Lotus symphony and you - how to stop giving microsoft your money!

Lotus Symphony and You - How to stop giving Microsoft your money! – ILUG 2010

Lotus Symphony and You

How to stop giving Microsoft your money!


• Lotus Symphony

– The Executive Perspective

– The User Perspective

– The Developer Perspective

60 Minutes of John talking about …


John D. Head • Director of Enterprise Collaboration at PSC Group, LLC

• Involved in Lotus technology since 1993

• OpenNTF.org Steering Committee Member and IP Working Group Chairman

Speaker • Over 30 sessions at Lotusphere since 1996

• Speaker at Lotus Developer , ILUG, UKLUG, and other conferences

Author • Publications on Office and SmartSuite integration with Notes

• LotusUserGroup.org contributing Author and Forum moderator

• “Lotus Symphony for Dummies” Technical Editor

• “Self Assessment and Strategy Guide for Migrating from Domino Document Manager “ Redbook Author

www.johndavidhead.com twitter.com/johnhead

3


PSC Group, LLC

IBM Premium Business Partner for

19+ Years

Microsoft Managed Partner

Notes & Domino 8.5 Design Partner

OpenNTF.org Alliance Member,

Steering Committee Company, & Former

Host of OpenNTF.org

Winner of 2007 & 2009 Lotus Awards!

• Host of the following blogs: • Ed Brill’s

(www.edbrill.com)

• Lotus Design Blog(Mary Beth

Raven)

(www.notesdesign.com)

• LotusStaffNotes (Brent Peters) (www.lotusstaffnotes.com)

• Lotus Connections Team

(synch.rono.us)

• Lotus Sametime

(www.thesametimeblog.com)

• Domino Server Team

(www.dominoblog.com)

• Lotus Mashups

(www.mix-and-mash.com)

• Chris Pepin – IBM CTO’s Office

(www.chrispepin.com)


Let’s take a poll

• Who is using …

–Office 97 and earlier

–Office 2000

–Office XP

–Office 2003

–Office 2007

–OpenOffice / StarOffice

–Lotus Symphony

–Other


OpenOffice.org — The History

• StarDivision StarOffice written in the mid 80s

• Bought by Sun Microsystems in 1999, StarOffice released in August 1999

• Source code released October 2000

• OpenOffice.org 1.0 released May 2002, 2.0 in October 2005

• OpenDocument format becomes international standard ISO/IEC 26300 November 2006

• IBM Lotus Workplace Productivity Editors released 2005 – Based on OpenOffice.org 1.1

• OpenOffice.org 2.2 released March 2007

• Notes 8 to include IBM Productivity Tools, based on OpenOffice.org 1.1X

• Lotus Symphony Beta 1 released in October 2007

• Lotus Symphony 1.0 May 2008

• Lotus Symphony 1.3 Spring 2009

• Lotus Notes & Domino 8.5.1 Fall 2009

• Lotus Symphony 3 Fall 2010


What is OpenOffice.org?

• Free office suite

• Description from their Web site

– “OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and

an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office

suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. To help

build the community, join us.”

• Their mission statement

– “To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that

will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality

and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based

file format.”


What is OpenOffice.org? (cont.)

• Getting past the marketing message

– OpenOffice.org is an alternative to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and it is free

• Provides the following applications:

– Writer — document editor

– Impress — presentation program

– Math — math function creator

– Draw — vector drawing tool

– Calc — spreadsheet

– Base — database


Why Should I Care About OpenOffice.org?

• Only office suite that supports Open Document Format (ODF) 100%

• A free alternative to Microsoft Office

• Runs on three platforms

– Windows

– Mac

– Linux

• Saves to PDF natively

• OpenOffice.org is the basis of the IBM Lotus Symphony


What is Lotus Symphony?

• IBM branded the Notes 8 Productivity Tools as Lotus Symphony

• Stand-alone Release

• Beta 1 was released in Oct 07

• IBM is on a 8 week release cycle with Symphony

• Notes 8.0.1 has Symphony Beta 4

• Notes 8.5 Beta 1 has Symphony 1.0

• Notes 8.5.1 has Symphony 1.3

• Symphony 1.3 stand-alone available

• Symphony 3 stand-alone available


Lotus Symphony Details

• How do they relate to OpenOffice.org?

– They are based on OpenOffice.org 1.1

– IBM has made changes since the code branch

• Do they support ODF?

– Yes, as well as Microsoft Office 97 through 2003

• Do they have an API?

– Yes, an HTML-like document API

– Supported in Eclipse.org development and composite applications

• What about LotusScript?

