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Today we are pleased to welcome a new employee – Kenneth Lindkvist.
Kenenth is highly skilled within IBM's collaboration solutions and enters our senior operations team.
We all look forward to begin working together!
Posted by:
Today we are pleased to welcome a new employee – Mikael Grenfeldt.
Mikael is highly skilled within IBM's collaboration solutions such as IBM Domino, IBM Notes, IBM Chat, IBM Traveler and he is a well sought after contribution to our seniour team.
On his first day (today) we treated him with extra special goodies to his morning coffee, so we hope this will ensure a good work relationship!
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Do you need access to experts with market leading knowledge of IBM Connections? Are you starting up a new Connections project or do you need help with one that is in progress? Could you use the help of a recognized expert to help you solve the issues that are delaying deployment? We can help!
Infoware have been working with IBM Connections since 2008 and have consultants with broad and deep knowledge of IBM Connections environments and development. When it comes to deploying new environments, upgrading existing installations, integrating with other systems or systems development our consultants are world class.
We have a portfolio of customer success stories for projects integrating IBM Connections with web content management systems such as EPI Server and IBM Docs with bran
ding, customizations and systems integration.
We are recognized experts at adding extended functionality to IBM Connections environments as well as having specialist skills in user adoption methodologies and systems training.
Apart from IBM Connections we also offer expertise on IBM Chat, IBM WebSphere Portal, IBM WebSphere and IBM Notes/Domino.
Contact us if you are interested in our services or in a partnership.
Back from IBM Connect! And back with a BANG. Becase this conference was very much different than the past five I've attended. In a better way. Here's why:
First: a new venue, no Disney Swan and Dolphin. Instead Hilton. Okay?
Second: no Infoware booth. What now?
Third: Im a newborn IBM Champion. Whoho!
I have been to five earlier IBM Lotusphere/IBM Connect and enjoyed each and everyone of them. On every conference I have been working in Infoware's exhibitor booth meeting customers, IBMers and resellers. I have listened to the visions and news from IBM and to our customers' thoughts. And each and every time I have been travelling home enlightened in many ways.
So this time, it's safe to say the questions were many more than the answers when I hopped on the airport train early Friday morning with destination Arlanda.
But some questions got answers already when I swapped flights in Frankfurt, when I saw a bunch of friendly faces cheering at me. Yay, the people in this community of ours is one of the best, no question about that.
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And to arrive in Orlando several hours later and see part of the Social Connections team filled me with even more expectations for the week to come. Things were looking good! After all, the number 1 thing people always say when referring to what makes IBM Connect so good is that: "It's all about meeting other community members."
What about the questions then?
The Hilton – this was a real winner, and maybe one of the keys to make it a successful event. Even if I am truly fond of the whole Disney thing with the iconic Swan and Dolphin hotels to wrap around it, the conference last year was some sort of a hick-up. Everyone was talking about the conference as "maybe the last one", and how many attendees we were, and what IBM would do. However, the nice surprise was, that people really did show up. Almost 1000 more attendees than expected, so I heard. The exhibition area was cramped with people. A lot of good discussions took place, and IBM showed us new and shiny stuff on stage. But all the same, the feeling of "the last one" lingered on.
So when IBM announced this new venue they had all the possibilities in the world to do a fresh start. And they did! Almost everything had a new smell to it. The hotel itself was as new as could be, the staff friendly and the food better than at Dolphin/Swan. Also the conference rooms and the Expo for sponsors was nice surprises. This was all very contagious on us all, so we were all smily faces.
The content then? One particular thing I liked was that The Opening General Session (OGS) was divided in two and had two clear messages. Vision and demo. Highlights from the OGS was for me:
– Project Toscana. Can't wait until I try this. A communication platform to use in teams or projects where you easily can communicate with each other on different topics, sharing files, etc. Almost an IBM version of Slack. High expectations on that one!
– The new homepage. Start your work day with a sleek looking homepage where you see everything that has happened since you left off. Super easy access to mail, calendar, connections, profiles with nice looking stacked cards.
