium service. Check out their website to learn more and get started with a free account. If you use my referral link, you'll get an additional 250 MB of space on top of the 2 GB they give you for free (so will I...thanks!).
If you have questions or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Cheers!
Forgive Them...For They Know Not What They Do...With Your App
If you've been following along with the home game, then you are aware that there are many excellent UI patterns that you can use to improve the user experience you deliver to your users in your applications. Today, I wanted to explore another simple yet powerful pattern: "Forgiving Formats". This pattern is perfect for those applications in which speed to data entry is key (or at least desirable in most circumstances). I know in many of the business applications I have encountered over the years, we tend to develop nice, complex forms to capture all of the data the customer says they absolutely need. When you come back and look at the database later, however, you often find that only a few key fields are filled out (just the required ones if you're using validation!). The Forgiving Format pattern is all about letting users enter those key bits of data quickly, without having to worry overly much about the way they are entering the content. This pattern puts the onus on you as the developer to do the heavy lifting, not the end user. Of course, this is one of the tenants of interface first design. It allows you to simplify the UI and make the problem really about the behind-the-scenes code.
A great example of the Forgiving Format pattern is Google Maps. When searching for an address, you can use a variety of inputs. For example, when searching for a location in my town, I can put in:
Aurora Aurora, OH Aurora, Ohio 44202 etc.
This flexibility allows me to focus on the job at hand, not on the exact way I have to format the address so that Google understands it. This lets me get my work done faster, so obviously it makes me a happy user.
You can apply this same idea to your applications. I find it can be useful both for allowing quick data entry for Notes documents as well as for use as a search mechanism. The underlying idea is simple. As the developer, you have to account for the various input types the user may enter and then code for those instances. In my Movie Review sample database, the main input is obviously movie information. While the form allows you to capture more data, there are only a few fields that are key to building a good database of movie knowledge. These include the movie title, the rating, the genre and the running time. I created a Quick Movie Entry option in the database to show this in action. First, let's take a look at how I implemented this.
I created a caption in the frame so that the user could free up screen real estate if they didn't want to use this option. It gets it out of the way if the user will be doing something other than data entry. However, if they want to quickly add a bunch of movies, they can expand the caption area and then will see an input line for the movie information. Of course you could break the input into a bunch of separate fields to capture the user input, but a single field is easier and more elegant.
I included a brief explanation of what the user should enter with this control. This particular pattern works best when you have information that is targeted to a specific objective and when the input is something that you can prepare for. Leaving it completely open ended would be incredibly hard to program for and would likely result in failure. In this case, I'm expecting those four particular bits of data and I want the user to enter them in that order, as specified by the help text. When you choose to implement this functionality in your own application, you will have to weigh how flexible you want to be with the input field and possible combinations of entries vs. the complexity of the evaluating code.
In the Movie Review example, the user can enter the title, rating, genre and running time and then hit the "Go" button. If the code successfully recognizes the entry, a new document is created in the database and the user is informed via a popup message (using the fade in/fade out technique). If the input can't be recognized, the user sees an error message.
As far as the backend code goes, it can be fairly simple or very complex, depending again on how flexible you want to make this functionality for the end user. In this example, there are two fields that I'm actually mapping to already established categories. The rating should obviously be a valid entry (G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17) and the genre has values such as Science Fiction, Drama, Comedy, etc. To evaluate these, I used a Select Case statement. This allows for the "forgiving" part of this pattern.
In the case of the rating, one user might enter a NC-17 movie as NC17 while another might use X and another might use XXX. They could also use varying values of upper and lower case (e.g. Nc17, nc-17, xxx). For each of these different possibilities, a Select Case statement makes it nice and easy to evaluate the input. I did the same thing with the genres. For a Disney movie, users might enter options like cartoon, animated, animation, etc.
Below is the sample code behind the button. Feel free to use this as a guide, but remember there is no robust error handling in the example.
Sub Click(Source As Button)
Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace Dim session As New NotesSession Dim db As NotesDatabase Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument Dim movieDoc As NotesDocument Dim entryDoc As NotesDocument Dim movieEntry As Variant
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase Set uidoc = workspace.CurrentDocument Set entryDoc = uidoc.Document
On Error Goto ShowError
movieEntry = entryDoc.MovieEntry
'Here's where you are going to do the meat of your work. 'You need to determine just how much logic you want to put 'in place to decode what the user has entered. I've given a 'couple of simple examples below.
