Teamstudio Voices

Tags: : General
Can you feel it? Spring is coming! For those of us in the northeast, green grass and warm weather still seem a long way off, but change is in the air. And we've got some exciting news! For the past couple of years, Teamstudio has hosted three separate blogs, each one with a different focus. As much as we've loved hosting and posting on them, it's time to simplify things a bit. So, we've decided to consolidate the blogs into a single, super-duper, extra-strength site, which provides all wit and wisdom of our blogs in one convenient package. Sure, this helps keep things simple for us, but it also simplifies things for you! Now you only have one blog to visit instead of three--and you'll still get all the information you've come to expect. So, without further ado, allow us to introduce our new blog: Get the Most from Notes (http://www.getthemostfromnotes.com). We chose the name because we want to help you do just that! As always, you can join us as we chat about industry news, happenings and events, and we'll give you the scoop on what's new at Teamstudio. Of course, we'll continue to provide tool tips and ideas on how to bring order to your Notes environment (not that your environment is in any way disorderly, mind you). We'll keep you posted on the athletic and adventurous endeavors of the braver members of our team, and, from time to time, we'll even wax philosophical about vampires vs. werewolves (well, maybe not--but you get the idea!). So check out our new digs and come back to visit often! As always, we want to hear what you think, and your comments and questions are most welcome.

Posted by John Coolidge At 12:56 PM | Location: Beverly, MA | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Tags: : Voices
It’s been a long winter when it comes to training for the fast approaching Triathlon season. With a few months to go until the racing begins, I thought it would be nice to try something different…a personal challenge on a different level – Tough Guy Race.

I’m sure that for the majority Tough Guy would sound like torture but following my ex army days it appealed to me, I always like a new challenge! It claims to be the world’s most demanding one day survival ordeal.

Taking place at the end of January, the race consists of a cross country run followed by an assault course. The unique blend of mud, freezing lakes, acrophobia, claustrophobia, barbed wire, fire and electric shocks, over an 8 mile stretch must be the ultimate test for the human body!

Last years race started out with 6000 people, 2800 made it to the finish line, 100 of which were hypothermia patients. On top of that there were numerous broken bones.

Wish me luck, I just might need it…!

For more information, see the link below: http://www.toughguy.co.uk/

Posted by Michael Wenn At 9:09 AM | Location: Huntingdon, UK | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Tags: : XPages Lotusphere

So Lotusphere is over for another year. What a great show!!! More sessions around XPages and the 8.5.1 Designer Client, plus you may have even seen some cool tie-died t-shirts .

I had the chance to have a chat with Philippe Riand about various XPage topics, including a question from our own development team regarding using the Design Description for custom controls. Some of the answers I felt should be shared with the Notes community so Philippe kindly agreed to answer a few on camera.

Posted by Richard Sharpe At 2:45 PM | Location: Phoenix, Arizona | Permalink | Comments (5) |      

Tags: : Lotusphere 2010 Announcements

I am very excited to let you know that we will be demonstrating Teamstudio Voyager, a new solution that enables Lotus Notes developers to build BlackBerry applications using the familiar Domino Designer client.

Here is a screen shot of the development environment.





Here is a screen shot of what a (simple) application might look like on the BlackBerry.





Full menu integration, clean layout, ease of use, everything you would expect from a native BlackBerry application.

The product won’t be available until later this year, but I would love to have you all come by and get a quick demo of the product. So come visit us at stand 428/429 at Lotusphere.

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 9:04 AM | Location: Beverly, MA | Permalink | Comments (4) |      

Tags: : Personal
As we approach the end of the year it gives me an opportunity to reflect on all the changes of the past year and to think about the challenges ahead in the coming year. I only joined Teamstudio just over a month ago. Even in these first few weeks I have been incredibly impressed by the friendly and open ‘welcome’ I have received from across the Teamstudio business. The Monday that I stated was especially tough as the sad news had just reached the UK office about Andrew's death in Afghanistan, but the team here still went out of their way to make me feel welcome and to help me settle in.

My own business background is one of 'big' corporate (Xerox and Vodafone). The change I was looking to make this year - after some 'personal' time out to go travelling and do some more sailing - was to move to a smaller organisation that was more focused, dynamic and open, and could offer me a whole new set of challenges. With the task ahead of us in the coming year, Stephanie [Heit] has certainly given me those challenges! Launching a CRM product means a whole new marketplace for Teamstudio, potentially a whole new set of customers, and definitely a whole new set of processes. It is great to be a part of building this from the ground-up and thankfully, I do not have to do it all on my own as I have the support of the marketing and technical teams here in the UK, as well as the exhortations of the boss to keep me on track!

Our CRM launch activity really gets rolling in the new year. We have planned a series of activities such as a joint seminar with IBM as well as email and print/on-line marketing campaigns to start to really drive the customer awareness around our GEDYS-Intraware CRM offering.

But before all that starts, we have our break over Christmas - and I love Christmas! Two small children and one big kid in our house! We will be driving a few miles over the vacation period, visiting family and friends. The snowfall we have had here and the few delays I have experienced on our motorways recently really pale into insignificance against the challenges of the snow-struck Eastern seaboard in the US, and of course the travel woes of the Eurostar passengers and those stuck on the motorways here in Kent! Even the celebrity host of UK's Big Brother, Davina McCall, was stuck in her car for 16 hours - but kept everyone up to speed through regular Tweets. One of the downsides of Twitter perhaps...

