IBM Connections 5 New Features Walkthrough

IBM Connections 5.0 Workshop

Author: Paul GodbyIBM Ecosystem DevelopmentLast Updated: July 29, 2014Duration: 45 minutes

IBM Connections Workshop

Lab Manual

New Features Walkthrough

COPYRIGHT IBM CORPORATION 2014. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.IBM Ecosystem Development

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Introduction:New capabilities in IBM Connections V5.0 make it easier for a company's employees to work with customers and business partners on projects. Enhancements throughout IBM Connections V5.0 make relevant content more accessible, encourage brainstorming on new ideas, and organize the content that is shared in communities. Included in IBM Connections V5.0 is EditLive! for IBM Connections, an optional rich text editor for content authors who create wikis, blogs, and profiles.

IBM Connections V5.0 adds new capabilities that make it easier for a company's employees to collaborate with customers and business partners on projects and share relevant information. With IBM Connections V5.0, external users, such as customers and business partners, can be invited to a shared file and an IBM Connections community. Communities that have been opened to external users are identified as such to the members of the community.

Enhancements throughout IBM Connections V5.0 can make relevant content more accessible, and accelerate your employees' ability to take action quickly.

Description:Enhancements throughout IBM Connections V5.0 can make relevant content more accessible, and accelerate your employees' ability to take action quickly.

Home page and user experience

• @mentions on content throughout: Draw attention to information that matters.

• Smarter content filtering: Makes the Activity stream more relevant to your needs.

• View the number of new @mentions and notifications on your home page.

• Type-ahead search for people: Results are personalized to find users by partial name matches via your extended network relationships.

• Preview link content: Quickly decide whether to follow a link in a status update by viewing a thumbnail preview.

• Pasting images: Create content faster by pasting images directly into the editor.

• Feed links on all pages: Consistent access to search feeds and improved ability to subscribe.

Activities

• Notify and select all members: Easily notify all members working on an activity


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Communities

• Join sub-community and parent community in one click: Get access to the content you need quickly by joining sub-community and parent in one click

• Create folders in communities: Organize the communities files and use them to create multiple galleries per community

• Landing page organization: Create and define the community landing page so that it directs members to the content that you want to feature

• Forum open questions: Identify and act on open questions in forums to foster community collaboration and engagement

• Multiple Ideation Blogs per Community: Improve idea generation on multiple topics by bringing added focus to each of them

Files

• File grid view: Quickly identify file content you need through thumbnails organized in a grid view

• Preview: Preview files without the need to open a new window to simplify reviews

Objective:This lab will explain the following tasks:

How to use some of the new features in IBM Connections applications


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Procedure:

SETUP

Step 1 Review the workshop setup document for instructions on how to ensure all required servers have been started on your SoftLayer device.

Step 2 You may choose to complete this lab on your local machine. However, the instructions will assume you are working locally on the SoftLayer device using a VNC client.

Step 3 Important! Any time you open a new terminal window (Applications → System Tools → Terminal), you should first enter the following commands to switch to the root user. All of the steps documented in this lab will assume you are running with root privileges!

su – root

(Enter <<SSH Password>>)

HOMEPAGE

The Home page delivers an aggregated view of your latest updates across all the IBM Connections applications.The Home page makes it easy for you to share information and collaborate with others by providing an always-current snapshot view of your IBM Connections applications in a single, centralized location.

By consolidating the latest information from your IBM Connections applications in a one-stop workspace, theHome page helps you stay up-to-date with the people and activities in your organization and fully leverage thebenefits of a collaborative working environment.

Step 4 In a web browser, navigate to URL:

https://<<Host Name>>/homepage

Step 5 Log in with the following credentials

Field Value

User name dmisawa

Password passw0rd

Step 6 On the left side of the page, review the new badging system in place on the navigation menu. You can very quickly and easily see the number of items that need your attention for My Notifications, Mentions, and Action Required.


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Step 7 In the navigation menu on the left, click My Notifications. Notice that once you visit the My Notifications view, the badge for this particular line item disappears. It's magic.

