IBM Connections

Connections Portlets

Connection portlets are not installed with the portal but you can easily download them from IBM Lotus and WebSphere Portal Business Solutions Catalog.

The portlet includes activities, blogs, blog summary, bookmarks, bookmarks summary, profiles, profiles summary, wikis, forums, forums summary, community overview, and tags.

Community pages

Portlets on community pages are automatically scoped to the community membership and display content from the community in the portlets. For example, if your community contains a forum you can add the forum portlet to a community page. The portal site visitors can view and interact with the forum content from the portal site.

You can automatically create new communities for your pages during the page template instantiation.

Search integration

Integrating Connections content into your portal search makes it easier for site visitors to find community content. Visitors can search for a term and see results from your portal site and Connections. Each Connections component has a unique seedlist provider. To configure your portal search to include Connections content, you must configure a content source for each seedlist. Instructions are provided in the Connections product documentation.

Tag integration

You can configure you portal tag cloud to include tags from Connections. This configuration makes it easier for your site users to find content in the communities.

You can also add the Connections Tags Portlet to a page. Then, you can wire it to other Connections portlets. