Tuesday, January 15, 2013

IBM Connections 4 - display profile tags as cloud as default

Since I published the "cloud as default" blog post for IBM Connections 3.0, my old IBM Colleague Emmar Hoel contacted me regarding how to do this in Connections 4.
We both had to pass after a lot of attempts. The procedure for doing this had changed since version 3.0.


So today, Emmar figured it out, and he sent me this in an email where he told me to post it on my blog.




So here it is:



From 2.5 the default in "My Profile" was to show tags as Cloud. In 3x and 4x its changes to Listview.
This is how to change it back to cloud in IC 4.
Thanks to Jim Antill and Joe in the Profileteam for helping me out :-)

In ver 3x this file we need to edit is in this path:
/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/AppSrv01/installedApps//Profiles.ear/lc.profiles.app.war/xslt/tags/tags.xsl
See this for more info in 3x : Change the IC 3x profiles

In ver 4x this is file is moved to the common resources, managed by osgi plugins and the Connections Common app.
Its now a .jar-file below the named like this:
Path: 

/opt/IBM/Connections/data/shared/provision/webresources/com.ibm.lconn.profiles.web.resources_3.0.0.20120817-1502.jar
where
is the WAS variable where customizations, common resource plugins, etc. reside

  1. Remember to stop the IC4 servers before starting this. Extract the com.ibm.lconn.profiles.web.resources_3.0.0.20120817-1502.jar into a temp-dir.
  2. Edit the file (with your texteditor) tags.xml in folder /resources/xslt/tags in the temp-dir 
  3. Search and added parameters for DIV's:
    Added this line: 
        <xsl:attribute name="style">display: none;</xsl:attribute> 

    for two DIV's:
    <div id="tagsYouAddedView"> and <div id="tagsList">


    Results: 
    <div id="tagsYouAddedView">
    <!-- Added Start -->
      <xsl:attribute name="style">display: none;</xsl:attribute>
    <!-- Added Stop  -->

    <div id="tagsList">
    <!-- Added Start -->
      <xsl:attribute name="style">display: none;</xsl:attribute>
    <!-- Added Stop  -->

  4. Searched for id="tagCloud" and comment the line : display: none; 

    Results: 
    <div id="tagCloud">
    <!-- <xsl:attribute name="style">display: none;</xsl:attribute> -->

  5. Save the file.
  6. Zip the files in the temp-dir into a jar-file : mynewjar.jar 
  7. Check that the structure in the new file is like this :
       
  8. Rename the orginal file com.ibm.lconn.profiles.web.resources_3.0.0.20120817-1502.jar in folder 
    /opt/IBM/Connections/data/shared/provision/webresources/ 
  9. Copy the new file mynewjar.jar into the same folder and rename it to com.ibm.lconn.profiles.web.resources_3.0.0.20120817-1502.jar 
  10. Remove all the files in the temp folder for the profiles of all nodes and appserver :
    /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/AppSrv01/temp
    and
    /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/Dmgr01/temp 
  11. Start the was servers (IC 4) and clear the browser history and now the cloud shows as default in the profilepage

A big thank you goes out to Emmar :-)

And remember. After applying a Fix or Fixpack for your Connections environment, these changes will most likely dissappear. So you have to do it all over again :-(

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for this. To my mind cloud should be the default - not just because it looks cool but also because if you have a large number of tags on a profile it gets unmanageable and requires lots of scrolling.

Unknown said...

I agree. Perhaps a lcc-config parameter where we can choose ourselves is in order? We can post this as a feature request. Or set Mr. Benitez on the case :-)

Erik said...

IMHO, a tag cloud implies a weighted list... something which is less meaningful when looking at a single profile. Note that tag cloud *is* the default on the profile search page - where it is useful.

Agree that the individual tag list can become long though... so it would be nice to have it as an option. Especially since it can push down the helpful "things in common" widget...

Unknown said...

I agree Erik, but a tag-list can get pretty lengthy in a profile page. It should at least remember which view you last selected, list or cloud, so that the next profile you look at has the same tag layout.

Benitez is on the case btw. Hopefully Connections 4.5 will have a config parameter for this.