Step 8 On the right, you should see a list of your notifications. The events listed here could contain messages directed towards you or could be notifications you have sent to others. You can select the tab as appropriate to filter the view:

Step 9 On the right side of these entries, you can further refine the results by application:

Step 10 In the navigation menu on the left, click Action Required. Notice that once you visit the Action Required view, the badge for this particular item does NOT disappear. This is not magic. Items in this view will only be removed when you choose to remove them. When you do this, the badge count total will decrease by one.

Step 11 On the right, view the first event posted by the ICDA application.


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Step 12 Notice that this event includes some IBM Connections user names in the form of @mentions. Hover over any of the user names and review the pop-up business card. The business card will give you more information about the user as well as provide links to his/her Connections applications.

Step 13 Close the business card and hover over the entire event. On the right, click the arrows that appear to view the embedded experience.

Step 14 For a production application, you would likely have a custom OpenSocial gadget displayed in this window with some buttons for you to complete some action. For example, you might be asked to approve or deny an employee's flight request. For now, go ahead and close the embedded experience.


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Step 15 Once again, hover over the top activity stream event. In the upper right corner, click the X to remove this item from this view.

Step 16 In the notification window, click Remove.

Step 17 You should notice that the item is removed from this view and that the badge count has decreased by one! Good job, you're on your way to completing your required actions!

Note: Performing this action does not delete the event. It just removes it from the Action Required view.

Step 18 In the menu on the left, click Updates. All of the various updates from your Activity Stream, whether it be status updates or events from items you are following, appear in this view.


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Step 19 New in IBM Connections 5.0, if you post a URL with a status update it will automatically pull down a preview of the page and/or image that is referenced. This allows you to preview the content without having to actually visit the link! At the top of the center column, you should see a section titled Share Something with a text box underneath that says “What do you want to share?” Click in this text box, type http://www.ibm.com and then press Enter. You should see a preview appear!

Step 20 Below the preview, go ahead and click Post to share this update with your colleagues. Reviewthe new entry, and how it will appear to others, in your Activity Stream.


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http://www.ibm.com/


Step 21 Across the top of the list of entries, notice that there is a series of tabs for filtering the Activity Stream entries. You can choose to view events from: I'm Following, Status Updates, or Discover (public updates)

Step 22 Click on the Status Updates tab. Find the entry indicating that Sam Curman has recently commented on your message.

Step 23 Notice that this event has quite a few comments associated with it. By default, the Activity Stream will show the last 2 entries. To see all of the comments, you need to perform an additional step. In the past, you would click on a Show more link that would open an embedded experience window so you could view all comments. Now, you can click Show Previous Comments to view the comments inline directly in the stream!

Step 24 The latest comments intrigue you, so you would like to respond. You may now use hashtags inyour comments. A hashtag is an informal way to apply tags to content. By using hashtags in comments, you can now leverage the Search feature inside IBM Connections to find the latest conversations on current / trending topics.


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Step 25 At the bottom of the current list of comments, click on Add a comment. Enter the following text and click Post.

These new features are fantastic! #ibmcnx

Step 26 As you can see, your comment now includes a hashtag. Clicking on the hashtag would perform an automatic search for similar entries with the same tag.

Step 27 Click the I'm Following tab to return to your list of followed entries.

Step 28 While you are in this view, you decide to search for a particular item in your Activity Stream. At the top of the list of current entries, click the Search icon.

Step 29 In the Search this stream box, type “education” and press Enter to begin your search.


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Step 30 The list should filter down to only those items that match your search criteria.

Step 31 While you are here, you decide to look up one of your colleagues. In the search bar in the upper right, start typing “Frank Adams”. The new people typeahead feature will return results from the user directory as you type. This new search will focus on users in your extended network relationships first, then expand to the rest of the user directory. Clicking on a user will take you to his/her Profiles page.

Step 32 Leave the browser open and proceed to the next section.


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ACTIVITIES

An activity is a place where the people involved in a project can share information, assign tasks, and shareresources like files, tools, and websites. Use an activity to organize content and prioritize tasks that are related toa project goal.

Step 33 From the fly-out navigation menu at the top, choose Apps → Activities.

Step 34 Click on the entry for the IBM Connections Workshop activity

Step 35 You want to send a reminder to members of the activity about the instructions for developing presentations. Locate the entry “Process for developing presentations” and click the More link on the right.

