All the part numbers across the various platforms are available here:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24026533

Projects
This is a great new feature that enables you to make changes to multiple content items and design elements and then to publish them as a group or "Project". Group changes can be made to items that multiple people are working on together. This is particularly useful for large site updates/changes where you want to preview all of the changes together.

This also has the impact for a lot of customers I suggest that they will no longer need a Staging server. Staging servers were typically used in scenarios where there were a lot of changes being made and you wanted to see them all before going live. All changes can be bundled together and previewed together. Large site changes can be done in parallel with day to day site changes

Projects are apparently easy to introduce to existing sites and content creation processes

Workflow
There have been some performance improvements here. Draft operations are as fast as operations on published items. Drafts can be made at anytime. Can save as draft outside of the workflow.
Workflow can be added or removed from all items. This means we can now have workflow for all design elements within a library.
Allows for multiple drafts for each item. This is useful when you are preparing some content for release which will be followed shortly there after with another release.
Offset date driven workflow actions. Ie process one week after date etc.
Return to previous workflow stage function

Authoring templates
New file resource type. These files can be rendered directly as well as being listed in menus and navigators.
Default Presentation Template for authoring templates
Taxonomy driven option selection fields

Syndication and Administration
Wizard to simplify setting up syndication.
Pending and failed items view for syndication in the syndicators admin portlet
Cross fix pack level syndication
System properties now editable via WAS resources in WAS admin console
Doc improvements

Structural Changes
Site Areas have replaced Sites at the top of the content library.
Folders-components, author templates, can be organized into folders with security inheritance. This will probably become the best practice for managing security of content/design items in a libary. You will set the security on a folder and then this will inherit to the items in the folders.

WCM Tags
Tags can now be entered with square brackets
Single property tag for accessing info about an item

User Improvement Enhancements
Significant user interface simplification
Web 2.0 built into authoring to accelerate content creation
Favorites and bookmarks. Favorites are context aware
Out of the box content. When you create a library it will prepopulate with basic site areas, templates, workflow etc. This should speed up the initial build of sites.
New clean look and feel for authoring portlet
Easier navigation and access to open items
Recent items. Persistent across sessions and client machines
Enhanced view filtering based on dojo popup.
Tag and design Helpers. To help add wcm tags to HTML and rich text items

What's new in rendering?
WSRP support
Remote actions supported.
Content page resolution filters
Tagging and rating out of the box

So all up it is a great new release and I am looking forward to leveraging the new capabilities.

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This is a Melbourne based position as part of our national Software Engineering and Services team.

Majority of work to be performed in Victoria however some work may be required interstate.

Focus on IBM Software, particularly with skills/qualifications for both Administration and Development around WebSphere (WAS, WebSphere Portlet Factory, RAD) and solutions running on WebSphere (Portal, Connections, Sametime, Quickr, Commerce, Process Server).

Skills in Tivoli Security (TIM/TAM) Administration also very desirable. If you happen to also have some Cognos BI skills this would be great.

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The main differences with Blogs are that:

1) You need to use a slightly different script.

2) You need to update the JSP's but also the Blog Theme templates

3) You need to use wsadmin to update the timestamp and restart the server.

So the script to use is:

<script type="text/javascript">

    #if($model.getRequestParameter('FromPortal') == 'true')
  document.cookie="FromPortal=true; path=/";
    #else 
 if(testCookieForFromPortal()) {
  document.cookie="FromPortal=true; path=/";
 } 
    #end

    function testCookieForFromPortal()    {
        if (getCookieValue("FromPortal") == "true") {
                return true;
            } else {
                return false;
            }
    }
    function getCookieValue(cookieName)    {
        var retVal = "";
        var i = document.cookie.indexOf(cookieName);
        if (i != -1) {
            var iVal = i + cookieName.length + 1;
            var j = document.cookie.indexOf(";", iVal);
            if (j < 0) retval = document.cookie.substring(iVal);
            else retval = document.cookie.substring(iVal,j);
        }
        return retVal;
    }
    // the themeTemplateURL variable should be set to the URL defined
    // as the src attribute of the <script/> tag generated by the
    // WebAppIntegrator portlet.

