Installing Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 4 in Lotus Notes 8.5.2
29 September, 2010 07:05:56 PM mangelcalvo Symphony English | Comentarios (5)
Upgrade: Since 15/11/2010 a Symphony 3.0 add-on for Lotus Notes is available on partnerWorld, so this procedure is no longer needed.
I'm a usual Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 4 user. It works quite well, and is quite usable and fast ( A lot faster than Symphony 1.3 that ships with Notes 8.5.2 ). But also as a Lotus Notes user, I'm missing having Symphony embedded in my Lotus Notes client. So I've tried to find a way to install Symphony inside Lotus Notes.
By looking at the files included in the Lotus Symphony installation file "IBM_Lotus_Symphony_w32.exe" you find a file named updateSite.zip. This file can be used to install Lotus Symphony as a plugin in Lotus Notes.
First, you must enable your Notes client to allow the user to install pluings.There are two ways to do this:
- Including in \framework\rcp\plugin_customization.ini file the line
- Or by using a desktop policy settings document
It's important to notice that the desktop policy settings prevails over the plugin_customization.ini file. And the value in the filed "Allow user initiated updates" in the desktop policy setting is disabled by default.
Once enabled ( maybe you should have to restart your Notes client once or twice ), you can install the Symphony plugin through File>Application>Install..
Then we select the option "Search new features to install"
In the next screen we select "Add zip/Jar location..."
We have to locate the "updateSite.zip" file we've mentioned before.
We rename the Local Site if necessary ( we can not have to application locations with same name )
Then we click select the just created "Symphony updateSite.zip" and click "Finish".
Here we have to select the features to install. All in this case.
And that's it. The system begins to install the features that compose Symphony and when it finishes, it will ask us to restart our Lotus Notes client. We've got now Symphony 3 embedded in our Lotus Notes client.
But, there are some important caveats. Maybe due to the fact that we're installing a Beta release or because this is not the Symphony thought to be installed with Lotus Notes. The bookmarks bar in the Standard client starts empty but for the Symphony and Home icons. Fortunatelly, everything seems to be ok if we open the Basic client, all our bookmarks are there.
This is a good exercise to see the Notes/Eclipse update capabilities, but to be done in a test environment :-)
This was just what i was looking for. Worked like a charm for me, thanks for sharing!
struggling to extract the updateSite.zip file from the IBM_Lotus_Symphony_w32.exe file in Windows 7.
Is there a link to just that file anywhere?
@adam - have you tried WinRAR? It worked for me (though admittedly not on Windows 7. I just thought I'd mention it - because I followed these instructions excited and then got this far and went OH POOP. If I hadn't had some horrific experiences with a mac at work this week (learning all about bundles) I might never have known that you can unpack an exe. Its probably basic to most of the people on here - and it may not be your particular problem... but I thought I'd mention it.
@adam, sorry for not mentioning it. IBM_Lotus_Symphony_w32.exe is a zipped file where you should find update.jar.
In any case, i have to say that IBM is about to deliver a specially crafted package to upgrade Symphony in Notes 8.5.2 that is going to behave better than the stand alone package.
I wish I could install Beta 4 but I get the RCP error. I have uninstalled Symphone gone throug the registery etc. But still cant install. The only way that i can will be to reinstall my whole machine. I have posted many times on the IBM Symphony forum. But nothing. It also appears many people have this problem. But IBM apear to do nothoing about it.