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Create your own SPI code to audit IBM Connections activity
I created a simple event handler to track activity on IBM Connections. The instructions are available here: https://ibm.biz/BdH53e . Yes, it's an old link but the instructions are still good! Here are the steps: Create the Java code. I'm attaching my source code to this post; feel free to take a look, with the understanding that it's sample code, not meant for production use, and the usual other disclaimers. You need to compile this code against a jar file provided by Connections called... [More]
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FEB Widget for ICEC
Creating a custom widget in IBM Connections Engagement Center turns out to be pretty easy. There are a couple of bumps in the road, but once you find the right path it's relatively straightforward to navigate it. I wrote a sample widget which shows Forms Experience Builder forms in EC. I'm providing it to you here with no warranty. This is demonstration-level code you may use at your own risk. Don't call IBM support if you have an issue with it, as they will not be able to help you. Here is a video of the widget... [More]
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Connections APIs -- yes you can!
The IBM Connections APIs let you get behind the scenes to show you what's going on in your Connections implementation. Take a look at this 2-min video for what you can do:
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List all Communities and their activity
Do you want to get an idea of how many communities there are in your on premises deployment of IBM Connections? Wouldn't it be even better to see when they were last updated? How about who owns them and whether they are a parent or sub-community? Here's what we did: Run these commands from the command line of the Connections server, in the Deployment Manager directory (ex. /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/Dmgr01/bin). ./wsadmin.sh -user xxxxxx -password yyyyyyco -port 8879 -lang jython... [More]
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IBM Connections Files Navigator tree view
Here is a Script Application I wrote to show a nifty tree view of all the files in an IBM Connections Community. It uses the open source jsTree plugin for jQuery to provide a navigable tree of files and folders for a community. Edit the index.html file and provide your own Community uuid, and away you go! This sample is provided with no warranty; use at your own risk! Download the sample here: FilesNavigator.zip Update: I was asked to create unique apps for "My Files", "Files Shared with Me", and... [More]
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Script Portlet to show a Cognos report
Accessing a Cognos report from a WebSphere Portal script portlet is pretty straightforward. Here is some sample code. Cognos Script Portlet sample For single sign on and to take advantage of the Ajax proxy, you'll need to import the following XML using the appropriate ConfigEngine command : Ajax proxy configuration file
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Enabling Ephox EditLive track changes in WebSphere Portal v8.5
The procedure to turn on track changes in the Ephox EditLive is not very well documented. Here are the steps I followed. Copy the file editlive_config.xml.jsp from <PortalServer>/wcm/prereq.wcm/wcm/config/templates/shared/app/config/ephox to <profile_dir>/PortalServer/wcm/shared/app/config/ephox (You will need to create that target ephox directory). Rename the file config.xml.jsp . Edit the file using the instructions found here: https://ibm.biz/BdXCGm . You will be uncommenting the track changes... [More]
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Create a custom WebSphere Portal theme without WebDAV
I've seen a couple of articles on this subject, but they were either incomplete or had errors. Here is my version. It also has steps on how to customize the theme after you've deployed it. The zip file contains the tutorials and the files which you need to complete them. Click here to download, and let me know if you find a bug!
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Outlook Web Access portlet
I have a simple portlet which access Outlook Web Access "Lite" with single sign on. The SSO is done using the credential vault. I hope this video helps explain how it works. I wrote this using Web Experience Factory. The portlet WAR file is here , and the Web Experience Factory archive is here . NOTE: This is sample code, with no warranty. Use at your own risk! UPDATE: I've uploaded a new version which properly encodes the userid and password for use in an HTTP query string.
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CSV File Data Service Builder
I took a look at Jonathan Booth's most excellent XML File Data Service builder, and I like it. However, I find it easier to create sample data in a spreadsheet, so I made a few changes to his builder and present for your edification a CSV File Data Service builder. If you examine my code and his, you'll see that it's 95% his stuff with only a slight change to read/write the file as a CSV (comma separated values) file instead of XML. Enjoy! CVS File Data Service Builder Edit May 1, 2014: fixed some bugs in... [More]
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Adobe AIR on FC18
I made an earlier post about installing Adobe AIR applications on FC17. On 18, it was little different. I used the same FC14 libraries I linked to in that post, but had to make a few changes -- adding some soft links to files which the installer complained it couldn't find. For each file, I created a softlink into the FC14 directory, so that my directory now looks like this: Then I ran the installer like this: LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/lib-fc14 Adobe\ AIR\ Application\ Installer... [More]
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Using the Domino Data Access builder and seeing the server's IP address?
