IBM Lotus Sametime 8 Essentials: A User's Guide - review
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A few weeks ago, Packt publishing sent me a copy of Marie Scott's and Thomas Duff's book IBM Lotus Sametime 8 Essentials: A User's Guide.
The first thing you'll notice, is this book is not a feeble attempt at a book, if reviewed purely by weight then this one makes it into the Super Middleweight class (284 pages), this is not the sort of bantamweight dummies book that you'd find inside a Lotusphere bag to make up space, this is a real book with more than just pretty screenshots. Don't get me wrong, this book is perfect for the kind of person that would read a dummies book, but it contains a lot more useful information than you'd ever find in one, and there are plenty of screenshots for those that are more visual in their consumption of information.
So I should point out that I am friends with Marie and Tom, and I even have a mention in the first few pages of the book, and there is mention of a few of my companies products hidden away in the pages too, but anyone that knows me, knows that I can happily pick holes in things that friends, foes or myself have created with equal ease. So with that out of the way let me begin.
So firstly this is a users guide, this isn't a guide on how to administer your Sametime, how to change a users name, or move a user from one Sametime server to another, this is an end user guide. If you're looking for a Packt Sametime Administrators guide you're going to have to wait, good news though, you at least can wait knowing that an Administrators guide is in the works.
The book recognizes that there are some people running the stand-alone Sametime client, and some running embedded Sametime, and points out the capabilities of each. The authors are smart enough to realize that not every Sametime user is running IBM Lotus Symphony, so they have a small section showing how Sametime presence awareness can be utilized in Microsoft Office, Outlook and Sharepoint.
At times I felt the book maybe went into a bit too much detail on the client, like is there anybody out there that really doesn't understand that the bold icon makes text bold, but then I thought about it and yes there are, these are the same people that call support desks complaining they haven't received any Instant Messages all morning, because it turns out, they had not loaded their Sametime client.
The book is targeted at Sametime 8.0x users, and not Sametime 8.5. This makes some sense as the majority of Sametime users are still on versions earlier than 8.5. There is an appendix on Sametime 8.5/8.5.1 however that gives a good introduction to some of the features available in those releases.
The only issue I have with the book, is the section on telephony, at no point in this book is TCSPI or client telephony based solutions mentioned, yet more people are probably making calls from Sametime using TCSPI than Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT). Admittedly the chapter is titled "Speak Up - Taking Advantage of Sametime Unified Telephony" so I suppose I shouldn't complain that it doesn't mention alternatives. The fact of the matter however is that SUT right now is not a good fit for a large percentage of Sametime customers, and alternate solutions from telephony vendors actually are. If there was one chapter that felt like it was written using IBM materials, this is probably it. Having said that, this is an end users guide, and as most Sametime users don't have SUT, this chapter really won't matter to them that much, but will give them an idea of things they might want to ask their administrators for.
The meat of the book is spent on the features that end users will use and should care about, and for that reason this is a great book for Sametime users and one that I happily recommend to Sametime users.
If you act quickly, you can get the book at 25% off today, as Packt have the last day of their IBM Month sale.
http://www.packtpub.com/article/ibm-books
There have been a few reviews of this book, rather than posting mine along with all the others, I wanted to keep the rolling thunder going for Marie and Tom, so held mine back for a while.
A few weeks ago, Packt publishing sent me a copy of Marie Scott's and Thomas Duff's book IBM Lotus Sametime 8 Essentials: A User's Guide.
The first thing you'll notice, is this book is not a feeble attempt at a book, if reviewed purely by weight then this one makes it into the Super Middleweight class (284 pages), this is not the sort of bantamweight dummies book that you'd find inside a Lotusphere bag to make up space, this is a real book with more than just pretty screenshots. Don't get me wrong, this book is perfect for the kind of person that would read a dummies book, but it contains a lot more useful information than you'd ever find in one, and there are plenty of screenshots for those that are more visual in their consumption of information.
So I should point out that I am friends with Marie and Tom, and I even have a mention in the first few pages of the book, and there is mention of a few of my companies products hidden away in the pages too, but anyone that knows me, knows that I can happily pick holes in things that friends, foes or myself have created with equal ease. So with that out of the way let me begin.
So firstly this is a users guide, this isn't a guide on how to administer your Sametime, how to change a users name, or move a user from one Sametime server to another, this is an end user guide. If you're looking for a Packt Sametime Administrators guide you're going to have to wait, good news though, you at least can wait knowing that an Administrators guide is in the works.
The book recognizes that there are some people running the stand-alone Sametime client, and some running embedded Sametime, and points out the capabilities of each. The authors are smart enough to realize that not every Sametime user is running IBM Lotus Symphony, so they have a small section showing how Sametime presence awareness can be utilized in Microsoft Office, Outlook and Sharepoint.
At times I felt the book maybe went into a bit too much detail on the client, like is there anybody out there that really doesn't understand that the bold icon makes text bold, but then I thought about it and yes there are, these are the same people that call support desks complaining they haven't received any Instant Messages all morning, because it turns out, they had not loaded their Sametime client.
The book is targeted at Sametime 8.0x users, and not Sametime 8.5. This makes some sense as the majority of Sametime users are still on versions earlier than 8.5. There is an appendix on Sametime 8.5/8.5.1 however that gives a good introduction to some of the features available in those releases.
The only issue I have with the book, is the section on telephony, at no point in this book is TCSPI or client telephony based solutions mentioned, yet more people are probably making calls from Sametime using TCSPI than Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT). Admittedly the chapter is titled "Speak Up - Taking Advantage of Sametime Unified Telephony" so I suppose I shouldn't complain that it doesn't mention alternatives. The fact of the matter however is that SUT right now is not a good fit for a large percentage of Sametime customers, and alternate solutions from telephony vendors actually are. If there was one chapter that felt like it was written using IBM materials, this is probably it. Having said that, this is an end users guide, and as most Sametime users don't have SUT, this chapter really won't matter to them that much, but will give them an idea of things they might want to ask their administrators for.
The meat of the book is spent on the features that end users will use and should care about, and for that reason this is a great book for Sametime users and one that I happily recommend to Sametime users.
If you act quickly, you can get the book at 25% off today, as Packt have the last day of their IBM Month sale.
http://www.packtpub.com/article/ibm-books
There have been a few reviews of this book, rather than posting mine along with all the others, I wanted to keep the rolling thunder going for Marie and Tom, so held mine back for a while.
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Posted by Thomas Duff At 09:07:17 AM On 11/30/2010 | - Website - |