I would like to finish by saying a big ‘thank you’ to everyone that has helped me start to build the platform for our CRM launch, and to say how much I am looking forward to a challenging new year of growth, revenue success, fun and developing my role here at Teamstudio.

Posted by Richard Finlay At 5:19 PM | Location: Huntingdon, UK | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Tags: : Personal

As many of you know, one of our colleagues and friends at Teamstudio, Andrew Fentiman, was in the Territorial Army and was recently deployed to Afghanistan. It is with deep sadness that we have to announce that Andrew was killed during active service on Sunday November 15th 2009.

We were absolutely devastated to have lost Andrew. We would like to express our deepest sympathy to his family and friends. Andrew was a remarkable young man who will be missed by all of us here at Teamstudio. He had a fantastic sense of humor and it was a pleasure to work with him.

We are grateful for the time that we got to share with Andrew.

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 6:57 PM | Location: Beverly, MA | Permalink | Comments (5) |      

Tags: : Development

Did you catch my earlier post on UI?  It reminded me of my favorite shared column.  Why should you just display a paper clip in a view when the document has an attachment when you can add value by displaying what kind of attachment it has?   Try this formula and be sure to check Display values as Icons.

extList := ".ODS":".XLS":".ODF":".DOC":".ODP":".PPT":".NTF":".TXT":".MP3":".ZIP":".PDF";
ext := @UpperCase( @Right( @AttachmentNames; 4 ) );
choice := @Member( ext; extList );
@If( @Attachments > 5; 30:30;
        @Attachments > 1;150 + @Attachments;
        @Attachments = 0; 0;
        @If( choice = 0; 5; @Select( choice; 141;141;142;142;143;143;145;1;15;10;171) ) )

To add other icons, add the extension to the first line, and add the icon number to the last line.  Also note that in ND 8, the icons for the M$ products have changed to a generic icon, despite the documentation.  

Also note that if you want to modify the mail template, this column is copied to every folder, which needs to be modified separately.  And if you want help interpreting the formula, the first clause checks to see if the version of Notes is less than R4 - you can probably safely remove this clause along with its other clauses that start with the @IsAvailable( $ContentIcon) phrase.  You can then fit this @if into the remaining @If statement.

Posted by John Kingsley At 8:16 AM | Location: Beverly, MA | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Tags: : Hobbies Fun Personal

I run with a social club for my running only events. Earlier this month we all took part in the Round Norfolk Relay. The race covered 193 miles of the Norfolk countryside, split into 17 stages. I would highly recommend relay race events to any running club. I felt it bought our team closer together after achieving a goal by working together. I ran what was supposed to be a 19.6 mile section of the race, but it turned out to be 21 miles after we were chased down by marshals telling us we had taken a wrong turn…well it was at dark by the time it was my turn to run!

Take a look at a this short film made by the Round Norfolk Relay organisers.

Posted by Michael Wenn At 8:00 AM | Location: Huntingdon, UK | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Tags: : Development

The good news is more people have access to Designer and can start making those small changes to their databases that have been bugging them for ever. The bad news is that now even Bob in accounting has access to Designer (no offense Bob).

Now, more than ever, developers need to be sure their data is secure. Remember, a ‘Hide when’ formula is not a security feature. Just right click on the document and show document properties. Fine, you say. I'll just hide the design and the list of fields isn't displayed. Still not a security feature.

I am not going to go into the details here, but think of a View with the first column categorized on a sensitive field like BirthDate, and be sure to not check the option to 'Don't show empty categories'. For real security, you need to encrypt the fields, or use Reader fields. Since a Reader field applies to the whole document, put that sensitive information on a 'daughter document' with appropriate Reader access.

We know Bob is a nice guy, but don't give him a head start down the wrong path.

Posted by John Kingsley At 1:43 PM | Location: Beverly, MA | Permalink | Comments (8) |      

Tags: : Best Practice

The other day I was watching a football game.  Okay, it was the Patriots 59 to nothing blow-out in a snow storm.  I noticed that the graphic that showed the score had 3 yellow dots over each team’s name.  Later in the game I realized that these dots were not just part of the graphic.  They conveyed the all important information as to how many time outs each team had left.  Intuitively obvious to the casual observer.  

In contrast, I found myself completely confused by the graphic superimposed on the field showing what down it was and how many yards were needed to get a first down.  I found myself trying to make sense of the head or tail of the graphic.  It isn't where the ball is.  It isn't where they need to go.  It appears to be totally random.  Even though it is a really cool thing, instead of adding value it just added confusion.

Which reminds of the Notes application I was using recently.  I was looking for some information and couldn't find and couldn't even understand why I wasn't finding in.  Then I realized the first column of the view was categorized, the second column had information, and the third column was sorted.  So when I read the view from left to right, scrolling down the unsorted second column, nothing made sense.  

Who knew that you would have to explicitly state that a requirement for that application should be that the sort order of views made sense.  If the third column really needed to be sorted, it should be the first column after the categorized column.  Or sort the second column.  It makes it much easier for simple people like me to find stuff.

Posted by John Kingsley At 7:56 AM | Location: Beverly, MA | Permalink | Comments (13) |