workspace and/or LSO ???

Remember that Matt's a marketing guy :>
Workspace replaces portal, and also provides the hosting container for self-service apps.
LSO is still the "power user" interface, but is optional.

Have you seen workspace in action? When we asked our outside consultant this question, they said they couldn't be sure because it won't be available until S3 10 comes out. I also asked this question during the webinars on S3 10 that Lawson hosted last week, and did not get a straight answer. I think we are going to have to blow money we don't have to go to cue, just to (hopefully) find out what is going on. We want to start budgeting and planning sooner rather than later!

According to the webinard from lawson and the other material that is coming out, Lawson has given customers the choice to deploy either workspace or LSO or both.
 
For power users or more sophisticated users be the director or mangers of business units on which decisions lie Lawson smart office is the best choice. Since by the use of LSO they can customize screens add widgets lists etc which will change the way they work by working the way they want to work. for e.g you could be an healthcare environment and have Accounts payable, purchasing etc. With the help of LSO you can modify the Ap10 or PO20 screens, create lists etc. Use of LSo will be higher in these environments.

For users who are not using Lawson as their tool for day to day operations but need lawson from time to time these users will need workspace. Links to LBI, ESS, MSS etc can be  created on workspace since this will be the replacement for poratl and for LSO as well.

It seems pretty straightforward to me. Workspace replaces Portal. You also have the option of purchasing Smart Office and deploying it to your more sophisticated users regardless of whether everyone else is running Portal or Workspace. The decision to purchase and deploy Smart Office is not tied to the replacement of Portal by Workspace.

Let me take a crack at this from the research I have done and what I have seen to date.

LSO is primarily for headsdown/core users. There are a few reasons for that from my perspective. 1.) Licensing wise if you took advantage of the LSO for maintenance only option that Lawson offered, you are licensed for concurrent licenses equal to what your back end modules were. For example, if you have 40 licenses for AP you would get 40 licenses. 2.) LSO has personalizations that users can define and utilize like hiding fields, defaulting values, etc without IT intervention. 3.) If you plan to use Mashup Designer (highly recommended by me) to pull data from multiple forms, tables, etc to create an application that follows your business process. LSO is required. 4.) Keep in mind LSO is a physical install on PC's and to take full advantage of features like Edit in excel, you must be Office 2007 or above and you PC's need to be at certain specs to get required performance. I think this is one of the major reasons for not rolling everyone to LSO as the PC requirements and work from home options are slightly more complex than a portal/sharepoint site deployment.

Workspace will be the replacement for Portal with a Sharepoint frontend. This should put the UI on a standard platform for bringing in 3rd party systems into 1 place. This will be the way to integrate self service, other Infor products and provide an up to date user experience. This is more for the casual user as they don't get into Lawson at the same frequency.

In terms of planning, they laid out some steps you can do to get to a place where S3 10/Infor 10 will work. The interim steps you would make sure are in place are 1.) Move to LS security 2.) Deploy LSO 3.) Deploy the new ProcessFlow tool ( I forgot the marketing name for this) 4.) Deploy S3 10

Those interim steps if you haven't taken them will help in determining the course of action. We have LS security deployed, we are deploying LSO currently and will roadmap the remaining. The date I have seen is May 2012 for release so we plan from that day out and would most likely look to next summer to install S3 10.

Hope that helps some as I have tried to begin the planning and roadmapping of this new product.

The deployment of LSO is not a required step to get to S3 10.

Thanks guys. I guess what makes us feel a little unsure, never having seen S3 10 or workspace, is how we keep reading that LSO should be deployed for our "heads down" /"power"/"core"/whatever users, and workspace is more aimed at "casual"/"day-to-day" users. I've got several hundred applicationusers that I would consider "core" -- accounting, HR/benefits, payroll depts, right up through executive. All these people are logged into Lawson applications all day every day. They currently access applications through portal and have no trouble getting their work done there. Is workspace missing something these people need? If we can get them to Lawson applications, emss, and T&E through workspace, and it sounds like we can, what is the need for LSO? It is being billed as an efficiency enhancer, but from what I've seen, it looks like a toy that gives users alot of new ways to fiddle around and waste time.

