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Bookmark to IBM Connections bookmarks from iOS

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:01:00 GMT

Bookmarks (aka Dogear) in IBM Connections is great and IBM provides a nifty bookmarklet to allow easy bookmarking from your browser. I couldn't however make this bookmarklet work in Safari on iOS so I decided to look into it. And I'm happpy to say I got it to working with some inspiration from the Instapaper bookmarklet. The way it works for me now is that I have the bookmark bar visible on my iPhone and iPad and when I need to bookmark I use the bookmarklet which redirects to the IBM Connections bookmark page and back to the original page once done. Super easy and it works great.

Here is how to make it work.

Open Safari and make a bookmark to a random page but be sure to place it in the bookmark bar (the bookmark bar can be made visible all the time in Safari options).
Edit that bookmark and change the title to something that makes sense (I use "IV Dogear").
Clear the location field and paste in the JavaScript code from below replacing the hostname (lc.intravision.dk) with a hostname applicable to you.
Save the bookmark and start bookmarking.

javascript:function%20abcdefg()%7Bvar%20h='http://lc.intravision.dk/dogear';var%20d=document;var%20b=d.body;var%20e=encodeURIComponent;var%20u=h+'/bookmarklet/post?url='+e(location.href)+'&title='+e(d.title);location.href=u+'&inframe=true&ver=';%7D;abcdefg();void(0);

File not found when using IBM Connections Media Gallery

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:58:08 GMT

At a customer users were reporting that the media gallery in IBM Connections did not work. The error they were seeing was aneror message in the UI telling them that the file they just selected from their file system did not exist. Very strange. After diagnosing the issue it was caused by the media gallery not having been set up correctly as the default file types wasn't imported into the configuration. Why these defaults are not set automatically is the topic for another day.

There are two templates which determine the file types you can upload by default. You should also have these in your AppSrv01 profiles, or your nodes, etc. The step is done by following the instructions in the info center.

Disabling HTTPS communication between IHS WAS Plugin and WAS servers

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:52:50 GMT

Many people believe that you have to have multiple servers to run IBM Connections - this simply isn't true! There's no reason why you cannot run everything of the same server which is what we do here at the office. When you do that, if all servers are inside the firewall - or if you simply doesn't care about the security that it provides - you can disable the IHS WAS Plugin from communicating with the WAS server using SSL. A benefit from this is among other things that you do not have to care about certificates between the IHS WAS Plugin and the WAS server which simplifies installation and management.

Any way... For a while I've doing this configuration change manually directly in plugin-cfg.xml (by commenting the HTTPS transport out) until it bit us the other day. So I finally decided to find a proper, correct, solution. And of course there is a way to do this and it's very well documented in IBM Technote 1452735. So if you want to make that change go ahead and do it - I did and it's working flawlessly.

Files plugin for Lotus Notes

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:14:33 GMT

A while back I saw the new IBM Connections 3.0.1 Files Plug-in for Lotus Notes from Mac Guidera's blog. I didn't blog it because it didn't work with LotusLive Engage but since updates was just done to LotusLive it may work now. Must try.

Searching Profiles programmatically

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:42:28 GMT

As part of IBM Connections you will find a big REST API that allows you to work with almost every part of Connections such as searching for profiles, managing files and working with communities. As part of our new product (see my previous post) I'm doing a lot with this API. Right now one of my favorite wiki documents is "Searching Profiles programmatically".

WAS profile creation on Windows Server 2008 64 bit

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:54:40 GMT

When installing Connections on Windows 2008 Server 64 bit the profile management tool doesn't work so profile creation is done using manageprofiles.bat/sh. The syntax is hard to remember so here it is for future reference.

Deployment manager:
c:\ibm\websphere\appserver\bin\manageprofiles.bat -create -templatePath ..\profileTemplates\management -profileName dmgr -profilePath d:\wasprofiles\dmgr -cellName LCCell01 -nodeName dmgrNode -serverType DEPLOYMENT_MANAGER

Application server:
c:\ibm\websphere\appserver\bin\manageprofiles.bat -create -templatePath ..\profileTemplates\default -profileName AppSrv01 -profilePath d:\wasprofiles\appsrv01 -nodeName appNode01

OnTime Group Calendar for Social Business

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:12:41 GMT

As part of the OnTime Group Calendar we're building a series of widgets for IBM Connections to allow easier collaboration - the more we collaborate the more we need access to accurate, updated, calendar data. This puts OnTime Group Calendar smack in the middle of the move to social business. We are getting ready to release the widgets as part of the product and we have the first demo ready.

The integration into the Profiles feature is easily understandable and shows the calendar of the user right there on the profile page as shown on the right. Click the image to see a larger version.

However the real power lies in the integration into communities. Here we bring the calendar of community members into the community is a text list UI and a full graphical viewer based UI as in the rest of our clients. For communities we are also offering a Social Scheduling widget to allow you to find available meeting times and book meetings with community members plus people you may only know based on tags (keywords) or location. Very powerful and possible due to the API offered for OnTime Group Calendar.

(click the image for a larger version)

Please note that everywhere the access to calendar data is only available if the querying user has sufficient access.

The demo below outlines how OnTime Group Calendar for Social Business brings calendar data into IBM Connections in the Profiles feature and in the Communities feature.

All videos are available on the ontimesuite YouTube channel.

Backup for IBM Connections communities

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:21:15 GMT

An excellent and a bit overdue addition to IBM Connections is better control over backup of communities. We're not talking fine grained control and integration with e.g. Tivoli Storage Manager but rather backup to and restore from ZIP-files. The asset has been added to the Greenhouse catalog and is described in the New backup & restore tool for IBM Connections Communities post on the Synch.rono.us blog.