Just Nudge

Lotus Connections

Nov 02 2011 Twitter Widget for IBM Connections
1

Today we are proud to release our latest widget for IBM Connections. This widget allows an IBM Connections user to associate their profile with their twitter feed and have the feed displayed when someone views their profile.

 

This widget uses a profile extension to allow the user to populate their twitter username using the edit profile functionality of IBM Connections.

For a limited time, Just Nudge is releasing this widget to the IBM Connections community free of charge.  To get the widget see our Twitter widget product page.  If you require any further information please contact us via email at sales@justnudge.com.

 

 

: IBM Connections,Lotus Connections
Nov 02 2011 Checking out IBM Connections config files
0

The IBM Connections wiki mentions checking out the configuration files to perform administrative changes to IBM Connections.  The method shown in the wiki is similar to the following:

LCConfigService.checkOutConfig("/temp", "foo01Cell01")

The cell name is often hard to remember and differs between environments.  To run the command without having to specify the cell name, run the command as follows:

LCConfigService.checkOutConfig("/temp", AdminControl.getCell())

: IBM Connections,jython,Lotus Connections,WebSphere Application Server
Oct 24 2011 Updated Profile Progress Widget
1

After much feedback from our customers we are proud to release the latest version of the IBM Connections Profile Progress widget.  The widget provides a user with graphical feedback on their profile’s maturity together with useful hints on how to improve their profile.

The new version of the widget includes easier customisation of the metrics and a reporting module that can give IBM Connections administrator’s an overview of their IBM Connections installation maturity.

For more details or to purchase the widget, please visit the widget product page or contact us at sales@justnudge.com.

 

 

: IBM Connections,Lotus Connections
Aug 02 2011 IBM Connections Profile tag customization
2

We have been creating a custom IBM Connection’s widget for a client that allows a user to upload a series of predefined tags to their (or someone else’s) profile. This in effect gives the user a catalogue of tags to choose from that are broken into sections, allowing them to rapidly populate their profile with tags that have meaning across the organisation. A couple of things came up as part of this development, firstly, what is the format of the ATOM message that is required?

To save you from using the help, what you need to do is upload the entire tags for the user, which means that if you want to add a single tag, you need to download the existing tags and add the additional tags to the list. The format of the ATOM file that needs to be sent is as follows (note this needs to be sent as a HTTP PUT):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

<categories xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2007/app" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:snx="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/ns">
<atom:category term="arabic"></atom:category>
<atom:category term="english"></atom:category>
<atom:category term="french"></atom:category>
<atom:category term="italian"></atom:category>
<atom:category term="mandarin"></atom:category>
<atom:category term="other language"></atom:category>
</categories>

This seems to work a treat in the testing that I have done so far. One interesting point to note is that this method of updating the tags allows you to insert tags into a profile that includes spaces – see the “other language” value above. This appears to work in the backend as well because it renders properly in the tags widget:

Profile Tags

If you would like to discuss customizing your IBM Connections implementing using widgets, then please email me at michael.ransley@justnudge.com for more information.

: IBM Connections,Lotus Connections
: , ,
Jun 21 2011 IBM Connections Communities Widget Customization
0

We are currently performing some work for a client and are creating some custom widgets for communities within IBM Connections. We successfully created the widgets but when you attempt to drop them onto the community they were only going into the second (or middle) column of the page.

However, when you attempt to add the “Media Gallery” widget it drops into third column (or the right column). After some investigation the way to ensure that your widget appears in the right column is to add primaryWidget=”false” to your widget definition as shown below:

1
2
3
4
5

<widgetDef defId="My Great Widget"
           url="/myWidget/widget.xml"
           modes="view"
           primaryWidget="false" 
           iconUrl="/myWidget/logo.png" />

: Lotus Connections
: , , ,
Oct 14 2010 WebSphere and SSL issues
1

Two posts in one day, maybe I will become a blogger yet!

I have been using WebSphere Application Server for a reasonable amount of time (since version 3.5) and one of the things that is the most difficult to understand is the SSL configurations. Within WAS there are a number of different parts that use SSL:

  • Communication between the node agent and the deployment manager
  • Communication between the plugin and the application server
  • Inter-communication between the application servers

There are many more, depending on your configurations, but when they go bad they are a bit of a nightmare of solve. I tend to approach this issue in following way – Find out which component is not communicating properly – and understand that it is a communication, so by definition it will be at LEAST two way. When you find this, check the key and trust stores between them. The key store contains the key that the component will present and the trust store contains the certificates to allow that side to validate the others key. If the communication is within WebSphere (i.e. the examples mentioned above) then ensure that the copies of the keys and trust stores are the same as those on the deployment manager, if they are not simply copy them across (after backing up the configuration) and see if that fixes your problem.

If you are communicating outside of WebSphere, ensure that both sides trust stores contain the relevant certificates for the keys.

Lastly, if you are using a test environment, replace WebSphere’s default keys with ones that take longer to expire. It is surprising how many WebSphere installations hit this issue about one year after they are installed!

Good luck.

: Lotus Connections,WebSphere Application Server
Aug 19 2010 Getting your users to populate their profile
0

Lotus Connections is the market leading Enterprise 2.0 collaboration solution. It provides powerful collaborative tools that can transform organizations and empower users by making knowledge and information more accessible. The question is, how effective is your organization’s use of Lotus Connections?

One of the most powerful features of Lotus Connections is the profiles feature. The profiles allow users to find people outside of their immediate sphere with knowledge that they may be in need of. The benefits of this can be huge, by enabling users to reach out across teams you can:

  • Improve cross team communication
  • Leverage knowledge across geographies
  • Reduce the amount of re-learning within the organization

The primary source of this data is the profile itself that shows information about the person. By default, this is populated from sources such as LDAP and displays information that has existed in common intranet whitepages since the early days of the internet. This is useful, but not a huge step forward from what was there before. The real benefits come from getting the users to describe themselves because in many cases the organizational view of an individual will not describe their skills and expertise.

There are a number of different methods to help users populate their profile and I would like to go through them with you here.

1. Tell them what they need to do

Lotus Connections has a lot of options and places where information can be entered and it can be overwhelming for a new user who doesn’t know where to start. A simple graphical widget can give them an indication of their profile maturity and how it can be improved. To a certain point these can be thought of as collectable achievements and is a well known method in getting users more involved in systems.

JustNudge has produced a widget that provides this feedback to the user, giving them both a graphical representation of their progress together with information on a potential next step.

Profile Progress Widget

The feedback can be relatively dynamic, it should suggest many potential options to the user:

Profile Progress Widget

This method has the following advantages:

  • You give the user a clear path to completing their profile.
  • There is an incentive for completing the profile – it may sound trival but how many of us have completed our profile on LinkedIn based on a similar concept?

2. Making profile population easier

By default the entry fields for Lotus Connections are text boxes. This has the advantage in that it allows great flexibility in the entry of data but is not so good when the user should be selecting an option from a list. It is possible to change the connections entry fields in Lotus Connections 2.5 as shown below:

Profile Modifications

By provide a select box for data entry you can:

  • Capture information simply and accurately.
  • Use the information captured to possibly populate other fields

Conclusion

The profiles feature in Lotus Connections is one of the most important parts of Lotus Connections and can be customized to ensure that user’s populate it correctly. JustNudge Software has a pre-built profile progress widget that can give feedback to the user and we also provide services for profile customization. If you require more information then contact us for more information.

: Lotus Connections,social
: ,
Copyright Just Nudge Pty Ltd