Home
Administering Connections 6.5 CR1
Welcome to the HCL Connections documentation site. HCL Connections is social networking software designed for the workplace. Its features help you to establish dynamic networks that connect you to the people and information you need to achieve your business goals.
Installing
To install HCL Connections™, you need to follow a detailed series of procedures.
Post-installation tasks
After installation, you need to perform further tasks to ensure an efficient deployment.
Configuring additional HCL Connections applications
You must perform additional tasks to enable HCL Connections for the Orient Me home page, the Touchpoint interactive user experience, Community Libraries, Community Surveys, Metrics applications, and more.
Installing Community Surveys
If you want to be able to conduct surveys within Communities to capture data and share it easily with your community in an activity stream, enable Community Surveys.
Upgrading an existing Community Surveys installation to HCL Connections Community Surveys
This procedure applies to an existing installation of the Community Surveys and should only be used when upgrading to HCL Community Surveys 6.5 release.
Manual steps required to complete the upgrade to HCL Community Surveys
The following procedure provides the manual steps necessary to complete the upgrade from an existing installation of Community Surveys to HCL Community Surveys 6.5.

Administering Connections 6.5 CR1
Welcome to the HCL Connections documentation site. HCL Connections is social networking software designed for the workplace. Its features help you to establish dynamic networks that connect you to the people and information you need to achieve your business goals.
- What's new in HCL Connections
  Find out about features that are new or updated in this release of HCL Connections.
- Product overview
  Learn how to deploy, customize, and administer the HCL Connections social networking product.
- Planning
  Before installing HCL Connections™, study the system requirements, deployment options, and documentation conventions.
- Installing
  To install HCL Connections™, you need to follow a detailed series of procedures.
  - The installation process
    Review the steps that are required to install HCL Connections.
  - Pre-installation tasks
    Complete the following tasks before installing HCL Connections. If you are migrating from a prior release of HCL Connections, do not complete the tasks for creating databases or populating the Profiles database. The migration process handles those tasks automatically.
  - Installing HCL Connections
    Select the HCL Connections applications that you plan to use and install them in a clustered deployment.
  - Post-installation tasks
    After installation, you need to perform further tasks to ensure an efficient deployment.
    - Registering custom widgets
      Register all custom and third-party widgets starting with HCL Connections™ 6 CR1 \IFR1 to ensure they meet security requirements and can display in communities.
    - Reviewing the JVM heap size
      Review the size of the Java™ Virtual Machine heap and adjust it, if necessary, to avoid out-of-memory errors or to suit your hardware capabilities.
    - Configuring IBM® HTTP Server
      When you have successfully installed HCL Connections™ to run on WebSphere® Application Server, you can configure IBM® HTTP Server to handle web traffic.
    - Configuring the Home page administrator
      Create an administrator for Home page so that you can make changes to the application such as adding and removing widgets.
    - Configuring additional HCL Connections applications
      You must perform additional tasks to enable HCL Connections for the Orient Me home page, the Touchpoint interactive user experience, Community Libraries, Community Surveys, Metrics applications, and more.
      - Component Pack for Connections™
        The Component Pack for HCL Connections™ introduces several offerings that enhance collaboration and boost productivity. Read on to understand the offerings, what resources Component Pack requires, sizing considerations for Kubernetes, and a high-level installation roadmap.
      - Setting up stand-alone Elasticsearch
        Deploy Elasticsearch as a stand-alone server for use with HCL Connections™, instead of deploying it as part of the Component Pack for Connections.
      - Setting up type-ahead search
        Enable type-ahead search in HCL Connections™ to suggest items in the search box based on content that is relevant to each user.
      - Installing Customizer Lite
        This topic describes how to install Customizer Lite. There are two deployment options, hereby referred to as Customizer Lite and Customizer Lite HA. Customizer Lite – the most basic deployment using a single Docker node running a single instance of each required service and Customizer Lite HA – a more resilient deployment using a pair (or more) of Docker nodes all running instances of each required service with requests load balanced across available nodes.
      - Configuring Connections Content Manager for Libraries
        If you installed the Connections Content Manager add-on, you must configure FileNet® to work with Connections Content Manager. Choose the instructions that match your deployment: either an existing FileNet deployment, which you installed independently before you installed HCL Connections or a new, integrated FileNet deployment that is part of a new HCL Connections installation.
      - Optional: Configuring HCL Connections Docs with CCM
        You can enable community members to edit files in Community libraries online if you have already installed HCL Connections Docs.
      - Installing Community Surveys
        If you want to be able to conduct surveys within Communities to capture data and share it easily with your community in an activity stream, enable Community Surveys.
        Creating a DB2 database for Community Surveys
        The following instructions describe how to manually create a DB2 database for Community Surveys.
        Installing Community Surveys with IBM Installation Manager
        The following instructions describe how to install Community Surveys.
        Completing the post installation tasks
        After you run the Community Surveys installer for either WebSphere Application Server, you must complete the installation by setting up the Community Surveys environment.
        Surveys in HCL Connections communities
        You can create polls and surveys in your Connections communities when you integrate Community Surveys with Connections. When you integrate the two products, the survey widgets, Surveys and Featured Survey, are enabled in community pages.
        Upgrading an existing Community Surveys installation to HCL Connections Community Surveys
        This procedure applies to an existing installation of the Community Surveys and should only be used when upgrading to HCL Community Surveys 6.5 release.
        Manual steps required to complete the upgrade to HCL Community Surveys
        The following procedure provides the manual steps necessary to complete the upgrade from an existing installation of Community Surveys to HCL Community Surveys 6.5.
        Uninstalling the current version
        The following instructions describe how to uninstall Community Surveys.
  - Optional: Installing and configuring Tiny Editors for HCL Connections
    The Tiny editors are alternative rich-text editors which can be installed for HCL Connections™. They provide additional features and extensive customization options not available with the default editor.
  - Optional post-installation tasks
    Complete the post-installation tasks that are relevant to your deployment.
- Uninstalling HCL Connections
  Uninstall HCL Connections.
- Migrating and updating
  Migrate HCL Connections™ and its supporting software to the latest release and then update the installation with the latest deployment, interim fixes, or Cumulative Refresh (CR).
- Administering
  Run administration and maintenance tasks to keep your environment up-to-date. For example, learn how to customize your deployment or how to use the wsadmin utility to edit configuration files. You can also schedule tasks, maintain application databases, moderate content, or manage users and their roles.
- Customizing
  Customize HCL Connections™ to fit your environment.
- Security
  HCL Connections™ provides a flexible security infrastructure that supports an open, easily shareable data model.
- Mobile
  See the HCL Connections™ Mobile documentation for Connections Cloud and Connections on-premises.
- Developing
  Get information about how to use the APIs provided with HCL Connections™ and how to use Connections Customizer to modify the Connections pages that are returned to users.
- Troubleshooting and support
  To isolate and resolve problems with your HCL products, you can use the troubleshooting and support information. This information contains instructions for using the problem-determination resources that are provided with your HCL products, including HCL Connections™.

