On May 21^st, business and LOB executives, IT professionals, business analysts, IBM Business Partners, IT decision makers, project managers, technical staff, developers, content managers and analysts will gather in Austin, Texas for the IBM Exceptional Web Experience Conference.

This annual event is dedicated to helping organizations learn how to keep pace with the expanding and ever increasing, Web-savvy user. You’ll learn about the latest Web portal, content, social, mobile, commerce, business process management and other innovations/technologies available from IBM and Davalen – as well as best practices and success stories.

As always, Davalen will be right in the thick of the event with a platinum sponsorship, two presentations, a VIP party, and the most relaxing and informative booth ever! Come enjoy a short chair massage in between sessions, or while enjoying your favorite food and beverages in the Product Expo. We will even be giving away a flat-screen TV at the conclusion of the show!

All the information about the event and our presence can be found here.

Planning to attend? Email Ruth Jarvis to get the inside scoop on the event or to receive your exclusive invitation to the VIP Party.

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This article is from our monthly resource e-Newsletter. Did you miss it in your inbox? Visit our eNewsletter archives for past editions or if you want to receive our monthly newsletter automatically, simply write to Ruth Jarvis and request to be added to our E-Newsletter list. Thank you!

David Wilkerson

 by David Wilkerson, CTO

One purpose of theme customization is to enrich a site by delivering some content ubiquitously. Though delivery of most content is accomplished through portlets delivery, in a theme provides delivery of the same content throughout pages in the site that employ the same theme. That is, as a user navigates from page to page, certain content is consistently displayed.  Out of the box examples of this approach are illustrated by the search widget, help link, username display, etc.

There are two logical approaches to delivering content in a theme: client-side logic and server-side logic. Client-side logic consists of JavaScript, iWidget, and live text that is stored in a WebDAV file store and is referenced in the file theme.html. A significant benefit of client-side logic is offloading of content aggregation to the browser. Further, the development of these components can be delegated to web designers using conventional web design tools.

Server-side logic consists of Java Server Pages (JSPs). JSPs cannot be stored in WebDAV and directly referenced in the file theme.html, as they rely on a servlet context for lifecycle events.

In many cases an organization may have an existing repository of JSPs they wish to leverage in their new customized 7.0.0.2 WebSphere Portal theme. To do this there are three tasks to perform: develop the content such as a JSP, configure the application server environment, and insert dynamic content spots into the file theme.html.

A web application developer can create the JSPs and related resources for delivery of dynamic content. Additionally, such a developer may be engaged to customize other dynamic providers associated with a custom theme. These artifacts are deployed in a WAR which is a member of an EAR file. The operational management and deployment of theme artifacts is covered in the supplemental documentation for the product here.

A WebSphere administrator will log on to the Integrated Solutions Console of the application server and navigate to: Resources -> Resource Environment -> Resource environment providers -> WP DynamicContentSpotMappings.

A new Custom Property will be defined by entering an arbitrary name to serve as the ID of the mapping. In addition, a URI value used to locate the dynamic content is entered.  The format will vary but the syntax is similar to this:

res:/CustomThemeContext/themes/html/MyTheme/dynamicContent.jsp

The third task is to define the dynamic content spot in the theme.html file. This task will require knowledge of the dynamic spot mapping ID defined by the administrator. The following is an example of a dynamic content spot tag:

<link rel=”dynamic-content” href=”dyn-cd:id:<mapping-ID-provided-by-administrator>

If you are developing on a live server, clear the browser cache, and load the page bound to your custom theme to view the result.

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This article is from our monthly resource e-Newsletter. Did you miss it in your inbox? Visit our eNewsletter archives for past editions or if you want to receive our monthly newsletter automatically, simply write to Ruth Jarvis and request to be added to our E-Newsletter list. Thank you!

