Sametime -- Lotus Sametime 2.0 enhances multimedia capabilities with broadcast meetings, translation services, and more. ++ Tags: collaboration, e-business, E-Mail, ibm, ibm lotus, ibm websphere, it networking, IBM, IBM Lotus, IBM Lotus Sametime, Instant

Comment on this topic

Technologies are rapidly being developed and improved to better serve the Internet community. Existing products quickly become outdated and may not be capable of handling a company's new e-business site, its Intranet, or corporate communications. But if you anticipated growth when you selected your platform, you can keep building and expanding on that platform. Lotus anticipated growth with Domino. It's a complete platform, letting you build your own Intranet, include your corporate workflow, and even extend this to the Web without additional software. And now with the integration of Websphere, Domino has a platform solution every company can use.

Unfortunately, many are unaware of additional products Lotus offers. One of these products is Sametime. Sametime can be directly integrated with your current Domino environment to provide one of the best communication tools available. Version 2.0 was released in December 2000 and has some interesting new features that this article examines, on top of the features already present in 1.5.

What is Sametime and what does it do?

Sametime is a tool that provides communication and awareness capabilities, enabling real-time collaboration.

The three elements of real-time collaboration are:

Awareness -- the ability of a team-member to be made aware when others are online.
Conversation -- members using instant messaging or partaking in virtual sessions involving a group of people, using text, audio, or video.
Shared Object -- live documents or applications shared with others.

These elements are seamlessly integrated in the Sametime product. Team-members can actively participate in online virtual meetings, communicate with each other, share applications, and more. The Sametime product consists of:

Sametime server
Sametime desktop client
Suite of Java applets
Sametime development kit

When you install Sametime as is, it can be used directly by clients who have the Sametime desktop software installed or by a browser client. The desktop client lets you create your own group of team-members, see who is online, participate in or initiate conversations, and control your own status (figure 1).

Figure 1: The Sametime 2.0 interface -- Sametime lets users see who's online, create groups, and start conversations or meetings.

Connecting to Sametime is not limited to the desktop client however. It also includes:

Any Domino-based application
Browser clients
Any T.120 client, such as NetMeeting

So, basically, no matter what environment you have at your work station, Sametime can be distributed to it. In addition, the Sametime 1.5 Connect client and above works with AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM) service to let users send instant messages to AIM users worldwide, as well as to colleagues on the Sametime Server. By enabling the Sametime Connect client to work with AIM, users of both can expand their reach and improve internal and external communications.

As previously stated, this is all available and ready when Sametime is installed as is. But as with almost any other Lotus product, Sametime can easily be extended to serve your specific needs, without requiring specific changes to either Sametime itself or your environment. Users can easily adapt the functionality into the use of their current Domino environment without requiring any additional training.

For those who develop in Notes, you'll find that customizing or tailoring Sametime is as easy as developing common Notes applications. The same development environment you are used to can be used for Sametime, using LotusScript or Java when developing for the Web.

Some of the most important application features when implementing Sametime into your Domino applications are:

Who is Online
Who is Here
Online Virtual Conferencing Center

Who is Online informs you who is online in the Sametime environment. Users can be grouped into teams to easily connect people with common interests.

Assume you have installed a default teamroom. Each teamroom contains a list of team-members and leaders. By adding the Sametime Who is Online capabilities to this database, this list can become Sametime enabled, meaning you will now see the same list translated into a Sametime object. For each user, a green button next to the name identifies that user as an online user and allows anybody to click on that name to start an instant session with the user. Adding this functionality is fairly easy, thanks to the Sametime Development Toolkit, which comes with ready to use examples of this functionality.

Who is Here (figure 2) is even more exciting. In your organization, a business-critical Domino database is developed, providing you with important knowledge for ordering procedures. Each document shows the name of the author and other relevant information. When the Who is Here functionality is integrated into this application, using the Sametime Developer Toolkit, you can see who else within your organization is reading the same document you are. Assume an employee just submitted a new document into this database, suggesting a new procedure. This new procedure is a hot issue in your organization and you are reading the document. At the same time, you see that 10 more colleagues are reading it. You can start an instant meeting with all of these people discussing the new procedure, without sending e-mails or planning a "real" meeting.

Figure 2: Who is Here -- Here's a Notes document with a list of active readers.

