In both cases, you’ll need the persons “profile key” which looks like this /profiles/html/profileView.do?key=91f00240-1f17-4b18-a767-9c813a2def4c&lang=en.  You’ll also find it easiest to use two browser sessions (or two browser tabs) to do this, one for your blog post, the other for searching and finding the information you need.  To find the profile key, open profiles, search for the person you want to find then right-click on their name and open the link in a new window.  The address in the browser URL bar should be the profile key.  When you need the key, you’ll copy everything after the name of the connections server (everything from /profiles to the end of the URL) and you are ready to edit

There are two types of links you can create.  The first is a simple HTML link which will take you to the persons profile. For example clicking on the name below will take you to my profile (well it would if the profile server existed!).

Tim Bull

To do this, simply copy the following and paste it in HTML mode (click on the <H> on the edit menu bar while in edit mode).  Paste the profile link / key as described in the paragraph above to replace the profile key in the example, then change the name of the person (in this case replace “Tim Bull” with who ever you are linking to).  I’ve bolded what you’ll need to change.

<a href=”/profiles/html/profileView.do?key=91f00240-1f17-4b18-a767-9c813a2def4c&amp;lang=en“>Tim Bull</a>

The second linking option is slightly more complicated.  In this case we are going to include a link that enables the person card popup as well.  This requires pasting a small amount of Java Script in to the HTML.  It will give a link as follows.  Note this doesn’t work in here (because this is wordpress), but if you’re familiar with Connections you’ll know exactly what I mean - I should include a picture but I’m a bit time pressed at the moment - in connections, howevering over the name will show a link to “Click here to view the business card”:

Tim Bulltim.bull@fake.email.com

To do this, copy the code below, as before, paste it into your blog posting in HTML mode and edit the HREF (profiles key), the text of the name and the e-mail address of the person.

<span class=”vcard”><a class=”fn person lotusPerson” href=”/profiles/html/profileView.do?key=91f00240-1f17-4b18-a767-9c813a2def4c&lang=en“>Tim Bull</a><span
class=”email” style=”display: none;”>tim.bull@fake.email.com</span></span>

One last note, this will ONLY work within Connections.  It is possible to do the same thing and link from any other web site, but there are a number of java libraries that need to be loaded to give the business card popup that I haven’t referenced as these are already loaded within the context of the Connections Blog.  The other trick is that this may not work with your Connections site if the rich embedding functionality is turned off (which it is by default to prevent x-site scripting issues).  The IBM reference with samples for doing this from other web-sites is here.

The other thing you’ll notice is my HREF examples link to the profile of the user, if you look at the links in Connections, you’ll see the pop-up is implemented in a variety of ways which you can emulate, for example, within the context of Blogs, clicking on the persons name will take you to their blog, in DogEar, to their bookmarks etc.  The principles are exactly the same, this should be all you need to get started.

Person Information (Enterprise Directory, Notes Databases, Relational Databases etc.).

The Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) which has a limited license within Lotus Connections, is a very capable integration tool that can pull information from a number of different profile sources to consolidate information into the Profile component of Connections.  This is an essential integration to limit the amount of re-keying that users will have to do.  Challenges in designing this integration are how much information, what sources and what update support is required (ie. what flows in and potentially back out of Connections).

LDAP Sources

Lotus Connections can authenticate against a number of different LDAP sources for authentication.

SameTime

There are a couple of different integration possible with Lotus Sametime.

1. Lotus Connections can be presence enabled and the person card enabled to initiate a chat directly using SameTime (very useful when using Profiles to locate an expert, you can then just initiate a SameTime conversation right there).
2. You can extend Lotus Sametime to integrate with Connections so that within the Sametime client you could initiate a group chat with all people in the same group as the user based on their Report To structure in Connections.

Many of these features require SameTime 8.0 so some care is needed to work out which are practical in the environment - you’ll need the latest versions of Sametime installed in some cases.

Google Gadgets / Widgets

The iWidget standard used to display the content on the HomePage is open and new Widgets are deployable by administrators.  One documented configuration is to wrap Google Gadgets as iWidgets so these are available on the Home Page.  You can also write your own custom iWidgets to access and consolidate other content.  The challenge is to work out what makes sense in the context of a social-networking site and not trying to deploy Lotus Connections as another Portal solution.

Blackberry

There are two blackberry clients available. One for DogEar which enables BlackBerry users to access DogEar bookmarks on the go.  The second (more useful in my opinion) client is the Profiles client which will let you search for and access a persons profile card.  Calls can be initiated directly from this card.  From the documentation it appears that no specific components are required (beyond the Blackberry Client and access to the internal Connections server) so administrators don’t need to deploy any content on the Blackberry Enterprise Server to make this work.

The downside is that Activities, Communities and Blogs are only accessible via the internal Blackberry browser which is a sub-optimal experience.

Quickr

Lotus Quickr and Connections have a number of different integration points, for example feeds of content from Connections can be consumed into Quickr and the Connections Person card can replace the Quickr person card.  With Connections 2.01 there are also:

• Quickr integration with Activities - Push-button publication from an Activity into one of your Quickr Places for permanent document storage
• Quickr integration with Communities - Allows communities to use Quickr as their content repository and document collaboration platform.

Lotus Notes 7

There is an extension that can be loaded for Lotus Notes 7 which provides access to Activities and allows you to store e-mail as an Activity, as well as the ability to DogEar a Lotus document or database directly into DogEar.

Lotus Notes 8

Notes 8 provides much of the same, but with the standard client you can access the functionality from the Sidebar which more user friendly.

Lotus Notes 8.5

Although not released, this will extend the integrations even further — you will be able to offline an activity and integrate the activity into your calander.

Browser Support

There is a button deployable into most browser (IE6+ and FF2+) which will allow you to DogEar URLs from web-sites you are visiting.  These bookmarks can be stored in DogEar, Activities, Communities and Blogs.

Websphere Portal

There is a Lotus Connections Portlet to display the features of Connections within a Websphere Portal.

Microsoft Office and Windows Explorer

There is a plug-in for Office and Explorer which lets you bring the Activities, Blogs, and Profiles features to your office applications, such as Microsoft Word, and to add files from Windows Explorer to an activity.

Microsoft Outlook

Post mail messages to Activities and access Connections Profiles from Outlook.

Confluence Wiki

Integrate communities with a Confluence Wiki.

SocialText Wiki

Integrate communities with a SocialText Wiki.

Virus Scanner

Connections supports integration into a Virus Scanning server to ensure that files uploaded are scanned and virus free.

Some of these elements are documented and available here http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ltscnnct/v2r0/topic/com.ibm.lotus.connections.help/c_connectors_over.html