IBM Connections 4.5 version confusion

I had several requests by customers about the version naming of IBM Connections 4.5 so I decided to explain it here:

The Connections code base you can download from Passport Advantage is version 4.5. For this version, several fixpacks have been published since the release date. They are called “Cumulative Refreshes” or “CR” and are numbered starting with 1. The most current CR release, at the time I wrote that article, is “CR4”.

You only need to apply the most current version. As the name states they are “Cumulative” so all fixes of the older versions are included.

In addition to the fix packs, new releases have been published for Connections 4.5 which are called “Interim Feature Release” or “IFR”.

And here is where the confusion begins.

These IFRs are only licence entitlements. Which means, you are entitled to use the new functions with IBM Connections 4.5 if you are under a valid maintenance contract.

These IFR releases are not new software code. So you still use IBM Connections 4.5 with the most current fixpack (or whatever the system requirements for a special IFR are). There is no need to download and install new code for IBM Connections itself. You just need to download the additional software needed for the additional functions (see below). The additional software should be listed in Passport Advantage if you are entitled to use it.

Currently we do have two IFRs:

IBM Connections V4.5 IFR 1 includes entitlement to IBM Forms Experience Builder V8.5 so you can use the Community Surveys feature. In order to get that new functionality you need to download and install IBM Forms Experience Builder V8. Installation instructions can be found HERE.

IBM Connections V4.5 IFR2 includes the entitlement to use Ephox EditLive! Enterprise Edition. So you will need to download and implement Ephox Editor on top of your existing Connections installation. Installation instructions can be found HERE and system requirements HERE.

Hopefully this explains it a bit better.

 

Change Language in Windows 7 Home and Professional

Microsoft does only allow to change the system language of Windows for Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate via the GUI. If you would like to change the language in Windows 7 Home and Professional you need to do that manually as described below (as a sample I describe how to change the language from English to German):

  1. Download the desired language pack. You find a complete link list here on this site. For German and English I copy them below:
    German 32-bit
    German 64-bit
    English 32-bit
    English 64-bit
  2. Download the exe2cab tool to convert the EXE file into a Microsoft CAB file.
  3. Open a command prompt (as an Administrator!) and run the following commands[codesyntax lang=”dos” title=”Commands”] 
    exe2cab <filename of your downloaded exe file> lp.cab
dism /online /add-package /packagepath:lp.cab
bcdedit /set {current} locale de-DE
bcdboot %WinDir% /l de-DE

    [/codesyntax]

  4. You then need to delete the following key from the registry:[codesyntax lang=”reg” title=”Registry key”] 
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MUI\UILanguages\en-US

    [/codesyntax]

  5. Reboot your machine

If you would like to change your language to or from another language you need to adapt the locale strings (like “de-DE” and “en-US” etc.) accordingly. A list of all strings can be found here.

Thank you to Tobias Hartmann!

DynDNS.org will no longer offer free accounts …

You might need to find another provider for dynamic DNS:

Ich habe gerade umgestellt auf http://www.anydns.info/ ….

Gepostet von Michael Urspringer am Dienstag, 8. April 2014

IBM Connections 4.5 Metrics: Changing user profile attributes for report dimensions

By default IBM Connections Metrics reports can be displayed in three different dimensions: Geography, Department and Role. If you want to change this to other profile fields you can do that as described in this link:

http://ibm.co/1dnNgug

However you need to do some additional steps in order to populate the database with the new values and also to get rid of the old values in the report. Here are the steps I have done:

  1. Change the definition as described in the link above, e.g. I changed two dimensions to use custom extension attributes “xxxcountry” and “xxxdepartment” which I defined in Profiles. So I changed the following lines in the metrics-config.xml:
    [codesyntax lang=”xml”]

    <userAttributesMappings>
<!-- <mapping metricsName="attribute1" profilesName="com.ibm.snx_profiles.base.countryCode"/> -->
<mapping metricsName="attribute1" profilesName="com.ibm.snx_profiles.ext.xxxcountry"/>
<!-- <mapping metricsName="attribute2" profilesName="com.ibm.snx_profiles.base.orgId"/> -->
<mapping metricsName="attribute2" profilesName="com.ibm.snx_profiles.ext.xxxdepartment"/>
<mapping metricsName="attribute3" profilesName="com.ibm.snx_profiles.base.title"/>
</userAttributesMappings>

    [/codesyntax]

  2. Make a full synchronisation of your Connections nodes and restart the metrics application.
  3. On the Deployment Manager, run the following wsadmin commands in order to update the data in the metrics database:wsadmin>execfile(“metricsAdmin.py”)
    wsadmin>MetricsUsersService.reloadUsersAttributes()
  4. Check the database table METRICS.F_TRX_USERS if the data for the attributes is correct. If this is not the case do the following commands:a. clear the METRICS.F_TRX_USERS.UPDATE_TS column for all users
    b. run http://<server>/metrics/service/PopUserMetadata.jsp to sync the user’s data
    c. check the data in f_trx_users table again
  5. Go to your “CognosConfig” directory (the one you used to install Cognos) and run the command “cognos-configure-update.bat”
  6. Go to the directory where you have installed Cognos Transformer (e.g. “D:\IBM\CognosTF”) ” and rebuild the cubes by running “<Cognos Transformer>\metricsmodel\build-all.bat”. This can take a long time depending on you amount of metrics data!

After doing these steps the new data was successfully displayed for the three dimensions.

IBM Connections 4.5 CR3 has been published

More information can be found here:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21637542

Step-by-Step directions for applying CR2 or CR3 for Connections 4.5 with Connections Content Manager:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21655425

Updating the IBM Connections 4.5 databases to the required schema versions for Cumulative Refresh 3 (CR3):

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21655480

New functions included in IBM Connections 4.5 CR3:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21656369

IBM Connections 4.5: Blog comments not displayed in IE after migration from 4.0

After migrating IBM Connections 4.0 to 4.5 it can happen, that Blog and Ideation Blog comments for migrated Blogs are not displayed in Internet Explorer.

You will just see the small turning wheel but nothing more happens. By tracing with Fiddler you will se that only requests for the first two blogs will be made and you will also see a Javascript error message in the browser.

There is a fix available (an updated “Comments.js” file which needs to be placed to “<CUSTOMIZATION_DIRECTORY>/javascript/lconn/blogs/comment”  for IBM Connections 4.5 CR2 which can be obtained via IBM Support.

And the fix is also included in IBM Connections 4.5 CR3 which will be published soon.

MobaXterm – The complete toolbox for remote computing

Did I ever told you about MobaXterm? A tool I never want to miss again while working with different remote computers. It includes SSH, Telnet, RDP, FTP, SFTP, VNC, XSERVER and more protocols. It has a Cygwin like Unix shell and is expandable via plugins (e.g. with OpenSSL, Perl, Python etc.).

And it is just one executable file which you can easily copy to every machine where you need it.

Just a great tool!