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Working Together: Yahoo! Messenger and Lotus Sametime

January 19, 2007 on 10:56 am | In Features | 31 Comments

Great news! The Yahoo! Messenger interoperability with IBM Lotus Sametime is officially live. Yahoo! Messenger users can now IM with IBM’s ten million Sametime users.

Sametime is the world’s best selling enterprise IM software and part of the IBM Lotus software suite. To add a friend who uses Sametime to your Yahoo! Messenger contact list, click the “+” button on your Messenger window. Then enter your friend’s email address and choose the “Lotus Sametime” network from the drop down menu.

One important note if you’re trying to add a Lotus Sametime user to your Yahoo! Messenger list…. It is entirely up to the Sametime deployment administrator if they want to enable Yahoo! interoperability for their employees. Some companies may choose to not enable this feature which means the Sametime friend you’re trying to add may be prohibiting it from their end. If the functionality does not work for a friend, you may want to ask that friend to contact their company’s IT group and ask them to enable Yahoo! / Sametime interop.

This latest interoperability is part of our overall effort to help Yahoo! users connect with more friends, family and co-workers around the world by partnering with the industry’s leading communication networks. The Yahoo! Messenger network currently interoperates with the Microsoft Windows Live Messenger, IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Live Communication Server networks.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

31 Comments »

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  1. Just tried this and it does not appear to working yet. Did I just jump the gun in trying this?

    Comment by Tim — January 20, 2007 #

  2. Tim – You may need to completely exit out of Messenger and sign back in a couple of times before you’ll see the Lotus Sametime option in your menu. Thanks,

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — January 22, 2007 #

  3. [...] So what’s a person who has to deal with a large, previously closed company that doesn’t want to use your IM client of choice? Well, if they’re running Lotus and you’re running Y!IM, you use your client of choice. [...]

    Pingback by Yahoo! Cool thing of the Day » Blog Archive » Of Messengers and Monoliths — January 22, 2007 #

  4. Folks, Use Y!IM with Lotus ST is great, but I’d like to use Lotus ST with Y!IM, in details, the client still Lotus ST, but the connection are on both servers (Y!IM and Lotus ST) this is the better way to connect Y!IM contacts, without install anything in computer that already has ST as official IM software, but witch server I have to use to connect to Y!IM ?

    Comment by Roder — January 24, 2007 #

  5. Hi Roder – Yes, this is a 2-way interoperability agreement, so Sametime users should be able to add Yahoo! friends to their contact list. Check with your company’s Sametime administrator to find out how to add Yahoo! friends. Yahoo! interop may not be enabled at your company and if it’s not, you should ask your Sametime administrator to set up Yahoo! interop. Thanks,

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — January 24, 2007 #

  6. I can not add any sametime contact.
    I always get the error: .is not a valid Lotus sametime ID.
    But I add the ID I see in sametime!!!

    Comment by Alessandro — January 26, 2007 #

  7. Alessandro, probably the problem is the format of your address?

    In particular, I got it to work, but at first I was using an email address like you@place.org,but the real address was like:

    YOU/PL/PLACENN

    No @ at all!

    Comment by Jeff — January 26, 2007 #

  8. Ooops, spoke too soon, the actual request to Add the user eventually timed out.

    But I think Lotus Sametime names are of the form:

    Elva Pixton/Support/CTI

    Comment by Jeff — January 26, 2007 #

  9. Is anyone able to enter a sametime ID and send a message. I cannot do it. I tried the suggestions above and it still doesn’t work. Please help. Thanks

    Comment by Lori — February 13, 2007 #

  10. Is there any plan so far to interoperate Yahoo! Messenger with Google Talk?

    Comment by Dave — February 20, 2007 #

  11. I am unable to add Lotus sametime users even with the above suggestion. I tried adding with space between names as it comes in lotus notes) but it is giving me an error stating that it is not a valid id. Please help.

    Comment by Riya Agarwal — February 23, 2007 #

  12. I cant get it to work at all, can anyone help ?

    Comment by Neil — March 8, 2007 #

  13. Does this require the sametime server be setup to allow yahoo? Pictures and directions would be nice – it doesn’t seem to be as straightforward as everyone thinks.

