Introducing IBM Workplace Services Express

Document options Document options requiring JavaScript are not displayed Rate this page Help us improve this content

Level: Introductory

Ellen Tiberi, Technical Editor, IBM Corporation

12 Apr 2005
Updated 15 Nov 2006

If you are new to IBM Workplace Services Express 2.6, find out how this collaborative platform can benefit your organization with this introductory article that looks at document creation and management, Team Spaces, instant messaging, and more.

[Editor's note: This article was updated for IBM Workplace Services Express 2.6.]

IBM Workplace Services Express is collaborative software that facilitates communication among team members, allowing them to work together more efficiently to achieve their project and business goals. By accessing the same collaborative portal interface, users can access their applications and shared on-line work areas and create, edit, and share documents from any computer with a Web browser (in a main office, a branch office, a manufacturing floor, and so on). Users are not tied to a particular workstation to access their data. You may be asking yourself, "How is this different from IBM Workplace Collaboration Services?" Good question. Workplace Services Express carves out its own niche in the Workplace world by catering to small to medium businesses (SMBs) as opposed to the enterprise-wide IBM Workplace solution.

This article introduces you to IBM Workplace Services Express 2.6. It provides a high-level overview of some of the key functionality in Workplace Services Express. This article is intended for system administrators and new users of Workplace Services Express.

IBM Workplace Services Express defined

An often important need in small to medium businesses is for the product to be easy to deploy and operate due to small IT departments. Workplace Services Express was designed for quick and easy installation. The installation program is less complex than IBM Workplace Collaboration Services and other WebSphere Portal products and gives the installer very few questions to answer. For a visual depiction of the screens you see during the installation process, go to the Workplace Services Express InfoCenter.

You can install Workplace Services Express on either Microsoft Windows or Linux servers, and it supports browser-based Windows or Linux clients.

The user interface

The Workplace Services Express user environment is simpler than that of IBM Workplace Collaboration Services. By default, the interface has four tabs, corresponding to four pages: Welcome, Mail, Team Spaces, and Search. You can add more tabs/pages, and you can customize Workplace Services Express, but the out-of-the-box functionality enables you to hit the ground running and feel immediate benefits of increased productivity and communication.

Workplace Services Express further defines its niche by combining the Workplace Team Collaboration features from the IBM Workplace Collaboration Services with IBM WebSphere Portal - Express capabilities and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) functionality. Workplace Services Express includes IBM (Lotus) Workplace functionality, such as Team Spaces (including Documents and Applications), Workplace Builder, Workplace portlets (such as Team Calendar, Discussion, and so on), and instant messaging and awareness.

In addition to these slices of collaborative functionality from our existing products, Workplace Services Express adds several new Team Space templates, many new themes with several different navigational styles for the tabs/pages, and new features such as Lists portlets and a palette from which you can drag-and-drop portlets onto a portal page and arrange them as you like.

For mail, you can integrate your existing back-end mail system, such as Lotus Domino or Microsoft Exchange, and display your email, calendar, and other business applications and content in portlets, enabling you to access it all from any browser. See the "Mail portlets" section later on in this article.

A key capability of Workplace Services Express is that it can leverage your existing deployments of products such as Microsoft Office. Workplace Services Express includes support for creating, reading, and editing documents in Microsoft Office 2000, XP, and 2003 with the new Document Manager Desktop Components feature. You can perform in-place editing of Microsoft documents that are centrally stored and managed so that they can be accessed by and shared with other team members.

Now let's delve a bit further into some of the functionality in Workplace Services Express.

Back to top

Team Spaces

A Team Space, a Workplace application, is a shared on-line work area that you can create and optimize to aid your team members in reaching their project goals as promptly and effectively as possible. Very simply, it is a collection of pages with portlets that designated users can access. Workplace Services Express provides 12 ready-to-use Team Space templates designed and tailored toward typical business projects to give you a head start with your own projects. The templates provide structure and organization and various means of facilitating communication between team members. You can customize the Team Spaces created from the templates. A Team Space provides a designated group of users with shared access to the appropriate applications and documents, a team calendar, on-line chat functionality, discussion forums, and other tools that are necessary to help the team keep their project organized, optimal, and on track.