Step 36 An expanded preview for this entry should appear, as well as some additional links / actions. Click on the More Actions link and choose Notify Other People.

Step 37 There are a lot of people in this activity, and you want to notify them all. You can now simply check the box to notify all members! Check this box, and for your Notify Message type “Pleaseread this before the next meeting.”. When finished, click Send.

Step 38 You should see a notification that your message was sent. Proceed to the next section.


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BLOGS

Blogs are online journals that you can use to share information within an organization in an efficient, dynamicstyle. In a business setting, blogs are a great tool for delivering timely information with a personal touch.

Blogs are a flexible medium for communicating within an organization. Use a blog to inform employees about anew product. Or use a blog to inform colleagues about topics that range from experiences at a trade show to tipson using new technology. Blogs are a fast, effective way to share your news and views.

New in Blogs you now have the ability to easily delete or edit existing comments. There is also a new threadedcomments view that allows user's to comment on comments.

Step 39 From the fly-out navigation menu at the top, choose Apps → Blogs.

Step 40 Once you enter the Blogs application, choose the My Blogs tab.

Step 41 Locate the blog titled “Lab – New Blogs Features” and click the name to access it

Step 42 Once you enter the blog, locate the blog post titled “New features in Blogs”. Notice that it already has five comments and three likes. So, it has already begun to generate some interestfrom others in the organization. As the blog author, you are very interested in what these usershave to say! Click the title, New features in Blogs, to view the blog entry.


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Step 43 On the right, click on the square smiley face to see who has liked this blog post.

Step 44 Scroll down to the bottom to review the comments. Review the available options on comment #1. In the past, you only had the ability to delete a comment. Now, you should see options for obtaining the comment permalink, the ability to reply to a comment, and a More Actions link with additional options.

Step 45 Review comment #2. You feel like this user has brought up an excellent point and you would like to share some additional insight. You can reply to this comment and view it in a threaded view interface. Click on Reply. Type “This is an excellent point!” and click Submit.


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Step 46 Review the new threaded comment user interface!

Step 47 You have determined that comment #3 was made in error. This user doesn't seem to be talking about anything related to your blog entry. As the blog owner, you can delete this comment. Click More Actions → Delete. When the confirmation window appears, click OK.

Step 48 All of this discussion has made you think about about a new potential blog entry. Scroll to the top of the page and click New Entry.

Step 49 For the title of this new blog entry, enter “Rich Text Editor Enhancements”


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Step 50 In the browser, open a new tab and navigate to URL:

http://<< Host Name >>/images/foreground.gif

Step 51 This is the background image used for the default page of the IBM HTTP Server. You really like this image and think it's useful for your new blog entry. You can now copy and paste images directly into your blog entries. Right-click the image and choose Copy Image.

Step 52 Return to your blog entry. In the rich text editor, right-click and choose Paste. That was easy!

Step 53 The image is very nice, but now you need some text to go along with the image. Underneath the image, type the following sentence.

The new features in blogs are fantastic!

Step 54 Feel free to experiment with the new rich text capabilities on this line of text!


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Step 55 When finished, press ENTER to go to a new line. Another new feature in IBM Connections is the ability to use @mentions throughout the product. Type the following text. When you begin typing the name, you will be given the option to select the user's name. When you do this, the @mention will turn into a link to the user's business card.

Many thanks to @Frank Adams for his help!

Step 56 Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Post to create your blog entry.

Step 57 Once the blog entry is created, you will be redirected to it. Leave the browser open and proceed to the next section.

COMMUNITIES

Files enables you and others to easily upload, organize, share, and collaborate on files.

Files provides an easy way to share files and ideas with people and communities, and a central storage place foryour work. Files can be shared, tagged, organized in folders, and accessed from other applications, such asActivities.

New in Communities Files, you now have the ability to create folders to organize the files associate with thecommunity. There is now also a new consolidated file viewer to help you easily preview existing documents.

Step 58 From the fly-out navigation menu at the top, choose Commmunities → I'm an Owner.


