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HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
HCL Digital Experience 8.5
Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
Configuring
Run the following tasks after you install and deploy HCL Digital Experience. They address tasks that are typically run one time and have a global effect. Some configuration changes are made more frequently or do not have a global effect. These tasks are addressed in the Administering section.
User registry
User information is stored in your user registry. You can enable LDAP referrals, configure HCL Digital Experience to use dynamic groups, update your user registry, or delete your user registry configurations.
Advanced group configurations
It is possible to use HCL Digital Experience ConfigEngine helper tasks to set up advanced Virtual Member Manager (VMM) group configurations. Specifically, it is possible to configure VMM to understand and use the "Group membership attribute" that many directories support.
Configuring HCL Portal to use dynamic groups
By default, HCL Digital Experience is enabled for static groups. However, the Virtual Member Manager (VMM) allows users to be members of either static or dynamic groups. Static groups have a persistent binding between a group and its members. Dynamic groups have a search query that is defined to retrieve the members of a group.

HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5 [Legacy Content]
- HCL Digital Experience 9.0
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 9.0 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
- HCL Digital Experience 8.5
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
  - Overview
    HCL Digital Experience (formerly IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager) empowers you to create, manage, and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to virtually all audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications, and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile. and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).
  - Roadmaps to deploy your system
    Review the roadmaps to understand the common deployment, configuration, migration, and integration patterns.
  - Roadmaps to create your website
    Review the roadmaps to understand how to create your website.
  - Online Help
    This Online Help is made available in the HCL Digital Experience Help Center for quick references on how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Digital Experience.
  - Installing
    HCL Digital Experience provides flexible deployment options that range from proof-of-concept where you can examine and test functionality to a highly available and scalable production environment. Review the planning information to learn more about hardware and software requirements, high availability, scalability, supported topologies, and much more. Select your operating system and then select the installation pattern that most reflects your business needs.
  - Configuring
    Run the following tasks after you install and deploy HCL Digital Experience. They address tasks that are typically run one time and have a global effect. Some configuration changes are made more frequently or do not have a global effect. These tasks are addressed in the Administering section.
    - Configuration Wizard
      Use the Configuration Wizard to set up stand-alone servers and new deployments, create clusters, migrate and update to new versions, and add new capabilities to existing deployments.
    - Setting up a stand-alone server
      Use the Configuration Wizard to set up a stand-alone server. A stand-alone server is useful for different environments, such as a content authoring environment, test environment, and more.
    - Setting up a cluster
      Use the Configuration Wizard to set up either a dynamic or static horizontal cluster.
    - Tune your environment
      HCL Digital Experience is not tuned for a production environment by default. Complete the steps in the Performance Tuning Guide to optimize performance.
    - Web servers
      HCL Digital Experience uses the internal HTTP transport within IBM WebSphere Application Server to handle requests. However, because WebSphere Application Server also supports the use of an external web server, you can access HCL Portal from your web server. You can use a local web server on the same server as HCL Portal or you can use a remote web server on a different server. A remote web server is typical for a production environment or other high-traffic configuration and is also typically placed in DMZ outside a firewall to protect portal ports.
    - HCL Portal
      First, finish your HCL Digital Experience deployment with the Configuration Wizard. Then, you can configure your environment further. For example, you can tune your servers to improve performance. You can change the default context root.
    - HCL Web Content Manager
      Set up a content server by installing HCL Web Content Manager in various deployments to provide robust and flexible environments for web content development and delivery. After you install the content server, more configuration steps must be completed according to the role that the server plays in your web content environment.
    - Syndication
      Use syndication to replicate web content library data from one server to another server. Syndication is based on a syndicator and subscriber relationship. The syndicator has the current data. The subscriber received the current data from the syndicator.
    - Database Management Systems
      Configure the connection between HCL Digital Experience and your database management system. The Database Transfer configuration option in the Configuration Wizard assigns users and permissions, creates databases, obtains support for database collation, and transfers your database.
    - User registry
      User information is stored in your user registry. You can enable LDAP referrals, configure HCL Digital Experience to use dynamic groups, update your user registry, or delete your user registry configurations.
      - Enable federated security
        You can use the Configuration Wizard to configure HCL Portal to use a federated LDAP for security. Use the following information to get familiar with the information you must provide in the wizard and the configuration procedure that it generates.
      - Adding more attributes to VMM
        After you install HCL Digital Experience and configuring your LDAP user registries, you must adapt the attribute configuration to match the configured LDAP servers and your business needs. However, do not complete these steps if you configured only a database user registry or the default federated file-based repository for out-of-box installations.
      - Enabling application groups
        You can define user groups within the database user registry with members (users or groups) contained in the federated LDAP user registry you configured with application groups. The benefit of application groups is that you can create groups that are only used in HCL Digital Experience.
      - Advanced group configurations
        It is possible to use HCL Digital Experience ConfigEngine helper tasks to set up advanced Virtual Member Manager (VMM) group configurations. Specifically, it is possible to configure VMM to understand and use the "Group membership attribute" that many directories support.
        Updating the group membership configuration
        The initial federated repositories setup might not include the advanced set up for the group membership attribute. You can configure the group membership attribute after the initial setup. Specify the properties in the wkplc.properties file and then run the wp-create-ldap-groupconfig task manually.
        Configuring HCL Portal to use dynamic groups
        By default, HCL Digital Experience is enabled for static groups. However, the Virtual Member Manager (VMM) allows users to be members of either static or dynamic groups. Static groups have a persistent binding between a group and its members. Dynamic groups have a search query that is defined to retrieve the members of a group.
      - Adding a database user registry
        Add a database user registry to the default federated repository to store user account information for authentication and authorization. You can add multiple database user registries to the default federated repository although you can add only one database user registry at a time.
      - Adding realm support
        A realm is a group of users from one or more user registries that form a coherent group within HCL Digital Experience. Realms allow flexible user management with various configuration options. A realm must be mapped to a Virtual Portal to allow the defined users to log in to the Virtual Portal. When you configure realm support, complete these steps for each base entry that exists in your LDAP and database user registry to create multiple realm support.
      - Updating your user registry
        After you deploy HCL Digital Experience, you can adjustment your federated user repository configurations. You can update these configurations to achieve the correct user registry configuration.
      - Deleting your user registry configurations
        After you deploy HCL Digital Experience, you might not require some of the LDAP entity types, realms, realm base entries, or repositories that you created. You can delete these configurations to achieve the correct user registry configuration.
      - Setting limits on searches for users and groups
        Searching for users or groups is a time consuming task. A search may time out or return more results than the system can handle or the user may expect. To prevent this behavior, you can set limits on searches for users or groups.
      - LDAP search filter expressions
        The rules for rule-based user groups are based on the LDAP search filter syntax.
    - Search
      You use Portal Search to search for text that is displayed in websites that are created by HCL Web Content Manager.
    - Document Conversion Services
      Document Conversion Services are used when you work with HCL Web Content Manager authoring, previewing, and search.
    - Setting up a remote spell checker
      Using a local spell checker is not supported. You cannot run spell checker on 64-bit systems. Instead, you must install and configure spell checker on a remote application server and access that server from the local HCL Portal server.
    - HCL Connections
      HCL Connections portlets give the HCL Digital Experience users access to more collaboration and social networking features such as activities, blogs, and bookmarks.
    - Reference: Configuration properties
      For your convenience, the properties files that are used to configure HCL Digital Experience are included in the product documentation. Information that is specified in the properties files is used to configure databases, LDAP integration, security, including external security managers, and more.
  - Backup and restore
    Backup and recovery of data files and databases is an essential operation for any business system, particularly for data and applications that run in production environments. Create and follow a plan for backing up and recovering data on all tiers of your HCL Digital Experience deployment. IBM Installation Manager must also be included in backup and recovery planning. If you back up the HCL Portal file structure and then install a fix pack, your HCL Digital Experience and IBM Installation Manager become out of sync after you restore the HCL Portal file system. This condition is not recoverable.
  - Migrating
    Successful migration requires significant planning and preparation, understanding the tools that are involved, and careful execution of the appropriate steps in the order provided.
  - Integrating
    Integrate HCL Digital Experience with software such as HCL Sametime to enable your users to collaborate more easily. You can also use the unified task list portlet to integrate HCL with your backend business process software, such as IBM Process Server.
  - Administering
    Use the administration tools that are provided with the portal to do various day-to-day administration tasks. There are two methods for editing portal setup: using the administration portlets or the XML configuration interface. The administration portlets are a convenient way to make real-time updates to the portal's configuration. While the XML configuration interface is suited to more advanced administration, including batch processing of updates.
  - Securing
    Security tasks include setting up property extension databases and custom user repositories, configuring and activating SSL, and configuring authentication. In addition, tasks such as activating Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and NIST SP800-131a security modules and configuring external security managers such as Security Access Manager might be required to secure your portal environment.
  - Monitoring
    HCL Portal includes tools and features to help you monitor the portal site.
  - Setting up a website
    Setting up a website includes, creating pages, adding navigation, setting up search, and adding content to the site. Themes are used to customize the portal's look-and-feel. Out-of-the-box templates and the site wizard can help you set up your portal site faster. You can add wikis and blogs to your site and let users tag and rate content on your site.
  - Staging to production
    During portal solution development, the solution is initially developed, tested, and refined on one server or a limited number of servers. The solution is deployed later on live systems, referred to as the production environment. The process of moving the solution from the development environment to the production environment is called staging.
  - Developing
    This section includes developer documentation on extending applications and development assets for HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager.
  - Troubleshooting
    This section helps you resolve problems, use diagnostic tools and tracing to capture HCL Digital Experience system errors.
  - Reference
    View information that can help you use the Digital Experience Help Center including directory conventions, terms of use, trademarks, a glossary, and more.
  - Glossary
    This glossary includes terms and definitions for HCL Digital Experience.
  - Content Template Catalog 4.4
    The Content Template (CTC) is a set of templates that accelerate the process of building a website.