Set movieDoc = db.CreateDocument movieDoc.Form = "Movie Review"
'Let's deal with the title first Dim movieTitle As String movieTitle = Strconv(movieEntry(0), 3)
'Rating Select Case movieEntry(1) Case "G", "g": movieRated = "G" Case "PG", "pg": movieRated = "PG" Case "PG13", "PG-13", "pg13", "pg-13": movieRated = "PG13" Case "R", "r": movieRated = "R" Case "NC17", "NC-17", "X", "XXX", "nc17", "nc-17", "x", "xxx": movieRated = "NC17" Case Else movieRated = "" End Select
'Category Select Case movieEntry(2) Case "Science Fiction", "scifi", "sci-fi", "SciFi", "Sci-Fi", "Sci-fi", "Scifi": Category = "Science Fiction" Case "Action", "action", "Adventure", "adventure": Category = "Action" Case "Comedy", "comedy", "funny", "Funny", "humor", "Humor": Category = "Comedy" Case "cartoon", "cartoon", "animation", "Animation", "animated", "Animated": Category = "Animation" 'etc, etc.... Case Else Category = "" End Select
'Here you'd actually perform the task (such as creating the 'new document if everything validated correctly. It should 'if you are careful with your forgiving format. If movieTitle <> "" And movieRated <> "" And Category <> "" Then Dim newMovie As NotesDocument Set newMovie = db.CreateDocument newMovie.Form = "Movie Review" newMovie.MovieTitle = movieTitle newMovie.Category = Category newMovie.MovieRated = movieRated newMovie.MovieTime = movieEntry(3) Call newMovie.Save(True, False)
'Display cool fade-in success message here Else ShowError: 'Display cool fade-in error message here End If Exit Sub
End Sub
This LotusScript was converted to HTML using the ls2html routine, provided by Julian Robichaux at nsftools.com.
When you break it down, I think that this a very simple UI pattern to implement in your applications. As always, it comes down to trying to simplify the user's task. While this pattern is not applicable to all situations, I can think of a good number of Notes applications I use frequently that could benefit from the Forgiving Format pattern. Does one of yours? Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
Sweet Drag and Drop Actions In the Lotus Notes Client
I've mentioned once or twice before that I really like using drag and drop. Although it is often a bit slower than other actions and you sometimes have to show the user how to do it, I find it to be a preferred method for executing certain tasks in an application. Lotus Notes itself offers many cool and useful drag and drop actions. I've been showing end users some of these for a long time, and always there are folks that had no clue drag and drop actions were even available. I wanted to share a few of them with you now.
Drag & Drop Links
You can drag and drop a document from any Notes view or a database icon into a rich-text field and Notes will create a document link or database link (as applicable). If the document is open, you can actually perform the drag and drop action from the tab. This is a much easier way to teach users how to send links to documents.
A couple of hints: You can often drag information from one part of Notes into another by hovering over the appropriate tab. For example, click and hold the tab of an open document, then drag it over to the tab of a document in edit mode. Hold it there for a second and the focus will change to the new document. You can then perform the drop action into a rich-text field and the link will be created. Also, an easy way to get the Notes:// address of an element is to perform that drag and drop into a regular text field. This will give you the Notes:// link along with the title of the item.
Drag & Drop Attachments
You can take attachments from a Notes document and drag them to the file system or your Windows desktop. For those of you on Notes 8, check out the very cool File Navigator side shelf component on OpenNTF. You can use this to drag and drop files directly from your Notes client!
Drag & Drop To/From Sametime
With Notes 8.5, you can drag a mail message to the Sametime Contacts list. When you drop it, a dialog will appear and present you with a list of all recipients of that e-mail message. You can choose to add them all or just select individuals to your contacts. This is a very speedy way to create groups within Sametime.
Going the reverse direction, you can drag a single contact or a group name from your Sametime Contacts list into the address fields of a new memo to instantly add those recipients to the mail message.
If you drag and drop a contact into a rich-text field, a mailto link to that individual will be created.
Drag & Drop Text
With Notes 8.5, users can now have a more rich experience as they drag & drop text. You can drag and drop text within a rich-text field (useful for rearranging some paragraphs, for example) or even between rich-text fields. I'll often use this when I am creating a new calendar entry and I want to pull some information out of an existing doc. Sure copy and paste is a bit faster, but drag and drop is so fun! ;-)
Drag & Drop Tabs
I often work with several documents and views open at one time and I generally like to have an orderly flow to how the tabs are arranged. If I open up these elements in an order other than the way I like them arranged, I just grab the tabs and reorder them via drag & drop. Perfect.
Drag & Drop Table Controls
There are some long awaited functions now available for manipulating tables via drag & drop. One of the best is the ability to resize columns without using the ruler. With Notes 8.5.1, you just grab the column border and drag & drop to resize.
