This is the Lotus Symphony overview from Lotusphere2009 for the Chicago Lotus User Group (GRANITE) Feb 2009 meeting. I cover the Symphony highlights from 2008, the plans and direction for 2009 including the 1.3 and 2.0 releases and discuss the coming LSX for LotusScript developers

1. Lotus Symphony @
Lotusphere2009
John Head, Director of Enterprise Collaboration, PSC Group, LLC
www.psclistens.com

2. Symphony News
• 2008 Awards
• 2008 Releases
• 2009 Direction
• 2009 Releases
• Symphony LotusScript LSX

3. Lotus Symphony Awards
• CRN Best Desktop Application
• CRN, a leading industry publication, announced its 2008
Product of the Year awards and named IBM Lotus
Symphony its Product of the Year for Desktop
Applications.
• "The Test Center found Symphony a snap to use, and
switching to Symphony after years of using Microsoft
Office was painless. "
• The editors at the Test Center for CRN evaluated hundreds
of products in 2008 in categories that ranged from
hardware to operating systems. In selecting each
product of the year, the editors considered market
impact and end user value. They concluded that 2008
has been a banner year in the technology sector. Lotus
Symphony represents one of these milestones.
• Full review

4. Lotus Symphony Awards (cont)
• ChannelWeb
• Online tech mag ChannelWeb has given Lotus Symphony 1 rave reviews,
concluding "... Symphony [is] a snap to use, and switching to Symphony
after years of using Microsoft Office was painless. While Open Office was a
nice alternative, Symphony looks and works much more elegantly while
keeping the free price tag. "
• Full Review
•

5. Lotus Symphony Awards (cont)
• Lotus Symphony Crowned Office
Productivity Software Product of the
Year by Datamation Magazine for
2008
• Lotus Symphony won in the Office Productivity Software category beating out
other nominees Microsoft Office, OpenOffice 2.3.1 and Think Free Office.
• Full Review

6. 2008 Releases
• 1.0 – May 2008
• 1.1 – Sept 2008
• 1.2 – December 2008
– Mac OS support
– new enhancements to Data Pilot support
– Ubuntu platform Generally Available
– performance improvements
– Presentations Thumbnails

7. 2009 Direction
• Complete Platforms
– Notes 8.5.1 Mac will have Symphony
– Mac out of Beta
• More Data Pilot Features
• Complete Mail Merge functionality
• Introduce Office 2007 Compatibility
• Begin Work on Symphony 2.0
– 2.0 release in early 2010
•

8. Symphony 2.0
• Move to the OpenOffice 3.X code base
– Not a one time move
– Change in how Symphony team works
– Be weeks behind, not years
– Contribute regularly
– Work with OpenOffice.org devs to
incorporate Symphony technology
• Complete 2007 (OOXML) File Format
Support
• ODF 1.2 Support
–

9. Symphony 2.0 (cont)
• Complete Data Pilot work and Excel
Pivot Table compatibility
• Performance
• VBA Macro Run-time Support
• Using Code Base to Web Authoring
– EditSpot
– Dandelion
– SlideRiver

10. Symphony 2.0
• Not currently committed to
– OpenOffice.org Add-ins
– OpenOffice.org apps beyond Symphony

12. Support Options
 Support Option 1  Support Option 3
 Symphony Embedded Version  Symphony Standalone Fee
 Passport Advantage support Based Support Offering
 Included with purchase of other  Passport Advantage support –
products Passport Advantage or
 Notes 8 Express Contract required
 Foundations  $25,000 for up to 20,000 users
– Limited to 20 technical
 No additional charge
contacts
 Support Option 2  Worldwide 24x7 Unlimited
Incidents
 Standalone Symphony Free
Support
 Web based moderated forum
support
 Forums monitored by IBM and
the community
 Hints and Tips
 Developer support forum

13. Symphony Development Options
• UNO API
• Symphony Plug-ins
– Expeditor / Eclipse.org
– Toolbar, Menu, Sidebar
• Composite Applications
• LSX coming for LotusScript & more

14. Lotus Symphony LotusScript LSX
• First Version coming with 1.3
• Notes applications automating
Symphony
• Structured to be familiar to Lotus Notes
Developers

18. LSX Info
• 1.3 will be first version
– Windows only support
– LotusScript and Java
• Updates every release
• Other platform support coming
– Mac then Linux
•

19. LotusScript Sample
• %INCLUDE "use_symphony.lss"
• Dim row As Integer
• Dim application As New SymphonyApplication
• Dim documents As SymphonyDocuments
• Dim document As SymphonyDocument
• Dim textTables As SymphonyTextTables
• Dim textTable As SymphonyTextTable
• Dim textTableCells As SymphonyTextTableCells
• Dim cell As SymphonyTextTableCell
• Dim range As SymphonyTextRange
• Set application = New SymphonyApplication
• Set documents = application.Documents
• Set document = documents.AddDocument("", False, True)
• Set textTables = document.Tables
• Set range = document.Paragraphs.Item(0).Range.Start
• Set textTable = textTables.Add(range, commcollection.Count,1 )
• Set textTable = textTables.Item(0)
• Set textTableCells = textTable.Cells
• Set cell = textTableCells.Item(0)
• Call cell.Range.InsertAfter(“Hello World”)

20. Symphony in 2009
• 1 major release (1.3)
• Mac out of beta and inside Notes
package
• LSX for LotusScript and Java
developers
• Office 2007 support
• IBM expects to see some major rollouts
once 1.3 ships
• 2.0 in the future