– The personal assistant. Finally is Watson available to you and me with suggestions, nudges and helps during your work day. Let the machine work for you, and not the other way around.
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What about the Infoware booth? This was a new experience for me. I suddenly had no home base where I could have conversations to our customers or demo our product DomainPatrol Social. But on the other hand it was also some kind of freedom! I could instead wander around wherever I wanted and catch people I wanted to talk to on the go. I had meetings in comfy sofas around the hotel, outside in the sun, or why not in the bar. The lack fo a booth didn't stop me for doing all those kind of things I normally do at IBM Connect. And it worked!
The IBM Champion thing then? This was truly the biggest eye opener for me. First I want to give praise to the amazing Amanda Bauman who is responsible for the IBM Champion program. She had arranged all sorts of activities for the Champions during the week, making sure we all felt welcome and connected.
Since I am one of the new Champions I just concentrated to tag along those who have done this before. And what a friendly bunch they all are! I know some of them before, but suddenly I got to learn new names and faces and they all welcomed us new ones with open arms. I can truly say I haven't laughed as much in a long time. Thank you all!
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So all my questions got answered in a much better way than I could ever imagine. IBM Connect 2016 was just as fabulous and inspiring as it could ever be. And I think Disney really poured some magic over us.
Looking forward to 2017!
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Posted by:
Infoware is once again attending IBM Connect in Orlando!
We look forward meeting our customers and resellers at this fantastic event.
Contact Maria Enderstam if you would like to schedule a meeting.
Posted by:
first: Happy Prosperous New Year! We hope you had a couple of relaxing days around Christmas and now are ready for new adventures in 2016!
This is just a short newsflash with two interesting topics we think you'll like:
New release of DomainPatrol Social for IBM Connections. This will put a smile on all of you Community Managers. We have seen for a long time that a key focus for companies today is to seek to minimize the time and effort they waste on creating something that already exist. To stop reinvent the wheel for good, and instead focus on developing new inventions.
The new function we're talking about is Community Templates. This will let you re-use your perfectly good and working Communities over and over again, with modifications if you like. Find the Community you would like to clone, select which parts of it you want to copy and click OK. Simple as that.
The release is ready to ship, so email us right away for more information, quotes, evaluation license or anything else.
And remember, DomainPatrol Social solves the most difficult tasks in IBM Connections concerning contents and users, such as Merge Communities, Move Communities, Move and Merge Blogs, Activities, Files, Wikis etc. We also handle Complete User Management for Files, Blogs, Wikis etc. Merge Profiles or Copy User Access. Take care of your orphan content today.
New project starts, others end. The organization is constantly changing and consequently your needs.
Last week I started to install IBM Connections 5.5 in our lab to prepare my self for upcoming customer projects with installation or upgrading customers' sites to Connections 5.5. This first install was done on a single Windows server but I used LDAP from a current Sametime environment (so I can integrate Sametime and Connections later on).
Windows Server Configuration
———————————————-
4 CPU, 16 GB RAM
C:\ 50 GB, D:\ 100 GB
I used IBM Connections Wiki Documentation (https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSYGQH_5.5.0/welcome/welcome_admin.html) but also the great "step-by-step" document written by IBM Connections Support Engineer Charlie Price (https://alturl.com/a3if4). "Step-by-step" guides can be great but do NOT trust them all the way, ALWAYS read the official wiki/technote documentation from IBM!
I installed the following software on a Windows 2008 R2 Server.