Lawson would like everyone to buy LSO, so they've been implicating or even saying outright that you must have it for your daily users of Lawson. If, as they are also saying, workspace provides all the functionality of portal then you shouldn't need LSO.

We are still defining our savings on LSO but it all comes down to ease of use and clicks. Clicks & Keystrokes = Time. So if I as an end user can remove fields I don't use or change the tab order to not have to click or tab through the field, then I save time. If I can default in a company number, and the person next to me can default a different company number, that saves 6 keystrokes. List driven searches and the ability to save that filtered list so when you click next on a form that it only scrolls to the next record in your filter, huge time saver. Then you add the ability to edit in excel, this provides access to users to utilize an add-in like toolset without having to map columns, download, upload and know the table structure.

Beyond base LSO, I love Mash up designer! This tool on top of LSO allows me to pull together disparet information into 1 view. For Example, in Grants they look at People data (employee table), Labor Distribution (GM10.2), Labor Cost Transfers (GM12.2) and Effort Reports (GM65). I have built a Mashup that allows me to follow the business process and have 1 screen that filters by employee when I click the employee it pre-filters the other forms which I placed on tabs. As I click the tab, the data is already there waiting for me to review. I now have taken the Lawson Application and turned it into a form to better utilize our organizations business process. The key to mashups, you have to deploy in LSO. My first mashup took about 4 hours to build, far less time than LBI or DS would have taken me to accomplish the same goals.

You can probably tell I am in the group supporting LSO deployment. I see you points and the marketing of it from Lawson. I then see how an area like Grants is very labor intensive without the ability to pull all of that data together and I see a vision for LSO / Mashups leading the way to make my users life's easier. That is my one and only sales pitch as LSO is a good tool, but I feel mashups takes it to another level.

Sounds like LSO is a godsend for your Grants users, Mark!

I am sure that LSO is not evil. Hopefully as the time gets closer, Lawson will be more a bit more forthcoming about the pros and cons of both UIs, so their customers can make informed decisions. We've been trying to contact our acct rep for more info or a demo, but to no avail!

How are you delivering LSO, Mark, are you guys physically going from PC to PC? What is your training strategy? Rolling out LSO would be a pretty decent sized effort for us, as we have Lawson application users in offices spread across the US.

The nice piece about the LSO install, you can send people to a URL and with 1 click it installs. We can do it for them remotely. We have targeted one area for our rollout up front. Grant Admin (Grants Accounting).

Physically we are in 3 buildings but only 5 miles apart total, so logistically we have an easier time if we wanted to go physically to the pc's.

YOu should be ok with the remoting in or even walking them through it on the phone. If your certificates are set up correctly, you won't have to touch anything else. Addins will install on the first time they used export to excel.

LSO auto pushes the updates to the PCs when you upgrade to a new version. It just tells them there is an update and installs. They sign in and get the new version. That piece makes it easier to support from an IT perspective on the PC itself.

As you are rolling out, PC's will be a big thing to keep your eye on. I have a Win 7 PC with Office 2010 and see no speed issues. We have some on XP SP3 and Office 2010 and they seem some performance issues. We are trying to quantify the differences to see if it warrents new PC's with Win 7 and more memory.

Thanks Mark! The initial install sounds pretty slick.

Sounds like you are saying that LSO actually uses addins for its excel piece. We've seen some issues with addins since we've gone to Win 7/Office 2010 (when users have more than one excel/addins session open), so that's good to know.

I read someplace that all the LSO customizations, mashups, etc are "stored on the server." I'm assuming this means the application server. Have you taken a look at these files, are they very big? Can you set up the folder where ever you want, or does LSO only want to store them in a certain place? If you are on Server 2008, did you have to turn UAC off in order for the files to be saved?

Thank you again for sharing your experiences with  LSO. Very informative!

Lawson posted an FAQ doc that has alot of good info in it around what to expect with S3 10 on mylawson. The points about process flow replacement work efforts, workspace vs LSO, as well as design studio questions helped me with some planning exercises.

Hope it helps others as well.

