Last week I presented the IBM Social Business Toolkit SDK to some partners and customers. In this session I focussed on scenarios to describe the value when using IBM Connections and the SDK to build social apps and I focussed on the simple JavaScript samples in the playground which help developers to get started quickly.

Below are my slides. On slides 9ff you can find a preview of a new version of the playground that we'd like to publish soon. To demo the playground I used the "my communities" sample in several variations: on prem vs cloud, oneui and bootstrap, API vs REST vs UI control and a custom template for an UI control.

Yesterday I posted a video with a sample scenario that shows how to extend IBM SmartCloud for Social Business with additional workflow functionality via app dev.

Several people have asked me to also publish the slides and screenshots. So here they are ...

Over the next month there will be three Social Business Toolkit webinars for IBM Collaboration Solutions application developers. Check the events page for details.

October 9th: Working with Widgets in IBM Notes and IBM iNotes (add calendar entry)

October 23rd: IBM iNotes and SmartCloud Notes Web Customization (add calendar entry)

November 13th: Technology to deliver Exceptional Social Digital Experiences (add calendar entry)

Tomorrow (October 8th) OpenNTF will host a webinar "The Power of XPages Extensibility" (add calendar entry).

I've had the pleasure to work with the IBM Collaboration Solutions app dev community since November 2008. After we established the new OpenNTF organization, we could do many great projects for the community in the following years: app dev contests, webinars, XPages.info, XSnippets, CollaborationToday.info, new website, etc.

Many different people have been involved in these projects, but one person has been involved in all of them - Bruce Elgort. Bruce has been the chair of OpenNTF for the last 3.5 years and I've been lucky to work with him almost on a daily basis. In addition to the visible deliverables Bruce has done a lot of work behind the scenes, for example the work to get the non profit status for OpenNTF.

Personally I've learned a lot from you, Bruce. Your motivation to deliver pixel perfect designs, your awesome presentation skills, your ability to moderate diverse groups of people and your focus on concrete deliverables are just some examples that really helped me in my personal development.

Thank you!

Below is a picture taken just before our Lotusphere 2011 session.

There is a new API explorer for the Domino REST APIs integrated in the Playground on IBM Greenhouse. The screenshot shows in the left column the different REST APIs and in the main area the result of "/api/data".



You can try the API explorer live by following these steps. First choose "Domino on Greenhouse" as your environment in the upper right corner.



Then choose a REST API in the left navigator, e.g. "Database collection", and click on the "Get" symbol to expand the explorer. Before you can execute the call you need to log in to Greenhouse.



You can also use the explorer against your own Domino servers by downloading it from OpenNTF and installing it locally.

SugarCRM provides a connector for IBM Connections. Watch the video below to see the functionality in action.

There are several interesting integration points. IBM Connections is used to enrich the SugarCRM experience. Rather than re-implementing these features the Connections infrastructure is leveraged.

- An opportunity is associated with a Connections community (screenshot). Updates to the opportunity are added to the community activity stream and can be accessed from either the IBM Connections user interface or from SugarCRM directly (screenshot).

- Files from the community can also be accessed from the SugarCRM user interface (screenshot).

- Connections activities are also surfaced in SugarCRM allowing SugarCRM users to collaborate with non SugarCRM users, for example by assigning tasks to them (screenshot).

Technically the connector uses the Connections REST APIs from PHP.

The IBM partner TIMETOACT GROUP developed a product Custom Page & Web CMS Extension for IBM Connections.

"IBM Connections works perfectly for cases of personal and casual exchange of information and ideas. For the realization of a classic intranet homepage it is missing formal web content management functions as e.g. a conventional navigation and controllable news. With our easy to use custom homepage you can combine formal and casual information in one application and thereby take one big step into the direction of one social platform for your employees."

Technically the content management extension leverages IBM Connections as a content store, e.g. news are stored in Connections blogs and accessed via REST APIs.

Content from the content management extension is displayed on a custom home page which has been integrated in IBM Connections. This page can be customized using the same customization user interface that community moderators use to add widgets to communities. This allows the usage of the same/existing widgets also on the home page.

The deck below also talks about a clipping widget that allows content from external websites to be integrated and the deck lists several potential future extensions.

The IBM business partner Highland Solutions has developed a nice integration feature between IBM Connections and SugarCRM called SemanticCRM:

"... It transforms the customer relationship management system into a powerful search engine comprised of internal and external information. The intelligently classified information is triggered by related words or actions and pushed to the user as they create opportunities."

Watch the video (3m 38s) to see the functionality in action. The SugarCRM web interface has been extended to display search results from IBM Connections files, profiles and communities. The searches are invoked when filling out opportunity forms so that sales people can find easily context related information stored in IBM Connections.

Trilog Group provides a solution ProjExec® Live which is a social project management application for IBM SmartCloud for Social Business leveraging the IBM Connections functionality in the cloud: "The flexible on demand subscription model of ProjExec Live lets you initiate online project communities to collaborate on projects across virtual teams, customers, suppliers and partners instantaneously and at an extremely affordable price while eliminating the need to deploy the solution on-premise."

Watch the video to see ProjExec Live in action.

Technically the solution demonstrates a couple of interesting capabilities:
- Each project is linked to a Connections community, where project members can collaborate (video at 4m10s)
- User profiles are used from SmartCloud and project members are synchronized with community members (video at 4m55s)
- Extension of the SmartCloud apps navigator (video at 6m25s)
- Store shared files in Connections communities (video at 8m55s)

We have updated the user experience of the IBM Social Business Toolkit blog. The blog home page displays now featured blog entries at the top with a screenshot so that key blog entries remain visible for a longer time. For the list of blog entries we use now a newspaper style where entries are displayed in multiple columns. Initially the last three blog entries are displayed, older entries can be added to the page via the 'show more' button.





Previously we also updated the SBT Twitter, YouTube and Slideshare profiles to use the SBT style.

Social Business Toolkit home page:




Twitter:




YouTube:




Slideshare: