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Administering Connections 7.0
Welcome to the HCL Connections documentation site. 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.
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.
Administering Communities
Configure and administer Communities using scripts accessed using the IBM® WebSphere® Application Server wsadmin client.
Managing the Communities catalog
The Communities catalog displays content from IBM® Connections communities in the Communities application.

Administering Connections 7.0
Welcome to the HCL Connections documentation site. 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
  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 HCL Connections social networking product.
- Planning
  Before installing HCL Connections™, study the system requirements, deployment options, and documentation conventions.
- Installing Connections
  To install HCL Connections™, you need to follow a detailed series of procedures.
- Installing or upgrading Component Pack for Connections
  HCL Connections 7.0 now supports the latest Component Pack based in Harbor, an open-source container and Helm registry hosted by HCL for the Component Pack build. Deployments that are new or carrying Component Pack 7 will use this approach for a simplified installation/upgrade process, while releases prior to 7.0 will first need to upgrade to Component Pack 7 using a zip file and a local Docker registry.
- Post-installation tasks
  After installation, you need to perform further tasks to ensure an efficient deployment.
- Optional: Installing and configuring Tiny Editors for HCL Connections
  The Tiny editors are alternative rich-text editors which can be installed for HCL Connections™. They provide additional features and extensive customization options not available with the default editor.
- Optional post-installation tasks
  Complete the post-installation tasks that are relevant to your deployment.
- Uninstalling
  Uninstall HCL Connections.
- Upgrading and updating
  Upgrade HCL Connections and its supporting software to the latest release and then update the installation with the latest interim fixes or cumulative fixes. Refer to the What's New in HCL Connections to review the features in the latest release and gather download links or links to the latest fix list and update strategy information.
- 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.
  - Administering common areas
    Administer the common areas of HCL Connections.
  - Administering Activities
    Configure Activities to best meet the needs of your environment.
  - Administering Blogs
    Administer site-wide settings for Blogs from either the Blogs user interface or via the wsadmin client.
  - Administering Bookmarks
    You configure and administer Bookmarks using scripts accessed using the wsadmin client. Changes to Bookmarks configuration settings require a restart of the Bookmarks server before they take effect. Changes made using administrative commands take effect immediately.
  - Administering Communities
    Configure and administer Communities using scripts accessed using the IBM® WebSphere® Application Server wsadmin client.
    - Running Communities administrative commands
      Jython scripts are used to administer the Communities application. These scripts allow the administrator to view Communities data and perform administrative tasks for Communities.
    - Changing Communities configuration property values
      Configuration settings control how and when various Communities operations take place. You can edit the settings to change the ways that communities behave.
    - Administering community templates
      If your organization deployed Component Pack for Connections 7.0, you can take advantage of the community templates feature that is part of the tailored experience for Connections oganizations.
    - Creating and populating communities
      Create and populate a community using scripts accessed using the wsadmin command-line tool. The administrative commands for creating communities do not require a server restart to take effect, and no file checkout is necessary.
    - Managing membership in Communities
      Use administrative commands to add and remove community members. You can also disable the Add Members button if you do not want community owners to add people to communities without their consent, or disable the invitations feature if you do not want to allow people to invite others to join their community.
    - Managing community content
      You can enable the active content filter to prevent users from embedding malicious content in text input fields. You can also use administrative commands to update or remove inappropriate information in fields to which you do not have owner access.
    - Moderating the content in a community
      When moderation is enabled for the Blogs, Forums, and Files applications, global moderators or community moderators can review community blog, forum, and file content before it is posted to a community, and manage content after it is added to a community.
    - Allowing non-community members to comment in forums
      Allow users who are not community members to comment in forums in public or moderated communities.
    - Configuring the size of the community description summary
      Use configuration settings to set the maximum size of a community description summary.
    - Configuring display settings
      Use configuration settings to control the display of data in the Communities application.
    - Specifying the maximum number of communities to display in user views
      You can add a configuration setting to the LotusConnections-config.xml file to increase the maximum number of communities that can be displayed in the personalized user views.
    - Hiding the Start a community button from unauthenticated users
      You can prevent unauthenticated users from creating communities by hiding the Start a Community button.
    - Disabling the My Organization Communities view in Communities
      You can control whether the My Organization Communities view is available in your organization's deployment of Communities by editing settings in the communities-config.xml file.
    - Enabling and disabling the community unique web address option
      Enable or disable the community owners ability to create a unique web address for their community.
    - Reparenting communities
      Use the reparenting commands to modify a community to become a subcommunity of another community. You can also modify a subcommunity to become a top-level community.
    - Operations that update the communities time stamp