While at Inforum, we sat through a session on workspace. It was said and I confirmed that Portal is really just repackaged inside Sharepoint to make the workspace product. It is like many people run LBI within the portal. Portal will run within Sharepoint. It simply wraps around the portal screen. This helped give me some relief in terms of planning for version 10 upgrade.

My understanding though for the back-end server, if you are going to implement LSO, you also need Landmark. We currently do not have Landmark, nor do we really want it. We've decided against the purchase of LSO and are simply going to install Workspace.
Can anyone clarify/confirm/deny?

Greg

I believe Landmark is required for LPA (replacement for Process Flow Integrator) and possibly for S3 10 but not for LSO on S3 9.x.

We just deployed LSO on 9.0.1.8 Environment/ 9.0.1.5 Apps, Sun Solaris , Oracle 11gR2 , Websphere 7.x with no issues.

We are in the process of moving to version 10 and so far i am not super impressed with wrapping current portal in a SharePoint shell. The user experience for ESS/MSS is lacking a interface. (hate that they did not give us a template)

Anyone have a solution to help with the user interface for simple ESS using workspace?

We were confused as well originally because EVERYTHING was saying that Portal is gone in V10. I have a V10 up and running and I am here to tell everyone that Portal is still alive and kicking. They did a VERY poor job of communicating around Portal changes because really all they have done is used a Sharepoint server and a Infor developed SharePoint Plug-in to wrap around the existing Portal. HOWEVER, if you have self-service users you can publish the portal link directly.

What I was trying to find out in this topic is how everyone is using the new user interfaces.  (maybe I should have just startred a new topic)...  My issue is that they have created very cool front-end for power users (LSO) and they have created a wrap for middle users (Workspace) and they still have Portal that support said I could use for ESS/MSS. At this point, I am trying to decide if ESS/MSS is going to use workspace. I just do not see what I gain from WorkSpace for my ESS/MSS users.

Also, their new bookmark structure is cascading with a combination of clicks and hovers. It is a little less intuitive than the 9.0.1.x versions and I was hoping someone might be able to share their experiences with V10 ESS/MSS. As I have talked with others I am finding that for ESS/MSS Infor expects us to create our own interface with custom HTML pages. There are no templates for ESS/MSS delivered from Infor.

Posted By Shane Jones on 05/23/2013 05:13 PM
I have a V10 up and running and I am here to tell everyone that Portal is still alive and kicking. 

This is misleading. While it's true that you still install "Portal", it is now "S3 for Workspace" (at least I think that's the latest name). However, there are certain functions that are removed from Portal and now exist within Workspace (e.g. the logout button no longer exists) And, you *must* login via Workspace (SharePoint) if you choose the Kerberos authentication option rather than "Lawson Security as Security Token Service" (LS as STS), Most importantly, using the "Portal" directly *without* Workspace is *NOT* supported. Don't do it.

Posted By Greg Moeller on 05/16/2012 03:54 PM
My understanding though for the back-end server, if you are going to implement LSO, you also need Landmark. We currently do not have Landmark, nor do we really want it. We've decided against the purchase of LSO and are simply going to install Workspace.
Can anyone clarify/confirm/deny?

Landmark is not required nor even an option associated with LSO. Landmark runtime is required for Process Automation, which replaces ProcessFlow for v10 customers.

Posted By Chris on 02/01/2012 07:43 AM
It seems pretty straightforward to me. Workspace replaces Portal. You also have the option of purchasing Smart Office and deploying it to your more sophisticated users regardless of whether everyone else is running Portal or Workspace. The decision to purchase and deploy Smart Office is not tied to the replacement of Portal by Workspace.

This is absolutely the correct answer.

Late last week I was talking with Infor Support and then early this week I followed up with My Infor Rep because I was unhappy with some of the new features. My Rep got me on the phone with an Infor Professional Services person. Both resources have led me to believe that I can still direct my ESS/MSS users to:

http://server.domain/lawson/portal/

In fact, the support person told me how to put the logout button back on the portal page. The logout button still exists in the "delivered" code for my 10.0.2 version - it is just commented out. Not sure why they would have told me all this if it is not supported?

I will follow up again -- I wonder if it has something do do with "ESS/MSS" users versus "Form" users?