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Step 59 In the list of communities, click on the name Lab – New Community Features

Step 60 In the navigation menu on the left, click Files to access the community files feature

Step 61 Notice that you now have the ability to add folders directly inside your communities! You can only add files that already are associated with the community to the folder, or you can upload them from your desktop. So, before you create a new folder, you will first need to add some files to the community. Click Add Files.

Step 62 You previously uploaded some files to the standalone Files application and would now like to share them with this community folder. Leave “My Files” selected. Choose the following files and click Share Files.

icWorkshopSetup.txt

icSoftLayerSetup.pdf


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Step 63 You should see a notification that 2 files were successfully shared with the community. You willalso see the files appear in the files list.

Step 64 As of right now, your files are a bit unorganized inside this community. To alleviate this problemand to help bring some order to the community files repository, you will need to add some folders. Click Add Folders.

Step 65 Enter the following information and click Add Folders

Field Value

Create New Folder << selected >>

Name IBM Connections Workshop

Description Everything you need to know!

Step 66 In the community files application, click the Folders tab to view your new folder.


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Step 67 On the right, click More to see more inline options for this folder.

Step 68 On the left, you should now see more options for the current folder. Click Add Files

Step 69 At the top of the Add Files window, choose “This Community”. In an earlier step, you shared some of your personal files with the community. However, you'll notice that no files appear in the list to add to your new folder. This indicates that you may only add files to a community folder that have been uploaded directly into the community (not those that have been shared with the community).

Note: We went through these extra steps to show you this limitation because there are NO messages here thatindicate what is wrong or that there are limitations to be aware of. Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

Step 70 At the top of the Add Files window, choose “My Computer” and click Browse...


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Step 71 Navigate to the following location and select the following files (hold down the CTRL key to select multiple files). When finished, click Open.

Note: If you are working on your own workstation, just upload any group of files you see fit. Try to include avariety of file extensions so that you can utilize the file preview feature.

Field Value

Location /labs/solutions/ecod.features

Files Connections.pngfeatures.docfeatures.pdffeatures.pptfeatures.txt

Step 72 Click Add Files

Step 73 To view more details about the folder, and the files it contains click the folder title IBM Connections Workshop. You should see all of the files you added in the previous step.

Step 74 The list of files is nice. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get some more information from the fileslist instead of having to manually click through each one and going through individual details? Well, now you can! On the top right, you should notice a new Display option named “Show thumbnails in a grid format”. Click this option to see file previews.


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Step 75 The new File Viewer allows you to quickly see thumbnails of the files associated with this folder. As you can see, you can quickly view a preview of the first page of each of the files. This can potentially help you quickly identify the type of content contained in each file and whether or not it's something you should look into further.

• A photo or image displays scaled to fit the thumbnail.

• A video displays the thumbnail that was uploaded for it. (Note: To add a thumbnail to a video, go to the details page for the video, select More Actions → Change Thumbnail.)

• An office file displays the first page of the document.

• Other types display a file type icon.

Step 76 Hover over the file named: Connections.png

Step 77 You should see new options for the file. Directly from the file preview, you can perform the following actions: Download, Preview, View File Details

Step 78 Click on the file named “Connections.png”. Alternatively, choose “Preview” from it's menu.


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Step 79 This should open a preview of the first page of the file. Click the right and left arrows to quickly preview all 4 of the files contained in this folder in context without leaving the current window!

Step 80 Close the file preview window.

Step 81 From the Community Actions menu, choose Add Apps to open the widget palette.

Step 82 The Gallery widget allows community owners to showcase files of any type, such as photos, videos, and office files, on the community overview page. When it is configured, the Gallery is renamed with the folder or community name and displays thumbnail images for the files. You can add more than one Gallery widget to the overview page. Click the plus sign (+) on the Gallery widget to add it to the community.

Step 83 Close the widget palette.


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Step 84 On the right side of the community overview page, click the Set up the Gallery link.

Step 85 In the Set up the Gallery dialog window, you have the option to display all community files or only the files in a specific folder. Choose the IBM Connections Workshop folder and click OK.

Step 86 You should now see mini grid view listing of the files in the selected folder directly on the overview page!


