Loading profiles data

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Today, I started to configure IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) to load the employee data into the Profiles feature.  One challenge is that the customer is only giving us access to their development LDAP which only contains 1% of the company.  This will make it hard for us to show the value of Profiles and tagging with such a limited set of data.  We are pushing the customer to get us more information.

Another challenge is that we are using Sun ONE LDAP as the LDAP provider and this is not yet supported.  In order to get this to work, we had to make two changes:

1. Modify the WIM properties
1. Find the wimconfig.xml file under D:\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\AppSrv01\config\cells\<cellName>\wim\config
2. Create a copy of the file
3. Open the file with your favorite editor
4. Add this line to the <config:attributeConfigurations> element of <config:repositories>
1. <config:externalIdAttributes name="nsuniqueid"/>
2. Modify the TDI properties (map_dbrepos_from_source.properties)
   
1. Ensure that PROF_GUID maps to nsuniqueid
   

In other news, I started an internal team blog for the community's core team.  We intend to use this blog to keep track of meeting notes and disseminate news to the community without having to spam your inbox.

Presence awareness with Microsoft Live Communication Server and Lotus Connections

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I’ve been investigating ways to add presence awareness to Lotus Connections using Microsoft’s Live Communication Server instead of Lotus Sametime. I’ve been using Dogear and Google to find resources on this topic. Below is a result so far of my research. There are two high-level ways to approach this:

1. 
   
2. Use the Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 SDK
   
3. 
   
   
4. Use the Microsoft Communicator Web Access AJAX SDK
5. 
   

Option 1

- Relies on DLLs installed on a user’s workstation to enable presence awareness in applications such web.

Pros:

* Very little code to write

Cons:

* Only works on Windows workstations

* Requires a DLL to be installed (or Microsoft Office 2003 installed and configured to talk to the Live Communication Server)

* Can’t customize the user interface (provided by the DLL / ActiveX object)



Option 2

- Relies on AJAX and JSON calls to access Microsoft Communicator Web Access (CWA). This SDK allows developers to write their own IM client.

Pros:

* OS-independent

* Browser-independent

* Customizable UI

* Already used in other parts of GM

Cons:

* Requires more code than option 1 — I believe it can be generalized though…



Based on this, it’s looking as option 2 is the preferred route. I’m going to develop some sample code and test it out today and see if it works. I’ll keep you posted!

Moving on to Lotus Connections

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For now, I'm moving on to Lotus Connections.  As part of my duties, I'm currently building enablement materials that explain how to customize and brand a particular implementation of Lotus Connections.  Additionally, I'm working on some materials around the APIs and how they can be used to integrate Lotus Connections with 3rd party products.  Development sent me a link to their internal Wiki where developers are posting some API samples, which I thought is great.

I'm also the WW Community Leader for the Lotus Social Software community.  Jeff Shick, VP of Lotus Social Software, will join us on our weekly Switchboard call to officially kick off the community.  This, of course, is awesome.  The fact that we have senior executive support for the community is phenomenal!  To enhance the community, we are leveraging all of IBM's new technologies for collaboration.  For example,

• the Lotus Connections Forum can be used to post questions and gather opinions on certain issues from community members and any other IBMer worldwide!
• the Lotus Social Software Quickr place contains collateral, customer deliverables, discussions, and other intellectual capital which community members have developed
• Sametime 7.5.1 and the BroadcastSuite plugin which allows community members to instantly chat, get their questions answered and collaborate.  If you haven't installed the BroadcastSuite plugin yet on your Sametime client, do it today!!!! 
  

Today, I'm at a customer site to start a Lotus Connections install of Beta 2.  The interesting problem that we'll address here is integrating Lotus Connections with the customer's home grown applications.  I hope to post my findings as I go along.

Contact

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So here's how you can contact me. And, no, I'm not going to give you my email address because that's very anti-social!

Chat: http://twitter.com/lbenitez

For an IBM Lotus Connections Question: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/lcforum.nsf

This is me

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Here's a brief summary of who I am:

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 70's I became a computer enthusiast at the age of 8 when I got my first IBM 386 PC with one 3.5" floppy drive, no hard drive, DOS v3, and, I believe, 32MB of RAM.

When I was in eighth grade, I decided to start a bulletin board system (BBS) which are widely considered the precursor of the World Wide Web. At this point, I was 13 years old and called it Hurricane BBS. The intent was to meet people, exchange emails, applications, and games. The BBS was recognized, even outside of Puerto Rico, and rated in the Top 100 in the United States by Computer Shopper in 1995.

I closed down the system when I graduated high school and started college at MIT. At MIT, my thesis was on "Pervasive, Human-Centered Computing Platforms" and part of Project Oxygen. I specifically worked in developing a speech recognition module that wouldn't require end-user training (unlike some systems today which require you to train them to recognize your voice). Some of this technology has been used by HP, Acer, Philips, and Delta.

After graduation, I briefly worked for FireSpout where I developed a machine learning system that converted unstructured enterprise content into tagged structured relevant content. Then, I briefly worked for Photolightning where I developed photo uploaders to sites such as Shutterfly, Snapfish, Wal-Mart, Fotolog and others. I'm proud to say that much of the features developed first in Photolightning were later copied and incorporated into the now Google-owned Picasa.

I joined IBM in 2002 as a Software Engineer for the Learning Management System (LMS) platform. In 2004, I joined the IBM Software Services for Lotus organization and travelled all over the world assisting customers with the deployment, configuration, customization of the IBM Lotus LMS. I also helped organizations follow recommended practices for a successful eLearning implementation.

In January 2007, I picked up IBM Lotus Connections, the first enterprise-grade social software system. In June 2007, I created, and now lead, the internal Lotus Social Software community open to IBMers worldwide. I served as an evangelist sharing my knowledge on Lotus Connections and promoting the use of social software to other IBMers. As a customer facing resource, I also evangelized the software to organizations all over the Americas and provide consulting to help them integrate Lotus Connections with their existing applications.

I was the first person worldwide to integrate Lotus Connections and Microsoft Sharepoint (see below in Publications). In January 2008, I'm now in pre-sales and continue to perform my duties evangelizing social software both inside and outside of IBM. In June 2008, I was the first blogger to report on the IBM and Microsoft Social Software Bake-Off, especially how IBM was deemed the clear winner at the Enterprise 2.0 conference.

As of September 2010, I'm now one of the Social Software Product Managers for IBM.
 
Publications:

• Lotus Connections RedWiki (Supporting Contributor)
• Using IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory to integrate IBM WebSphere Portal and Lotus Connections
• Integrating Lotus Connections with Microsoft Technologies
• Lotus Connections 1.0 Deployment Part 2: Post-installation tuning and optimization
• San Juan Star: The Podium: IBM's Luis Benitez
• IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning Deployment Best Practices - Part 1
• IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning Deployment Best Practices - Part 2
• Comparing IBM Lotus LMS and IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning

My Family

Hobbies
I'm a private pilot and enjoy flying whenever I can. I also like bowling, baseball (I'm a huge Red Sox fan, by the way), and I do volunteer work for the Civil Air Patrol. I am also a volunteer for MIT where I am a member of the Educational Council. As such, I get the awesome opportunity to interview prospective MIT students!