Ann Hamm

When discussing the first Davalen retirement, managing partner, Dave Jacob, said, “This is not something I was thinking about when I incorporated the company as JSI in October 1993. I had a grand total employee count of one—me, and a first year revenue of $22,000. Fortunately for me, and the success of the company, others—namely Ann Hamm, David Wilkerson, and Dan Smith—took a chance and joined me.”

Ann Hamm graduated from Hood College with a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics before continuing on to receive her Masters in Science in Human Ecology. This however, was only the beginning, as she worked 15 years as a systems engineer for Electronic Data Systems (EDS), where she worked side by side with Dave Jacob before becoming a Y2K consultant.

“It’s hard to believe you have worked with someone for 40 years, especially when you are only 39 years old, but stranger things have happened in business.” chuckled, Dave Jacob. “As Ann and I were starting out as new employees in Pennsylvania at EDS, the original data processing services company, we developed a strong work ethic, culture, and personal friendship that allowed us to connect over the years as we raised our families, moved too often, and changed jobs.”

Looking back at his time working with Ann while building Davalen, Dave remarked, “It has been both an exhilarating and rewarding experience to build Davalen from an idea to a profitable company with the help of individuals like Ann, who I respect and trust as a friend and business partner. Thank you Ann, for all that you have done for us, and for being a special, lifelong friend.  Knowing you as well as I do, you won’t sit still for very long. In the meantime, everyone at Davalen wishes you continued success on your next adventure.”

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This article is from our monthly resource e-Newsletter. Did you miss it in your inbox? Visit our eNewsletter archives for past editions or if you want to receive our monthly newsletter automatically, simply write to Ruth Jarvis and request to be added to our E-Newsletter list. Thank you!

Here are the details:

TECH-D27
Tips from the Top Chefs: Proven Recipes for Successful Web Experience Factory Design
Dave Jacob, Solutions Design Engineer, Davalen
Mike Witherspoon, Lead Architect – Web Experience Factory Practice Davalen

Tuesday, 8:30AM – 9:30AM, Meeting Room 406

It takes more than a great kitchen and quality ingredients to produce great looking, delicious food. A winning recipe is a big advantages is a little advice from a top chef. In this session, Web Experience Factory (WEF) Chefs Dave Jacob and Michael “Spoon” Witherspoon share the recipe used by Davalen to successfully deliver on large WEF development efforts. The secret ingredients includes large quantities of leadership, creating a center of excellence for enforcing architectural standards, educating all team members on the tools, and a WEF optimized coding infrastructure. Each of these ingredients will be explained in detail with real world examples of clients that made this work to perfection. Forget what you already know about WEF planning, scheduling, UI mockups, functional prototypes, and development dependencies and come learn the strategies and tactics for delivering an exceptional user experience, on time and under budget.

This year’s conference is being held in Austin, Texas beginning Monday, May 21 and ending Thursday May 24, 2012.

Don’t miss this and other great sessions at the event. Register now and remember to mark Davalen’s other session: TECH-D22 as a “must see” presentation to learn how to make exceptional Web 2.0 Web Experience Factory Portlets.

More details to follow so check back soon!

The new versions have an electronic release date of May 4, 2012 with a media availability of May 25th.

The overview section of the announcements also states:

WebSphere Portal V8.0 and Web Experience Factory bring together the essential capabilities that help you create, manage, and deliver powerful online web experiences, including social when and where it can most influence productivity; mobile to take your web experiences to where your users are with targeted content; and integration with real-time analytics, giving the insight to the make the right decisions. Highlights of the new releases:

• Social: Delivers IBM Connections content and services for Portal or Web Content Management; provides authentication via popular social sites; enables social communication where and when you need it.
• Mobile: Designed to develop and render content and applications that display perfectly on smart phones, desktops, or just about any Web-enabled device.
• Content-driven: Delivers content relevant to each user, in a way that is compelling to each user.
• Managed: Enables pages that can be updated, previewed, versioned, published, and rolled back
• Insightful: Offers in-place, real-time web page and channel delivery analyses based on web analytics page overlays.
• Integrated: Enables site designers to create web portal pages using HTML and web content, feeds, portlets, iWidgets, and more; cross-enterprise application integration, such as SAP.
• Extensible: Allows developers to extend existing or develop their own builders, capturing repeatable patterns for use by other developers within the team.
• Open: Supports open standards APIs making it easier for developers and designers to learn, integrate and leverage systems that rely on these same open standards.