With Infor 10, Lawson Portal is decommissioned as an end user product; while it is still used as part of Workspace, Infor's intention is to move to a unified UI across all Infor products--Workspace, and ming.le--which sits atop Workspace.

As for ESS/MSS pages, yes, they can run outside of Workspace, since they are HTML pages/forms that are calling LSF servlets.
However, for "Portal" forms, they should be run inside of Workspace.

So yes, while Portal still exists, my understanding is that its use without Workspace is not intended or supported.

It's just like LID -- it does still exist, but its use is not supported by end users.

Where you may end up with issues is with 1) authentication--for Kerberos at least, it is done in SharePoint, and passed to Lawson, and 2) endpoints (alternate access mapping in SharePoint terms); the future direction will be that those functions will be owned by Workspace.

While we might see this change based on push-back from clients who don't want to adopt SharePoint and Workspace, I think that's unlikely.

Regardless, this is a worthwhile discussion, and very important that the community not start down a path without a complete understanding of what is involved and any possible support implications.

Being that I Install v10 systems, I will say that Workspace within Sharepoint will eventually work out OK, but really only if all the underlying technology gets all the weirdness, bugs and kinks worked out, such as for example "LS to STS" authentication. I'm being positive thinking here.

-Roger

I thought I should follow-up on this topic since I have more information... Friday I contacted Infor to get confirmation - in writing - because I wanted to make sure I could use the ESS/MSS without the stupid SharePoint Wrapper. I was informed by an Infor Services Technician and my Account Executive that using "just" portal without the SharePoint wrapper for ESS/MSS is supported. In fact, I was further informed that if I want I can create all of my own html landing pages and link associates to different ESS/MSS feature pages without using the Workspace warpper at all.

My 2 cents on the SharePoint Wrapper: "It is a huge dehancement." I am seeing little that improves my use of the system and they pretty much give you a blank canvas. (More clicks to get places - how is that better?) Anything you want to do in the Sharepoint wrapper you will need to develop. Additionally, with the SharePoint wrapper I have to remove probably 50 or more email links that used to take users directly to a Form (HR11, PR14) which you can not do in Workspace. They will have to manually navigate to the form and lookup the record that you want reviewed. With the SharePoint wrapper for an ESS feature I will not be able to send an associate a link directly to a ESS/MSS feature. (i.e we send associates emails indicating that their Dependent was missing information or they are married and their beneficiary is not their spouse.) The email would in 9X include a link DIRECTLY to the ESS feature page. Workspace can not link directly to the ESS/MSS feature bookmark.

Are any of you "using" Version 10? I would be surprised if companies do not drag their feet a bit on using Workspace as the front-end for ALL users. (Look how long LID hung around.)

Shane, I have to agree with you about Sharepoint/Workspace being a dehancement. Couple of thoughts, being on the front lines of installing v10 and v10 products. I'm trying to be positive but it's hard to when some of this underlying technology is not completely stable or just plain wonky. Or it could be me too that I can't make sense of incomplete or unclear documentation. And of course there is the support.

I think there is too much wrapper in the wrapper. Behind the scenes there is Sharepoint,Workspace,DSSO/DSP, LS to STS (or Kerberos), Workspace Identity Provider, Workspace Plugins, plus 3 new IDs you have to create (spinstall, spfarm, spservices). All of it has to be installed in the correct and proper order, plus it all has to be configured spot on.... or else....the stuff just won't work. And all of that wraps around S3 for Workspace. Do long time or even short time customers need Ming.le, SoHo... boo.boo or ding.dong? Do they need all those bells and whistles inside Sharepoint? My 2 cents is that I don't want to go Faster, I just want it to go correctly and get me there in one piece. On course and get me to my destination.

And I haven't even touched on LBI....

What about patches and upgrades to this stuff. If you're upgrading to a new version of Workspace for example, does that mean you have to tear out everything and reinstall it again? I haven't done a v10 to v10 Workspace upgrade yet but I'm dreading it a little.

Versus,..

Just S3 for Workspace (Portal). Clean simple log in screen. And your there.

