I know, I didn't give you that much advanced notice, and despite another XPages webinar that was scheduled for the same exact time, we had a really decent turn-out.

If you missed my recent webinar on Mobilizing Apps with XPages, have no fear: as with all of GBS Group Talk webinars, we recorded it, and have made it available for playback.

Again, from our much-more-eloquent-than-me Marketing Team:

Learn about creating smartphone and mobile device-friendly User Interfaces and User Experiences for your existing traditional IBM Lotus Notes Client applications. In this 1 hour session we'll discuss development and architectural considerations as well as valuable techniques and code you can use to create a Mobile XPages app.

You can view this webinar, download the slidedeck in PDF format, and even download the example/demo NotesDatabases at gbs.com/en/videos.

This series will guide you -- an IBM Lotus Notes Domino XPages developer -- through creating a touchscreen smartphone and mobile device-friendly User Interface and User Experience for an existing traditional IBM Lotus Notes Client application. These tutorials will discuss development and architectural considerations as well as deep-dive into the specific code you can use to create a Mobile XPages app.

Click thru for more details and bookmark this post, which will be updated as each part in the series is published!

Here's something you might not see everyday: An XPage UI rocking an iPhone UX on a Blackberry:

My Build Project for my mobile development session, Creating mobile device apps for Lotus Notes and Domino applications, is a simple one: creating an XPage-based HTTP Request Proxy for a Personal Address Book, with absolutely no modifications to the target NotesDatabase design.

Hopefully I see you there, May 11th-15th in Boston!

Lotus Notes Domino, Blackberry, WAP, and forgetting your portfolio (and Ego)!

I found myself in a pretty interesting situation today: I had a customer that had a need that I could address with a very low-tech solution. And it got me wondering if we don't put too much on building this monolithic solution that leverages the greatest cutting edge technology to date and something that's completely unique and amazing... just to sorta pad our own egos -- me being a huge offender of that very thing! I will often take a look at a situation and say, "Hmm, I know how everyone else would handle it; how should I take a look at it?".

And for better or worse, I talk about these really cool, unconventional ways of addressing an issue.

Well, I try not to do that for customers and in particular I didn't this time around. Now, the problem (if you will) or the request was simple: they had a Lotus Notes Client-based application that they wanted to be able to take to the mobile device. Now, the mobile device in question was a Blackberry. They run their own BES server; it's all in-house. They have people in the field that access their backend environment with Blackberries.

Everything was setup, so all I had to do was take the data out of the NotesDatabase and put it into a format that would work on the Blackberry.

I could use direct HTTP Requests... so I went that route.

(Click thru for more...)

I was contacted by Keith the other day asking me for a downloadable example from my WML-enabling a Personal Address Book - It's in the cards.... article.

Instead of going the multi-Design Element route (as the original article called for a View Design Element and a Form Design Element), I thought that I would take a second to simplify the approach and instead deliver the same functionality with a single Agent Design Element.

The Agent - named mobile - can be added to any Lotus Notes Personal Address Book Template-based NotesDatabase, have that NotesDatabase setup with an appropriately configured Access Control List, put in on a Domino HTTP-enabled Server, and simply point your mobile devices to NotesDatabase/mobile.

The Agent itself is very simple - by design - and can allow for customization via tweaking to meet the needs of the particular customer:

Sub Initialize

 Dim s As New NotesSession
 Dim db As NotesDatabase
 Dim col As NotesDocumentCollection
 Dim doc As NotesDocument
 Dim markup_options As String
 Dim markup_cards As String
 
 Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
 Set col = db.AllDocuments
 Call col.FTSearch(|[form] = "Person"|, 0)
 
 Print |Content-type: text/vnd.wap.wml|
 
 If (col.Count > 0) Then
  
  Set doc = col.GetFirstDocument
  
  Do Until (doc Is Nothing)
   markup_options = markup_options + |<option value="| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("fullname"), "") + |"><onevent type="onpick"><go href="#card_| + Cstr(doc.UniversalID) + |" /></onevent>| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("fullname"), "") + |</option>|
   markup_cards = markup_cards + |<card id="card_| + Cstr(doc.UniversalID) + |" title="Contact Info"><p><b>| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("fullname"), "") + |</b><br />| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("mailaddress"), "") + |<br />| + Join(doc.GetItemValue("officephonenumber"), "") + |</p></card>|
     Set doc = col.GetNextDocument(doc)
  Loop
  
  Print |<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">|
  Print |<wml><card id="card1" title="| + Cstr(db.Title) + |"><p><select name="name">| + markup_options + |</select></p></card>| + markup_cards + |</wml>|
  
 Else
  
  Print |<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">|
  Print |<wml><card id="card1" title="| + Cstr(db.Title) + |"><p><b>Unable to load Contacts</b></p><p>There appears to be an issue with this address book. Please contact support.</p></card></wml>|
  
 End If
 
End Sub

Pretty simple stuff here, which renders the following WML markup:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">
<wml>

<card id="card1" title="Example WAP NAB">
<p>
<option value="Chris Toohey">
<onevent type="onpick">
<go href="#card_3CEDB7D07E5327D98525760200117ECA" />
</onevent>Chris Toohey</option>
</select>
</p>
</card>

<card id="card_3CEDB7D07E5327D98525760200117ECA" title="Contact Info">
<p>
<b>Chris Toohey</b><br />
ctoohey@dominoguru.com<br />
610.417.1700</p>
</card>

</wml>

So feel free to take the above LotusScript-based Agent Design Element code and use it to add a mobile device WAP UI to any Group Address Books and such that you might have lying around. Also, feel free to point your mobile device WAP-friendly browser to check-out the online demo that I've setup.

(Note: I wrote this in an Agent and leveraged things like FTSearch from within the mobile Agent. I do this so you can easily pinpoint what's going on and apply any required modifications.)

Now, for a killer solution: combine this with Showtime and deliver via Channel Push - for example - as many icon-laden WAP-enabled Personal Address Books that your customer teams require.

So, to review:

To implement this solution, you can simply create a new Agent Design Element named mobile, past in my code, and point any WAP-friendly mobile device to /mobile.