What's new in IBM Connections 4.5

What's new for administrators in IBM Connections version 4.5?

Installation

The installation of IBM Connections Content Manager for the Libraries application on AIX, Linux, and Windows.
The installation now supports IBM i platform 6.1/7.1 for all applications other than Libraries.
The installation wizard is based on IBM Installation Manager 1.5.3.

Administration

IBM Connections:

You can lock the default frequency with which email digests from IBM Connections applications are sent to your users by configuring the frequencyLocked property in the notification-config.xml file. For more information, see Setting the default frequency of email digests.

Activities:

The EventLogPurgeJob task deletes old entries from the Activities events log. This taskhelps maintain performance and keeps the log from becoming too large. By default, it runs daily at 2 AM. You can specify the time that the log is purged and set the properties that define which entries can be deleted.

Communities:

You can increase the maximum number of communities that can be displayed in the Communities user views by adding a configuration setting to the LotusConnectionsconfig.xml file.
If the Communities catalog index becomes corrupted or is not being refreshed properly, you can restore the index by deleting the existing index data and waiting for the next scheduled crawl. For more information, see the Restoring the Communities catalog index topic.
By adding search to the list of modes in the Linked Library widget definition, you can enable search for content in linked libraries. For more information, see Enabling search for linked libraries.

Libraries:

Libraries provide community members document management capabilities to upload, manage, organize, and collaborate on community files. A community can contain multiple libraries.

Attention: When the IBM Connections Content Manager add-on is deployed, community owners can create libraries directly from a community using the Library widget. Community owners can also link to existing libraries using the Linked Library widget available in IBM Connections 3.0.1 and later. In this documentation, the libraries created directly from a community using the Library widget are referred to as community libraries. The libraries connected to a community using the Linked Library widget are referred to as linked libraries. Community libraries are currently only supported in IBM FileNet Content Manager deployments. Linked libraries are supported by IBM FileNet Content Manager and IBM Content Manager.

Community libraries provide owners and members with the following content management capabilities and enhanced social features:

Checkin and checkout. Members can check out files and edit them using private drafts. Checked out files are locked to prevent other users from making updates at the same time.
Version control. Members can see who has updated content at a glance and roll back to previous file versions if there is a need to recover older content.
File organization. Members can copy, move, and delete files, and use Trash view functionality to manage deleted content.
Draft review. Members can collaborate on shared files and send them through an established review cycle to obtain the approval of selected members of the community.
Sharing. Community owners can set file-level access to the library, giving them tighter control over who can edit content.
Social content management. Members can interact with content in the community library in a social and dynamic way. For example, they can use tags to categorize content and improve file retrieval, and like files to recommend them to fellow members. Members can also track file updates in the community activity stream, follow files, comment on files, and see who has downloaded files.
Document types and properties. Community owners can set the default document type for a library, allowing them to specify a defined set of information and properties for library files.

Existing linked libraries from earlier versions of IBM Connections can also leverage many of the content management capabilities and enhanced social features provided by community libraries, depending on the deployment specification. Where there are limitations for specific linked library deployments, these are noted in this help.

Notes:

Access to linked libraries is managed on the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) server unlike community libraries, where the access is managed from the community. Access to a linked library does not include the community owners and members groups, so having access to a community does not necessarily mean that you have access to its linked libraries. You can see the Linked Library widget but unless you have access to the linked library, you cannot see any content in the library.
If you remove the Linked Library widget from your community, the linked library content is not deleted from the ECM server. You can access the content by adding the Linked Library widget to your community again and recreating the connection with the ECM server. If you remove the Library widget from your community, the associated library content is permanently removed from your community and cannot be retrieved.
You can search for files in community libraries, however, searching in linked libraries is disabled by default. If search is enabled for linked libraries, a Linked Libraries tab is available in your Communities search results. Linked library search results display all matching files in the library. The search results do not include any social features, such as tagging, or document type information. When you click a search result, you are taken to a generic landing page that is outside the scope of a community. When a linked library is connected to a subfolder of a library, the search results are scoped to the library rather than to the folder.

Wikis:

The Wikis administrator can delete draft wiki pages that were created by other users. This capability is useful after a user leaves the organization.
Create your own message for users by customizing the Wikis welcome page.

Files:

You can now use a Files administrative command to obtain the ID of a community library using its community uuid value. The format of the command is: FilesLibraryService.getByExternalContainerId(string community_id)

Profiles:

You can now exclude nicknames when adding or updating user profiles by specifying a new name.expansion property in the tdi-profiles-config.xml file.
You can use the new mapToNameTable property in the profiles-types.xml file to specify an additional givenname or surname value for use with Profiles directory search.
You can integrate the Profiles business card with your web application by mapping an LDAP distinguished name, using the DN parameter; in addition to the previously available user ID and email mapping options.
The hashEmail extended attribute can be added to the map_dbrepos_from_source.properties file or profileExtension table in the tdi-profilesconfig. xml file to support Profiles users in conjunction with the Microsoft Outlook Social Connector. For related information topics in the Using the IBM Connections Desktop Plug-ins for Microsoft Windows section of the IBM Connections wiki.

News:

Use the NewsActivityStreamService.updateApplicationRegistrationForEmailDigest command to update a registered third-party application to enable it for email digest functionality. For more information about this command, see Registering third-party applications.
Use the NewsEmailDigestService.refreshDefaultEmailPrefsFromConfig()command to refresh updates to the default email preferences specified in the notification-config.xml file without the need for a server restart.

Search:

Use the new, optional parameter for the SearchService.startBackgroundIndex command to run social analytics indexing jobs at the end of the background indexing operation.
You can configure post-filtering for the ECM service by enabling or disabling a property in the Search configuration file. Post-filtering is enabled by default.
Use the SearchService.startBackgroundSandIndex command to create a background index for the social analytics service. Use this command to run background indexing for social analytics without having to run a full index crawl.
By adding search to the list of modes in the Linked Library widget definition, you can enable search for content in linked libraries using FileNet P8 5.2. For more information, see Enabling search for linked libraries.