The Widget and Live Text feature in IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 and IBM Lotus Expeditor 6.2 provides the user with an option to add widgets from a catalog to the sidebar. In the Composite Application Editor (CAE), users can browse catalogs and add widgets to the component palette. From there, they can be added to composite applications.
To enable a preview of this functionality in Lotus Notes 8.5 you have to install the CAE catalog support feature as described in this article. In order to install this feature in Lotus Expeditor 6.2, you first have to install the Expeditor Widgets feature and the Widgets Composite Application Adapter feature.
Browse Catalog
If the component catalog feature is installed, you can use CAE to add widgets from the default catalog or from any other Domino-based or Web-based catalog to the component palette. You configure the location of the default catalog in the Widgets section of the Notes or Expeditor preferences respectively.
Remark: This feature requires the catalog server to be specified by either its IP address or its full server name. For example, instead of using a catalog server like server/domain the full server name server.domain.com has to be specified in the Widgets section of the Notes/Expeditor preferences.
By right-clicking on the component palette in CAE, you can select “Add Components” - “From Default Catalog” or “From Other Catalog...”. If the “From Default Catalog” option is selected, the default catalog as configured in the preferences is opened in a new tab in CAE. If “From Other Catalog...” is selected, you have to provide a URL pointing to the desired catalog. For both Expeditor and Notes, you can supply http-based URLs. Inn Notes you can also provide a Notes URL starting with “notes://”, for example “notes://myserver/folder/mycatalog.nsf”. In both cases, the catalog will be displayed in a new tab in CAE. There, users can browse through the available categories. Please note that depending on the server connection, it can take a while for the catalog to display and that currently during this process, there is no user feedback.
Widgets can be added to the component palette by dragging and dropping the widget's extension.xml to the component palette.