Carl Tyler's Blog :: Sametime tool for the Sametime Administrator

Category Sametime Buddylist Administrators

These Plug-ins are all well and good, but what about the lowly Sametime Administrator? Where's the love? Well last week one of our developers Wassim was feeling sorry for you guys, he knew that AdminP with Sametime 8.0.1 now handles renames in Sametime Buddylists (so Sametime Admins have something to be grateful for), but Wassim just didn't feel that it was enough. Wassim came up with a small command line utility for Admins to do some basic buddylist manipulation. The utility can be used to do things like adding/removing Private Groups, adding/removing Public Groups, pre-populating new users Buddylists.

Wassim built the utility using the Buddylist Service and the Sametime Community Server Light Login feature. You can find out about the BuddyList Service in chapter 7 of the Redbook from a few years ago Lotus Instant Messaging/Web Conferencing (Sametime): Building Sametime Enabled Applications. The Sametime Community Server Toolkit is documented in the Sametime SDK documentation.

So dear Sametime Administrators, with love from Wassim, you can download the utility from here:
http://www.epilio.com/web/BLcontrol.htm

Comments

1 - cool stuff... is there a particular ST server version required to use this?

Posted by Erik At 09:25:14 PM On 07/28/2008 | - Website - |

2 - Should work with 7.51 and 8.x.

Posted by Wassim At 09:45:35 PM On 07/28/2008 | - Website - |

3 - WOW!!!! This is major and for free! Epilio out did themselves with this one!

It would be nice if the new rename process via AdminP in Sametime 8.0.1 handled name changes in the buddylist for LDAP buddylists (or at least Domino LDAP), like it does for Domino Directory authentication buddylists Emoticon

One step at a time Emoticon

Posted by Tim E. Brown At 10:50:35 PM On 07/28/2008 | - Website - |

4 - @1 We didn't test it, but as we go through the BuddyList service, it should actually work with Sametime 2.5 and later, as the whole thing is abstracted out.

@3 We can thank Wassim for this one.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:53:04 PM On 07/28/2008 | - Website - |

5 - This is absolutely great stuff! Thanks a lot!

I am already thinking about creating a database around it that will create a standard buddylist for new employees and that will maintain a private group for all users.

Posted by Almar Diehl At 07:01:45 AM On 07/29/2008 | - Website - |

6 - I encountered the error messages "Bad version number in .class file" when running the command "java -jar populateBL.jar <st server> Username "Add" "Public" <new public group>.

Any idea what could be the problem ?

Posted by Wee Meng At 04:12:48 AM On 07/30/2008 | - Website - |

7 - Actual error messages

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1<Native Method>
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1<Unknown Source>
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass<Unknown Source>
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass<Unknown Source>
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100<Unknown Source>
at java.net.URLClassLoader.run<Unknown Source>
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged<Native Method>
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass<Unknown Source>
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass<Unknown Source>
at.sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass<Unknown Source>
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass<Unknown Source>
at java.net.URLClassLoader.loadClassInternal<Unknown Source>

Posted by Wee Meng At 05:47:11 AM On 07/30/2008 | - Website - |

8 - @7 What version of Java are you running
type java -version

what version of sametime server?

Posted by carl tyler At 07:16:21 AM On 07/30/2008 | - Website - |

9 - jre 1.5

Is that version not compatible with the tool ?

Posted by Wee Meng At 11:20:17 AM On 07/30/2008 | - Website - |

10 - Sorry, didn't see the question on Sametime server version.

Sametime server version 8.0.1

Posted by Wee Meng At 11:52:11 AM On 07/30/2008 | - Website - |

11 - @9/10 Hi Wee Meng, we reproduced it. we'll recompile with an older Java version which should address it. I'll post here when it's done.

Carl

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:11:17 PM On 07/30/2008 | - Website - |

12 - @9/10 New build version been posted to the site. Tested and it works fine with 1.5

Posted by Carl Tyler At 01:13:46 PM On 07/30/2008 | - Website - |

13 - Have downloaded it. Will test it out and let you if it worked.

Thanks for recompiling it.

Posted by Wee Meng At 04:05:59 AM On 07/31/2008 | - Website - |

14 - This is very cool - I'm not an admin. Is there a way to do something similar as an end-user ? My use case is the need to be able to send out a script that my test team members could run to establish a private group with all the other team in it. In an ideal world, there might be a way to send an updated list via chat - kinda of like privately managed group lists for small teams. I realize I'm probably a tiny niche. It may work for other types of adhoc teams as well.

Posted by Glen At 07:52:56 AM On 08/02/2008 | - Website - |

15 - @14 Intersting idea. but if you're not an admin, should you really be messing with people's buddylist.

Anyway, you can do what you want today.

You just have to export you buddylist from your client, then edit out all the stuff that is not specific to you, so that it contacts the groups etc. you want to add on the other person buddylist.

Then send them the final XML and tell them to import the contact list, but be sure to select the option merge, not overwrite.

We will actually be posting an updated version of the BLControl on monday, that will allow an admin to export a users buddylist, in XML format, so that they can edit it and send it back to the end user if need be.

Carl

Posted by Carl Tyler At 07:37:15 PM On 08/02/2008 | - Website - |