To read the full release click here.

Davalen, LLC today announced plans to develop a new presence in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Davalen will begin accepting contracts beginning May 1, 2012 for work in the IBM WebSphere Portal Development space, with room for more services in the near future. This office will be Davalen’s first official presence in the state of Texas.

“We could not be more excited to begin offering services in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area,” says Dave Jacob, Davalen’s managing partner and chief sales director. “With offices across the United States and so much demand in the Dallas area, it is a natural transition for our company to begin offering services in the area full-time. This also means job creation for a local-based staff.”

Jacob went on to say, “At Davalen, we’ve developed a methodology that requires consistently providing services in an effective and efficient way so that our clients can get up and running quickly. By having more offices in more locations, it allows more flexibility with our resources so we are better able to maintain our industry-leading service.”

Davalen offers enterprise-level companies a single point of contact for all their IBM Software needs. Davalen is committed to IBM Collaborative Solutions, which is reflected in the direct tier-1 supplier relationship with IBM and reputation of providing and building RapidValue solutions for clients on IBM software. Davalen’s Web Experience Factory expertise is unrivaled. Consultants and contractors have been architects, mentors, and developers, on the largest Portal Development projects cross-industry.

As a veteran owned and operated company, Davalen was founded in 1993 in Massachusetts and has opened offices across the United States while servicing clients worldwide. Led by former U.S. military officers, Davalen brings a highly effective discipline to all of its projects, including the hiring and training of new talent. Davalen’s consultants are recognized for their leadership among advanced IBM technologies and the practical application of those technologies in a business environment.

For additional information on Davalen, contact Ruth Jarvis by telephone at 800-827-8451 ext 105, or by email at rjarvis@davalen.com. To learn more about the new Dallas office, contact Dave Jacob by telephone at 800-827-8451 ext 104, or by email at djacob@davalen.com. You can also visit Davalen’s website at http://www.davalen.com.

Davalen is looking to meet with Dallas/Ft. Worth based clients at the upcoming 2012 IBM Exceptional Web Experience conference, taking place this May. More details can be found at http://davalen.com/exceptionalwebconf or can be viewed on a mobile device at http://www.davalen.com.

Dave Jacob

 by Dave Jacob

What it means to be a part of a software development team has dramatically changed over the course of my career. Yet while the current remote employee approach to software development is very different from the centralized approach used in my early days, the goal remains the same – deliver quality systems on-time and within budget.  Davalen does just this. Using remote employees, with little relocation and travel, Davalen maintains a high project success. However, the change to the remote development model was not without its challenges.

For me, the largest challenge, other than cultural, language, and time zones differences, was communicating requirements and validating work on an on-going basis. Initially, we focused on “perfect” design documents that the team at large (on- or off-shore) could code to. Design documents were created in time-consuming, pain-staking, details and the project scope had to be frozen early in order to have a prayer of working.  As it’s common to experiment with part of the design before creating it entirely, an inflexible design document could never work.  The saying, “You built what I asked for, but it’s not what I want” was often heard and understood. Since Davalen has earned a reputation for quality, on-time delivery – this was not going to fly. We had to update and create effective project management and communication standards.

Adapting to this new virtual environment in a way that was beneficial to clients as well as employees required effective communication–instilled with training and education.  For our needs, all Davalen consultants learn three important things when they join the company:

1. How Davalen consultants conduct themselves;
2. What tools are available to help them do their job; and
3. The design patterns Davalen uses in our projects.

Being on the same page before the project begins saves time and money.  For example, our junior developers begin their career at a Davalen facility under the direct supervision of a mentor.  Senior employees often begin remotely but they still go through the same three step education process mentioned above.

