The Whole Lotus Enchilada

We currently run Lotus Notes/Domino, Sametime and Quickplace in our environment.  We do not run Websphere, but we don’t have any other portal software either.  We are in the middle of a project to switch our email to Outlook/Exchange.  We have been told that “as long as we have workflow, we’ll have Notes/Domino” (with the implication that we’ll always have the product).  OTOH, Quickplace (soon to be Quickr) has been under pressure both from Sharepoint and E-Room, and there are rumours that we are going to be moving from Sametime to the Microsoft instant messenger product.

Here is my question:  from a developer perspective, how much should I worry about losing Sametime from the product lineup?  I’ve done some Quickplace work, so I worry a bit about losing that.  If I thought Microsoft had a viable workflow option for Notes, I would also be worried about that.  But while I know that Sametime is (particularly now) an extensible platform, the fact is that I (and my fellow developers) don’t do any Sametime development.  Part of me says that it is just a tool that happens to be from Lotus (like our document managment system is just a tool that happens to be from Interwoven).  Another part of me says that anytime Lotus is removed from our environment that my job as it currently stands is one step closer to vanishing.  I have every reason to believe my company would retrain me, but that is beside the point I’m wondering about.

So, what do any of you think?  In my situation, would you consider the loss of Sametime to be a threat?

Sametime Spellcheck Strangeness

Sametime 7.5 has spellcheck, and that is an excellent addition to a business chat client.  What is strange, though, is that the spell checker doesn’t run just as words are typed, but as letters are typed.  So as I type a long word, the spell checker continuously tells me the word is misspelled when really it is only incomplete.  This can be very distracting when a word starts with another word.  Take, for example, the word “business.”  Here is what you would get as you type:

b (error)
bu (error)
bus (valid)
busi (error)
busin (error)
busine (error)
busines (error)
business (valid)

Those red squiggles grow, then vanish, then grow some more before finally vanishing.  It’s quite disconcerting to my eyes, and if it bothers me, I’m sure it bothers others.  I’ve also noticed that there is sometimes a lag as spell check tries to keep up.

Needless to say, I’ve turned off the automatic spellcheck.  I can still check an individual message before I send it, so it is still a nice feature.  I hope, though, in future releases they will stop spellchecking by the character and do it by the word instead.

Sametime Code Exchange

Over at the InsideLotus Blog, there is an announcement for a new Sametime Code Exchange site to be hosted by IBM.  Right now, the samples that are in the site are the same ones you get when downloading the SDK.  So it isn’t that useful now, but if developers are willing to add their plugins and code snippets to the site, it could quickly become a very powerful tool for expanding your Sametime usage.  So if you have something to add, head on over and post it for the rest of us to use and to learn from.