– No support for LotusScript or OLE/COM in 8.0.0

– 8.0.1 adds basic OLE/COM support

– 8.5.1 adds LotusScript and Java API


Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

• For the past 10 years, Office has been the monopoly

• Users are changing the way they work

• Speed and mobility vs feautures

– Lightweight applications

– On-line editing

– Mobile editing


Microsoft Office is cheap!

• This is the #1 misconception in our industry

• Microsoft is more expensive than Lotus …

• “Prove It”

• OK …


The Microsoft Desktop vs. Lotus Collaboration Suite Cost

Note: All MS prices are approximate Open Price License prices in US$


But that isn’t the real cost

• In 2007, Microsoft broke the Core CALS for many of

the servers

• Standard and Enterprise

• Many features now require an Enterprise CAL


Microsoft Exchange Server 2010


Microsoft Office Communication Server 2010


Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010


Microsoft Office Enterprise 2010


The Microsoft Desktop vs. Lotus Collaboration Suite with Enterprise CALS



Do you want Support?

• Now we have to add Software Assurance

• Upgrade Assurance

– Did you buy Windows SA in 2003?

– You didn’t get Windows Vista until 2006/07

– You wasted money!


The Microsoft Desktop vs. Lotus Collaboration Suite with Enterprise CALS and SA



But wait … we have the OS

• You get your Operating System with your machines

– Windows OEM

– Linux

– Mac OS

• Your numbers are bloated!

• Ok … let’s fix that


The Microsoft Desktop vs. Lotus Collaboration Suite Cost with Enterprise CALS and SA



What are you really paying?

• These are all Open Licensing or SRP pricing

• You won’t pay those prices

• Even with license agreement savings, you will pay

50% to 70% more for Microsoft


So what am I paying for?


Support Option 1

Symphony Embedded Version

–Passport Advantage support

–Included with purchase of other products

• Notes 8, 8.5, & 8.5.1

• Foundations

–No additional charge

Support Option 2

Standalone Symphony Free Support

– Web based moderated forum support

– Forums monitored by IBM and the community

– Hints and Tips

– Developer support forum

Support Option 3

Symphony Standalone Fee Based Support Offering

– Passport Advantage support – Passport Advantage or Express Contract required

– $25,000 for up to 20,000 users – Limited to 20 technical contacts

– Worldwide 24x7 Unlimited Incidents


Resources

Project Liberate • SW License Optimization Can:

– Understand how to demonstrate the

alternatives to Microsoft EA bundle so

your customers could reduce their budget

and be able to invest in mission critical

projects.

– Explain Microsoft interdependencies

strategy and how customers can be tied

without being able to negotiate.

– Show customers the Real Cost of

Microsoft’s collaboration strategy based

on lessons learned from hundreds of

customers engagements.

• [email protected]

• www.ibm.com/software/info/liberate

Executive Briefings • 2 Day on-site briefings

• Covers the Lotus Symphony story for

– Executives

– Administrators

– Developers

• Includes a Microsoft Office assessment and strategy white paper

• Contact [email protected] for

more info

mailto:[email protected]




Lotus Symphony – The User Perspective

• Why would a user want to use something other than Office?

• Why are they using Google Docs?


Identifying Users

• Casual- Task Users • Common uses of documents, spreadsheets & presentations

• Mostly viewing and light editing

• Filling out templates (status reports, etc.)

• Use out of box with little to no customization

• Example: Customer service, and other supporting functions

• Start now!


Identifying Users

• Medium – Power Users • More robust needs for documents, spreadsheets & presentations

• Stronger interoperability requirements as need to collaborate with Office users

• Example: Sales, marketing,

• Move over time


Identifying Users

• Power & Macro Users • Heavy Excel users

• Third-party application integration

• Heavy reliance on macros

• Example: Finance department

• Symphony 1.3 added Data Pilots (Pivot Tables)

• Symphony 2.0 will allow VBA macros to be run


Lotus Symphony Features

• Three applications • Lotus Symphony Documents

• Lotus Symphony Presentations

• Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets

Robust and complete feature set • Designed for the majority of end users

• Intuitive interface, easy to learn

• Multiple file formats supported


Lotus Symphony File Formats

• Additional supported formats – Export documents, spreadsheets and presentations to Adobe PDF

– Import Lotus SmartSuite documents, spreadsheets, and presentations

Application ISO/IEC ODF Microsoft Office OpenOffice.org XML

Other Formats

Documents .odt .doc, dot read .docx, dotx

.sxw .rtf .txt

Spreadsheets .ods .xls, xlt read .xlsx, xltx

.sxc .csv

Presentations .odp .ppt, pot Read .pptx, potx

.sxi


Lotus Symphony Documents

• Create, edit, & share complex word processing documents

• Robust feature set including:

