Effective today IBM released Sametime 7.5.1 and made it available to download via Passport Advantage for all customers and partners.
IBM has published a detailed list with added features and functionalities. Though major improvements are certainly the IM video conversation, the integration into Microsoft Office applications and some enhancement within administrative policies.
Being in New Zealand I am in particular interested whether or not the bug has been fixed where Sametime 7.5 could not display the New Zealand daylight saving time, which is DST +13. This bug should been fixed with Sametime 7.5.1.

From the development perspective IBM introduces to the ‘new’ way of creating a sidebar extension. While the class AbstractMiniApp from the package com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.miniapp has been used in version 7.5 to add mini-apps to the Sametime Connect Sametime 7.5.1 uses the standard Eclipse ViewPart class which is defined in the org.eclipse.ui.part package.
Obviously is this the same procedure in Notes 8 to create view extensions. Hence the introduction of this change.

While I have seen quite interesting presentations about Lotus Notes and Domino 8 including the new possibilities to create composite applications I thought it might be worth to bring my Eclipse Java development environment up to the latest release. While about 140 bugs has been fixed with this new maintenance release the main intention behind the installation in my case had been the test whether or not extension elements for org.eclipse.ui are now properly displayed rather than referred to ‘Default’ as described in my previous comment. (more…)

Working on the creation of extensions for the Sametime 7.5 client I had been searching for a Sametime Server I could utilize to log-in and test my extensions. Since I do not have the right hardware to build a dedicated server I had been searching for an public Sametime 7.5 Server.

Fortunately IBM does have a solution for a poor person like me: The IBM DEMOnet Sametime 7.5 Demonstration site.

After the creation of a user name and a password everybody can extensively test the features of the Web Conferencing interface as well as logging in via a standard Sametime Connect or the Lotus Notes integrated Sametime awareness client.

Be aware that this service might be terminated by IBM at any time without prior notice.

I am currently trying to get my head around the new development possibilities of the Rich Client Platform provided with Sametime 7.5 following the instructions from the IBM Redbook® “Extending Sametime 7.5 – Building Plug-ins for Sametime“.
Unfortunately I already struggled on page 73 of the instructions where a new extension point to display a new action in the tools menu is going to be created. My Eclipse client did not show up the option to create a new actionSet extension element as shown in Figure 4-13 of the manual. Instead of it I could select to create a new Default element only. Same on page 74 where Default has been the only option to show up as well instead of a new menu or action item.
After some research in the Sametime Forum I discovered, that there might be some differences in the Plug-ins of Eclipse version 3.2 and more recent versions (I used version 3.2.1).
After downloading Eclipse version 3.2 and linking the 3.2 versions of the Eclipse plug-ins as described on page 52 of the manual everything worked as described even while working with Eclipse version 3.2.1.

Once the settings for the default community in Lotus® Sametime® 7.5 has been set it seems to be impossible to change the user- as well as the server name afterwards. Additional the default community cannot be removed. So what can be done if the server I want to connect to or my account name has been changed?
First of all you need to make sure that Sametime does not log-in to the community automatically.
Go to File -> Preferences … after the Sametime client has been started, search for the communities setting and open your default community. Make sure that the option ‘Automatically log in’ is not selected on the first (‘Log In’) tab. Hit OK to save and leave the configuration.
While re-starting the client the next time or using the log-out/log-in actions this dialogue will be shown.

Hitting the ‘Reset User’ button removes all local community settings and gives the opportunity to create a new default community. Resetting the user unfortunately removes the local buddy list as well. However, they either can be re-initialized by the server or saved locally using the import/export contact list functions listed in the File menu.