      The following tables list the community and remote app actions and events that update the community lastmod time stamp.
    - Working with Community trash
      Users may want to delete a community if it no longer has a purpose or is inactive. When a user deletes a community, it is not deleted permanently, rather it is moved to a trash area. After a set amount of time in the Trash, the community is permanently deleted. Provided it is not permanently deleted, the community can be restored.
    - Enabling community feeds
      The HCL Connections AJAX proxy is configured to allow cookies, headers or mime types, and all HTTP actions to be exchanged among the HCL Connections applications. However, access to arbitrary URLs is prevented by default.
    - Renaming the My Organization communities view
      You can update a property in the HCL Connections configuration file to change the organization name that displays for your communities.
    - Managing the Communities catalog
      The Communities catalog displays content from IBM® Connections communities in the Communities application.
      - Configuring the Communities catalog administrator role
        To add sources and manage the Communities catalog, you must be a catalog administrator.
      - Adding sources to the Communities catalog
        Add sources to make HCL Connections communities available to users in the Communities catalog.
      - Managing Communities catalog sources
        Perform management tasks for the Communities catalog by using the options available from the administrative user interface.
      - Adding HCL Connections nodes to the Communities catalog
        You can add HCL Connections nodes to an existing catalog in Communities. Whenever the main node stops operating, another node can automatically start collecting data.
      - Configuring Communities catalog settings
        Follow these instructions to configure the catalog index folder and the catalog shared replication folder.
      - Restoring the Communities catalog index
        If the Communities catalog index becomes corrupted or is not being refreshed properly, you can delete the existing index data to rebuild the index.
    - Administering widgets and remote applications
      You can extend your community to include various components or applications. These applications are contained within the community as widgets. You can administer widget lifecycle events to ensure that changes are synchronized between the Communities server and the servers hosting the widgets.
    - Configuring Galleries
      Configure the behavior of Gallery widgets by checking out and editing gallery-config.xml. Galleries are community widgets that display thumbnails of files such as photos, videos, and office documents.
    - Managing Communities scheduled tasks
      Use the CommunitiesScheduler commands to administer the community event tasks performed by the IBM® WebSphere® Application Server scheduler. These administrative commands do not require a server restart to take effect, and no file checkout is necessary.
    - Configuring news event log clean-up
      Edit settings in the communities-config.xml file to define the interval at which the EventLogCleanup task runs.
    - Configuring the Events widget
      Configure the behavior of the community Events widgets by checking out the calendar-config.xml file and editing it directly.
    - Retrieving and listing community data
      The community fetch commands return a Java™ vector of Java hash maps. No file checkout or server restart is required when using these commands.
    - Filtering community lists
      Use the CommunitiesListService commands to filter the information in community lists and to generate smaller lists containing more specific information.
  - Administering Files
    You administer Files using the wsadmin client to specify properties in a configuration file, or run administrative commands.
  - Administering Forums
    Administer Forums by specifying properties in a configuration file or running administrative commands.
  - Administering the Home page
    You can administer site-wide settings for the Home page from the Home page administration user interface or using the wsadmin client.
  - Administering the News repository
    You administer the News repository using scripts accessed using the wsadmin client. Changes to News configuration settings require node synchronization and a restart of the Home page server before they take effect.
  - Administering Profiles
    Profiles provides two types of administrative capabilities: configuration settings and administrative commands. You change configuration settings and execute administrative commands by running scripts from the wsadmin command line.
  - Administering Search
    The Search service provides a point for performing full text and tag searches across all the deployed HCL Connections applications. Search is a required application for all HCL Connections applications, and it must be running to prevent unexpected behaviors in the other applications.
  - Administering Wikis
    Configure and administer Wikis by using the wsadmin client to run administrative commands or by editing the configuration file directly.
  - Administering Component Pack for Connections
    Monitor the services for Component Pack for HCL Connections™ and troubleshoot issues.
- Customizing
  Customize HCL Connections™ to fit your environment.
- Security
  HCL Connections™ provides a flexible security infrastructure that supports an open, easily shareable data model.
- Mobile
  See the HCL Connections™ Mobile documentation for Connections Cloud and Connections on-premises.
- Developing
  Get information about how to use the APIs provided with HCL 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 HCL products, you can use the troubleshooting and support information. This information contains instructions for using the problem-determination resources that are provided with your HCL products, including HCL Connections™.

Managing the Communities catalog

The Communities catalog displays content from IBM® Connections communities in the Communities application.

Sources are connections to servers or clusters that contain IBM® Connections communities. The servers publish metadata about their communities and places, and sources collect that metadata in an index. Community metadata then displays in lists of communities in the I'm an Owner, I’m a Member, I’m Following, I’m Invited, Trash, and My Organization Communities views. By default, metadata is collected automatically on a schedule, but you can control collections for each source.

Note: Only places metadata is collected, not the actual community or place content.