– Formatting options for text, page,

paragraph

– Headers, footers, footnotes, indexes, table

of contents

– Drawing tools

– Pre-defined document styles

– Pre-defined fields (i.e., dates, page

numbering)



Lotus Symphony Presentations

• Create, edit, and share complex presentations

• Robust feature set including:

– Pre-defined presentation templates

– Slide show mode with animations and page transitions

– Speaker presentation timing and rehearsal modes

– Speaker notes

– Flexible navigation views – page by page, text outline, page thumbnail, and speaker note views



Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets

• Create, edit, and share complex

spreadsheets

• Robust feature set includes:

– Supports conventional row and column format for spreadsheets

– Spreadsheet sizes up to 256 columns and 65,536 rows

– Supports up to 256 sheets per spreadsheet

– Large library of pre-defined calculation functions



Lotus Symphony Deployment

• Included with Lotus Notes

– 8.0.0 = Productivity Editors

– 8.0.1 = Lotus Symphony Beta 4

– 8.0.2 = Lotus Symphony 1.0



• Included with Lotus Foundations

• Stand-alone


Can we update the embedded tools ourselves?

• YES

• Symphony 1.3.0.1 installs on top of 8.5.1

• Notes 8.5.2 includes Symphony 1.3.0.1

• Symphony 3.0 add-on installs on top of Notes 8.5.1

and 8.5.2


Each demo is the equivlant of a ―Hello World‖ sample

They are self contained and as little code as possible No error trapping, etc

This will get you started with Integration


Symphony Documents (UNO)

Symphony Spreadsheets (UNO)

Symphony Presentations (UNO)

Symphony Documents (LS API)

Symphony Spreadsheets (LS API)

Symphony Presentations (LS API)


―Getting Started‖ demo #1

Demonstrates how to use LotusScript to have Notes automate Lotus Symphony Documents via UNO



Demonstrates how to use LotusScript to have Notes automate Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets via UNO



Demonstrates how to use LotusScript to have Notes automate Lotus Symphony Presentations via UNO


• Included with Notes 8.5.1 is the new Symphony API

• Supports LotusScript and Java

• Must run from Notes client – does not work with Standalone Symphony Application (applications or plug-ins)

• API is modeled after Notes Object Model

• Symphony Container added to Composite Applications thru the CA Editor


• Create a new SymphonyApplication object

• This is a base level object, much like the NotesSession

• You will not see anything on screen after setting this Dim application As SymphonyApplication

Set application = New SymphonyApplication


• Initialize the Documents Application

• You should see the Symphony Application at this point Dim documents As SymphonyDocuments

Set documents = application.Documents


• Create a new document

• You can also create a new document based on a Template using the second property

Dim document As SymphonyDocument

Set document = documents.AddDocument("",False,True)

• New Document based on a template

Set document = documents.AddDocument("D:\FileTypeAssociation\test.ott",True,True)


• You can set a range based on a paragraph, table, or in this case, the entire document contents

Dim range As SymphonyTextRange

Set range = document.content.End


• Using the InsertBefore or InsertAfter methods, you can insert text based on any range or object Call range.InsertBefore("Hello World")




Demonstrates how to use LotusScript to have Notes automate Lotus Symphony Documents via the new LS API




Demonstrates how to use LotusScript to have Notes automate Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets via the new LS API




Demonstrates how to use LotusScript to have Notes automate Lotus Symphony Presentations via the new LS API


Using the Lotus Symphony Toolkit

• Documentation and samples for integrating the Lotus Symphony with Notes 8 Standard

• Lotus Symphony Developers API 8.0 Windows.exe

• Download this from Lotus Symphony website

• Targeted at people who know:

– Java

– HTML internals

– ODF

• Most of the time you will use this from a Composite Application (CA)


Productivity Tools Architecture


Lotus Symphony Toolkit

• Developer Guide

– Overview, development environment setup,

development process, API introduction, Sample code

– How to customize Symphony and make use of UNO

API

• Samples

– Customize Symphony menu, toolbar, side shelf

– API usage (Java, UNO)

• API reference

– Javadoc


Lotus Symphony with Eclipse.org Plug-ins

• Enable deploying Eclipse plug-ins to Symphony

• API for accessing Symphony controls and document content

• Enable UI extensions

– Menu (add-ins)

– Toolbar (set of buttons)

– Stack in side shelf

– Another window

• Examples

– AutoRecognizer

– Translator

– Backend integration

– Customized editor


Introductions

―Getting Started‖ with Integration

Advanced Integration From the Notes Client

From Lotus Symphony

Looking Forward

Q & A


From your Contacts application:

Create Letter

Mass Mail Merge

Export

Create Presentation

This requires that you replace the design of your Contacts application with the OpenNTF.org Contacts Experience template


From your Contacts, create a new letter for the selected contact in Lotus Symphony Documents.

