Connections 4: Profiles Customization Gets More Flexible

So I am not sure if anyone else has really spent time with this feature yet or not, but IBM has rewritten the was Profiles customization and extension happens.  It now takes advantage of the FreeMarker templating system for customizing Profiles, Business Cards, and Profile Search results.

IBM has provided a demo example in the product wiki to walk you through the steps to execute a simple extension.

The beauty of this approach is that code which would previously have been put into a custom attribute definition (which still works for backwards compatibility) can now be either placed into a custom FreeMarker macro in the commonUtil.ftl or can simply be wrapped around the display macro for the field in the other templates.

One word of advice, the documentation still has remnants of the Connections 3.x methodologies and links within some of the pages weave you between both methodologies.  When looking for information on enabling extension attributes for editing via the API, for example, it still references all configuration being done in the profiles-config.xml.  That file has been broken up into multiple files, with certain configuration remaining there and other configurations being moved to profiles-types.xml.

If the OOTB template files are not extreme enough of a UI change for you, it would appear that the documentation indicates you can completely rewrite the display and editing templates to your liking.  The ability to add/remove tabs from Profiles, reorder fields (which I have already used this for), add new fields, etc makes for a very flexible and interesting feature now.

Last note, there is a setting which you will want to explore:

<layoutConfiguration>
  <!--
   UI Template rendering configuration information
   -->
    <templateConfiguration>
    <!-- FTL template reloading to test customization, in production this value should be set to 0, but during customization set to value in seconds -->
      <templateReloading>1</templateReloading>

         ...

    </templateConfiguration>

</layoutConfiguration>

This will ensure that while developing your templates checking them out and in without restart will render your changes.

Happy Customizing!

For more information about FreeMarker, check their SourceForge page here.

Connections Mail Available!

If you missed the announcement:


IBM Connections Mail is now available to integrate mail and calendar into your social environment
IBM Collaboration Solutions

IBM Connections is an open and secure social software platform that helps people engage with networks of expertise and integrated business processes in order to act with confidence to create a new world of possibilities. Leverage the new information on Connections Mail to bring mail and calendar views and functions into your social environment.

• Connections Mail plugin entry for the Catalog
• Connections Mail demo
• Discover page

You can find it in the Solution Catalog on Greenhouse.

Connections 2.5–4.0 Upgrade Notes

While working on one of the first 2.5 to 4.0 upgrades with my team, here are some of our lessons learned:

1. You MUST use an HTTP server when running features from more than one WAS profile.  Accessing some of the features like homepage, which make use of the ajax proxy, do not work in all browsers.  Be sure to install and access your deployment through an HTTP server before you continue to troubleshoot.
2. You can string together the database upgrade scripts (2.5 > 3.0.1 > 4.0) without installing C3.  The wizard does perform some database validation which will let you know the databases are structurally sound and ready to move to the next step.
3. All supporting apps require an upgrade.  C3 to C4 this may not be a true statement, but when skipping versions, it absolutely is.  This has implications to your ability to reuse current config files, settings, and TDISOL directory.  We discovered that exporting and importing the Connections config files, they did not all translate well.
4. 1. It was simpler to deploy with the OOTB config files and reapply configurations. 
   2. TDI options are not the same, and some of the scripts do not run properly or at all with the 2.5 TDISOL directory.
   3. Profile extensions are not handled the same way.  Some of these changes were introduced in 3.0, but the source environment does not take this into account.  Review the custom attributes, labels, and pre/post HTML which needs to be converted to newer method of applying these settings.
5. Don't forget to check your HTTP server for custom header / footer components.  It was a best practice in the 2.5 days to move your header to the HTTP server. There may be items in the files on the HTTP server that you will need to incorporate into your upgrade.
6. Changes to css are now located in <Connections_Data>/shared/customization/themes/defaultTheme and wind up being rolled into a "virtual" css "default.css".  This is NOT dynamically generated and requires a restart of the Common application to rebuild the file.  (Did not test to see if there is a timed interval that rebuilds this.)  NOT EFFECTED by the UI debug WAS parameter.

It’s Official…

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2012/Jun12/06-25MSYammerPR.aspx

We knew this was coming, but now they are out of the closet.  So… what will this mean for SharePoint social add-ons?  How will NewsGator and the others plan for the next 12mo?  I think it will be very interesting as there is clearly a statement here that is SharePoint is NOT social, and as such, Microsoft is making a purchase that will enable them to bridge that gap.

On a side note, it makes me feel that Connections’ message is more solid than ever.  As the MS partner ecosystem tries to figure out what the new Yammer + SharePoint will mean for them, IBM can continue to develop and evolve their solution just as they have been for quite a few years now.  Businesses can’t deny that IBM has what is obviously a market leader, and also a very mature and stable solution when compared to the new SP landscape.  This will be fun, for sure.

WebSphere Plugin Key & Password Expiration 4/26

Accelerated Value Announcement:  WAS Alert affecting ICS Products !

WebSphere Plugin Key & Password Expiration 4/26

Overview:    WAS Support posted two Flash Alerts to customers about Expirations on 4/26.  These expirations could have significant impact to production environments if not addressed. The following alert applies to all products that are built on top of WebSphere Application Server, for example: Portal, Sametime, Connections, and Quickr J.

ACTION:  Make sure that your customers are aware of these items and the April 26th date .

1)The password to the Plugin-key.kdb file  that is shipped with the WebSphere Plugin install will expire on April 26, 2012:
 
Please refer to the following link for additional details.  

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21588312

The impact  of the "password expiration issue in the above flash" is that the https transport between the WebSphere plugin and back-end AppServers will stop working, if not resolved.  It means that the Plugin-key.kdb (and the personal & signer certificates in it) will not be loaded during the plugin initialization and the https transport will not be used.

2) The personal certificate  called "WebSphere Plugin Key" within the plugin-key.kdb that is shipped with the WebSphere Plugin install will expire on April 26, 2012:

Please refer to the following link for additional details.  

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21577327

This will affect those WebSphere AppServers that are configured to require SSL client authentication (SSL mutual authentication) and that are using the default WebSphere plug-in key.  Most of our customers did not configure WebSphere AppServers to use SSL mutual authentication between the plug-in and WebSphere AppServers.

We CAN Move From SharePoint to IBM!

So I have not posted for a while, and for good reason.  I have been working almost exclusively with the same customer since November on a really cool project and it is finally reaching a point that I can talk about it… a bit.  We (Ascendant) partnered with IBM and T-Systems to bring to fruition a working content migration utility that can take content FROM SharePoint and populate it into Connections / Quickr / WCM.  (Yes… any or all of the three mentioned have a native connector for the utility from T-Systems now thanks to our project.)  Beyond just grabbing the content, transforming it, and then pushing it into the correct content area, we are able to maintain content ownership and impersonate other users at migration time without impacting those users.  This is truly a first of it’s kind solution to the best of my knowledge.  Hats off to the whole team we have been working with.  I know I am excited to be part of this, as I am sure most of the other team members are as well.  This brings real choice to the market as people now have the availability to move their content between platforms.

Thank You everyone that made this possible!

This Looks Promising…

https://greenhouse.lotus.com/plugins/plugincatalog.nsf/assetDetails.xsp?action=editDocument&documentId=447ED472AC7169588525792D0064F44C

Community Backup/Recovery (Archiving) tool!

Found this today while working on something else and thought I would share.  Published to the solutions catalog just yesterday, I can see a lot of promising use cases for this particular utility.  If you try it, please share your experience and thoughts.

I suggest you read the notes, as there is an important point about what is backed up vs. what can be automatically restored.