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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.
Installing Connections
To install HCL Connections™, you need to follow a detailed series of procedures.
Pre-installation tasks
Complete the following tasks before installing HCL Connections. If you are migrating from a prior release of HCL Connections, do not complete the tasks for creating databases or populating the Profiles database. The migration process handles those tasks automatically.
Populating the Profiles database
Populate the Profiles database with data from the LDAP directory.

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.
  - The installation process
    Review the steps that are required to install HCL Connections.
  - Pre-installation tasks
    Complete the following tasks before installing HCL Connections. If you are migrating from a prior release of HCL Connections, do not complete the tasks for creating databases or populating the Profiles database. The migration process handles those tasks automatically.
    - Verifying disk space and open file limits before installing HCL Connections
      On all operating systems, ensure that you have 6 GB of temporary disk space. On AIX® and Linux™, set the Open File Descriptor limit to at least 40000 before installing HCL Connections.
    - Preparing to configure the LDAP directory
      Determine which Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) attributes you want to use as the identifiers for HCL Connections users.
    - Installing IBM® WebSphere® Application Server and IBM® HTTP Server
      HCL Connections requires an environment where the WebSphere® Application Server Deployment Manager and one node are installed and configured in advance. IBM® HTTP Server and the Web Server Plug-ins for IBM WebSphere Application Server are also prerequisites. This software is provided with the HCL Connections package.
    - Accessing Windows® network shares
      Configure a user account to access network shares in an HCL Connections deployment on the Microsoft® Windows® operating system
    - Setting up federated repositories
      Use federated repositories with IBM® WebSphere® Application Server to manage and secure user and group identities.
    - Creating databases
      Create databases for the applications that you plan to install. You can use the database wizard or run the SQL scripts that are provided with HCL Connections.
    - Populating the Profiles database
      Populate the Profiles database with data from the LDAP directory.
      - Configuring IBM Security Directory Integrator
        Configure IBM Security Directory Integrator to synchronize and exchange information between the Profiles database and your LDAP directory.
      - Adding source data to the Profiles database
        Populate the Profiles database with information from the source server by using the Profiles population wizard or by populating the database manually.
      - Populating Profiles with photos from LDAP
        You can use the IBM® Tivoli® Directory Integrator assembly-line command load_photos_from_ldap to load the Profiles database with photos of your users.
      - Configuring the Manager designation in user profiles
        When you map manager data in the Profiles database, you can mark manager profiles and also create report-to chains.
      - Supplemental user data for Profiles
        You can supplement user profiles data using a mapping table, the profiles_tdi.properties file, and CSV files.
      - Specifying the global ID attribute for users and groups
        Decide if you will accept the default identifiers used by your LDAP directory server or create a custom attribute to be used as the global unique identifier (GUID) for each user. This identifier is unique across the organization and is used for synchronizing names in the LDAP directory with names in the Profiles database.
      - Optional: Specifying a custom ID attribute for users or groups
        Add custom global unique ID attributes in the LDAP directory to make user record changes easier to manage and to minimize the possibility of accidentally introducing dual accounts for a user. This is an optional task.
    - Before installing
      Verify that all necessary prerequisite conditions are complete before installing HCL Connections.
  - Installing HCL Connections
    Select the HCL Connections applications that you plan to use and install them in a clustered deployment.
- 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.
- 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™.

Populating the Profiles database

Populate the Profiles database with data from the LDAP directory.

Before you begin

Spend time planning your Profiles population, integration, and customization.
Involve all the relevant stakeholders at an early stage of the planning process.
If possible, release the Profiles rollout in phases and get feedback from pilot users.
Pre-populate Profiles photos.
Plan for business card use and for Sametime® presence awareness.
Ensure that IBM Security Directory Integrator is correctly configured.
Consider using Security Directory Integrator to populate the LDAP and then to populate the Profiles database.
If your database uses a database driver that requires Java 8, or you otherwise require Java 8 when running Security Directory Integrator, see this article for instructions: Using IBM Security Directory Integrator with Java 8 and HCL Connections 6.5 or 7.0. Then see the instructions that follow in this section. Note that you must use the manual population method when using Java 8, not the population wizards.

About this task

You have to create the Profiles database before installing HCL Connections so that the installer can link to it during the installation of Connections. Nothing gets written to the database during installation but all the databases have to exist. Performing user population is a recommended pre-installation task; however, you can perform the user population after the installation or in parallel with installation, depending on the size of your LDAP directory.