(This post refers to Time Tracker v1.0 - Open Source Efficiency Tracking Utility for the Lotus Notes Client.)

Setup of your Time Tracker Sidebar Widget

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Managing your Time Tracker Preferences

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Just a few updates and mentions of things to come!

• Today marks the official launch of LotusLive, where you can sign up (if you aren't already) and feel free to connect to me. In case you don't know about LotusLive, it's an ever expanding enterprise-level cloud services offering from IBM.

  I hear ya, "Why should I care?". Well, the cloud services (in this case) are not just buzzword technology. The LotusLive Engage team has put together a pretty slick module-based offering - leveraging Lotus technologies like Connections and Unyte - that not only address a lot of the needs of enterprise users, but also allows business partners and customer developers to build click-to-cloud onsite solutions portfolio integration with the ever-expanding offerings.

  Our own Stuart McIntyre has started the LotusLiveBlog, where you can get the latest community information on all the slick things coming out of camp LotusLive!

• Niklas Heidloff writes - via the OpenNTF.org blog - that he and Steve Castledine are organizing a redesign of our favorite open source Lotus-themed community development resource! As mentioned, we all had the chance to suggest and vote/demote feature and functionality requests (via IdeaJam) - and now the real fun begins!

  If you're interested in helping improve one of the greatest resources to our community, follow the link above to the original post and contact Niklas and Steve directly!

• I've been posting a few quickie tutorials over the past few days, going over the basics in Domino Web Development - including creating $$ViewTemplates and a simple permalinks vs. NotesDocument UNID overview. So far, the feedback has been amazing (thanks!), and it sounds like you guys like these introductory-level Domino Web Application Development videos... so I thought I'd keep them rolling.

  Expect to see the following soon on this site (or you can subscribe to my YouTube channel):

  • Using the $$Return
  • $$ViewBody vs. Embedded View
  • Using a base href in Domino Web Applications

  Feel free to give me your gut-check feedback on these topics or suggestions for others!

• One of the projects that I'm working on - to make it uber l33t - is going to require more functionality from Zephyr than I had originally written - specifically, I want to allow Mail Merge-like functionality for Hotspots, Buttons, etc.!

  The real world need for this is pretty simple: I'm putting an Approve and a Reject image on a workflow-generated email message. Each image contains a Hotspot that - when clicked - will (in this case) point to a given Domino Agent that will handle the request (Approval/Rejection) based on the pre-defined workflow.

  Simply put, the Job Document will contain two specific NotesItems: webappURL (which I'll initially pull from a Preferences document) and docUNID. The Zephyr Email Template will contain the images and the Hotspots, each with the following syntax:

  <webappURL>approve?openagent&docUNID=<docUNID>

  I'll be adding a few other suggested enhancements to the application, including the option to use a timestamp instead of the "1"-stamp when Zephyr runs against a given JobDocument, and a Preferences-defined JobDocument purge Agent to keep things tidy. Any other suggestions for Zephyr v0.2, email/IM/comment!

Wow - ok, that was longer than I thought it was going to be when I started! ;-)

It's been a while since I've updated the Event Calendar Public Build project... more due to me being extremely busy than not working on the build. Since my last video, I've put some considerable work into the application. It's still Notes Client-only at the moment... and for good reason: we're far from done! See, one of my goals with this particular project was to show you how to take a Notes-based application and ready it for the web... and I wanted to build a pretty feature-rich and configurable (which is key!) before I jump into the web-build of this particular project.

So what have I been doing?

Well, for starters I've added a facility that will allow you to assign Groups (from an Admin-defined list) as an additional level of categorization... and read-access restrictions - all configurable at the UI level to the Event Author via a Restrict to Group? flag.

You'll also notice the Reservations Embedded View - pretty self-explanatory there: user's will be able to click-and-subscribe to events!

I've also done some considerable work with the Preferences engine: specifically adding more keywords (which was simple enough, and a given really), and the Admin-defined Color-coding... with a twist. See, I'm allowing you to define the Color Profile Formula in a Formula field - using placeholders for the font and background colors - and I then apply the Runtime Formula (which is a Computed and evaluated version of the Admin-defined Formula).

If that wasn't enough, I've also allowed you to define the default action of the New Event button via the Preferences document's Default Action. Selecting Event Form will wire the button to launch the simple single-entry Entry|entry Form Design Element, while selecting Event Wizard will wire the same button to instead envoke the New Events Wizard. This wizard, which is lifted from my Lotus Notes Client Wizard components example download, will allow the user to create multi-day event entries in the Event Calendar as well as drive the creation of the standard single-day event.

All of this resulting in a very simple, but very functional Lotus Notes Client application that can handle basic Event and Reservation management!

The next step, prior to the web build, is the C&S (Calendaring and Scheduling) integration. The intended goal is simple: click on an event, and a new Meeting invitation is sent from a simple standard Mail Database Application, containing all of the Event information, and putting those individuals with reservations into the invite list - where we'll leverage the built-in C&S functionality in the standard Mail Application Template... which is something I certainly don't want to hack around in or attempt to re-write!

I'm on the fence as to whether to public this particular design release yet, which is admittedly incomplete. See, I don't want someone to take this application as a finished product and start using it... because the finished product will kick this one in the nards!

... but if I get enough "gimme-gimme-gimme!" feedback, I'll post what I have so far for download and dissection!