How to reanimate your Sametime environment (after failed upgrade)

I already upgraded many customer environments from IBM Sametime 8.5.2 to 8.5.2 IFR1 without any hitches but this time I tried it on our own internal production environment and failed miserably.

Don’t ask me why but the upgrade of the SSC  failed and my system was left in an “unstable state”
-> #StuffIBMTechnotesSay
Definition of unstable = I can’t install the upgrade, SSC is not working, I can’t reinstall 8.5.2

Fortunately I found a Technote which rescued me out of this unstable state and helped me to go one step forward
Upgrading Sametime System Console to 8.5.2 IFR 1 fails during installation

But still the upgrade failed and by searching for errors inside the logs (yes, there are many, many logs and it will take a while to find useful infos) I found a possible credential problem. I remembered an upgrade preparation step
Updating Installation Manager if the administrator name or password has changed
which I ignored because I never changed the admin account or password.
I checked the encoded wasadmin password in the installregistry.xml file and surprise, surprise, it was not the current admin password.
After changing the password the upgrade worked as expected.

Remember
1. Always check the wasadmin password, even when you didn’t change anything
2. Download the iscmod_uninstall.py from the technote, it will be a good friend if anything goes wrong

Happy upgrading!

Almost ready – Lotusphere 2012 is waiting

Done:

To do:

See you in Orlando!

How to enable Online Awareness in your Lotus Notes Client after Sametime upgrade

Many customers are upgrading their pre 8.5 Sametime environments to 8.5.x Versions and therefore have to change the directory lookups to LDAP.
(If you already used LDAP lookups just ignore this post.)

Unfortunately online awareness for hierarchical names will not work anymore in the Lotus Notes Client (still works for email addresses):

This is because the hierarchical name is not a “standard” lookup field. If you use Domino as LDAP server the displayname field will be your hierarchical name and you have to add it to the LDAP lookup.

To do this open up your Notes Client with the Sametime Admin ID and connect to the Sametime configuration DB (stconfig.nsf).
Now open up the LDAP config doc and add (displayname=%s*) to the user search filters:

Save the file, restart you community server and recheck online awareness in your Notes Client. Now you should see online awareness for hierarchical names working again.

Comments/remarks very welcome.

Native iPhone App für IBM Sametime 8.5.2 erschienen – IFR1 released

Seit dem 22.11. steht der Intermediate Feature Release (IFR) 1 für Sametime 8.5.2 zum Download bereit.
Hauptziel dieses Releases war es, neben Produkt Bugfixing weitere Funktion für Sametime zu implementieren, ohne das man auf einen neuen Punktrelease warten muss. Die wohl meist erwartete Neuerung stellt die native iPhone/iPad Applikation dar, welche alles bietet, was man sich von einer iOS5 App vorstellt (Notifications, Picture uploads…). Der Client soll es auch ermöglichen SUT (Sametime Unified Telephony) Anrufe direkt vom iOS Gerät aus zu initiieren. Link zum Appstore.

Genauere Details werde ich hier vorstellen, sobald ich die App in der Tiefe testen konnte.
Eine weitere sehnlichst erwartete Neuerung ist die Erweiterung der unterstützen Plattformen:

- Browser : Neu wird auch der der IE 9 (neben 6-8) unterstützt sowie Firefox 6&7 (neben 3.6)

- Server: Domino 8.5.3 wird nun offiziell als Applikationsserver unterstützt

- OS: Neu wird auch Apple OS 10.7 unterstützt

Eine sehr wichtige Neuerung gibt es auch bei Sametime Unified Telephony. Neu ist es möglich die Server virtualisiert zu betreiben, ohne das eine spezifische HW vorausgesetzt wird. Dies ermöglicht eine erhebliche Konsolidierung der Infrastruktur und eine sehr grosse Kosteneinsparung, wenn man weltweit mit mehreren verteilten SUT Servern arbeitet.

Insgesamt bin ich positiv überrascht was der IFR1 alles Neues bereitstellt und bin gespannt auf meine ersten Update Erfahrungen.

Customizing the Sametime Meeting Center UI

I really like the new Sametime Meeting Room Center UI, nice blue/green/grey screen.
Nevertheless our CI colors are more like purple and so I had to try to change the UI accordingly. Sametime Meeting Center is a pure Websphere application so customizing means find the app resource files and you are almost done.

So the magic path is :
$WAS_INSTALL_PROFILES_MEETING\installedApps\$CELL\Sametime Meeting Server.ear\stmeetings.webclient.war\static-20110517-1459\oneui\common\styles

To change UI from

to

was pretty easy.
For this example I just changed 7 images (btnActionBkgd.png, LotusSametime.png, STiconHomepageLarge.gif, titlebarLeft.png, titlebarMid.png, titlebarRight.png, welcomeBkgd.png) and did some CSS changes in defaultTheme.css