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Administering Connections 7.0
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.
Post-installation tasks
After installation, you need to perform further tasks to ensure an efficient deployment.
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.

Administering Connections 7.0
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 Connections
  To install HCL Connections™, you need to follow a detailed series of procedures.
- Installing or upgrading Component Pack for Connections
  HCL Connections 7.0 now supports the latest Component Pack based in Harbor, an open-source container and Helm registry hosted by HCL for the Component Pack build. Deployments that are new or carrying Component Pack 7 will use this approach for a simplified installation/upgrade process, while releases prior to 7.0 will first need to upgrade to Component Pack 7 using a zip file and a local Docker registry.
- 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 the community creation wizard
    Starting with Connections 7.0, a community wizard is available to help users create communities. Replacement of the old Community creation process is managed by configuration, which provides you the flexibility to first deploy and test that capability and then switch the user experience.
  - 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.
    - Defining IBM® HTTP Server
      Define IBM® HTTP Server to manage web connections. If you select to configure HTTP Server at the beginning of the Connections installation, you would perform this task at that point; otherwise you would perform this after installation completes.
    - Mapping applications to IBM® HTTP Server
      Map HCL Connections applications to IBM® HTTP Server.
    - Verifying application mappings
      Complete this task only if you did not select to configure IBM® HTTP Server during the installation HCL Connections.
    - Editing the XML configuration file
    - Configuring IBM® HTTP Server for an encrypted connection
      Configure IBM® HTTP Server to use an encrypted connection.
    - Adding certificates to the WebSphere® trust store
      Import a self-signed IBM® HTTP Server certificate into the default trust store of IBM WebSphere® Application Server.
    - Determining which files to compress
      If you are not compressing content with the IBM® WebSphere® Application Server Edge components or a similar device, configure the IBM HTTP Server to compress certain types of content to improve browser performance.
    - Updating HCL Connections to use the HTTP server
      Update the web addresses that IBM® HTTP Server uses to access HCL Connections applications.
    - Allow Upload To Files Application
    - Configuring file downloads through IBM® HTTP Server
      Configure IBM® HTTP Server to manage file downloads from Activities, Files, Mobile, and Wikis. This approach is more efficient than using IBM WebSphere® Application Server to serve file downloads.
    - Configuring file uploads through IBM® HTTP Server
      Configure the IBM® HTTP Server to manage file uploads from Files. This approach is more efficient than using the IBM WebSphere® Application Server to receive files larger than 500 MB.
  - 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 type-ahead search, Customizer Lite, and Community Surveys in HCL Connections.
- 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
  Uninstall HCL Connections.
- Upgrading and updating
  Upgrade HCL Connections and its supporting software to the latest release and then update the installation with the latest interim fixes or cumulative fixes. Refer to the What's New in HCL Connections to review the features in the latest release and gather download links or links to the latest fix list and update strategy information.
- 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™.

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.

Prerequisites

You have installed and configured the prerequisite software.

IBM® WebSphere® Application Server with the latest version and fixes
IBM® HTTP Server with the latest version and fixes
IBM® Web server plug-ins with the latest version and fixes
HCL Connections and databases

Configuring the IBM® HTTP server

Depending on whether the IBM HTTP server was installed and configured during Connections installation, some of the these tasks might already have been performed. Configure IBM® HTTP Server to manage web requests to HCL Connections by following these steps.

Disabling edge-side-include caching

Edge-side-include (ESI) caching is enabled by default in WebSphere Application Server. You must disable it for HCL Connections. If it is not disabled, it will cause problems with HCL Connections applications. For example, the Surveys application as well as others.

To disable ESI caching, in the WebSphere Administration Console, go to Servers > Server Types > Web servers > web_server_name > Plug-in properties > Caching and deselect Enable Edge Side Include (ESI) processing to cache the responses. Save the configuration and synchronize nodes. Then generate the plugin configuration, propagate it, and restart the HTTP server or servers.