Our lead Web Experience Factory developer, Michael “Spoon” Witherspoon, explains this well stating,

“Our use of remote meeting and collaboration tools combined with ample use of cloud computing is so effective our work is nearly 100% location-agnostic.  We teach remote classes, hold meetings, and deliver presentations world-wide so often that working remotely is very comfortable and effective.”

Technology has made remote teams able to access networks and servers from any location.  Davalen uses cloud-based source control and development environments to centralize development work so our architects can review code regularly, make suggestions, and keep the project standardized and on schedule. Since we are all trained on using the same design patterns, we can assign additional resources to each large project for back-up and expansion when project needs dictate. This allows us to manage staff personal needs without negatively impacting the project schedule or utilization.  The team remains a living, breathing, creative, productive team using the techniques described in Len Barker’s article this month.

Remote software development has resulted in more productive and happy employees who are able to juggle multiple jobs and priorities more effectively than if they were onsite.  While we can’t go out to lunch together as often as we would like, we can still have a corporate culture that involves employees in the decisions of the company and provides quality, on-time, within budget projects that always impress our clients.

At the upcoming IBM Web Experience Conference I will be discussing this in combination with best practices tips for development. Having a blended approach is something I’m passionate about providing my clients with and I hope to have the opportunity to do so in Austin this May.

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This article is from our monthly resource e-Newsletter. Did you miss it in your inbox? Visit our eNewsletter archives for past editions or if you want to receive our monthly newsletter automatically, simply write to Ruth Jarvis and request to be added to our E-Newsletter list. Thank you!

Len Barker

 by Len Barker

Steve Jobs believed that collaboration and creativity are at their best when people frequently bump into each other in the course of their daily work.  At Pixar (NASDAQ: PIXR) and Apple (NASDAQ: APPL) he built elaborate buildings with layouts that encouraged such encounters.  At Davalen, most of our employees work from home or customer sites. In this type of environment, creating a sense of unity and shared purpose is a leadership challenge. So too is building an environment where remote employees frequently bump into each other in ways that lead to the exchange of ideas.

Spontaneous creativity occurs at the confluence of bright, energetic people and clever use and placement of social business tools.   Davalen has become one of IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) fastest growing technology partners by hiring great people and immersing them in our world of collaboration.  Despite never seeing each other, our consultants churn out great products with short revision cycles, like Web Experience Factory Top Gun curriculum and Davalen Charts, and work together as a team to deliver on large consulting engagements.

There are only three key enablers for remote productivity and creativity:

1. Hire great employees – There is no substitute for hard working brilliant people.  Hire them and make sure they stay.  Creating a great collaborative environment that is full of leadership and creativity is a great way to keep remote employees excited.
2. Build a great collaborative infrastructure – A great infrastructure alone will accomplish little but reliable, flexible tools are essential for enabler number three.  The components of the collaborative infrastructure will vary for each company.  At Davalen we rely on Lotus Domino applications (for knowledge bases), IBM Quickr (for project collaboration), IBM Sametime (for real time communication with each other and IBM), Netsuite OpenAir (for time, expenses, resource utilization and project planning), Citrix GoToMeeting (for teaching classes and online meetings) and Salesforce.com (for Opportunity management). Most of our major clients also use IBM Connections (for profiles, activities, file sharing, communities,etc) as a part of their collaborative infrastructure.
3. Expose your collaborative tools so that employees will bump into them – When Steve Jobs was designing the new Pixar building, he wanted to have only one large bathroom so that everyone had to bump into each other throughout the day.  I like to organize business processes in a way that employees have to pass one or two mileposts several times a day.  This makes it possible to place collaborative tools in those spots so that collaboration and creativity will be likely to occur.  For example, if employees have to enter their time every day (comma) then why not let them see who else is entering time and what they did that day? One of the best ways to bump into others is to place the feeds from IBM Connections near these mileposts.  Employees can follow their mentors, co-workers, or heroes this way.  The stream of ideas displayed in the feeds will result in many ah-ha moments.