– WAS 8.5.5.7
– IBM HTTP Server 8.5.5.7
– DB2 10.5 FP6
– TDI 7.1.1 FP3
– Installation Manager 1.8.3
After installing all the above, creating WAS cell and profiles, configuring LDAP, creating DB2 databases, populate profiles and configuring IBM HTTP Server, is it was time to do the actual Connections install. As this test environment will be used to evaluate all the features in version 5.5, I also chose to install IBM Connections Content Manager (CCM). To be able to install CCM you have to specify a folder that contains the correct FileNet installation software. For Windows you need to download these files and add them to the folder:
– 5.2.1-P8CPE-WIN.EXE
– 5.2.1.2-P8CPE-WIN-FP002.EXE
– 5.2.1.2-P8CPE-CLIENT-WIN-FP002.EXE
– IBM_CONTENT_NAVIGATOR-2.0.3.EXE
– IBM_CONTENT_NAVIGATOR-2.0.3.5-FP005.EXE
After answering all the Connections Installation Wizard questions and settings, I could finally click on the "Install" button 🙂
But unfortunately the installation ended with an error message…. 🙁
The IBM Installation Manager logs indicated that the Connections Installation Wizard where unable to finish some of its "post-install task". After a closer look in the IM logs I could see that the installation wizard where trying to uninstall Connections. OK, I then opened the install.log in the Connections install folder, in my case D:\IBM\Connections. This log contains information about all WAS configuration and Connections application installations that is done during installing Connections. I soon found this in the log:
Create CCM data directory: [D:\IBM\Connections\data\shared\ccm]
Replace place holders in template file [D:\IBM\Connections\lib\filenet\ce_silent_install_windows.txt] to new file [D:\IBM\Connections\tmp\ce_silent_install_windows.txt].
RUN: "D:\Download\CCM\FileNet\5.2.1-P8CPE-WIN.EXE" -i silent -f "D:\IBM\Connections\tmp\ce_silent_install_windows.txt"
D:\IBM\Connections>"D:\Download\CCM\FileNet\5.2.1-P8CPE-WIN.EXE" -i silent -f "D:\IBM\Connections\tmp\ce_silent_install_windows.txt"
Exit code: 0
RUN: "D:\Download\CCM\FileNet\5.2.1.2-P8CPE-WIN-FP002.EXE" -i silent -f "D:\IBM\Connections\tmp\ce_silent_install_windows.txt"
D:\IBM\Connections>"D:\Download\CCM\FileNet\5.2.1.2-P8CPE-WIN-FP002.EXE" -i silent -f "D:\IBM\Connections\tmp\ce_silent_install_windows.txt"
Exit code: -1
ERROR: FileNet [ce] installer [5.2.1.2-P8CPE-WIN-FP002.EXE] failed, exit code [-1]:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "D:\IBM\Connections\lib\ccm.py", line 318, in do_install
self.install_filenet_software()
File "D:\IBM\Connections\lib\ccm.py", line 371, in install_filenet_software
self.install_fn_component(c)
File "D:\IBM\Connections\lib\ccm.py", line 413, in install_fn_component
raise Exception("FileNet [%s] installer [%s] failed, exit code [%s]:" % (comp, binary, result))
Exception: FileNet [ce] installer [5.2.1.2-P8CPE-WIN-FP002.EXE] failed, exit code [-1]:
LotusConnections Component [CCM] install is FAILED
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The installation continued after this, installing all the other applications, the "only" failed installation was the CCM application. OK, So now I started to troubleshoot this error. Was the 5.2.1.2-P8CPE-WIN-FP002.EXE file corrupt? I downloaded a new one and tried to install Connections again but I got the same error message. I then checked the VMware resources, had I enough CPU or RAM? Yes. How about free disk space for the temp folder? CCM needs at least 6 GB otherwise the installation will fail. No that wasn't it. I tried to install Connections once more, this time I made a copy of the D:\IBM\Connections\FileNet folder under installation so I could investigate all the files created in this folder during installation. This as the Connections Installation Wizard deletes this folder when it fails to make a successful installation of IBM Connections. It's hard to troubleshot if logs and other files are deleted by the installation… 🙂
So what did I find in the FileNet folder? In the log file ce_install_log_5.2.1.2.txt I found the following error:
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so jan 24 20:05:08:104 Error while building the EAR file in the installer
Status: FATAL ERROR
Additional Notes: FATAL ERROR – sö jan 24 20:05:10:818 [ERROR]
BUILD FAILED
D:\IBM\Connections\FileNet\ContentEngine\lib\mergeears.xml:99: The following error occurred while executing this line:
D:\IBM\Connections\FileNet\ContentEngine\lib\mergeears.xml:135: The following error occurred while executing this line:
D:\IBM\Connections\FileNet\ContentEngine\lib\mergeears.xml:202: Unparseable date: "01/24/2016 08:05 em"
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Touch.checkConfiguration(Touch.java:256)
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Touch.execute(Touch.java:280)
at org.apache.tools.ant.UnknownElement.execute(UnknownElement.java:292)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor6.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:56)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:620)
at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.java:106)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:348)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:435)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.performTasks(Target.java:456)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeSortedTargets(Project.java:1393)
