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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 common areas
Administer the common areas of HCL Connections.
Managing external user access
Manage the access that people from outside your organization (external users) have to your HCL Connections implementation.
Configuring self-registration for external users
Set properties that make it possible for people outside of your company to self-register for a Connections account when invited to join.
(Optional) Encoding the LDAP password in self-registration-confg.xml

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.
    - Administrator checklist
      Consider tasks that you might want to complete after you install HCL Connections and before users start using it.
    - Administration tools
      Use the wsadmin utility to edit configuration properties or run administrative commands.
    - System maintenance
      Make sure HCL Connections works properly in your particular environment.
    - Managing content
      Use superusers, moderation, and other methods to manage HCL Connections content.
    - Administering the Widget container
      The Widget Container is the HCL Connections-specific integration of the Common Rendering Engine, also known as the CRE.
    - Managing access
      Manage roles, credentials, users, and directories, and allow third-party access to HCL Connections data.
    - Managing external user access
      Manage the access that people from outside your organization (external users) have to your HCL Connections implementation.
      - Configuring self-registration for external users
        Set properties that make it possible for people outside of your company to self-register for a Connections account when invited to join.
        (Optional) Encoding the LDAP password in self-registration-confg.xml
        Customizing notifications for self-registering users
        You can customize the content of the email notifications related to the self-registration feature by copying the relevant source files, saving them in the appropriate customization directory, and editing the files that correspond to notifications you want to change. As the source files are provided in different languages, you can also customize the notifications in those languages.
        Registering external users with Profiles
        Ensure that external users are recognized by populating them in the Profiles database via IBM® Tivoli® Directory Integrator.
        Setting user roles for external collaboration
        Assign the EMPLOYEE_EXTENDED role to internal users who are allowed to create content that is visible to external users.
    - Customizing the deployment
      Perform optional tasks to customize your HCL Connections deployment.
    - URL Preview
      URL preview allows users decide quickly whether to follow a link by displaying a thumbnail preview for URLs.
  - 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.
  - 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™.

(Optional) Encoding the LDAP password in self-registration-confg.xml

About this task

The password for the LDAP BindDN in Invite’s selfregistration-config.xml can optionally be XOR-encoded. For this, the set_invite_pass.py wsadmin script provided by the Connections installation can be used to encode the given password and persist it in the configuration file.

Procedure

Locate the wsadmin script to execute the command with: Open a command prompt and then change to the following directory of the system on which you installed the deployment manager: app_server_root/profiles/dm_profile_root/bin

Enter the following command to encode and store the password:

Linux:

./wsadmin.sh -lang jython \
 -host dmgr.connections.example.com \
 -javaoption "-Dpython.path=app_server_root/lib" \
 -wsadmin_classpath "app_server_root/lib/lccfg.jar;app_server_root/lib/jose4j-0.6.3.jar" \
 -f "connections_root/bin/set_invite_pass.py"\
 --password ldap_bind_password

Windows:

wsadmin.bat -lang jython ^
 -host dmgr.connections.example.com ^
 -javaoption "-Dpython.path=app_server_root\lib" ^
 -wsadmin_classpath "app_server_root\lib\lccfg.jar;app_server_root\lib\jose4j-0.6.3.jar" ^
 -f "connections_root\bin\set_invite_pass.py" ^
 --password ldap_bind_password