</script>

Update the following files:

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-adminpage.jsp

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-embeddedpage.jsp

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-mainmenupage.jsp

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-simplepage.jsp

\installedApps\Blogs.ear\blogs.war\WEB-INF\jsps\tiles\tiles-tabbedpage.jsp

Themes:

Update each Theme by adding the script to the _header.vm file . The themes are located in the blogs.was/themes directory.

Update Timestamp:

Next you need to update the timestamp for the configuration files:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ltscnnct/v2r0/topic/com.ibm.connections.25.help/t_admin_common_customize_postreq.html

and then restart the servers.

And that should be it!

So we now have all features with the ability to add the ?FromPortal=true paramater to the URL and the Top Navigation Banner will disappear.

Once this is all done integrating with Portal is really easy using the Web Page Portlet. Simply add the Portet to a page and point the configuration of the Portlet to the appropriate URL. When users access Connections within the Portal the top navigation automagically disappears and you can use the Portal navigation instead. I found setting the Web Page Portlet to a height of 1100 meant that you never get a scroll bar in the Portlet.

The next step for me to to try and do the same with the Web Application Integrator Portlet which will mean that we effectively wrap the Portal Navigation around Connections rather than use the iFrame that the Web Page Portlet method users. This is fairly easy but first I need to build our custom theme into the Web App Integrator. Might be Part 4!

Wikis:

Wiki's is slightly different in that it doesn't import the JSTL Core Tag Lib which is used in the script hence we need to add it. So add the script to the following file:

\installedApps\Wikis.ear\qkr.share.wiki.was\jsp\home.jsp

and then also add:

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %> to the first line of home.jsp

Files:

Files is the same as Wiki's in that we need to add the tag library as well.

\installedApps\Files.ear\qkr.share.files.war\WEB-INF\pages\home.jsp.

Activities:

Now activities is also slightly different. You still need to add the above script to the jsp however there are two body tags to add it to. There is also a change required to banner.jsp.

So first add the usual scripts from yesterday directly after each of the <body> tags in the mainpage.jsp

\installedApps\Activities.ear\oawebui.war\WEB-INF\jsps\webui\mainpage.jsp

Now at first this didn't work and it took me a while to realise that the "lotusbanner" was not being updated to display="none". The reason for this is that unlike the other features the DIV for the lotusbanner only contains a Class reference and not an ID reference. Hence as the script sets id="lotusbanner" to display="none" it doesn't work. So we need to update the banner.jsp (same directory as mainpage.jsp) to have:

<div id="lotusBanner" class="lotusBanner">

It then works a treat just like the other features.

 URL to link Web Page Portlet to: https://<activities-server>/<activities-context-root>/service/html/mainpage?FromPortal=true

So all that is left is Blogs. Blogs is proving to be slightly more difficult due to the Theme templating. So that might make up Part 3 to come.



What we want to achieve is the following:

1) When accessing Connections directly (ie without Portal) Connections has the normal Connections navigation. When you access Connections from within the Portal the Top Level of Connections navigation disappears and is effectively replaced by the Portal Navigation (1 page per Connections feature).

2) Initially we will use the Web Page Portlet to display each Connections feature on a separate page of the Portal.

3) We will then move to the preferred method of integration using the Web Application Integrator Portlet. The Web App Integrator is preferred because it removes the usage of iFrames (which is effectively what the Web Page Portlet does) and provides a more seemless user experience. However in using the Web App Integrator a bit of work needs to be done so it support a custom Portal Theme as well as a Double Top Navigation (and maybe even a 3rd level navigation sidebar).

So here we go...

Automagic disappearing Connections Top Level Navigation!

So the first thing we need to do is modify Connections so it can detect if the user has come to Connections directly or via the Portal. If direct then Connections navigation is used, if from Portal the Portal navigation will be used.

We do this by adding a parameter to the URL that is used to access Connections and then setting that parameter as a cookie. This cookie is then tested and if it exists we know to hide the Connections Nav.

The easiest way to hide/show the Connections top navigation bar is by using the fact that it's style is controlled by the "lotusbanner" style class. Each Connections feature has a header.html file (just do a search for header.html in each of the feature .ear file. eg [WASHOME]\profiles\lcprofile\installedApps\[YourCell]\files.ear). You need to add the following code:

<script type="text/javascript">
if(testCookieForFromPortal()) { document.getElementById("lotusBanner").style.display = "none";
}</script>

This code basically tests for the FromPortal cookie and if it is true sets the stle display ="none" which makes the Connections top level navigation banner disapear.