at org.apache.tools.ant.helper.SingleCheckExecutor.executeTargets(SingleCheckExecutor.java:38)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTargets(Project.java:1248)
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Ant.execute(Ant.java:440)
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.CallTarget.execute(CallTarget.java:105)
at org.apache.tools.ant.UnknownElement.execute(UnknownElement.java:292)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor6.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:56)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:620)
at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.java:106)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:348)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:435)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.performTasks(Target.java:456)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeSortedTargets(Project.java:1393)
at org.apache.tools.ant.helper.SingleCheckExecutor.executeTargets(SingleCheckExecutor.java:38)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTargets(Project.java:1248)
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Ant.execute(Ant.java:440)
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.CallTarget.execute(CallTarget.java:105)
at org.apache.tools.ant.UnknownElement.execute(UnknownElement.java:292)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:95)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:56)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:620)
at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.java:106)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:348)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:435)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.performTasks(Target.java:456)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeSortedTargets(Project.java:1393)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTarget(Project.java:1364)
at org.apache.tools.ant.helper.DefaultExecutor.executeTargets(DefaultExecutor.java:41)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTargets(Project.java:1248)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.runBuild(Main.java:851)
at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.startAnt(Main.java:235)
at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.run(Launcher.java:280)
at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:109)
Caused by: java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "01/24/2016 08:05 em"
at java.text.DateFormat.parse(DateFormat.java:369)
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Touch.checkConfiguration(Touch.java:249)
… 44 more
Total time: 9 seconds
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So I opened the mergeears.xml file and looked at the row 202. Hmm, something with dates??? OK, lets ask Google about "mergeears.xml:202: Unparseable date". The first hit I got was this one.
https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1PJ43439 from december 15, 2015. "CPE FIX PACK INSTALLER FAILS WHEN USING FINNISH(FINLAND) ON WINDOWS". Aha! So that was the cause. Well I am not using Finnish but as I am sitting in Stockholm, Sweden my Windows Server is using Swedish as date format and location (for system locale I use English US). So it appears there is a bug in the 5.2.1.2-P8CPE-WIN-FP002.EXE fixpack, that will make the installation fail if the date format and location on the operating system is something other than English…
"… The 5.2.1.2-CPE installer fails with a fatal Unparseable date
error when Region and Language is set to Finnish(Finland) on
Windows. It's probable that this is a general installer issue
that will fail for any Region and Language that has a different
date format.
The problem is fixed in the ant script, which should now work
for any non English locales also Resolved by 5.2.1.3-P8CPE-FP003 and higher."
The workaround for this is to always use English as date format and location during installation of IBM Connections. After the installation is done you can change date format and location to the one that you prefer. 🙂
So did it work? Yes, I changed date format and location to English, tried to install IBM Connections again and now the installation finished SUCCESSFULLY with that lovely little green icon!
Are you interested in the IBM Social Business user community? Then this site is a place for you.
Here you can read about events from both IBM and independent user groups, webcasts, twitter feeds, blogs and testemonials.
A place to get together, share ideas and talk about what’s new in social.
And if that is not enough, right now I'm featured IBM Champion on the site as well.
So why wait, click here now.
It's soon Christmas and we all look forward to holidays with lots of relaxing days with friends and families. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers, partners, resellers and friends for a fantastic year!
To all of you from all of us we wish you a very warm, friendly, delicious, happy Christmas and a prosperous, sparkling New Year!
See you all again in 2016!
Instead of Christmas gifts we have this year made a donation to the scientists at The Swedish Cancer Society, where they are trying to find a cure for cancer.
