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