With the release of 2.0 , you can include audio and video conferencing in addition to instant chat, and the additional features listed below:

New multimedia capabilities

Members can see and hear participants, and share information more effectively. In addition to the audio and video conferencing, Sametime lets you broadcast audio/video/data presentations throughout an entire corporate network and the Internet.New broadcast meeting capabilityThis component lets thousands of users participate in a single conference. Scheduling a broadcast lets you define a moderator, have multiple presenters, and lets you send audio/video or any other meeting tool to a large group of people, regardless of their location. (More detail is provided later in the article.) This lets users choose the type of transport they want to use. The meeting creator can set the meeting function for Collaboration, Moderated Presentation or Demo, or Broadcast Presentation. Collaborative and Moderated presentations use the T.120 and H.323 standards. For Broadcast Presentations, Sametime uses IP/Multicasting. For all these meeting types, attendees only need to browse the Sametime server. Sametime does not require installation of code on the user's desktop for users to attend a meeting. And Sametime supports the use of Microsoft NetMeeting as a client, giving those users the ability to attend Sametime meetings as well.

Translation capabilities

The Lotus Translation Services for Sametime (LTSS) makes it easier for enterprises to collaborate internationally. LTSS connects Sametime to the IBM Translation Server or other third party Translation Servers available from Transparent Language, Alis Technologies, and Systran. A user can send an instant text message in English to a Spanish speaker for example, and the message is automatically translated from English to Spanish. This is an unprecedented use of instant translation technology that has massive implications for global e-business. Currently, translations are available in nearly all common languages. Any engine of third party suppliers can be connected to the Translation server, letting the customer pick the best of breed. The Lotus Translation components are comprised of the following modules:

Lotus Translation Services for Sametime is an application and a set of new components that ships with the Lotus Translation Components Release 2.1. They let Sametime administrators add multilingual chat capabilities to their Sametime communities. It is composed of three main components: The server application, the Translation Console, and a Notes or Web-based administration console.
TheServer component of LTSS is implemented as a Java-based standalone application, which will require a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to execute. The server will launch as a console application and will accept command-line administration commands from the console input. The server will display significant events and the output from commands entered on the command-line in the console.
The Translation Console is a client-based application -- Sametime administrators will be able to deploy to their users within their Sametime communities. There will be no client install; this will be Web based. Users communicate and receive translated messages from the server-based application of the LTSS through the Translation Console.
The Administration console lets you administer the Lotus Translation Service for Sametime by using the server console locally using a command-line interface and remotely using a Web interface and the same command-line options.

Meetings

In addition to the Sametime meeting center, meetings can be instantiated from the Sametime desktop client. Furthermore, the entire meeting transcription can be saved to a file, letting you use the outcome of the meeting as the minutes for the next meeting, or other future reference. Dozens of new options have been added to the meeting scheduler, letting you set security, define moderators, etc. More detail is provided later in the article.

Solutions

If you're wondering what Sametime can do for your organization, the following list of solutions is a good start:

Meetings can be held virtually, based on text, audio, video, or a combination of all, and can be instantiated on the fly, either from the meeting center or from the Sametime desktop client (figure 3). People are more likely to find time for a five minute meeting, rather than scheduling a formal one -- avoiding the burden of comparing agendas and finding the available time.

Figure 3: The online meeting -- Participants can hold a virtual meeting using a whiteboard or other tools.

By integrating Sametime into your Domino-based Web site, you can provide the richness of Sametime on your site, improving communications with your customers. In the event you are selling products via the Web, your help desk can talk to customers online, show them complementary pictures of products using the Sametime whiteboard, or assist them with installing a software product using Sametime's application sharing capabilities.

You can extend knowledge management in your organization by bringing Sametime into your knowledge management application. When you have a Domino-based knowledge management environment, members can talk instantly to the author of a document, providing him with, or asking for, additional information. And with Sametime 2.0, as mentioned, you can save meetings held, and the minutes of meetings can be added to complement existing knowledge.

Sametime's security is exceptional. Users are always authenticated when trying to access the Sametime server, ensuring that who is online really is the person online. In addition, by using the Sametime proxy service, you can let external users access the Sametime server with no threat to your network security. Proxies currently supported are HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5.

Any data coming from a session can be encrypted to protect the content for unauthorized viewing. And users can determine, for privacy reasons, who can "see" them online, thus avoiding calls and chat via Sametime if desired.