Creativity and productivity can flourish in organizations with remote employees as long as a conscious effort is made to make it happen.  Davalen and IBM are two great examples of companies with a widely dispersed employee base where collaboration is a way of life.

Visit us at the IBM Exceptional Web Experience Conference on May 21 – 24, 2012 to learn how we can help your organization collaborate and succeed.

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This article is from our monthly resource e-Newsletter. Did you miss it in your inbox? Visit our eNewsletter archives for past editions or if you want to receive our monthly newsletter automatically, simply write to Ruth Jarvis and request to be added to our E-Newsletter list. Thank you!

Monday, May 21, 2012

1:45 – 2:45    Meeting Room 408

TECH-D22 Have your Dojo and eat it too!

Michael “Spoon” Witherspoon

This presentation will focus on how to create a great UI using Dojo while allowing page automation to perform its magic. It will also explain and demonstrate specific techniques for integrating the features of Dojo input fields with the Page Automation framework.

This year’s conference is being held in Austin, Texas beginning Monday, May 21 and ending Thursday May 24, 2012.

Don’t miss this and other great sessions at the event. Register now and don’t forget to mark TECH-D22 as a “must see” presentation to learn how to make exceptional Web 2.0 Web Experience Factory Portlets.

More details to follow so check back soon!

Ann Hamm

 by Ann Hamm, Senior Lotus Developer

As a seasoned developer since the early days of Lotus, I look around and see an emerging new market for my skill set. I’ve been programming in Lotus Notes for years and I know formula language and LotusScript but have never really coded a web application.  If you’re like me, you’ve noticed the buzz around the business implications of smart devices, coined by IBM as Social Business.

So, I went investigating to find the best resources to get involved in this evolving Social Business. For me, Lotus XPages was the way to go. XPages allows you to take your Domino application and present it on mobile devices. Obviously, my first question was:  “What resources are available to get me up and running quickly?”

The capabilities of XPages are still growing, so there is information about XPages in classes, online tutorials, books, wikis, and even YouTube videos.  There is a plethora of information.  Therefore, if you’re looking to start down the road I did consider the following path of resources:

1. The Learning Continuum Company, offers a free course called “Introduction to XPages Development.”  It’s a great way to get one’s feet wet and to start to get comfortable with the XPages development environment.  Exercises are used to reinforce the concepts being learned.
2. Print out David Leedy’s Cheat Sheet and keep by your side.
3. Purchase Mastering XPages:  A Step-by-Step Guide to XPages Application Development and the XSP Language by Martin Donnelly, Mark Wallace, and Tony McGuckin.   This book is a must if you want to understand what’s really happening.   As a Domino developer I tried lots of different paths to make sense of XPages, and this is the first book that I found that actually explains things.  It’s also the first book that I found that helped me totally understand the source code that I was looking at.  It is well worth the money.  I bought the Kindle version and read it on my IPad as I’m manipulating the downloaded exercise files (there is a link that comes with the purchase).
4. Watch the “Notes In Nine” videos.  David Leedy has created a series of videos that typically are very short (9 minutes or less) that explain one technique or one control.  He’s easy to follow and very informative.  You will have links to all the videos and they are divided between the typical short videos and the extended videos.  The videos are also available on YouTube.
5. Try to create Declan Lynch’s phone book application(final version is on OpenNTF.org).  You have to search his blog by going to the bottom of a current post and clicking “older Entries” enough times until you find them, but they are still available.   This particular series was written when XPages first came out, so some of the interfaces may be different, but there’s still a lot of good information here.

And FINALLY, when you are ready for more check out the IBM Lotus XPages resource center.

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This article is from our monthly resource e-Newsletter. Did you miss it in your inbox? Visit our eNewsletter archives for past editions or if you want to receive our monthly newsletter automatically, simply write to Ruth Jarvis and request to be added to our E-Newsletter list. Thank you!