IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 for Domino Administration: Ensure effective and efficient team collaboration by building a solid social infrastructure with IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5

The Lotus Quickr product itself is a common set of services that are built on top of two very different product architectures. When you buy Lotus Quickr you get both. These foundation level deployment architectures are Lotus Domino and WebSphere Portal. There are a host of reasons for this type of product design, but the key is that customers have different requirements and it is not practical to build a "one size fits all" solution. Each of the deployment platforms provide capabilities that can be leveraged to build enterprise class collaboration solutions.

The next sections will dive deeper into each of the deployment architectures. While the WebSphere Portal platform is discussed at some level, the focus of this book is on the Lotus Domino product. It was not practical to cover both platforms in adequate detail in the scope of this book, given the significant backend differences between the deployment platforms. Lotus Quickr for Domino represents...

The Lotus Quickr connectors represent key capability common across both Lotus Quickr architecture platforms. These connectors are deployed locally on Windows-based workstations to allow direct integration into the productivity applications, which a user already comfortable with. That allows a user to continue to work in Lotus Notes or Microsoft Office and directly manage the content on the Lotus Quickr servers.

The architecture of the desktop connectors allow them to integrate with various backend server environments including Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. IBM has made available, the Lotus Quickr integration code for IBM FileNet and Content Manager, to allow them to appear as a traditional Lotus Quickr server to these desktop connectors. From an end user standpoint, they don't have to be directly aware the type of system they are using to store their data. They can focus on producing content and interacting with other team members.

An example of interacting...

One of the common patterns seen in customer environments today is the need for an integrated solution. It is important that solutions like Lotus Quickr be able to easily integrate content into other environments which have already be deployed.

Out of the box, Lotus Quickr provides several types of integration. This includes both the deployment architectures mentioned earlier. Some of those other integration areas which are covered later in Chapter 12, Integrating IBM Lotus Quickr with other IBM Products, are around the Lotus Connections, Lotus Sametime, and Enterprise Content Management products.

Lotus Connections is a social networking product that provides a very rich set of capabilities, which enterprise customers are looking for today in the social space. Examples of these services include employee profile and contact information, communities, wikis, blogs, social activities, social bookmarks, discussion forums, and file sharing. In the Lotus Connections...

The final area to cover is around Enterprise Content Management (ECM) integration. The Lotus Quickr product has been broadening these services for several releases now. The Lotus Quickr 8.5 release grows these capabilities to a whole new level. Now ECMcontent can be made available in both the Lotus Domino and WebSphere Portal deployment platforms. The integration itself has deepened significantly with this latest release, particularly in the following areas:

These integration capabilities require Lotus Quickr integration code to be separately installed on the backend ECM system.

Having the ability to connect Lotus Quickr with ECM systems opens a wide range of possibilities....

This chapter exposed you to the two deployment architectures available for Lotus Quickr, as well as an overview of the products. Additional areas of integration in terms of Lotus Connections, Enterprise Content Management, and desktop productivity applications that Lotus Quickr provides, were also discussed. This is just a brief insight of the potential here. The product itself can easily be inserted into larger solutions sets to meet your business collaboration needs.

The remaining chapters of this book will dive deeper into the Lotus Quickr for Domino product installation, administration, customization, and integration. While it is not intended to replace the product documentation, the goal is to provide you with valuable information from the author's experiences.