January 14th, 2008
Notes view to Symphony!
Last week when I blogged about transferring Notes view data into a spreadsheet, I was overwhelmed by your immediate requests to have this same functionality, but with Lotus Symphony. Well, here you go. The demo application has now been updated with a "Transfer Data To Symphony" action button. You can download the updated application here.
Update Jan 15/08: The "Transfer To Symphony" action button works in Lotus Notes 8.0.1 and above, but that does not mean that there are not ways to do this in earlier releases.
This makes for an extremely compelling demo, since the spreadsheet is opened inside Lotus Notes. This results in a very seamless process for the user, and that should certainly impress your boss, and drive those Notes 8 upgrades!
In case you did not notice, the demo application also has as a few views which use colour coding features to show how you can highlight data. If the value is below 25 it will be red, between 25 and 75 yellow, and above 75 green. In one of the views I just colour the text, in the other, the text and the background. I don't think enough customers use these simple and effective features in their Notes applications, so my hope is that this demo can help people appreciate what Notes is capable of! ;-)
Created 1/14/2008 11:40:40 AM by Guido Otto
( )
Just for your (and others) information:
As of Notes 7.0.2 and Notes 8.0 the really great feature "Copy elected as table" does no longer work properly.
It works / worked perfectly in Notes 6.5
For for some (large) tables, it raises a "Table cannot be wider than 22.75 inches (57.785cm)." error message.
Large means in our case 24 columns with a total width of "264".
Unfortunately management needs to export the Notes view on a weekly basis. With their brand new Notebooks it does not work any more (with old ones it did, same Notes version, maybe something with screen resoultion or driver).
Management is pretty annoyed and we again have a Notes vs. Exchange debate. This time wit focus on the better Office integration of Outlook / Exchange (and of course serial letter comes up as well)
I have been told that There is an SPR on the table isseu with number BUN6LMMVS but unfortunately this one seems to be non-public and - according to IBM tech support - there are no plans to fix (because it is working as designed)
IBM claims that the message is only a "informational" message with no more impact, but our experience is that there is no data pasted into clipboard when this message occures.
The official "workaround" from IBM is to use / code an Export-to-Excel-Agent ... but I don't want to "pimp" all our large views with an Agent. And what if a user needs to paste into a new mail instead of Excel?
I wonder how this fits into what IBM always says about backwards compatibility and TCO.
[2] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 11:57:43 AM by Rob McDonagh
(Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com)
Hey Alan,
Is this an 8.01 app? I get "cannot create automation object" on my 8.0 install. Just wondering if it's my setup, or if this would work if I was running 8.01.
[3] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 12:05:30 PM by Alan Lepofsky
(Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net)
Guido, you already contacted me about this, so I am not sure why you've decided to state it again here. But anyway, as I pointed out via email, the Copy View As Table feature is not really intended to be an Export To Excel bridge. If a critical part of your business application is to have management export views, than I do not understand why you don't want to program this feature (or pimp your views as you call it, which I like) into your application, thus making it even simpler and easier for the users. I am sure the managers would be much happier with a simple button which transfers the data for them, versus requiring them to copy/paste/format the data manually. You'd be a hero. How about really impressing them with a nice application upgrade, then they will be really happy with Notes, rather than using this lack of functionality in some silly Notes vs. Exchange debate. I think taking a few minutes and adding this feature makes a lot more sense than thinking about migrating your company to a new infrastructure, and then trying to re-write all your applications on another platform, most likely ending up with less functionally than what is available today.
As for the feature no longer working as you expect in Notes 7/8, I agree with you, something that used to work, should not be broken. I will ask around about the SPR.
[4] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 12:06:28 PM by Alan Lepofsky
(Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net)
@2, Hmmm, I had not thought about that. I'm not sure. I'll ask the developer who added the agent for me.
[5] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 12:31:13 PM by Mark Hughes
(Mark Hughes )
Looks like with using automation objects you could create graphs and charts as well, just like you would with excel, without leaving the notes client. Does anyone know where the com objects are documented for synphony? I looked at the source and it looked like star office com objects but i m not sure.
[6] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 12:44:10 PM by Ben Langhinrichs
(Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog)
@2 - In 8.0.1, this will work without any effort. In 8.0.0, you could get it to work by fudging a few registry entries (Alan Bell showed me how).
@5 - Absolutely, I am showing some things like this at Lotusphere in my BP201 A Jug of Wine, a Spreadsheet and Thee session, if you are going to be there.
[7] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 1:15:10 PM by Charles Robinson
(Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com)
@5 - John Head demonstrated this at Lotusphere 2005, and expanded it in 2006 (and co-presented with Alan Bell). Check out John's downloads for some samples: { Link } . The OpenOffice.org SDK has full documentation of the API: { Link } .
@6 - I truly don't mean to steal your thunder. I'm sure you'll cover different topics than John did, or present it in a completely different way. :-)
[8] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 1:34:15 PM by Alan Lepofsky
(Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net)
Thanks Ben. I don't mean to steal any of your thunder either. This was intended to just be a very simple demo, so that customers can see the very start of what is possible.