The Team Space creator is not required to be an administrator; there is no need for access to WebSphere Portal administration. When you create a Team Space, you are designated as its default moderator; this allows you to grant the appropriate access to fellow project members as well as change the name, description, and look and feel of the Team Space. The Team Space moderator controls membership to the Team Space through the Manage Members portlet.

By default, three catalogs (or application categories) are available: Team Spaces, Document Libraries, and Applications. This functionality is not new, but the user interface is slightly different from that of IBM Workplace Collaboration Services. There are fewer top level tabs, and depending upon the Theme you choose, the catalogs may be listed vertically down the left side of the screen as in Figure 2.

Applications are another flavor of Team Spaces. The Team Spaces and Applications tabs contain (you guessed it) the Team Spaces and Applications you have access to. Applications include chat room, discussion, event planning, and meeting materials.

The Documents tab lists document libraries to which you have access. Document libraries are very powerful in that they provide a centralized location for documents that team members can access and share. Document libraries facilitate team collaboration by enabling the team members to make changes and comments. If versioning is enabled, members can save documents under unique version numbers, which provides a history of the changes made to the document. You can lock documents in document libraries so that they cannot be modified by more than one user at a time. Depending upon access rights that the Document Library moderator has granted, members can read, edit, or delete documents as well as create and delete folders. Simple workflow allows you to implement a draft approval process. Document libraries may also reside inside Team Spaces.

In the following figure, the Acme Sales Analysis Team Space is newly created from the Sales Team template; this template was designed to include portlets and pages designed specifically for a sales team to use. Workplace Services Express introduces document taxonomy functionality that allows customized folder hierarchies. In Figure 3, a default document taxonomy has been created on the Documents tab of the Sales Team Space.

Team Project template
The home page of the Team Project template provides portlets, such as Announcements, FAQs, and Links, and also a Members portlet listing the project team members. The subsequent pages and portlets follow a specific format that is beneficial for project team member use. For example, portlets dealing with crucial task assignments and tracking as well as a team calendar are on the Schedule page immediately following the home page; this page provides the focus and organization of the project. Other pages and portlets delve into the specific communication mechanisms and tools (Discussion portlet, centralized Document storage, and a chat room) that can be used to achieve the project team goal.

The Team Project template consists of the following pages and portlets:

Sales Team template
The Sales Team template provides an established structure for all sales associates on a team, in a department, or other entity so that they can immediately document and execute their sales goals and track team tasks, customer contact list, prospects, and so on. The home page contains a Members portlet that identifies members of the team (as defined by the Team Space creator or moderator).

The template contains a predefined document taxonomy (folders) specifically designed for storing all the documentation associated with a sales plan (for example, forecasting, prospecting, presentations, sales methods, and so on). See Figure 3 for an example of the document taxonomy associated with the Sales Team template.

The Sales Team template consists of the following pages and portlets.

Marketing Team template
This template provides a marketing group with a predefined infrastructure for storing and sharing data, such as market research, branding, packaging design, marketing strategies, and so on.

Like the other templates, the Marketing Team template provides a means for documenting and updating tasks, assignments, milestones, and more to help ensure the project stays on track. Team members can maintain a high level of communication regarding the various aspects of the marketing plan through discussion and chat functionality.

The Marketing Team template consists of the following pages and portlets.

Human Resources Team template
This template contains many of the same portlets/pages as the templates described before, and its document taxonomy provides helpful categorizations for HR materials, such as advertising campaigns, job fair materials, recruiting tools, and management training.

The template also contains the standard communication and scheduler portlets and pages to make sure all team members stay on track with their schedules and with each other.

The Human Resources Team template consists of the following pages and portlets.

Customer Support Team template
The home page of this template provides a means of communicating FAQs, announcements, and helpful links to folks in a Customer Support department. There also is an Issues portlet used for tracking issues as well as the standard portlets/pages cited previously.

Customer Support member phone schedules and planned Vacations can be tracked on the Schedule tab.

The Customer Support Team template consists of the following pages and portlets.

For information about developing and deploying applications created from the Workplace Services Express templates, see the developerWorks article, "Developing and deploying collaboration applications with IBM Workplace Services Express."

