Ilug 2008 - Lotus Symphony and You - How to stop giving Microsoft your money

Lotus Symphony and You How to stop giving Microsoft your money!

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50 Minutes of John talking about …

Lotus Symphony

The Executive Perspective

The User Perspective

The Developer Perspective

Who is John

Director of Enterprise Collaboration at PSC Group, LLC

Working with Lotus technology since 1993

Speaker at Lotusphere, Lotus Developer, and ILUG

Specializing in Integration of Lotus Notes & Domino with Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, & Lotus Symphony

PSC Group, LLC

IBM Premium Business Partner for 18+ Years

Microsoft Gold Partner

Notes 8 and 8.5 Design Partner

Host of IdeaJam.net

Former Host of OpenNTF.org

Winner of 2007 Lotus Award!

Host of the following blogs:

Ed Brill’s (www.edbrill.com)‏

Alan Lepofsky’s Notes Tip’s (www.alanlepofsky.net)‏

Alan Gartenberg – DB2 (www.adamgartenberg.com)‏

Jeff Eisen – Hannover (www.jeffeisen.com)‏

Domino Server Team (www.dominoblog.com)‏

Lotus Connections Team

(synch.rono.us)

Lotus Sametime Team

(www.thesametimeblog.com)

IBM Mashup Team

(www.mix-and-mash.com)

Chris Pepin (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

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 Productivity Tools included with IBM Lotus Notes 8

The Notes 8 Productivity Editors

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

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

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$ Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

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 2007 Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

Microsoft Sharepoint Server 2007 Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

The Microsoft Desktop vs. Lotus Collaboration Suite with Enterprise CALS Note: All MS prices are approximate Open Price License prices in US$ Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

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 Note: All MS prices are approximate Open Price License prices in US$ Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

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 Note: All MS prices are approximate Open Price License prices in US$ Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

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? Lotus Symphony – The Executive Perspective

What about support?

Support Option 1

Symphony Embedded Version

Passport Advantage support

Included with purchase of other products

Notes 8

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_address]

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_address] for more info

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

Not a target in 2008

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

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

8.5 Beta 1

8.5.0 = Lotus Symphony 1.1

Included with Lotus Foundations

Stand-alone

Can we update the embedded tools ourselves?

NO

Not Yet

Grrrrrrrr

Coming soon?

Lotus Symphony – The Developer Perspective

Symphony has multiple methods for customization

UNO API

Symphony Plug-ins

Composite Applications

Introduction to OpenOffice.org Development

Designed on an interface-based component model called Universal Network Objects (UNO)

UNO definition

UNO offers interoperability between different programming languages, different object models, different machine architectures, and different processes; either in a local network or even via the Internet

UNO components can be implemented in, and accessed from, any programming language for which a UNO language binding exists

Does this work with Lotus Symphony

All of the demos will be done using Lotus Symphony

You will need Notes 8.0.1 or higher

IBM has exposed the Lotus Symphony objects to the registry to allow COM to work

If you want run the demos in 8.0.0, they will invoke OpenOffice.org

There is a way to hack 8.0.0 to work, but it is not supported

What is the ServiceManager?

ServiceManager is similar to the NotesSession class

It is a factory class that gets you to other places

Set SM=CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager")

Think of the ServiceManager as a back-end class, and we want the front end (like NotesUIWorkspace)

Set Desktop=SM.createInstance("com.sun.star.frame.Desktop")

What Did That Do?

Calling the ServiceManager created an OpenOffice.org window, but we need to do more …

Let’s Start Writer — Word Processing Application

So far we have an OpenOffice.Org window, but it doesn’t know what application it will be — we have to tell it

Dim args()

Set WriterApplication=Desktop.loadComponentFromURL ("private:factory/swriter","_blank",0,args)

Args is a variant array

We don’t want to pass any parameters, but it must be an array

The “s” in “swriter” stands for “Star”

Now we have a word processor up and running

The Picture So Far

Now we have an application open

Time to do something!

Let’s Add Some Text

First, we need to get a handle to the text part of the document

Set WriterText=WriterApplication.getText()

Next, we need a cursor position where we can insert the text

Set Cursor=WriterText.createTextCursor()

Finally, we can make the traditional greeting

Call WriterText.insertString(Cursor,"Hello World!",False)

Hello World!