Now another approach which is a little nicer is rather than adding the code to the header.html file for every feature you can create the header.html on your IBM HTTP Server (IHS) and then this effectively overrights the header.html for each feature. You would have done this already if you have customised the Connections Logo or header at all as documented here. This is a much nicer way of doing it as you only need to maintain the code on the IHS rather than in each feature individually.

So once that is in place the next step is to add some script to every jsp in Connections that displays a page. This script will firstly set the cookie "FromPortal"=true if the URL has the "?FromPortal=true" parameter added to it. It will also test to see if the cookie has been set.

<script type="text/javascript">
if (("<c:out value='${param.FromPortal}'/>" != "true") && !testCookieForFromPortal()) {  }
else
// if we get here, we have come from Portal, set a cookie
document.cookie="FromPortal=true; path=/";
}
function testCookieForFromPortal() {
  if (getCookieValue("FromPortal") == "true")
  { return true; } 
  else 
  { return false; }
}
function getCookieValue(cookieName) {
  var retVal = "";
  var i = document.cookie.indexOf(cookieName);
  if (i != -1) {
    var iVal = i + cookieName.length + 1;
    var j = document.cookie.indexOf(";", iVal);
    if (j < 0) retval = document.cookie.substring(ival);
    else retval = document.cookie.substring(ival,j);
 }
  return retVal;
}
</script>

So here is a list of the jsp's it needs to be added to for each feature:

Homepage:

 \installedApps\Homepage.ear\dboard.war\web\jsp\about.jsp

 \installedApps\Homepage.ear\dboard.war\web\jsp\errorPage.jsp

 \installedApps\Homepage.ear\dboard.war\web\jsp\main.jsp

 \installedApps\Homepage.ear\dboard.war\web\toolsHomepage.jsp

 \installedApps\Homepage.ear\dboard.war\admin\admin.jsp

URL to link Web Page Portlet to: https://<homepage-server>/<homepage-context-root>/?FromPortal=true

 Profiles:

\installedApps\Profiles.ear\peoplpepages.war\WEB-INF\jsps\html\layouts\profiles1ColLayout.jsp

\installedApps\Profiles.ear\peoplpepages.war\WEB-INF\jsps\html\layouts\profiles2ColLayout.jsp

\installedApps\Profiles.ear\peoplpepages.war\WEB-INF\jsps\html\layouts\profiles3ColLayout.jsp

\installedApps\Profiles.ear\peoplpepages.war\WEB-INF\jsps\html\layouts\profiles1ColCenteredLayout.jsp

URL to link Web Page Portlet to: https://<profiles-server>/<profiles-context-root>/home.do?FromPortal=true

Communities:

\installedApps\Communities.ear\comm.web.war\WEB-INF\jsps\html\layouts\default.jsp

URL to link Web Page Portlet to: https://<communities-server>/<communities-context-root>/service/html/allcommunities?FromPortal=true

Search:

 \installedApps\Searchear\search.war\web\advancedSearch.jsp

 \installedApps\Searchear\search.war\web\errorPage.jsp

 \installedApps\Searchear\search.war\web\noIndex.jsp

 \installedApps\Searchear\search.war\web\searchResults.jsp

 \installedApps\Searchear\search.war\web\stats.jsp

 \installedApps\Searchear\search.war\web\toolsHomepage.jsp

Dogear:

\installedApps\Dogear.ear\dogear.webui.war\h3\jsp\main\h3.jsp

\installedApps\Dogear.ear\dogear.webui.war\h3\jsp\main\errorPage.jsp

\installedApps\Dogear.ear\dogear.webui.war\h3\jsp\tools\about.jsp

\installedApps\Dogear.ear\dogear.webui.war\h3\jsp\tools\toolbox.jsp (This was called h3_tools.jsp in Connections 2.0)

URL to link Web Page Portlet to: https://<dogear-server>/<dogear-context-root>/?FromPortal=true

So that is Home, Profiles, Communities, Bookmarks, and Search. I will post next about Blogs, Activities, Files and Wikis.....and then onto the Web Application Integrator Portlet.

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