Back to top

Document Manager Desktop Components

A slick feature of Workplace Services Express is the Document Manager Desktop Components application, which provides an easy and convenient way for you to work with documents stored/shared in your document libraries using the desktop applications installed on your computer.

NOTE: This functionality is available only to users on Windows workstations.

Document Manager is the interface that allows you to view and work with your document libraries in IBM Workplace Collaboration Services. The Document Manager portlet is located in each library in the Document Library catalog. This same functionality is present in Workplace Services Express (for example, as can be seen in the Team Space template descriptions earlier).

After installing the Desktop Components on your computer, you can directly access files in your document library within particular applications. Document Manager-specific menus appear in Microsoft Office applications that may be installed on the computer, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. The Desktop Components provide integration with Windows Explorer as well as Microsoft Office applications.

You can install the Desktop Components with a Portal Document Manager (PDM) browser plug-in or by downloading an executable and running it manually. From the Documents page of a Team Space or from a Document Library, click the Tools button and choose Install Desktop Components from the pop-up menu. A screen displays the installation options: Install Now and Download. The Install Now option triggers the browser plug-in that automatically installs the Document Manager Desktop Components (default directory: C:\Program Files\IBM\WP Document Manager\) and configures default desktop settings.

If you select Download, a dmdiinst.exe file is downloaded to the client machine, and you can manually run the installation program via the executable at a later time.

NOTE: The Download process does not use the PDM browser plug-in, and it also does not provide a default configuration setup. It is more manual in nature. A link to step-by-step installation instructions exists on the Desktop install screen when you select Tools - Install Desktop Components.

The browser plug-in is enabled by default, but the administrator can disable it while in Configure mode for the document library. When the browser plug-in is disabled, you do not see the Install Now option in the interface, only the Download option.

After you set up the Desktop Components, you can create a file, for example, in Microsoft PowerPoint, and then upload it to a document library for sharing with others. To upload the file in PowerPoint, select from PowerPoint's menu: File - Document Manager - Add To Library.

Back to top

The Palette and Lists portlets

Workplace Services Express introduces the Palette, a slide-out panel from which you can select portlets to add to a page. To add a portlet to any Team Space or other Portal page, click the Palette tab. The Palette displays the portlets to choose from. You can select either the Portlets title bar or the Lists title bar in the palette. Each expands to show you the portlets available to use.

Speaking of Lists, Workplace Services Express includes Lists portlets, which are small applications that provide a speedy means of posting announcements, providing frequently asked questions and answers, tracking and prioritizing issues, recording attendance, providing important URLs, and so on in Team Spaces and other Portal pages. For example, you can click the Lists title bar (shown in Figure 6) and drag-and-drop the FAQs portlet onto your Team Space.

You can configure Lists portlets to be interactive if needed. For example, a project leader can solicit and receive quick feedback from fellow team members about a topic, such as their upcoming vacation time.

For more information about Lists portlets, see the developerWorks article, "Introduction and guide to Lists portlets in IBM Workplace Services Express 2.0."

The Palette initially contains default portlets, but an administrator can add other portlets as desired to the palette. Each user can change their Palette. Any portlet that can be added to a given Portal page or Team Space can be placed on the Palette for later use. It is important to note that having many Lists portlets on a page significantly slows down performance. And the number of items in each Lists portlet should also be relatively small.

Portlet drag-and-drop

As mentioned earlier, Workplace Services Express introduces new ways for users to customize what they see. You can reposition portlets in a Team Space or other Portal page by clicking and dragging the Portlet title bar to the desired place on the page. A translucent icon appears during the drag to show where the portlet is placed when the mouse button is released. When a horizontal line appears, you can drop the portlet in that position if desired.

An administrator can lock portlets into specific positions, so you may not be able to reposition particular portlets. For example, the Search portlet on the Search page is locked; when you click and drag the blue title bar of the Search portlet, the portlet moves with the mouse pointer, but when you attempt to drop it into another position on the page, it snaps back to its original location. Likewise, when you drag a portlet into an area that the administrator has locked, the portlet snaps back to its original position when you attempt to drop it.

