Configuring WAS for Groups

IBM WebSphere Application Server configuration is necessary to take advantage of the group features and functionality in IBM Connections. Configuration depends on which LDAP repository is configured in WAS and in a specifc LDAP service provider, such as Active Directory, ITDS, Domino, Sun, or Novell. Group expansion and group membership are two different concepts and LDAP servers treat them differently.

Think of Group expansion as performing the action For a particular group, return a list of all its members. Group expansion can occur for direct group membership, for example give me all members for this group, or for a nested level give me all the members of this group, and continue on to expand all the members of groups that are groups and so on, which can be a resource-intensive feature. Users can exploit these features in IBM Connections using type-ahead or the Group Browse feature, searching for groups using type-ahead to enter exact group names, or partial names. In the search results of each application users are presented with a single group, nested groups, or nothing. This capability requires a specific configuration in WAS.

Conversely, Group membership performs the action Return all the groups that a given user or group is a member of, Group membership can discover a person's group and community membership across Connections applications such as Activities, Communities, Files and Wikis. Each application uses it to grant access to content, adding or modifying membership, and so on. LDAP directories can be deployed to use nested groups (groups that contain group members). Determining group membership can affect the performance of Connections applications and directory providers (LDAP).

Configure the Membership and Member attributes as follows: