SharePoint & Lotus

This week, version 1.5 of Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes was released. But instead of resting on our laurels here at Mainsoft, we’re already hard at work on the next release of the Notes plug-in. I’d like to give you a glimpse of one of the new cool features that’s in the pipeline: Calendar Federation.

For me, the most anticipated new feature in Lotus Notes 8.5 is calendar federation. For example, it allows you to subscribe to external iCal-based calendars and overlay Google calendars inside Notes. The Google Calendar support goes beyond Microsoft Outlook’s offering; Notes 8.5 offers true integration where you can create and edit appointments on Google Calendar from within Notes.

Mainsoft will be adding to this offering by making the connection to SharePoint calendars. SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes 8.5 will enable you to add SharePoint calendars to your Notes calendar view, and distinguish between calendars using color. From Notes, you can view, edit, create and delete appointments on your team’s SharePoint calendar. The calendar appointments are synchronized both ways, which means that every change you make in Notes will be transferred to SharePoint and vice versa. Calendars make use of Notes’ built-in offline feature, so you can work with SharePoint appointments even when you’re not online.

The screencast below shows an internal build of SharePoint Integrator running on a beta version of Lotus Notes 8.5. You can see a SharePoint calendar being added to the Notes calendar application, and becoming a first-class citizen in the Notes calendar view.

If you’re going to attend Lotusphere 2009 in Orlando, Florida in January, we’d be thrilled to meet you there. Mainsoft will be hosting a Birds-of-a-Feather session, and we’d be happy to show you a live demo of SharePoint Integrator and the Calendar Federation feature.

If you can’t make it to Orlando to talk to us in person, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!