Lotus® Sametime® is real-time collaboration software -- with online awareness, instant messaging, application sharing and virtual meetings.
Sametime consists of client and server applications that enable a community of users to collaborate in real-time online meetings over an intranet or the Internet. Members of the Sametime community use collaborative activities such as presence, chat, screen sharing, a shared whiteboard, and real-time audio/video capabilities to meet, converse, and work together in instant or scheduled meetings.
Sametime "presence" technology enables members who have logged in to the Sametime server to see all other members who are online (logged in). The names of online users display in presence lists (also known as buddy lists) in Sametime applications. From these presence lists, members of the community can converse through instant messaging sessions or start instant meetings that include chat, screen-sharing, whiteboard, question and answer polls, the ability to send Web pages, and audio/video collaborative activities.
To allow the IBM® Telephone Directory V5.2 application to integrate Sametime functions, it uses the Sametime Links optional toolkit for Lotus Sametime. The Sametime Links toolkit is used for enabling Web applications and with Sametime awareness and instant messaging using an HTML or JavaScript™ API.
When a user logs in to search for directory entries, results are returned on HTML pages. The pages display information obtained from the directory for each matching entry. Results always contain the name of each entry and may also contain email addresses, telephone numbers, and a list of job responsibilities. When Sametime chat links are enabled, results also include awareness icons for each entry (provided by the Sametime Links toolkit). Awareness icons are used to indicate whether the other users are online (logged into Sametime). If they are logged in, users can click on the awareness icons to initiate chat sessions with other users using Sametime technology.
Another feature of IBM Telephone Directory V5.2 is the Sametime presence list support (also known as a buddy list). When the Sametime buddy list support is enabled for the application, an Add to Buddy List icon is displayed in the navigation bar of a search result page. When this icon is clicked, the directory entry that is displayed is added to the user's Sametime buddy list. IBM Telephone Directory V5.2 only provides the ability to add listings to a buddy list. Sametime client software, or other Sametime software, must be used in order to use and manage the buddy list.
Interaction with the Sametime server for chat sessions and buddy list support is handled by the Sametime Links toolkit APIs that runs in the client browser. IBM Telephone Directory does not provide the toolkit, rather, it adds what is needed on the HTML pages for the toolkit package to be downloaded from the Sametime server.
See the following IBM Telephone Directory V5.2 topics for more information on how to set up and use Sametime integration in the application:
- Set up Sametime chat links (STLinks)
- Set up Sametime presence list support
- Add an entry to your Sametime presence list
- Start a Sametime chat with an entry
Related information
You can also set up your Sametime server and configure it to use the same LDAP directory as IBM Telephone Directory V5.2. By doing so, you can enable all users to have real-time collaboration without any additional user administration. See Using the same directory for IBM Telephone Directory V5.2 and Lotus Sametime for more information.