After executing all of that code, this is the result

Now let’s try it for real

Notes to Writer/Lotus Symphony Documents Lotus Symphony – The Developer Perspective Demo — Example 1 “ Hello World” from Notes to Writer/ Lotus Symphony Documents

Let’s Start Calc — Spreadsheet Application

Calc uses a different URL to define the application

Set CalcApplication = Desktop.loadComponentFromURL_("private:factory/scalc","_blank",0,args)

The command above creates the workbook

Next, we need to get the first sheet

Set Worksheet=CalcApplication.Sheets.getByName("Sheet1")

Let’s Start Calc — Spreadsheet Application (cont.)

Finally, we access the cell into which we want to enter text

Set cell=Worksheet.getCellByPosition(3,6)

We have set the string in a cell, but which cell is it?

Calc/Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets “Hello World” Lotus Symphony – The Developer Perspective Demo — Example 2 “ Hello World” with Notes and Calc/ Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets Where will the text go?

Notes with Calc — D7!

Why did the text go into cell D7?

Didn’t we write to cell (3,6)?

Rows and Columns Are Numbered from Zero

Just like arrays in Notes, the index starts at 0!

Introduction to Impress

Impress and Draw are almost the same application

Pages contain shapes

Shapes can contain text

Text is handled just as it is in Writer

Let’s Start Impress — Presentation Application

To create the instance of Impress, call its URL

Set ImpressApplication=Desktop.loadComponentFromURL_ ("private:factory/simpress","_blank",0,args)

Next, call the getDrawPages function to create the default presentation

Set Presentation=ImpressApplication.getDrawPages()

To get the first slide, use the getByIndex method

Set Slide=Presentation.getByIndex(0)

Let’s Start Impress — Presentation Application (cont.)

Each layout type has its own number

To create a title page, enter the following:

Slide.layout=1

Finally, we need to get the title and handle it like it’s a Writer text object

Set title=Slide.getbyindex(0)

Set TitleText=title.getText()

Set Cursor=TitleText.createTextCursor()

Call TitleText.insertString(Cursor,"Hello World!",False)

Impress and Notes — The Result Lotus Symphony – The Developer Perspective

Impress/Lotus Symphony Presentations “Hello World” Lotus Symphony – The Developer Perspective Demo — Example 3 “ Hello World” with Notes and Impress/ Lotus Symphony Presentations

Using OpenOffice.org/Lotus Symphony Within Your Applications

Add value by:

Writer — printing

Calc — number crunching and charting

Impress — presentations

One of the great value adds you get is PDF generation

Instead of “exporting” to ODF, you select PDF

Exporting to PDF

Creating a PDF from any OpenOffice.org application is very easy

args1.Name = "URL"

args1.Value = "file:///"+strOutputFN

args2.Name = "FilterName"

args2.Value = "writer_pdf_Export"

Set argsFinal(0)=args1

Set argsFinal(1)=args2

Kill strKillFN

Call objDocument.storeToURL("file:///"+strOutputFN,argsFinal)

A PDF of the same name as the file will be saved

OpenOffice.org Integration in a Real-World Application Lotus Symphony – The Developer Perspective Demo — Example 4 An invoicing application that uses OpenOffice.org

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 – The Developer Perspective

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

Possible Future for Developers

Content model for easy control and content manipulation

As editor component in Expeditor solutions

Composite application on Symphony

Need stand alone composite application editor

Interoperability with OpenOffice.org programmability

OpenOffice.org 2.x

UNO API and StarBasic

Interoperability with MS Office programmability

VBA interpreter

Enable plug-ins for Symphony in Notes

Symphony in a browser

DOM model for accessing content via JavaScript

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 8.0.1

Lotus Spreadsheets support today

www.integra4notes.com Lotus Symphony – The Developer Perspective

Lotus Symphony Programmability Summary Expeditor/Portal Eclipse, Java, Expeditor Notes/Java Skills needed for developers Service Symphony Web Site Service Support Expeditor Toolkit Symphony Toolkit Toolkit for Productivity Tools Domino Desinger Development Tools Editors/DB2e/Encryption... Editors, Web Browser Editors/Mail/Calendar/... Local services Lotus Expeditor Server Websphere Portal No Domino Server Support/Managed No No Yes Lotuscript Support Yes (via Portal) Yes Yes (in nsf) Composite Application Yes Yes Yes Eclipse Plug-in Symphony in Expeditor (future) Symphony 1.0 Symphony in Notes 8.0(.1)

Lotus Symphony Roadmap 2008