[9] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 5:18:37 PM by Ben Langhinrichs
(Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog)
Trust me, I'm not worried about anyone stealing my thunder. Besides my demos, which WILL surprise you, no matter what sessions you've see before mine at Lotusphere (and even if you think you've read my slides), the way I am doing the presentation is an experiment in and of itself. No, I am not wearing a kilt or handing out scotch, but you won't want to miss it, even if it is Thursday morning and you are hung over.
[10] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 6:13:54 PM by Ian Randall
(Ian Randall )
It would be nice if you could also provide an example with the same functionality of Exporting to Excel and Symphony from Domino via a Web browser as not all Domino users have a Notes Client.
[11] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 6:21:07 PM by Mike Brown
(Mike Brown )
Alan,
Is this new agent Windows-only? Has anybody tested it on the Linux client?
Cheers,
- Mike
[12] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/14/2008 11:39:22 PM by Nick Halliwell
(Nick Halliwell http://www.comware.net)
Alan, its great and am so please that you did it in Lotus Apps (AKA Symphony). Any chance that next time the Lotus Apps functionality comes before the MS Apps functionality (:>).
However have you actually looked at the data that comes in. It is coming in as Text (This is the 1st number '85). Obviously this is meant to be numbers. How can we change it. I have tried formatting it to text and it does not change anything. You of course can do it manually, but kinda of defeats the objective.
Also when it opens Symphony it opens it in some funny mode, there are no menus or tool bars across the top. However the side bar is there and functions correctly.
Nick
[13] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/15/2008 4:12:24 AM by Kerr
(Kerr )
@10, The easiest way is to simply return an html table with the relevant content, but use application/xls as the mime type. The browser will treat it as if it was a downloaded .xls attachment and pass it to excel. Excel will then happily read the HTML table and treat it as row and column data for a spreadsheet. You can even put formulae in the table cells.
[14] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/15/2008 9:01:49 AM by Santosh Kumar
(Santosh Kumar )
@2 The capability of accessing SpreadSheet from Lotuscript has been enabled in Notes 8.0.1. So this would work with Notes 8.0.1.
Santosh
[15] re: Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/15/2008 10:50:48 AM by Alan Lepofsky
(Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net)
Hi Nick. I've posted an updated version of the NSF, where the values are now numbers. This was done by adding:
Call cell.setPropertyValue("NumberFormat", 2)
Again, I want to make sure to point out to people, this is just an quick example of what is possible. Many customers and vendors have contacted me about more detailed products in this area (Notes to Symphony integration) , which is really great news!
[16] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/15/2008 11:55:10 AM by Pedro Quaresma
(Pedro Quaresma )
This is excellent Alan, thanks!
@7 So does this mean that all this API used in this test db is part of the Open Office API? And it can potentially be used with other ODF implementations?
I have to admit I was wondering where these "com.sun.star.ServiceManager" etc were coming from
[17] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/15/2008 4:24:27 PM by Ben Langhinrichs
(Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog)
Pedro,
Virtually all of the API samples you see working with Symphony or the Productivity Editors will work with OpenOffice, but the reverse is not quite as true. The Productivity Editors are based on an earlier version of OpenOffice (roughly 1.1), and some functionality is disabled even for that subset due to the way it is packaged inside Notes. I am working on trying to understand the limitations/possibilities so that I can share them at Lotusphere.
Ben
[18] re: Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/15/2008 8:01:39 PM by Alan Lepofsky
(Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net)
I've been told by product management, that Symphony Beta 4 will include expanded application development capabilities, documentation, samples, tutorials, etc. I will blog about it after we announce at Lotusphere next week!
[19] Notes view to Symphony!
Created 1/15/2008 8:45:25 PM by Alan Lepofsky
(Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net)
@11 - I'm sorry, I don't know if this works on Linux. Tested, hah! Remember, I said this was a quick example :-)
[20] works with N8.0.0
Created 1/20/2008 8:55:55 AM by Jörg Asmussen
( )
@2 & @14
Got it working with Notes 8.0.0 when started with Eclipse.
When I run N 8.0.0 in basic mode, the code starts my Star Office installation, but it doesn't seem to be able to communicate, saying something like [communication? bridge].
Anyway Santosh, thanks for showing that it can be done. Was about to give up hope.
[21] [automation bridge] error
Created 1/20/2008 9:11:18 AM by Jörg Asmussen
( )
Get the error when using Notes8.0.0 and I haven't started the productivity version of spreadsheet manually. When I've a window open, the view data load fine into a seperate new spreadsheet. If no productivity tools spreadsheet is currently open, the agent will start Star Office and I get the [automation bridge] error.
[22] Symphony opening in different window
Created 7/9/2008 9:23:08 AM by Martin Vereecken
(Martin Vereecken http://www.bizzybee.be)
Hi Alan,
Nice, powerful demo!
However, for some reason your example always opens the spreadsheet in a new window, so the result looks very similar to the Excel solution. I don't say it's the code, it seems like I never manage to open/create a Symphony file in a tabpage, it alwasy opens a new window. Any ideas on what's wrong and how to fix it? Thanks!
Regards,
Martin