Expand capabilities with the Development Toolkit

By providing a complete development toolkit for Sametime, Lotus has made Sametime available to all developers for customization and integration into existing environments. Developing Sametime applications is very easy with the new toolkit. In it, a separation is made between solutions solely for the Notes client, based on OCX components, and for the Web, based on open standards as Java.

By providing the interfaces to the Sametime APIs, more items can be customized than in previous releases, such as the conferencing and schedule management component.

Following is an excerpt from the Lotus Sametime site, providing you with an overview of what can be developed with the new toolkit.

Sametime Community Services

Designed to expose key Sametime awareness and conversation capabilities to the developer, the ST Semantic Components provide awareness and conversation control found in no other product today. For higher-level functionality, the Sametime UI Components provide an easy-to-use set of OCX and Java controls that can be prebuilt in Notes or Web applications. Additional functionality includes:

Server Login/Logout -- Lets developers programmatically log users in and out of the Sametime Server's Community Services.

Who Is Online -- Lets developers input a set of names to query, and displays visual online status for each name.

Who Is Here -- Lets developers identify and converse with users who are active in the same Domino database.

Send Instant Message -- Lets developers open a chat window and send a message to a specified user.

Open Multiparty Chat -- Lets developers open a chat window and send chat invitations to specified users.

Save Chat Transcript -- Lets developers save a chat session in a Notes database or other file.

For lower-level control, Sametime offers two identical lower-level programming toolkits. The Programming Toolkit for Notes provides Notes-specific OCX controls, and the Programming Toolkit for the Web provides Java-based equivalents. Both programming toolkits provide the same categories of functionality listed for the UI Components above, but with a more granular set of API methods and parameters.

Sametime Meeting Services

The Java components found in the Sametime Meeting Services toolkit allow meeting control, electronic whiteboarding, and application sharing to be embedded into any environment that supports a Java Virtual Machine R1.1.4 or greater. These components can be combined or separated out, depending on the requirements of the application.

Sametime Sample Applications and UI Customization

Sametime ships with several sample applications that developers can learn from as they build their own Sametime-enabled applications. Sample applications are included for Domino mail, discussion databases, and document repositories. In addition, the Sametime Online Meeting Center UI can be customized using traditional design tools like Domino Designer. The following two examples show how developers can use Domino Designer to customize the Sametime UI:

Create a custom Sametime Online Meeting Center UI for a conferencing service.

In this case, the service provider may want two user interfaces -- one for end users to only join meetings in progress and one for service operators to create, schedule, and control meetings on the server.
Update currently customized Domino mail or discussion templates with Sametime functionality.

When an organization has already customized Domino templates, it may be easier to add the Sametime functionality to the existing templates rather than apply the default design from the Sametime-enabled sample mail and discussion applications that ship with the server.

Sametime Conference -- Schedule Management

Using standard Domino C and C++ APIs, developers can directly access the master conference database on the Sametime Server. This .nsf database manages the list of scheduled and active meetings on the server. With this kind of control, developers can let third-party applications, such as external scheduling packages, add meetings to the Sametime schedule or trigger the launch of a third-party application when a particular meeting starts.

To make it easier to develop HTML-based Sametime-enabled applications, an HTML/JavaScript API Toolkit has been made available. With this toolkit, Sametime awareness can be added to HTML pages by using HTML and JavaScript. By adding the appropriate JavaScript functions to Web pages, a participant's name turns green when he is online but remains black when he is not, without requiring a reload of the Web page. When the name is lit (green) as being online, it is clickable as a normal HTML link, enabling the Instant Messenger. The manner in which this online status is displayed is defined in common stylesheets located on the Sametime server and can therefore be easily adjusted.

Getting started with Sametime 2.0

You can install Sametime 2.0 stand-alone or on an existing Domino server. Doing the latter means it will run as an added server task on the Domino server and all relative items, such as the directory and security, are directly inherited from the Domino environment. The installation process is fully automatic and will install, depending on your choices, the following additional services on your Domino server:

Sametime Community Server
Sametime Meeting Server
Sametime Multimedia capabilities
Sametime Toolkit
Example Databases
Meeting Center

After the installation is complete, and you have re-booted your system, Sametime automatically commences after the server has started. You will then have all facilities available and clients or browsers can connect to the server and start sharing information or scheduling meetings. Figure 4 shows an example of the Meeting Center as shipped.

