The new IBM Sametime App for the iPad – Demo

Just a short demo which I created to show you what you can do with the new

IBM Sametime Meetings Viewer for iPad

And here’s the link to the iTunes App Store

Start Sametime TURN Server as Windows Service

Since Ver. 8.5.2 Sametime provides video communications across NATed networks or firewall via the TURN server when direct peer-to-peer communications are not possible. Unfortunately this “server” is only a java program which has to be started manually and which will be closed when you log out the server.

Workaround is to create a windows service which will start the TURN server as local system account:

- Download Windows Service Manager (SrvMan) from: http://tools.sysprogs.org/srvman/
- open run.bat (which starts the TURN server) and add the full path to TurnServer.jar
- run SrvMan and add the batch file as service

That’s it, now you can automatically start all servers as windows services

Sametime security – Public “Classic” Meeting Listings

Looks like many Sametime Admins like to share the all meetings view with everyone, just do a google search:

“allinurl: stconf.nsf”

I would recommend to check your ACL settings and restrict access to authenticated users only!

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!

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.