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Administering Connections 6 CR6
Welcome to the HCL Connections 6 CR6 documentation. HCL Connections is social networking software designed for the workplace. Its features help you to establish dynamic networks that connect you to the people and information you need to achieve your business goals.
Customizing
Customize IBM® Connections to fit your environment.
Customizing the user interface
The procedure to customize IBM® Connections is the same for each application. You must edit a copy of the relevant source file and save it in the appropriate customization directory.
Customizing product strings
You can replace a word or phrase in the product user interface with terminology that better suits your environment.
Customizing notification strings
Customize the strings that are used in the notifications that are sent to IBM® Connections users by the system.

Administering Connections 6 CR6
Welcome to the HCL Connections 6 CR6 documentation. HCL Connections is social networking software designed for the workplace. Its features help you to establish dynamic networks that connect you to the people and information you need to achieve your business goals.
- What's new in HCL Connections 6
  Find out about features that are new or updated in this release of HCL Connections.
- Product overview
  Learn how to deploy, customize, and administer the IBM Connections social networking product.
- Planning
  Before installing HCL Connections™, study the system requirements, deployment options, and documentation conventions.
- Installing
  To install IBM® Connections, you need to follow a detailed series of procedures.
- Migrating and updating
  Migrate IBM® Connections and its supporting software to the latest release and then update the installation with the latest interim fixes or Cumulative Refresh (CR).
- Administering
  Run administration and maintenance tasks to keep your environment up-to-date. For example, learn how to customize your deployment or how to use the wsadmin utility to edit configuration files. You can also schedule tasks, maintain application databases, moderate content, or manage users and their roles.
- Customizing
  Customize IBM® Connections to fit your environment.
  - Customization best practices
    Use the following guidelines to help you to implement and manage customizations in your deployment of IBM® Connections.
  - Injecting customizations into Connections pages
    IBM Connections™ Customizer is a proxy service that lets you modify the IBM Connections user experience. Customizer intercepts and modifies requests from clients and responses from servers, so it can customize anything that flows through it, such as the behavior of APIs or the look-and-feel of the user interface.
  - Customizing the user interface
    The procedure to customize IBM® Connections is the same for each application. You must edit a copy of the relevant source file and save it in the appropriate customization directory.
    - Determining where to save your customizations
      When you are customizing IBM® Connections, save your customized files to the appropriate directory to ensure that your customizations override the default settings.
    - Enabling live user interface customization editing mode
      You can force applications to reload override files every time a browser request is made. This capability shows your customization changes in the product instantly.
    - Customizing the navigation bar
      You can edit the files that control the content of the IBM® Connections navigation bar to add to the bar's functionality. For example, you can add extra links to the navigation bar, remove the Log Out link, or insert extra drop-down menus.
    - Adding an Important To Me bar to a Connections component
      Use an iframe to add an Important to Me (ITM) bar to any IBM Connections component.
    - Customizing images
      You can update the images used in HCL Connections™ to suit the needs of your organization. For example, you can replace the IBM® logo with your company logo, or customize the sprited images and file type icons that are used in the product interface to fit with your company's branding.
    - Adding styles to the IBM® Connections style sheet
      You can customize the look of the IBM® Connections pages by adding new style definitions in the cascading style sheet and applying that style to different parts of the product user interface.
    - Making extensive color and style changes
      Edit the defaultTheme.css file to change the look of the user interface, such as changing the font style or background color.
    - Customizing the login page
      Customize the login page in IBM® Connections to have the appropriate style and content for your organization.
    - Customizing the footer
      You can edit the files that control the content of the IBM® Connections footer to improve the footer's functionality.
    - Customizing the error page
      Customize the text on the error page in IBM® Connections.
    - Customizing the Getting Started view
      Help your users get started with your implementation of IBM® Connections by customizing the Getting Started view that is displayed in the Home page.
    - Customizing product strings
      You can replace a word or phrase in the product user interface with terminology that better suits your environment.
      - Property file strings
        Use the information in the tables to locate the customizable strings that are contained in property files and to determine where to save the customized files.
      - Customizing strings sourced in JavaScript™
        Replace a word or string in the product user interface that is sourced in JavaScript™ as opposed to a strings resource bundle.
      - Adding custom strings for widgets and other specified scenarios
        You can add custom strings or modify existing strings when performing certain IBM® Connections tasks.
      - Customizing notification strings
        Customize the strings that are used in the notifications that are sent to IBM® Connections users by the system.
    - Overriding and extending JavaScript™ in IBM® Connections
      IBM® Connections supports a mechanism that allows you to override or extend the JavaScript™ that is used in the different applications.
    - Extending JSP files with custom tags
      You can extend IBM® Connections by adding your own custom JSTL tags to meet your company's needs.
    - Customizing the Application Access and Access Request interfaces
      You can customize the header, footer, login, and error pages that prompt IBM® Connections users to grant/deny and revoke access to their Connections data for third-party applications protected by OAuth. Also, you can edit the text strings that display on the Application Access and Access Request interfaces.
    - Embedding Connections in an IFrame
      You can customize HCL Connections to be embedded in an IFrame.
    - Customizing the Hikari theme
      Customize the default Hikari theme in IBM® Connections.
  - Customizing notifications
    The content of the notifications sent by IBM® Connections is defined in templates that are processed by the FreeMarker engine.
  - Adding new ways to share content
    Create your own gadgets and add them to the Share dialog.
  - Customizing a blog theme
    Customize a blog theme to change the look of a blog. Or create a new theme and make it available to your blog users.
  - Customizing Metrics reports
    Metrics data displays as reports, which you can customize for your organization. When you install IBM® Cognos® Business Intelligence to support the Metrics application, a set of standard reports is immediately available. You can customize the standard reports by editing the configuration file that defines each report’s layout. In addition, you can use IBM Cognos Report Studio to create new reports.
  - Customizing Profiles
    Customize the Profiles application to define the core data model for people within your deployment and tailor the presentation of profile content to meet your organization’s requirements.
  - Using Profiles and Communities business cards
    Extend your web application by integrating the Profiles and Communities business cards in to the application.
  - Customizing the Wikis welcome page
    Customize the welcome page of the Wikis application.
  - Post-customization step
    Edit a configuration property so users see your changes the next time they log in, without having to clear their web browser cache.
- Security
  IBM® Connections provides a flexible security infrastructure that supports an open, easily shareable data model.
- Mobile
  See the IBM Connections Mobile documentation for Connections Cloud and Connections on-premises.
- Developing
  Get information about how to use the APIs provided with IBM® Connections and how to use Connections Customizer to modify the Connections pages that are returned to users.
- Troubleshooting and support
  To isolate and resolve problems with your IBM® products, you can use the troubleshooting and support information. This information contains instructions for using the problem-determination resources that are provided with your IBM products, including HCL Connections™.

Customizing notification strings

Customize the strings that are used in the notifications that are sent to IBM® Connections users by the system.

About this task

You can customize the text used in the notification messages sent to your users to include information specific to your organization. All of the strings used in notification templates are contained in the following directory: profile_root/config/cells/cell_name/LotusConnections-config/notifications

Procedure

Find the file that serves as the source of the notification string that you want to edit.
You can locate the strings used in notifications in one of the following directories:
- Strings that are shared across templates are contained in the following directory: LotusConnections-config/notifications/resources/nls/notification_*.properties
- Strings that are specific to templates from a particular application, such as Activities or Files, are contained in the following directory: LotusConnections-config/notifications/application_name/resources/nls/notification_*.properties
Open the file and edit the string directly to make the required changes.
Save your changes and close the file.
To test out your customizations, restart the News application before sending new notifications.

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