Home
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 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.
Managing the Search index
The Search application uses a Lucene 3.0.3 index, supplemented by social facet information. The location of the Search index is mapped to an IBM® WebSphere® Application Server variable, SEARCH_INDEX_DIR. The value of this variable is set to CONNECTIONS_DATA_DIRECTORY/search/index by default.
Backup and restore
Create a backup of the Search index and save it to a secure location so that it can be used to restore the index in the event of loss or corruption.
Backing up the Search index
You can back up the Search index using SearchService commands or you can manually copy the index files to a backup location.
Backing up the Search index manually
The Search index can be backed up and restored at a later date in the event of loss or corruption of data.

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.
  - 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.
    - Accessing the Search configuration environment
      You need to initialize the Search configuration environment to be able to run the SearchCellConfig and SearchService MBean commands.
    - Managing the Search index
      The Search application uses a Lucene 3.0.3 index, supplemented by social facet information. The location of the Search index is mapped to an IBM® WebSphere® Application Server variable, SEARCH_INDEX_DIR. The value of this variable is set to CONNECTIONS_DATA_DIRECTORY/search/index by default.
      - The indexing process
        The Search index is generated by retrieving information from each of the applications based on a schedule defined by the administrator. Search uses the IBM® WebSphere® Application Server scheduling service for creating and updating the Search index. The index must be deployed on each node running the Search enterprise application.
      - Creating Search indexes
        Search indexing is automatically configured for HCL Connections during installation.
      - Index settings
        Indexing is automatically configured in HCL Connections. However, when setting up indexing for your environment, you might need to perform additional configuration tasks.
      - Verifying Search
        You can perform a number of steps to verify that Search index creation has completed successfully and the Search application is working as expected.
      - Adding a new component to an existing index
        Add new HCL Connections components to the index that were not included when the index was built.
      - Configuring scheduled tasks
        The SearchService MBean is used to access a service that provides an administrative interface for adding scheduled task definitions to the Home page database.
      - Running one-off tasks
        The SearchService MBean provides commands that allow you to create an indexing optimize task that is scheduled to run once and only once, 30 seconds after being called.
      - Retrieving file content
        Use SearchService commands to perform file content retrieval tasks.
      - Purging content from the index
        Use the SearchService.deleteFeatureIndex command to purge content for a specific application from the Search index in a single-node environment.
      - Reindexing content
        Use the retryIndexing command when you want to reindex content that was not indexed successfully during initial or incremental indexing.
      - Reindexing content on a clustered HCL Connections deployment
        When you reindex from scratch on a clustered HCL Connections deployment, reindexing takes place in the background while the system continues to service requests of the existing index. When reindexing completes, you then switch to the new index. The update process includes ripple restart of Search nodes.
      - Deleting persisted seedlist data
        You can free up disk space by deleting persisted seedlists from your system using the SearchService.flushPersistedCrawlContent command.
      - Deleting the index
        Delete the index by deleting the contents of the directory specified by the IBM WebSphere® Application Server variable, SEARCH_INDEX_DIR.
      - Listing indexing nodes
        Use the SearchService.listIndexingNodes command when you need to check the names of the Search indexing nodes in your deployment. For example, if you want to remove an indexing node from the index management table, you can use this command to verify the name of the node that you want to remove.
      - Removing a node from the index management table
        When you are removing a node from a cluster, use the SearchService.removeIndexingNode wsadmin command to remove the node from the index management table.
      - Backup and restore
        Create a backup of the Search index and save it to a secure location so that it can be used to restore the index in the event of loss or corruption.
        Configuring index backup settings
        Use SearchCellConfig commands to define index backup settings in the search-config.xml file.
        Backing up the Search index
        You can back up the Search index using SearchService commands or you can manually copy the index files to a backup location.
        Backing up the Search index using wsadmin commands
        Use SearchService administrative commands to define scheduled backup tasks for the Search index.
        Backing up the Search index manually
        The Search index can be backed up and restored at a later date in the event of loss or corruption of data.
        Restoring the Search index
        When you create a backup copy of the Search index, you can use the copy to restore the index in the event of loss or corruption.
      - Configuring file attachment indexing settings
        Edit settings in the search-config.xml file to configure Search for file attachments.
      - Configuring the number of crawling threads
        Edit settings in the search-config.xml file to specify the maximum number of threads used when crawling. The maximum number of threads that you should specify is the number of applications that you have installed in your deployment.
      - Configuring the number of indexing threads
        Edit settings in the search-config.xml file to specify the maximum number of threads used when indexing.
      - Boosting search results by tag, title, or recency
        Influence the quality and ranking of search results by configuring a boost to the relevance score associated with specified fields in the index.
    - Managing the Search application
      You can perform the following tasks when managing the Search application.
    - Viewing and collecting Search metrics
      Enter a URL to view a standard set of metrics related to the Search application. You can also write internal search metrics to a file.
    - SearchCellConfig commands
      The SearchCellConfig commands are used to configure the location of the Search index and the IBM® LanguageWare® dictionaries used by Search, and to configure the file download and conversion service used when indexing file attachments.
    - SearchService commands
      The SearchService commands are used to create, retrieve, update, and delete scheduled task definitions for the indexing and optimization Search operations.
  - 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™.

Backing up the Search index manually

The Search index can be backed up and restored at a later date in the event of loss or corruption of data.

Procedure

To back up the Search index manually, complete the following steps.

Disable any regular indexing tasks that you have configured.
To disable all tasks, enter the following command:
```
SearchService.disableAllTasks()
```
Verify that indexing is not ongoing.
For more information, see Verifying that index building is not taking place.
Copy the entire index directory and its subdirectories to a secure backup location.
Optional: When backing up the Search index, consider performing a full backup of the HOMEPAGE database.
Note that the Search index has a dependency on data in the HOMEPAGE database.
Re-enable your indexing task or tasks by performing one of the following steps:
- If you had no tasks that were disabled before you completed step 1, then run the SearchService.enableAllTasks() command.
- If you had specific tasks that were disabled before you completed step 1, then use the SearchService.enableTask(String taskname) command to enable those tasks.
  For example:
```
SearchService.enableTask("mine")
```
The next indexing task to run resumes indexing at the point at which the restored index was last successfully indexed.