-Roger

Workspace was an interface UI that was MANDATED by Infor for install at S3 Clients, primarily so that All Infor products - Lawson being one of them, could be deployed in a single container as a frontend. Although "Portal" is still there at ../lawson/portal, it is deployed inside a WorkSpace Wrapper. I have heard that there was discussion about not having Workspace installed at PURE S3 Clients, but that the Parent Company still wanted it to be that way. I guess they would wish to cross-sell other Non-Lawson Infor Software products to the Lawson S3 Clients and have them all available in a single UI. The reccomendatin I have heard was to install Sharepoint Foundation, and make that Sharepoint for Workspace "independant" of any Sharepoint Farm a Client may have, most likely because n the transtion to Workspace there may have been fear (on both ends) about pushing this into a pre-existing sharepoint farm and potentially breaking it.

Our organization was just given a "sales" presentation on Mingle (renamed Workspace) and they really emphasized the collaboration tools built into Mingle. The desktop we saw looked like a combination of Facebook and LinkedIn. Very little emphasis was placed on actually using Lawson. We are currently working on our upgrade to Lawson 10, including rolling out LSO for power users. A few users are currently working with LSO and really like it. However when I asked the Infor sales team if the nifty collaboration tools they were waxing eloquently about in Mingle are available to LSO users the answer was no. So you could have user "A" in Mingle initiate something which will then send a notification to other users ("B","C") that they have a task to perform, but if user "C" is on LSO then user "C" will not get this notification. WTF?? Infor is supposedly working on integrating the collaboration tools into LSO but they are not there yet.

We were told that LSO is not going away anytime soon, and will be supported for at least 4 years (the timeline Lawson uses for decommissioning products) but did not get a clear answer if LSO was going to be merely supported or would be actively developed and expanded going forward. Does anyone have insight about the future of LSO?

David, are you guys going to install Ming.le foundation or Enterprise? When we look at it, the enterprise version will allow you to do all the social collaboration like you said but I can't quiet get there in order to purchase and install ION etc since we don't run any other Infor (Non Lawson) product.

When I asked the question about LSO vs Ming.le; I was told they are both moving forward as planned for UI. There are clear differences between the two UI's and the purpose behind them. I love the collaboration within LSO for headsdown users. I am looking at the Ming.le webparts (sharepoint) to provide additional contextual BI for EMSS and RQC users.

I think the collaboration and contextual BI set both UI's apart from portal today.

Hi Mark,

We will probably just be using the Ming.le foundation at present.  Our power users will be using LSO and the sharpoint system will be for everyone else.

Mark, sorry I didn't reply sooner.

From your comments, is ION also required to utilize Ming.le Enterprise? We too do not have any non-Lawson Infor products (and only have S3 apps) to integrate.

We are going with Ming.le Foundation at present and probably scrapping ISO. The quote we got for Enterprise was $450,000. Also we were told you have Enterprise to integrate with the next release of ISO (new name for LSO).

Part of my point was Infor introduced Ming.le and really touts the collaboration tools built into Ming.le Enterprise but then admits these collaboration tools are not integrated with ISO so our ISO users would have to be logged into both ISO for their normal work and into Ming.le to get notifications.

David, ION is required if using enterprise. That is one of our driving factors as well. Our user base will be "core" heads down users in ISO, all EMSS/RQC in Mingle. You are correct that means two different UI's or at minimum links between two.

We have not been able to justify the collaboration that Ming.le provides in a business case as of yet. That is why we are planning V10 upgrade with Ming.le foundation for Oct go-live.

Shane. Can you share where the commented code block is? We are not planning to roll out Mingle to end users as we are not sure what to do with it yet.  We are going to push the Lawson 10.x portal link for self service. Thanks

Jim Ollerton

Posted By Ollerton on 04/30/2014 11:34 AM
Shane. Can you share where the commented code block is? We are not planning to roll out Mingle to end users as we are not sure what to do with it yet.  We are going to push the Lawson 10.x portal link for self service. Thanks

Jim Ollerton

Hello just an FYI, if you are not planning on rolling out Mingle to end users, and instead you just want the 'old' portal, Infor/Lawson may not support your users if they begin having issues with the application or environment. 

-Roger