Configuring HCL Portal to use dynamic groups | HCL Digital Experience

By default, HCL Digital Experience is enabled for static groups. However, the Virtual Member Manager (VMM) allows users to be members of either static or dynamic groups. Static groups have a persistent binding between a group and its members. Dynamic groups have a search query that is defined to retrieve the members of a group.

About this task

Disclaimer: The following procedure is to activate dynamic group support natively in VMM. It is preferable, if possible, to use the group membership attribute support to bring in dynamic group information from your LDAP server. Using the group membership attribute support for dynamic group membership is only possible if:

Your LDAP server supports a group membership attribute
The group membership attribute includes dynamic group membership information

Otherwise, complete the following steps to manually configure HCL Portal to use dynamic groups.

Clustered environments: Complete the following steps on the Deployment Manager and then synchronize the nodes.

Procedure

Log in to the WebSphere® Integrated Solutions Console.
Go to Security > Global security.
In Available realm definitions, select Federated repositories and click Configure.
In Related Items, click Manage repositories.
Select the appropriate repository from the list.
In Additional Properties, click Group attribute definition and then click Dynamic member attributes.
Click New and specify values for the Name and Object class fields as appropriate.
For example:
- Name: memberurl
- Object class: groupofurls
Click OK and save the changes to the master configuration.
Stop and restart the appropriate servers to propagate the changes. For instructions, read Starting and stopping servers, deployment managers, and node agents.