Figure 4: The Sametime meeting center -- Attending and/or scheduling meetings has never been easier.

A Sametime server is accessed with a standard Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, or by using the Sametime desktop client. The meeting room client is Java-based, and no special client installation is required. Simply attend a Sametime meeting with a Web browser (figures 5 and 6) and the appropriate client software is automatically installed through standard Web browser mechanisms and cached for faster access to future meetings. Sametime online meetings are firewall friendly, offering many different connection types for firewall usage. Many corporations not only require an HTTP proxy server for access to the Internet, but also require all connections use port 80. Sametime supports this configuration as well. In addition, if the service provider only allows HTTP traffic, but the client Web browser is using SOCKS, Sametime will perform HTTP tunneling through this SOCKS proxy server.

Figure 5: Meeting component -- Scheduling a meeting provides you with all the possible options required.

Figure 6: Meeting component -- Tight security integrated in Sametime ensures unauthorized use is not possible.

Audio and video present real challenges for most corporate firewalls because audio and video media streams typically use UDP. Sametime supports the use of audio and video tunneled through TCP for either direct outbound connections or through a SOCKS proxy server. When attending a broadcast meeting, Sametime also supports HTTP tunneling. Also, the use of T.120 and H.323 clients such as Microsoft NetMeeting is supported, letting Sametime and other third-party clients adhering to the T.120 and H.323 standards interoperate. Since it is built on the Domino environment, there's nothing stopping you from adjusting the center to meet your corporate standards, and you won't lose any functionality.

Scheduling a meeting is as simple as filling in a Notes form and includes all the options required. Three different types of meetings can be held:

Collaboration

Best meeting type for:

Small work groups and brainstorming sessions
2-5 participants
Multiple presenters
Everyone participating

Moderated presentation or demo

Best meeting type for:

Presentations, seminars, and structured meetings
10 or more participants
Multiple presenters
Some participation

Broadcast presentation

Best meeting type for:

Large presentations
Multiple presenters
Large audience with no participation

Files can also be attached to the meeting via whiteboard or sharing capabilities and the meeting can be password protected and hidden from the meeting list when confidentiality is a factor (figure 7). Furthermore, the meeting can be encrypted and you can identify whether the meeting should be made available to NetMeeting users. Basically, what you are getting with the Sametime meeting center is a complete set of tools to instantly start using real-time collaboration.

Figure 7: Confidential meetings -- Users must enter a password to enter confidential meetings. Passwords are distributed via e-mail.

An established platform

Sametime 1.5 proved its value with perfect integration of the Domino environment, letting you build state-of-the-art collaborative applications for the Notes client and browsers for your e-commerce sites or corporate intranet. With 2.0, this functionality is extended further and includes tools to let you broadcast to large audiences and use audio/video. Lotus listened closely to requests from Sametime 1.5 users about enhancements, and as a result most of them can be found in Sametime 2.0.

Sametime is an established platform that can be used as a stand-alone solution or can be easily integrated into an existing messaging and collaboration environment. Instant messaging, whiteboarding, screen sharing, audio and video conferencing, as well as the option of working with LTSS for instant multilingual translations provide you with necessary solutions in today's environment.

Keep your eyes open for a future Advisor article, to include a detailed development guide for Lotus Sametime 2.0.

COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY

Sametime

Lotus Sametime 2.0 enhances multimedia capabilities with broadcast meetings, translation services, and more.

Apply Real-time Collaboration with Sametime

No reader comments ... yet.

What do YOU think about this topic? Share your advice and thoughts using this form.

Your Name

REQUIRED : PUBLIC

Your E-Mail

REQUIRED : PRIVATE

Job, Company

OPTIONAL : PUBLIC

City, State, Country

OPTIONAL : PUBLIC

Your Web Site

OPTIONAL : PUBLIC

Your Comment

Please help everyone by keeping your comments on-topic, using clean language, and not defaming or making personal attacks.

Your e-mail address is required, but it will not be displayed to the public or given to anyone. See our Privacy Policy. Comments become visible after they pass our spam filter, and spammers and abusers are permanently blocked. Please report spam or abuse.

ARTICLE INFO

FREE ACCESS

MORE ADVISOR