If you're using Web Experience Factory's Domino Access builder and it's trying to use the Domino server's IP address, you need to make a configuration change on the Domino server. In the Current Server Document, navigate to Internet Protocols and then the DIIOP tab. Put the hostname into the "Host name/Address" field and restart Domino. That's it!
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A PHP Widget for IBM Connections
I had posted here and here about using PHP for WebSphere Portal, and a customer asked me how to create iWidgets for IBM Connections using PHP. Using PHP or other web languages as iWidgets can be great for your enterprise; the code already exists, you already have the skills, and there's very little to do to make the integration. Here's a quick tutorial. You will need to configure the AJAX Proxy in Connections to allow iWidgets from external sources. The details are here . In summary, you use wsadmin to check out... [More]
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IBM Sametime in KDE
Do you use IBM Sametime in KDE and wonder why it won't open your chosen file manager when someone transfers a file to you? Well, the Sametime team uses an Eclipse call to gvfs, rather than (what I thought) xdg. The KDE control panel configures xdg, so now I know why Sametime is ignoring it. To get Sametime to open Konqueror, for example, use this command: gvfs-mime --set inode/directory kde4-kfmclient_dir.desktop
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EJPDB0124E when creating a page
When creating a page in WebSphere Portal v8001 using Firefox, I got this error: Error 404: EJPDB0124E: The specified string [undefined] can neither be deserialized as an object ID nor resolved as a unique name. IBM tells me that this is a known bug that happens under certain conditions with Firefox. The immediate work-arounds are to use Chrome or IE (something other than FF), or to create the page using the Manage Pages portlet, instead of putting the page into Edit Mode and clicking More -> New Page. An APAR has been created (PM88936)... [More]
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Enabling Community Pages after upgrading to Portal v8.0.0.1
If you're like me, you noticed that the Community Pages link no longer appears in the page properties after an upgrade to Portal v8.0.0.1. The upgrade seems to wipe out a vital property.
The property is in the Resource Environment Provider call "WP ConnectionsIntegrationService". One of its custom properties, globalBaseURL, needs to point to the Connections server. From the portal's WebSphere console, navigate to the Resource Environment Providers, and find WP ConnectionsIntegrationService (probably on page 2). In its custom... [More]
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multiple monitors with Fedora Core 17 and nvidia drivers...on a thinkpad
With the latest nvidia drivers, they've changed how the driver itself works, but haven't yet updated the nvidia-settings tool to accommodate that change. This affects me, because I often need to share my Thinkpad W520 screen with an older projector which only supports 1024x768 resolution.
The trouble is that the nvidia-settings tool doesn't let me set the Thinkpad monitor to 1024x768, so I cannot clone my screen on both monitors. There is a tricky way to do this from the command line, however, and here it is: nvidia-settings --assign... [More]
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Letting non-administrators add users to a group in WebSphere Portal
A customer recently asked if the above can be done. The answer is Yes! Typically, group management is done on the LDAP side, and Portal uses the user and group configuration in a read-only manner. However, if you want to let Portal update LDAP, here's how you can do it. Let's say you have a user called groupAadmin, and you want to let him add and remove users from GroupA. First, give groupAadmin the role Security Administrator on the virtual resource called USERS. To do this, the portal administrator users the Resource Permissions... [More]
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Adobe Air 2.6 on Fedora Core 17, x86_64
It turns out that installing Adobe Air on FC17 is much like on FC15 . Here's what I did. sudo yum install ld-linux.so.2 gtk2-devel.i686 libdbus-glib-1.so.2 \ rpm-devel.i686 libXt.so.6 \ libDCOP.so.4 libxml2-devel.i686 nss-devel.i686 libxslt.i686 \ xterm rpm-build libgnome-keyring.i686 \ gtk2-engines gtk2-engines.i686 libcanberra-gtk2 libcanberra-gtk3 libcanberra-gtk2.i686 libcanberra-gtk3.i686 When I ran this command, yum complained about a conflict. I had to uninstall a 64 bit package to allow its 32 bit counterpart to install; I think it... [More]
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Publishing a WebSphere Dashboard Framework project to WebSphere Portal v8
Here's how to publish your WDF project to Portal v8. As far as I know, this method is currently unsupported by IBM, but perhaps they'll release a technote or something. At the end, I'll show the supported method.
