A new widget for IBM Connections is now available which brings the Quickr for WebSphere Portal document library into a Connections community.
The widget augments the original Quickr widget because it maintains the user in the Connections environment, whereas the other widget would make the user switch back and forth. It's also nice because you can link to existing Quickr document libraries (or if you don't want to map a community to an existing Quickr library, you can make it so that a new document library is created and membership is synchronized). And just like the SharePoint and ECM widgets to communities, you have full access to the entire document library directly from Connections. You no longer need to go back and forth between the two.
Moreover, similar to the ECM widget for communities, the widget allows round-trip editing of documents stored in Quickr. I particularly like the ability to check-in/check-out documents directly from Connections as well as uploading documents of a specific document type and entering the metadata as required by Quickr, again all seamlessly happening from Connections. With this integration, a community in Connections becomes a place where members can come in and collaborate on files regardless of where they are stored: SharePoint, Connections, Quickr, or ECM.
Here's a screenshot that shows how it works:
To download the widget, you can get from free here in the Lotus App Catalog. Note in the instructions the additional system requirements you need to install.