Manual steps required to complete the upgrade to HCL Community Surveys

The following procedure provides the manual steps necessary to complete the upgrade from an existing installation of Community Surveys to HCL Community Surveys 6.5.

About this task

The IBM Installation Manager is used to upgrade the Community Surveys application on the WebSphere Application Server environment. The following must be completed before continuing with this procedure: Refer to Upgrading an existing Community Surveys installation to HCL Connections Community Surveys.

This procedure requires manual replacement of the Communities specific widgets with a newer versions from the installation kit.

Procedure

Remove the newly created /opt/HCL/Forms (Linux) or C:\HCL\Forms (Windows) directory structure.
Switch to the /opt/ibm/Forms/extensions (Linux) or C:\HCL\Forms\extensions (Windows) directory.
Make a backup copy of both Connections_config.properties and Builder_config.properties.
Remove all of the existing .jar files from the extensions directory.
Extract the updated files from <install_kit/ibm.nitro.integrations.connections.packaging-8.7.x.x.zip into the extensions directory to replace those removed.
Remove the new unconfigured Connections_config.properties that came from the zip and rename or copy the backup copy to Connections_config.properties.
Switch to the /opt/ibm/Connections/data/shared/customization/strings (Linux) or C:\IBM\Connections\data\shared\customizations\strings (Windows) directory.
Remove all of the existing .properties files from the strings directory.
Extract the updated files from <install_kit/ibm.nitro.integrations.connections.client-8.7.x.x.zip into the strings directory to replace those removed.
Switch to the /opt/ibm/Connections/data/shared/provision/webresources (Linux) or C:\IBM\Connections\data\shared\provision\webresources (Windows) directory.
Remove the existing ibm.nitro.integrations.connections.packaging.client-8.6.x.x.jar file from the webresources directory.
Copy the new <install_kit/ibm.nitro.integrations.connections.packaging.client-8.7.x.x.jar file into the webresources directory.
In the WebSphere Application Server, do a full synchronize of the nodes and then stop and restart the Common and Communities applications.
Log into Connections and verify the Surveys and Featured Surveys are functioning correctly.

Rate this topic

5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star

Comment on this topic.

By clicking this box, you acknowledge that you are NOT a U.S. Federal Government employee or agency, nor are you submitting information with respect to or on behalf of one. HCL provides software and services to U.S. Federal Government customers through its partners immixGroup, Inc. Contact this team at https://hcltechsw.com/resources/us-government-contact. Do not include any personal data in this Comment box. Note: To report a problem or question about the product software, do not use this form. Instead, go to the HCL Software Support site.