Without this trick, your attempt to publish will fail at the very end. WDF will tell you to look in a particular file for the error message, but that file will be empty. The error message is: EJPXB0019E: Server response indicates an error. For status and details of the XmlAccess error look at file... [More]
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Portlet events the easy way, with Web Experience Factory
Web Experience Factory (WEF) v8.0 has some great and easy-to-use features to make portlets send events to each other. Here's a short tutorial. A common scenario in a web application is navigating from a summary to a detail page. The summary has a few pieces of information about a particular item, and the detail shows all the pertinent data, and also possibly gives you the ability to edit that data. In the non-portal world, users typically click on a link in a summary table, and are taken to a separate page which has the detail. The user... [More]
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Using Locale in Web Experience Factory
I posted earlier about using locale in Web Experience Factory (WEF) portlet titles , but I never bothered to walk you though using locale for labels in a WEF portlet. Here's a quick tutorial. I started with a simple provider and consumer application, using a Data Page builder. The result looks like this:
In Eclipse, navigate to the WebContet/WEB-INF/work/source directory. Right click on source , then choose New -> Folder . Name it... [More]
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Customizing the WebSphere Portal Mobile theme
I wanted to replace the "WebSphere Portal" graphic which is the default image on the mobile theme which IBM provides for portal. I created my own theme based on the default one, and registered it. I changed the reference in css/mobile.css, but it didn't make any difference. An examination of the theme showed that it didn't bother to read the css files that come with my own theme; only the ones from the original. What good is that? So I added a couple of lines to the theme.html, and now it works fine: Put the following lines... [More]
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Creating a custom theme in WebSphere Portal v7
Here's a simple way to create a custom theme in WebSphere Portal. Your new theme will be based on the default PageBuilder2 theme. There are two main steps: first you copy your new theme components to the portal server, and then you register this new theme. Even if you only want to keep the PageBuilder2 theme and only tweak the style, it's still a good idea to create your own theme. That way, none of your changes will be lost when you apply a fixpack. Use a WebDAV client to connect to your running portal at... [More]
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Using Locale in Web Experience Factory portlet titles
Do you have a Web Experience Factory portlet which you've customized for various languages? That part is very straightforward; setting a language-specific title for that portlet is not. Here's what to do. Edit the file WEB-INF/bin/deployment/portlet_base.standard286. Locate the element <supported-locale>en</supported-locale> and add in locales for the other languages you want to support. For example, to add French and Spanish, it should look like this: <supported-locale>en</supported-locale> ... [More]
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Getting the query string in a portlet factory portlet
Someone asked me today how to get the query string from a portlet built using Web Experience Factory (formerly WebSphere Portlet Factory). The use case is this: an email has a link to register on your site. You want to know something about where the user got the link (which email, etc) so you attach a query string to it.
You can get to the query string with a bit of Java code: public String getQS(WebAppAccess webAppAccess) { PortletRequest portletRequest =... [More]
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No sound in Notes 8.5.x running in 64-bit Linux
Here's a quick tip: if you have the above configuration and don't have sound on your Notes notifications (calendar, etc), then install esound-libs.i686. Presto!
