IBM « B’musings

April 25, 2011

Solution for Quickr/FileNet/XenApp Integration, Earthquakes, and Stuff

Filed under: IBM,Lotus — Mike Burford @ 12:08 pm
Tags: Domino, FileNet, Lotus, Quickr

It’s been a couple of months and a somewhat disruptive earthquake since I posted about the problem we had run into with Quickr not being supported in a Citrix/Xenapp environment.

The customer’s offices were in the building next to the collapsed CTV building (as shown on TV), so they are now spread around three offices across the city. We lost our office as well so things have been a bit more challenging than normal, but we’re all up and running and the project is progressing through design phase. A definite advance on the status I last reported.

I’ve had a lot of support from IBM’s Lotus team in Australia and they put me in touch with one of the FileNet technical sales guys who came up with a workaround for the Quickr/XenApp issue: IBM Content Collector for Email. Notes 8.5.3 is going to support XenApp 6 so the users will have the Notes Standard client running under XenApp, Quickr will be running on WebSphere Portal Server, and IBM Content Collector (ICC) will “archive” the required content from the mail files on the Domino server into FileNet. FileNet Services for Quickr will provide the integration between Quickr and FileNet so in theory we will have access via Quickr to content in FileNet that has been collected both from Quickr entries and email content harvested by ICC. Users can initiate a search of archived content from within Notes, but it will launch a web interface to display the results from FileNet. Add Sametime, Traveler, and telephony integration to the mix and it’s a challenging project!

We’re putting together the proof of concept and demo environment this week, I’m building the two servers for Domino and Quickr on WebSphere Portal Server as I write this. It’s going to be an interesting week!

As for other news, my mother-in-law lost her house during the Feb earthquake and is now living with us, and my wife and I are now full-time carers of our two and a half year old granddaughter and subsequently feeling a lot older than we should be! Though I have experienced my first Wiggles concert as a result and that was something not to be forgotten!

And no, the house-load of women is not the reason I’m in my office building servers on a public holiday.

February 11, 2011

Notes 8.5.x + XenApp 6 + Quickr + FileNet = no sale?

Filed under: IBM,Lotus — Mike Burford @ 3:48 pm

Last Friday was an exciting day, an opportunity turned into a potential sale when a customer emailed to say that they have decided to replace their Exchange and online document management environment for a Lotus software solution that includes Notes/Domino 8.5, Traveler, Sametime, and Quickr. At the meeting on Tuesday to look at the scoping/design approach they stated that the planned environment is for everything to run on Win Svr 2008 R2, with the clients in XenApp 6, and Quickr connecting to FileNet with all key data (including emails) to be stored in FileNet. I can’t be certain, but I think I may have gone pale round about then. I know that Notes isn’t supported in XenApp 6 yet (let alone 2008 R2), but from what I’ve read it seems that it will be in 8.5.3. What I knew nothing about at the time was the Quickr/FileNet requirements and how that was going to work in their proposed environment.

Unless anyone out there can advise otherwise, indications are that it isn’t going to be happening any time soon. Quickr and FileNet play well together of course, but not in a Citrix environment if you’re relying on being able to use connectors. On warning the customer about this the response was in that case FileNet would need to be able to search the Notes emails without Quickr ….. yes, I know, not going to happen.

As the FileNet integration is critical to the migration, and as they have already approached the FileNet provider regarding Sharepoint integration, it’s looking as though we may have lost a big win in just under a week and they’ll stick with Outlook/Exchange and implement a Microsoft environment instead. And just to rub the salt in, the infrastructure is going to be fully hosted by IBM – which was another first for us, and we were the ones who brought IBM in on the opportunity.

I haven’t given up yet, emails have been flying back and forth to IBM and I’ve posted in the Quickr forum and now here in case someone can come up with an answer, but I think I’m clutching at straws.

Anyone?

Comments (3)

July 2, 2009

State Services Commission tells (NZ) Govt agencies to dump Microsoft

Filed under: IBM,Lotus — Mike Burford @ 12:46 pm

Now here’s an opportunity for IBM!

National Business Review Article

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