Allow the user to select from custom templates


From your Contacts, create a mass mail merge for the selected contacts in Lotus Symphony Documents.



From your Contacts, export selected fields for the selected contacts in Microsoft Excel.


From your Contacts, create a presentation for the selected contact in Microsoft PowerPoint.



Introductions



From Lotus Symphony

Looking Forward Q & A


Using a custom Symphony Plug-in, add an Insert Image menu item and sidebar that allows for easy image insertion from a Notes repository.


Lotus Symphony Programmability Summary Symphony in Notes 8.5.1 Symphony 1.3 Symphony in Expeditor

(future)

Eclipse Plug-in Yes Yes Yes

Composite Application

Yes (in nsf) Yes Yes (via Portal)

Lotuscript Support

Yes No No

Server Support/Managed

Domino No Lotus Expeditor Server Websphere Portal

Local services Editors/Mail/Calendar/... Editors, Web Browser Editors/DB2e/Encryption...

Development Tools

Toolkit for Productivity Tools Domino Desinger

Symphony Toolkit Expeditor Toolkit

Support Service Symphony Web Site Service

Skills needed for developers

Notes/Java Eclipse, Java, Expeditor

Expeditor/Portal


Introductions



From Lotus Symphony

Looking Forward

Q & A


• We finally have great tools

• Domino Designer for Eclipse

• Lotus Symphony API for LotusScript and Java

• Great Tools Coming

• Symphony 3.0

• New/Updated APIs for Notes Data

• REST

• DXL

• LotusScript

• Java

• We have multiple options

• Office, Symphony, OpenOffice.org, Google Docs, etc.

• Competition will be good for us … if we can deal with all the changes


Document Generation is starting to become a viable option Using the standard formats of OOXML, ODF, and PDF

Instead of requiring the application to be present, this is done with no interaction of any application

Tools C# and the OOXML Toolkit for Office

Java and the upcoming ODF Toolkit from IBM for Symphony

Numerous PDF APIs and Toolkits for both .NET and Java

Can generate server side in a fraction of the time

Here is a demo of what we are doing with Document Generation …


Lotus Symphony Homepage – with community forums and downloads

Symphony.lotus.com

My Symphony Blog Entires

www.johndavidhead.com/symphonythursday

My Symphony Videos

http://www.youtube.com/user/johndavidhead

OpenNTF.org — the open source Web site for Notes

www.openntf.org

Integra4Notes Web site

www.integra4notes.com

Slides and content available from http://www.johndavidhead.com http://www.psclistens.com

http://www.johndavidhead.com/symphonythursday

http://www.youtube.com/user/johndavidhead

http://www.openntf.org/


http://www.integra4notes.com/



http://www.johndavidhead.com/

http://www.psclistens.com/

http://www.psclistens.com/


Third-Party Application Support

• Product vs. Custom Development

• Both have their place

• Integra for Notes Symphony Edition

• Supports Lotus Symphony and the

Notes Productivity Editors

• Requires 8.5.1

• Lotus Spreadsheets support today www.integra4notes.com


Lotus Greenhouse (greenhouse.lotus.com) is a live community website where you can use Lotus Collaboration Products for free!

The Lotus Community Podcasts

Planet Lotus (www.planetlotus.org) is an aggregation of Lotus related blogs and news

IdeaJam (www.ideajam.net) is a place where people can post and share their ideas, and gauge the marketability, popularity and viability with input from others

OpenNTF (www.openntf.org) is a site devoted to getting groups of individuals all over the world to collaborate on Lotus Notes/Domino applications and release them as open source

Bleedyellow.com provides community implementations of Lotus Connections and Sametime

IBM’s Official portal for developers including a dedicated section for Lotus (www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus)

LotusUserGroup.org is the on-line home of the IBM Lotus community for regional and virtual user groups

http://www.ideajam.net/



John Head

[email protected]

1051 Perimeter Drive

Suite 500

Schaumburg, IL 60173

(847) 517-7200

(847) 517-7600 fax

Facebook.com/PSCGroup

Twitter.com/PSCGroup

Linkedin.com/company/psc-group-llc

Slideshare.com/PSCGroup

Youtube.com/PSCGroup

Facebook.com/johndhead

Twitter.com/johnhead

LinkedIN.com/in/johndhead

Slideshare.com/johndhead

Youtube.com/johnhead

www.johndavidhead.com

www.pscgroup.com

Date post:	20-May-2015
Category:	Technology
Upload:	john-head
View:	1,846 times
Download:	0 times

Lotus symphony and you - how to stop giving microsoft your money!

Technology