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Integrating with other products
You can integrate HCL Connections applications with other products and features.
Connections Engagement Center
Connections Engagement Center provides the corporate office, management, and workforce with a single user experience for all communications, as well as a state of the art enterprise social collaboration features and the possibility of adding custom applications. All this runs at the office and on all mobile devices, so the entire workforce – from CEO to intern – can access this most valuable tool regardless of where they are, what their role is, or what devices they prefer.
Overview
Connections Engagement Center is a single, accessible hub for organizational news and content within HCL Connections, enabling users to create and manage web content efficiently. People get engaged with finding, creating, owning, and promoting content to improve intranet communication. All content can be found in one place. Communication and collaboration are on the same page or one click away. Connections Engagement Center makes it simple and easy for users to create content; there's no need for multiple systems to create and publish content. This documentation explains and describes role concepts, site structure, functions of the various Connections Engagement Center features and their usage and configuration.
Best practices
Most of the content displayed by Connections Engagement Center pages will be created and maintained within HCL Connections. Therefore we provide some useful best practices in this area to guide your editorial teams to an effective content creation process.

Integrating with other products
You can integrate HCL Connections applications with other products and features.
- Connections Engagement Center
  Connections Engagement Center provides the corporate office, management, and workforce with a single user experience for all communications, as well as a state of the art enterprise social collaboration features and the possibility of adding custom applications. All this runs at the office and on all mobile devices, so the entire workforce – from CEO to intern – can access this most valuable tool regardless of where they are, what their role is, or what devices they prefer.
  - Overview
    Connections Engagement Center is a single, accessible hub for organizational news and content within HCL Connections, enabling users to create and manage web content efficiently. People get engaged with finding, creating, owning, and promoting content to improve intranet communication. All content can be found in one place. Communication and collaboration are on the same page or one click away. Connections Engagement Center makes it simple and easy for users to create content; there's no need for multiple systems to create and publish content. This documentation explains and describes role concepts, site structure, functions of the various Connections Engagement Center features and their usage and configuration.
    - Get started
      Connections Engagement Center makes it easy way to build a social intranet by creating a portal-like experience using various out-of-the-box and custom widgets. Engagement Center does not have its own content store, but aggregates content from different backend systems. Mostly, HCL Connections is the back-end system, since it is the underlying foundation for a set of key Engagement Center services, such as user authentication and authorization, personalization, top-level navigation, and news.
    - Roles
      Connections Engagement Center has multiple user roles that provide increasing levels of access.
    - Adding the Engagement Center widget to a Community
      Community owners can add the Connections Engagement Center widget to a Community in the same way they would add any other widget or app by using the Community Actions menu.
    - Admin dashboard
      The Admin Dashboard is reachable through the URL: [your_domain]/xcc/admin apps.[yourLocale].collabserv.com/xcc/admin. You will find system configurations there, so be careful with that.
    - Admin panel
      This section describes creating custom grids and layouts and CSS for all pages. If you are Admin, you can reach the Admin panel on every Connections Engagement Center page by clicking the Customize button.
    - Widgets
      Engagement Center widgets can be embedded in placeholders on every Connections Engagement Center page. The height of each widget can be defined pixel perfect or set to auto for a height responsive to the content.
    - Embedded experience
      The following widgets have an embedded experience:
    - FlyOut page
      The Connections Engagement Center FlyOut Page is managed by the admin or Page Editor. The FlyOut Page may contain any of the over 30 Connections Engagement Center widgets and is available anywhere in Connections. You only need to move your mouse over this icon.
    - Personalization
      Within the individual widgets, personalization can be activated. Upon activation there is the option to configure different channels for different values of a profile. Additionally it is possible to choose a default channel.
    - Personalize homepage
      In the Connections Engagement Center-Settings tab in the admin panel you can personalize the homepage. The source must be an existing Connections Engagement Center page.
    - Creating a custom widget with the custom widget API
      You can copy an existing widget or modify an existing widget to create a new widget using the custom widget API. You can upload a JavaScript file to have access to the Connections Engagement Center. This is necessary for the Custom widget API. The widget API is the only API and where JavaDoc-level documentation is stored.
    - Functions - fields - buttons
      There are different fields and buttons available in the configuration options.
    - Best practices
      Most of the content displayed by Connections Engagement Center pages will be created and maintained within HCL Connections. Therefore we provide some useful best practices in this area to guide your editorial teams to an effective content creation process.
      - Roles and restrictions in source communities
        If widgets are set to display the latest content of a Community each new post within this community will be displayed on the corresponding Connections Engagement Center page. This enables an easy content creation process. To make sure that only a defined set of people are allowed to publish content within this sources there are different options.
      - Picture guidelines
        The different news widgets display pictures in various ways. Depending on the CI adaption and the layout there should be maintenance guidelines in place to ensure a consistent layout.
  - Installing and configuring Connections Engagement Center
    This section provides instructions for upgrading an existing XCC Web Content Management Extension to the Connections Engagement Center. For fresh installations, instructions are provided for planning, creating a database, installing, and then configuring the Engagement Center. Also included are browser links to access the various modes of Connections Engagement Center, and instructions for uninstalling Connections Engagement Center.
- Installing integration plug-ins for HCL Connections
  Access and update your Connections content from other applications.
- Using the HCL Connections desktop plug-ins for Microsoft™ Windows™
  Use this plug-in to upload and work with files in HCL Connections from Microsoft™ Windows™ Explorer and Microsoft Office.
- Using file sync for HCL Connections for Mac
  Use HCL Connections for Mac to keep local files in sync with copies of those files on the server.
- Using the Connections plug-in for Microsoft Office
  Use the plug-ins to share files and information between Microsoft™ Windows™ applications and HCL Connections or HCL Connections Cloud.
- Using Connections with Microsoft Teams
  Enabling support for Microsoft Teams integration with Connections is an optional task. Enable this support only if your organization is using Microsoft Teams.
- Using the HCL Connections Add-in for Microsoft™ Outlook
  The power of Connections from your Outlook inbox. Use the Connections Add-in for Microsoft™ Outlook to work with Connections content from within your Outlook inbox.
- Using the HCL Connections community app for Microsoft Sharepoint
  As a Microsoft SharePoint administrator you can register the Sharepoint app with Microsoft Azure and edit its configuration file in HCL Connections to make it available for your organization.
- Using plug-ins from HCL Connections with other products
  Get help using the plug-ins that integrate the capabilities of HCL Connections with other products.

Best practices

Most of the content displayed by Connections Engagement Center pages will be created and maintained within HCL Connections. Therefore we provide some useful best practices in this area to guide your editorial teams to an effective content creation process.