Widgets are standalone applications that can be added to the Lotus Notes sidebar. These can come from external sources, such as Google, or they can be created and distributed internally by your Domino administrator. You can also create your own widgets.
All of this work will be done in your preferences and your widget sidebar in the IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 client. To obtain the new IBM social widgets, you can go to https://greenhouse.lotus.com/.
Here you will see how to get manage and add widgets to your sidebar.
There are several ways to add a widget to your client, or My Widgets sidebar. If you do not see your widget sidebar, enable it from the Widgets preferences.
- To add widgets, right-click on the widget in the My Widgets sidebar panel, click on Properties, and check the Add as a panel on startup option.
- Open the widget from your source, and then click on the Add as a Panel toolbar button. If you are using this method to add a web page, gadget, or feed to the sidebar, you must use the Lotus Notes embedded browser. To enable the embedded browser, navigate to File | Preferences | Web Browser | Use the browser embedded in this client.
- To install all the widgets from a category in the widget catalog, select the category in the Widgets preferences.
The widget appears as a new sidebar panel item and will appear in your sidebar each time you start Notes. Using this method creates the widget with the option Add as a panel on startup.
The following are a few ways to add an existing widget to the My Widgets sidebar panel:
- Drag-and-drop the widget from the widget catalog that you want to your My Widgets sidebar panel.
- To install a widget that was e-mailed, just drag-and-drop it to the My Widgets sidebar panel.
- Select one or more widget documents in the widget catalog, and navigate to Tools | Widgets | Install this Widget.
- Widgets on your file system can be imported or dragged-and-dropped to your My Widgets sidebar panel.
You can remove widgets from the sidebar.
To remove a widget from your sidebar, right-click on it and select Remove:
Provisioned widgets can not be removed.
IBM has introduced a suite of widgets that work in the Lotus Notes client to access and update IBM Connections. In order for these widgets to work, you must have IBM Connections as well. To obtain these widgets you can go to https://greenhouse.lotus.com/. You will need a Greenhouse account. If you do not have one, you can join at the same URL.
Once you download the installer, launch it and the installation wizard will take you through the installation.
In Preferences under Connections, fill out the requested information.
Only two of these widgets will be described here, they are the Status Updates widget and the Files widget. In Connections you can see status updates for users that you follow. Using this widget you can also update your status to Connections. When using the Status Updates widget and Connections 4.0, you can do the following from the widget in your Lotus Notes 8.5.3 client:
- Attach a file to a status update
- Like/unlike a status update
- Activity stream integration allows to monitor updates for all the Connections services
- Search by people and communities
- Post status, letting your colleagues know what you are doing
- View status for people in your network
- Comment on status updates
- Delete your status or associated comments
- Forward an update by e-mail
- View or post updates from the icon in the system tray when you are not working in the Notes client
Connections 4.0 allows you to store and share files with other users in your organization. When using the Files widget and Connections 4.0, you can do the following from the widget in your Lotus Notes 8.5.3 client:
- Lock/unlock files
- Upload files for your own use or to share with others
- Drag-and-drop an attached file or a file from your desktop to Files
- Drag-and-drop or copy and paste a file from Files to your desktop
- Send an HTML link to a file
- Search for people or communities
- Sort files for easier browsing
- Detach the Files window from the Notes sidebar
- Open Connections Files in a browser
As you can see, widgets extend the Lotus Notes client and can be a convenient way to follow and update IBM Connections without ever leaving your Lotus Notes client.