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Lotus Notes: getting images to appear inline in emails sent to Internet addresses
I've had more than one customer send me an email with an image pasted inline...except the image ends up as an attachment by the time it arrives in my inbox. There's a simple setting in your Notes configuration to get this to work correctly:
In the lower right corner of your Notes client, click on the Location, and choose "Edit Locations" Make sure the current location is selected, and click the Edit button. In the dialog which appears, select the Mail tab. In the "Format for messages addressed to internet addresses",... [More]
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Adobe Air 2.6 on Fedora Core 15, 64 bit
I had some trouble getting this to work, so I'm documenting it -- for my own benefit, if not for anyone else. :-) Here's what I did: Download the Adobe Air v2.6 installer from Adobe's site. Install with yum. It installed libxslt as well. On my x86_64 system, I needed to install other 32-bit rpms as well. Here's the command to install them: yum install gtk2-devel.i686 dbus-glib-devel.i686
qmmp.i686 rpm-build-libs.i686 rpm-devel.i686 gnome-keyring-devel.i686
libxml2-devel.i686 nss-devel.i686 libxslt.i686 glibc.i686 xterm That's it for... [More]
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automating portal login
To automate a portal login, so that one click automatically logs you in, use this url: http://hostname:10039/wps/portal/cxml/04_SD9ePMtCP1I800I_KydQvyHFUBADPmuQy?userid=<wpsadmin>&password=<password> Substitute a valid ID and password for <wpsadmin> and <password> above. This is especially handy when developing with Web Experience Factory. Every time you log in, the WEF portlets are refreshed -- easy! Note: This same URL will work for Portal v6.1.5; just use port 10040 instead of 10039.
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SOLVED: problem with action-validate-ldap-connection step when running configwizard
We were having some significant problems trying to federate an LDAP repository with WebSphere Portal. The action-validate-ldap-connection step would always fail with something like this: action-validate-ldap-connection: [ldapcheck] ############################################################### [ldapcheck] ldapURL : ldapserver:389 [ldapcheck] ldapUser : ptladmin [ldapcheck] ldapPassword : **** [ldapcheck] ldapSslEnabled : false [ldapcheck] baseDn : [ldapcheck]... [More]
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Passing events in and out of a PHP iWidget
In an earlier post ,
I mused on the possibility of having an external application, such as a
PHP app, participate fully in the event model of iWidgets in IBM's
Mashup Center or WebSphere Portal. Now I have it working. Why would you want to do this? Well, I have a number of customers who have a bunch of PHP code, or ColdFusion, or whatever, already created. There's no reason to rewrite those applications using Java so that they can exist as portlets. Instead, break down the existing application into manageable UI components, and... [More]
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Portalizing an application
There are a number of options for "portalizing" an application. Here are the categories, and examples of applications which fit into them. Create Portal Application : These applications provide discrete services with open and/or public APIs. An open API is something like REST, web service, or EJB. Some systems use proprietary APIs (eg. SAP), but at least they're documented and well understood in the industry. IBM has tooling to access SAP, PeopleSoft, and Siebel APIs out of the box, and it can also consume any custom Java API (ex.... [More]
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SQL1042C when trying to start DB2 on Linux
Upon booting my Fedora Core 14 laptop, I suddenly couldn't get DB2 to start. It had worked fine up to that point, so I didn't know what was going on. When I ran db2start, I'd get this message: 04/08/2011 21:25:35 0 0 SQL1042C An unexpected system error occurred. SQL1032N No start database manager command was issued. SQLSTATE=57019 The sqllib/db2dump/db2diag.log file gave me an extremely unhelpful "Trace facility mutex unexpected lock error" message. Following a tip from another IBMer, I did this: db2trc on -f db2trc.out... [More]
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Cursor disappears on KDE when using Sympony v3
I have been using KDE forever, but apparently the folks who create Lotus Symphony haven't been. Version 3 works great on GNOME systems, but on KDE, there's a bug: when I switch away from Symphony and then back, the cursor disappears. I can still type and characters appear, but it's a little surreal not to see the vertical bar to indicate where my cursor is. The Symphony folks acknowledge the bug and don't have a resolution yet. However, on this site , I found a workaround, which is to add the following line to your .bashrc file. It worked... [More]
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Error when starting portal application using admin console
I had a customer see the following error when trying to start a portal application from the admin console: Application XYZ cannot be started because it is installed on a different server. It
turns out that the customer had started up the server1 instance to use
the admin console, because that was what he was used to (being a WebSphere guy). However, in
portal the admin console application is installed also on the
WebSphere_Portal instance, so there's no need to start up server1 to use
the admin console.
