Below is an overview of the new IBM Social Business Toolkit and a list of resources.
IBM Social Business Toolkit – Overview
The IBM Social Business Toolkit is your single source for developing integrations and leveraging IBM Connections and IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. The toolkit provides a set of extensible tools and resources for developers who want to incorporate social capabilities into their applications and business processes. Watch this video for an overview of the SDK.
Social Business Toolkit SDK
The Social Business Toolkit SDK lets Web, Java and XPages developers easily access IBM Connections and IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. It can be run on several Java application servers like WebSphere Application Server, Tomcat, WebSphere Portal, and Domino. The SDK provides easy to use JavaScript and Java APIs that encapsulate authentication mechanisms like OAuth, avoid JSON and Atom parsing, and abstract the specific target environments.
Social Business Toolkit Playground and API Explorer
The SBT Playground is a web-based live demonstration of the JavaScript APIs that are exposed by the SDK. The Playground contains a large set of code snippets and examples that you can customize and use in your own applications. The Playground also comes with an integrated API explorer and API documentation. Try the Playground on IBM Greenhouse.
API Documentation
The IBM Social Business Development Wiki contains the documentation of the SDK, for example the Java API documentation and the JavaScript API documentation.
News
Collaboration Today is a news aggregator for IBM Collaboration Solutions professionals covering news about various IBM products like IBM Connections, IBM SmartCloud and IBM Domino. Read news about IBM Connections app dev and news about XPages.
IBM Social Business Toolkit – Get Started
Get Started
Watch this video for a short overview of the SDK or watch this longer video to learn about the IBM Collaboration Solutions app dev strategy. Then try out the Playground to see simple JavaScript samples running live against IBM Connections on IBM Greenhouse or watch the samples that come with the SDK in another video. There is also a quick start image in the IBM SmartCloud available for developers which comes with IBM Connections, IBM Domino, test user accounts, the SDK and other components preinstalled and preconfigured.
Get Started as HTML Developer
The SDK can be used to develop client side HTML and JavaScript code to access IBM Collaboration Solutions services without having to write any server side logic. As a JavaScript developer you can write and test your code via the Playground. Read the JavaScript API documentation to learn about the available functionality and check out the IBM Social Business Development Wiki for more details.
Get Started as Java Developer
The SDK can be used from Java code running on various Java application servers. Read the Java API documentation to learn about the available functionality and check out the IBM Social Business Development Wiki for more details. Watch this video to see how to set up the Java development environment. There is also a simple tutorial describing how to build your first J2EE app using the SDK and there is material available from workshops which guides developers in detail through the capabilities of the SDK.
Get Started as XPages Developer
The SDK can also be used from XPages applications to access IBM Collaboration Solutions services. Check out this deck for a description how to set up and use the SDK. Read the Java API documentation to learn about the available functionality and check out the IBM Social Business Development Wiki for more details. Watch this video to see a real life example. The source code of this sample can be downloaded.
IBM Social Business Toolkit – Community
Ask and answer Questions
StackOverflow is a programming Q and A site that is free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, free to read and free to index. Ask your questions and please use the tag ibmsbt so that other developers can easily find your questions. StackOverflow can be used for practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. For XPages related questions please also use the tag xpages.
Get latest Updates via Twitter
Follow the latest Social Business Toolkit related updates on Twitter via ibmsbt , collab2day and ibmsocialbizux. Additionally you can also search for the hashtags #ibmsbt, #xpages and #ibmconnections.
Download and contribute Open Source
OpenNTF.org is an open source community for IBM Collaboration Solutions with more than 800 projects. You can search, download and reuse full projects or code snippets. Additionally you can contribute your own projects and collaborate with other developers. OpenNTF also hosts regularly development contests and has a YouTube channel.
Contribute to the Social Business SDK via GitHub
While the actual releases of the SDK can be downloaded from OpenNTF, GitHub is used as source control repository. In order to get daily updates from the SDK, you can download the latest code directly from GitHub. The IBM development team is looking for more contributors for the SDK project. If you are interested to collaborate and contribute, please contact us.
Read Documentation and help improving it
Share your experiences and best practices with the IBM Social Business Toolkit in our wikis and help IBM create scenarios for successful deployments. The IBM Social Business Development Wiki contains the documentation of the SDK. More information can be found in the IBM Notes and Domino Application Development Wiki, the IBM Connections Wiki and the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business Wiki.
Read Blogs and write Blogs and Comments
The IBM Social Business Toolkit team has an official blog where we announce news and ask people to provide feedback. Additionally some developers have their own blogs, for example Ryan Baxter and Niklas Heidloff. On the OpenNTF blog you can find announcements of new open source projects for IBM Collaboration Solutions.
Attend Events
There are various types of events that you can attend, for example local user groups, webinars, Connect Comes To You events, etc. Check Collaboration Today, IBM developerWorks and SocialBiz User Group for a list of available events.