This is a very interesting and positive Technote on Support for Lotus Connections
Lotus Connections requires the use of several collateral products for its normal operations. In particular, it requires IBM WebSphere Application Server, a database, a repository for user information (typically an LDAP repository), and other products depending on specific customer requirements.
Because the list of “Supported Products” cannot reasonably describe all possible configurations that a customer may need to use, some customers have voiced concerns about the level of support that will be provided for configurations that are not specifically designated as “Supported.”
The Technote goes on to break down three categories of support
1. Supported Product – these are the documented LDAP, Database, Browsers, etc…
2. Newer Versions and Releases of Supported Products – Â These are fix packs and updates to supported products which do not make substantial changes, (with a few exceptions)
3. Unsupported Product – these are the exceptions, and while subject to change any time it currently had three items on the exclusion list
The following are restricted products where IBM Lotus Connections team has a specific reason for supporting an exact match or for not supporting the product. This list may change, as our product and customer experiences continue to grow:
– Exact match for supporting: IBM WebSphere Application Server 6.1.0.23
– Exact match for supporting: IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator 6.1.1 FP6
– Not currently supported: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8; native model
The Technote then continues with a specific statement regarding LDAP Servers
LDAP support spans two (2) categories. These are “Fully tested and supported LDAP servers” and “Untested LDAP servers.” The support statement for each category follows:
No big news on the Fully Tests and Supported LDAP servers, but the Untested LDAP Server provides the following
In general, Lotus Connections Support makes a commercially reasonable effort to support directory servers that have not been tested with Lotus Connections. This includes version numbers that differ from what is listed as tested in Lotus Connections 2.5 System Requirements
Support accepts problem reports for the appropriate Lotus Connections releases using untested directory servers. If Support can recreate the reported problem using a tested LDAP server, staff will attempt to fix the problem.
This is good news for organizations that have an LDAP directory running a release not specified in the list of supported LDAP servers, if the problem is reproducible IBM support will work to fix the issue.
Now I know that the restriction on the WAS version is one of the bigger issues raised with Lotus Connections, and these changes do not address that specific issue. Â It would be nice to have WAS listed as a minimum required version with higher revisions supported, but it will obviously take more time to get there. Â Over all this is a very positive change and statement adding some flexibility to components that will be supported running Lotus Connections.