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How to become a social business
Louis Richardson spoke at Lotusphere 2011 last month, and he identified five steps which companies can take to become a social business. Get started. Don't sit around trying to figure everything out ahead of time, just get moving. Find people who are already socially active, and engage them in what you're doing. They'll be your evangelists. Find the "answer people". These are the people who are already the experts, and people are asking them questions. Get them on board -- it will help them out by removing the effort required to... [More]
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Access a jar file from Portlet Factory
If you have a library of code in a jar file, you can easily import it into Portlet Factory and use it like you use any other WPF feature. Just drop the jar into the WEB-INF/work/lib directory for your project, and refresh your project. Then you can create a Linked Java Object and the chooser will find the classes in the jar. By the way, the WEB-INF/lib directory is for any code which your application may need in order to compile or run, but which isn't needed in the builder interface.
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Fixing "too many open files" when running Portal as non-root in Linux
So I kept getting the above error on my laptop. I run portal as a
non-root user, having changed the ownership of the appropriate
directories. It worked fine until I configured Portal to use DB2 as its
repository; then I started regularly getting the "too many open files"
message.
The solution is to increase the number of open files! Of course! But....how...? After some poking around, I read that I can edit the
/etc/security/limits.conf file for the user in question. Here's what I
put in: skipper hard ... [More]
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Error installing the WebSphere Portal Solution Installer on linux
I kept getting an error when I ran the install-SolutionInstaller.sh file, saying it couldn't find settings.properties. The file was RIGHT THERE; how can it not find it? I resolved the problem by editing the script file where it's trying to identify the properties file. Old line: SETTINGS_PROPERTIES=settings.properties New line: SETTINGS_PROPERTIES=./settings.properties I don't know if it's just my system (Fedora 13 64-bit), but this change made everything work.
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Trust Association Interceptor (TAI) quick HOWTO
On a recent project, I had to create a TAI to integrate Portal v6.1.5 with a
customer's custom security system. The documentation on TAI describes
how to create one, but I couldn't get it to work with the out-of-the-box
login portlet. It turns out the form in the login porltet must be
submitted to a secured URI. Change the loginView.jsp from this: < form method=" POST" action=" < % logi nURL .wri teDi spos e(ou t);% > " to this: < form method=" POST" action=" /wps/myportal"
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Passing events to a PHP iWidget
Some folks have asked about this. Since a PHP iWidget lives in an iframe, passing an event to it isn't very straightforward. The trick is to use a
hidden form in the view markup. This form (and its associated
JavaScript) captures the event, extracts the payload from it, then
submits that payload to the iframe. The PHP invoked in the iframe
extracts the payload from the request headers in the normal fashion, and
needs no modification. I don't think there's a way for the PHP iWidget to pass events to other iWidgets, so we only have... [More]
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Creating a customized Enhanced Theme in WebSphere Portal v6.1.5
If you want to customize the Enhanced Theme (aka Page Builder) which comes with portal v.6.1.5, do this: Copy the four directories from < wp_profile> /installedApps/< nodename> /Enh ance d_Th eme. ear/ wp.t heme .enh ance dthe me.w ar to a temporary location. The four directories are: META-INF, skins, themes, WEB-INF. Make changes to the them es/h tml/ Enha nced /sys tem/ styl es.j son to reference your new style. I added a line like this: { loca liza tion Pack ageN ame: 'com .ibm .bun dles ', loca liza tion Bund leNa me:'... [More]
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Configuring a mysql datasource in WebSphere (and Portal) v7
There are a couple of HOWTO docs out there on this, but they're for older versions of WebSphere. Here are my notes on v7. This works pretty much the same on v6.1 as well. You'll need the mysql Connector/J, the official JDBC driver. Google for the latest version and unzip it into a location which is accessible by WAS. When you create the JDBC provider, specify that it's user defined. The implementation class name is com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlConnectionPoolDataSource. When you create the data source, the helper class name is... [More]
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