    Comment by qtrolazyg — March 14, 2007 #

  14. Hi, I also have this problem, I suspect it’s down to a server problem so where does this need to be entered?

    //Martin

    Comment by McGeek — March 29, 2007 #

  15. Hello Sarah and everyone.. I am experiencing the same problem, getting the same error message that the ID is invalid. Is there anything else that should be configured aside from the other end’s yahoo interop?

    Comment by iska — May 22, 2007 #

  16. October now, and I have not seen any indication that this is possible. Does anyone have a single positive example of adding a sametime user to yahoo, or a yahoo user to sametime? specifically to IBMers

    Comment by Bshoemate — October 17, 2007 #

  17. Shall I consider this as a hoxxxxx since no one can use the SameTime ID to add to Yahoo..

    Comment by Sree — November 2, 2007 #

  18. Just read on Internal IBM site that this interoperability is still in progress. There is a limited 500 user testing in progress. May be ready in January

    Comment by Mrcdeo — November 10, 2007 #

  19. Any resolution on using sametime ID on Yahoo IM so far? I am not able to add.

    Comment by Arun — February 26, 2008 #

  20. Tried all the options listed above to add Lotus Sametime ID’s.
    And its way past Jan 2008, but still no luck.
    Anyone else been able to do it so far?

    Comment by Kevin — April 20, 2008 #

  21. Yeah just tried again.. no luck.. sounds like BS to me!

    Comment by Capri — May 8, 2008 #

  22. anyone can add Lotus Sametime ? I still have problem, It’s more than one and half years since the ‘good’ news announced.

    Comment by Sunny — September 19, 2008 #

  23. anyone can add Lotus Sametime ID to Yahoo Messenger ? Been trying it for sometime …still not working..or is there any step that I miss out !!!!!

    Comment by Lee — October 7, 2008 #

  24. I’ve been trying to add IBM employees. Has this thing ever worked?

    Comment by atalanta_63 — October 10, 2008 #

  25. Hi Sunny, Lee and atalanta_63,

    Sorry you’re having trouble adding a friend. One thing to note: It is entirely up to the Sametime deployment administrator if they want to enable Y! interoperability for their employees. Some companies may choose to not enable this feature which means the Sametime friends you’re trying to add may not make it possible. If the functionality does not work for a user, that user should contact their company’s IT group and ask them to enable Y! / Sametime interop.

    Hope that helps,

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — October 14, 2008 #

  26. I added my friend from Yahoo messenger and I am able to send her instant messages which she can see but she is not able to reply to me (i have Sametime 7.5.1)

    Comment by ADA — November 7, 2008 #

  27. We are using a product that Adobe bought called Antepo. Is there a way for us to link our Enterprise IM system to Yahoo, so that our employees can chat with Yahoo customers?

    Comment by Ryan — October 13, 2009 #

  28. @Ryan – Sorry, at this time we do not have an interoperability relationship with Adobe or Antepo. Thanks,

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — October 14, 2009 #

  29. Hi Sarah, Thanks for the response. Do you have a version of the client that is geared toward a corporate environment? We have a couple users to have some new clients that insist on talking over yahoo messenger. However, we have compliance requirements that require all electronic communication in the company to be logged. We want to prevent file transfers, and keep permanent Logs of the chat covnersations. Our users also login to Terminal servers. This might be the wrong place to ask about this, but I cant find anywhere else that is talking about this.

    Comment by Ryan — October 15, 2009 #

  30. @Ryan – I’m sorry, I’m not too familiar with the enterprise IM world. We do offer archiving in Yahoo! Messenger. So as long as those log files are getting backed up, would that suffice? It is a preference so archiving is something that an employee could turn off however. As for preventing file transfers in Yahoo! Messenger, that is not possible.

    Sarah Bacon

    Comment by Administrator — October 15, 2009 #

  31. Thank you for the quick response Sarah. Have a nice day.

    Comment by Ryan — October 15, 2009 #

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