Back to top

Mail portlets

Workplace Services Express contains predefined portlets that allow you to access your existing mail, calendar, and address book information. You must have an already established back-end mail server, such as a supported version of Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino, to configure mail and other collaborative portlets. Some of the mail options are:

• The Domino Web Access portlet allows you to view your Domino-based mail file (if based on a Domino Web Access template design) and receive, create, and send mail messages.
• The Consolidated Mail Client lets you perform standard mail functions using a Web browser or wireless phone. You can send and receive mail (and attachments) as well as manage the messages you receive.
• The IBM Internet Mail Box connects to an IMAP or POP3 Internet-based mail server to receive, create, and send Internet email using either a Web browser or a wireless phone.

NOTE: If you are an international user and connect to an IMAP or POP3 mail server, use the IBM Internet Mail Box portlet instead of the Consolidated Mail Client so that you can view the mail portlet contents in your native language.

The Microsoft Exchange Mail portlets connect to Exchange 5.5 and 2000 servers and allow you to view, receive, create, and send mail messages.

In Configure mode for the chosen portlet, the Workplace Services Express administrator creates a credential slot or uses an existing credential slot for accessing the back-end mail server and selects the protocol (such as Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000, IMAP, or POP3) used by the back-end mail server. Advanced mode also gives the administrator the option to allow additional functionality in the portlet, such as using Document Manager for saving and attaching files, enabling rich text content within new emails, and viewing attachments in HTML.

You can add the Mail portlets to any page, but it is recommended that they be added to the Mail tab. Before adding the portlets, the administrator must configure the connection to the back-end mail server as mentioned.

Back to top

People Finder and Instant Contacts

As with other IBM Workplace and WebSphere Portal products, Workplace Services Express provides an easy way for locating fellow employees and contacting them on-line through People Finder. Workplace Services Express also contains an on-line status indicator in the top right corner of the user interface, so you can change your on-line status no matter where you are in the portal.

The Instant Contacts portlet lets you create and organize your own list of people you interact with frequently so that you can instantly contact fellow project team members by starting an on-line chat session. The Live Names feature is also implemented throughout Workplace Services Express so that when you see a name, you will have an indication of whether or not that person is currently available on-line.

Back to top

User customizations

Peppered throughout this article are examples of how individual users can customize their interface, content, layouts, tools, and lists. The Getting Started portlet on the My Workplace page provides you with the means to customize your work area, create Team Spaces, create pages, and so on. User friendly instructions appear directly on the various pages.

Many of the actions that you can perform in Workplace Services Express portlets are dependent upon the access level the administrator has initially granted you. For example, you could have Reader, Author, Editor, or Manager access to a particular portlet or Team Space or document library. The type of access you have depends upon what you are accessing. For detailed information, refer to the "Access to applications and components" topic in the IBM Workplace Services Express InfoCenter.

Back to top

Conclusion

Workplace Services Express helps you connect your users, data, and applications in one location that can be accessed from almost anywhere. We hope that this article helps you understand the product a little better. The Resources section lists more information about Workplace Services Express. As a follow up to this article, you may want to read the Best Practices document (PDF file download).

Resources

• For more information about the Lists portlets in Workplace Services Express, see the developerWorks article, "Introduction and guide to Lists portlets in IBM Workplace Services Express 2.0."
  
  
• For information about creating applications in Workplace Services Express, see the developerWorks article, "Developing and deploying collaboration applications with IBM Workplace Services Express."
  
  
• The Workplace Services Express product documentation can help you get started installing and configuring Workplace Services Express.
  
  
• To learn more about Workplace Services Express, check out the developerWorks IBM Workplace resource center.
  
  
• Get involved in the developerWorks community by participating in developerWorks blogs.
  
  
• Browse for books on these and other technical topics.
  

About the author

		Ellen Tiberi is a member of the Knowledge Management team in IBM Lotus Software Support. She has been a Technical Editor since 1991, and currently edits, publishes, and occasionally writes technotes for Workplace Services Express as well as other Workplace products, Lotus Notes/Domino, and the Lotus Collaborative Portlets and Components that work with IBM WebSphere Portal.

Rate this page

Please take a moment to complete this form to help us better serve you. Did the information help you to achieve your goal? Yes No Don't know   Please provide us with comments to help improve this page:   How useful is the information? 1 2 3 4 5 Not useful Extremely useful

Share this.... Digg this story del.icio.us Slashdot it!

Back to top