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Step 87 Scroll to the top of the overview page to review the community description. As you can see, it just contains some very basic text that was entered when the community was created. Below this description, you see a collection of widgets that provide a quick glimpse into the data contained in the individual applications that have been added to the community.

Step 88 In the upper right, click on Community Actions → Edit Community

Step 89 In IBM Connections communities, you now have the ability to change the landing page that will be shown when the community first opens. This new feature gives you the ability to direct community members to the content that you want to feature!

Step 90 On the initial Community Profile tab, scroll down to the “Start Page” drop-down list. Choose Blog from the list. When finished, click Save.

Step 91 You should be immediately redirected to the community blog. To help you visualize the end-user experience, click the name of the community in the upper left Lab – New Community Features. This link is the same as the one that will appear throughout Connections or that youwill distribute to colleagues. By clicking this link, you will be able to see the new landing page.


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Step 92 It's been a long day, and you just received an e-mail from your boss that you need to delete this community and start over. To delete a community, choose Community Actions → Delete Community

Step 93 In order to delete a community, you will need to confirm the community name and your name. Perform all of these actions and click OK.

Step 94 Your community has just been deleted. You return to your e-mail and quickly realize that you boss wasn't talking about this community....he/she was talking about a different one. Oh no! You deleted the wrong community!


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Step 95 New in IBM Connections, you may now recover your deleted communities (provided you restore in the given time interval set by the administrator)! Hooray! On the left, choose Trash from the navigation menu.

Step 96 On the right, find the entry for your community named Lab – New Community Features. ClickRestore.

Step 97 You should receive a notifcation that the community was restored.

Step 98 Click on the link in this message, Lab – New Community Features to return to the community.Verify that all of your content is there.

Note: You will have to repeat the process to restore any sub-communities that were also deleted!!! They willautomatically be readded to the parent community once restored.

Step 99 You just recovered from a potentially major problem. Whoa, that was close. Pat yourself on the back and proceed to the next section.


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FORUMS

Forums are an excellent way to create social connections and a sense of community. They can also help you tocultivate an interest group about a particular subject.

Use the Forums application to start discussions about a specific topic or to debate solutions to shared problems.By participating in a forum, you can exchange ideas, ask questions, and use the expertise of people in yourorganization.

New in Forums, you can easily identify and act on “Open Questions” to foster community collaboration andengagement.

Step 100 From the fly-out navigation menu at the top, choose Apps → Forums.

Step 101 You should start on the Topics tab in the I'm Following view. On the left, click I'm an Owner toswitch views.

Step 102 You should see a list of the most recent topics. In this view, you can see topics that are locked,topics that are open questions, and topics that are answered questions. You can also see the name of the Forum, the current number of replies, the number of Likes, and when the topic waslast updated. All of this information can help you quickly and easily identify hot topics that needyour attention.

Step 103 If there are a large number of topics, it could take some time to filter through the list of topics and find the open and answered questions. There are now some new tabs to make this process easier. Click on the Open Questions tab.


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Step 104 As you can see, there is currently one open question in the Forum titled “IBM Connections Support”. If you know the answer to this question, you could click on it and make a reply.

Step 105 Click on the Answered Questions tab.

Step 106 Notice that there is an answered question “How do I create an iWidget?” This is great news because you had this same question! As you can see, there are currently three replies and twolikes in this discussion topic thread. Click on the question to view it.

Step 107 Scroll down and view the accepted answer by Frank Adams.

Note: The accepted answer now automatically moves below the question so that you can quickly find it.However, you can still see in the topic thread where the actual answer was given.

Step 108 Now you know where to go to learn more about creating iWidgets!


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Summary:

In this lab, you learned about some of the new features in IBM Connections 5. Congratulations!

Access FREE education on the IBM Collaboration Solutions portfolio of products today!

1. Visit the IBM Greenhouse and create a free account.

Link → http://greenhouse.lotus.com/

2. Visit the IBM Collaboration Solutions Ecosystem Development Community

Link → https://greenhouse.lotus.com/communities/community/icsecod

3. Learn new skills and share these links with your friends and colleagues!


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http://greenhouse.lotus.com/

https://greenhouse.lotus.com/communities/community/icsecod

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IBM Connections 5 New Features Walkthrough

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