Blog Entry

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Novell has released the latest installment of the Novell Vibe OnPrem product. This is version 3, code named Durango, and formally known as ‘Novell Teaming’.

The collaboration story, product line and solutions continue to grow within Novell. All of our customers will benefit from this solid delivery of a variety of collaboration tools and products. If you have collaboration needs, Novell has collaboration solutions!

Connecting the different products!

In an effort to continue to integrate the Novell’s collaboration products together, there are actually two products that are releasing as part of this announcement. Novell Messenger has also been updated and will be available to customers who either are on Novell GroupWise maintenance or who are on Novell Vibe OnPrem maintenance.

Novell Messenger 2.2 has been enhanced to provide additional integrations with Novell products. We added Messenger/Conferencing integrations in Messenger 2.1. We added Conferencing/OnPrem integrations in Messenger 2.2. With Messenger 2.1, you are able to begin an Instant Message with someone and then promote that chat session to a Conferencing session directly from your Novell Messenger client. With 2.2, Messenger is used to provide presence information.

Here are the substantial improvements in version 2.x.

Novell Messenger 2.x provides substantial improvements over Novell Messenger 1 in the following areas:

• Vibe OnPrem Integrations: Novell Messenger can now be used to provide presence information in Novell Vibe OnPrem.
• Conferencing Integrations: Novell Messenger users can now start a Conferencing meeting directly from the Messenger client.
• Windows and Cross-Platform Client Enhancements: The client has added functionality for chat rooms, broadcasts, personal history, custom online status, and support for Windows XP themes.
• GroupWise Integration: You can now see a user’s presence in the GroupWise Windows client and send a message directly from the Quick Info message area.
• Administration Enhancements: Both the Messaging Agent and the Archive Agent support IPV6. You can now control who can use the Remember Password feature, who can print and save conversations, who can use the Personal History feature, and who can create chat rooms. In addition, a new chat container has been added to hold chat rooms that are created, there is enhanced Novell Messenger WebConsole functionality, and you can search for chat rooms in ConsoleOne.

Check out the documentation for more details.

What’s New!

Now on to Novell Vibe. Novell Teaming released version 2.1, back in February. This version builds significantly on those features to bring a much improved user interaction experience, a better organized user interface layout and significantly more features.

• General User Experience Improvements (throughout the product)
• Branding/Theming (supporting for BOTH site and workspace branding support, simple/fast branding experience)
• Expanded User Profile (User experience improvements, additional user properties with support to identify knowledge experts, and "fly over" support for user profiles
• User Management improvements (better group and user synchronization, tighter directory and workspace synchronization, and support for disabling accounts in Teaming)
• Entry History/Versioning and Promotion (entry level history/versioning support including the ability to promote a previous to current)
• Document Management improvements (including version deletion, major/minor version, and version categories like "official", "current" etc., and file level access control)
• Search Improvements. Significant performance improvements (through updated Lucene indexing services and support for multi read/write threads)
• Significantly improved relevance (applied to Teaming search results)
• Integrated Windows Authentication (delivering Windows NTLM and Kerberos authentication)
• Wiki Improvements
• Advanced User Enhancements
• What’s New Page – very cool activity streaming so you can benefit from the social aspects of Novell Vibe.
• Novell Messenger Presence Integration
• Novell Conferencing Integration
• and much much more . . .

You will want to review the documentation for all of the details:

Quality and Customer Focus

Kevin Crutchfield’s engineering team has worked very closely with Tracy Smith and the Product Management team, along with Novell Technical Services to make sure we continue to capture, respond and deliver features and quality to our existing customers. The customers who are using the product are the ones that probably have the best insight into how the product should work and what issues need the most attention.

We addressed 165 bugs/enhancements that originated outside of Novell (Customers, Partners, or Kablink Community users) in Durango. We ran a 5-month beta program that included 60 authorized beta sites, and we've been using Durango internally for the last 3.5 months. Our internal rollout and beta program have been an integral measuring stick to the balance between the right set of features and the continued high quality that is expected.

Check out what one of our Partners is saying about this release. See YouTube videos.

Here are a few screen shots to give you a glimpse of what to expect with this version...

Click to view.

Click to view.

Click to view.

Get it

There are several ways to get this product. If you are currently a Novell Teaming customer and have a current maintenance contract, you will be able to get this update from the Novell Customer Center. Just login…

http://download.novell.com
Select Login and login with your credentials
Select "Customer Center"

If you are a new customer and would like to purchase the product. Simply, check out the product page on Novell’s website.

Here is the direct link: http://www.novell.com/products/vibe-onprem/how-to-buy/

If you want to simply check it out, play with it or try an evaluation copy of the product. Here are a couple of options…

1. Virtual Sandbox: A place where you can see the product in action and play with it without having to install or do any setup.
2. 10 user Starter Pack: This will allow you to install the product in your environment and set up users and configure it specifically for your needs and try it out before you purchase.
3. Vibe OnPrem Resource Library: This library contains forms and workflows that can be used in the customer environment, workspace templates, use cases, audio and video demos, and success stories.

What’s Next

I also want to give you a brief look at what is planned for the subsequent release of the product. The product continues to release on a very regular schedule with new functionality and continued reliability. The high-level set of features that are planned for the next version include:

• GroupWise Calendar/Task sync
• MSOffice integrations
• Task management improvements
• File versioning management
• Improved commonality with Novell Vibe Cloud
• Landing page improvements

The next version is code named – Evergreen - and is expected to release in 2011.

We know you will appreciate this latest version of Novell Vibe OnPrem. Check out the documentation and then download the product….Come on – Social Get Working!

Dean

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.