You can also move whole rows or columns at one time via drag & drop. If you hover over the outside border of a row or column, you'll see the cursor change to an arrow pointing at a row or column respectively. Click, hold and drag and you'll see a shadow moving to represent that row/column. Drop it where you want it in the table and the other elements will be reordered accordingly (see animation below).
If you just want to move the content of a single cell, highlight it and then drag & drop it into the destination cell of choice. You can move multiple cells at once, as well. Play around with this a bit and you'll find some interesting functions.
While I'm on the subject of tables, while not strictly drag & drop specific, there are a couple of other very handy new tricks you might like. If you want to add a new row or column, you can now do this without resorting to the Table menu. To do this, hold the Shift key down and then hover over a row/column border. You'll see the cursor change to a thick horizontal or vertical line with a little blue diamond next to it. When you see this cursor, double click with your mouse and the new row/column will be inserted. Thanks to the developers...I really like that new edition!
So, those are some of my favorite drag & drop features in the Notes client. There are many more. How about you? Any particular drag & drop actions I missed that you really like? If so, please share in the comments.
Yes...I haven't fallen off the earth. Thanks for asking. Just spending a lot of time learning other parts of the Lotus collab stack and having to crack open the books to study up on <shudder> admin topics leaves little time for development stuff anymore. I still plan to change that. :-)
I thought I'd throw this very simple but highly useful tip out here because I have found that not everyone is aware of it. In fact, I was asked about this topic the other day. The question at hand: Can I create an RSS feed that opens a document in the Notes client rather than on the web? The short answer: Of course!
This is very easy to do, since you can use the Notes URI format in place of the standard HTTP URI.
Here is a snippet of XML code from a feed that demonstrates this:
<item>
<title>Creating an RSS feed with Notes URIs</title>
<pubdate>Thu, 24 Feb 2005 10:39:25 PM -0400</pubdate>
<description>I posted this tip to SearchDomino in 2005
and it was the 2nd time I became a Hall of Fame tip winner.</description>
<link>notes:///85256FA500530C43/AllDocuments/CDEEB412F83130AA85256FB30010FBAC</link>
</item>
Notice the <link> element references a Notes identifier rather than a URI referencing a web resource via HTTP. When users view this feed in their RSS aggregator, it will provide links that open the documents in your Notes client.
The <link> element of your feed can be constructed using a formula (usually calculated in the document or in the view column) such as:
You can replace "AllDocuments" with the name of your view or use its design ID.
Combined with the Feeds sideshelf component in Notes 8, this makes for a very handy mechanism for distributing document updates to end users in a more modern fashion.
Thoughts about Collaborative Technologies and User Interface Design...
About Me
Name:Chris Blatnick
By day, I work as a Collaborative Technologies
architect and champion the cause of usability and user interface design. But don't judge me
by my blog...I'm using a template. Cobbler's children and all... ;-)
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Since I work for Big Blue now, I'm compelled to say “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.” So there...
The winds of change are blowing here at Interface Matters and in my opinion are way, way overdue. The only excuse I have is lack of time to devote to these changes (or at least lack of desire to devote the time since other things have been occupying my attention of late). I have been wanting to make some changes here for quite some time, and as the new year rolls around, it's probably as good a time as any to make the leap.
I've always been a fan of performing tasks as efficiently as possible and eliminating the drudgery of those tasks that don't add a lot of value to my work or personal life. One of those tasks which is a necessary evil is the maintenance of paper-based documents. Everyone has them...bills that need to be paid, bank statements, tax documents, owner's manuals, receipts. As much as possible, many of us have tried to digitize these things so we don't receive them as paper in the first place. I've pretty much successfully eliminated any kind of bill coming to me in the mail and have turned every monthly payment into an automated one. Technology is a great enabler for managing a lot of this "stuff", but if you are like me, you probably have a legacy of paper filed away in some part of your house. For me, my paper legacy takes the form of two file cabinets full of the paperwork that makes up my life since I started college. A great majority of the paper is content that I will never likely have to revisit, but feel the need to keep in case it is required for some reason. Financial and legal documents seem to be the most prevalent in this category. In the 10 years I've been in my current house, I've never had to go to the file cabinet and physically pull my mortgage papers, yet there they are, taking up valuable space and stuffing the drawer so it makes it harder to get to the stuff I really do need to see. Earlier in the year, I decided to start tackling the paper problem in my house. Ironically, as a collaboration architect working with Lotus technologies, I've helped many companies eliminate paper from business processes through the years, but never really took action on it in my own life. The cobbler's children and all...
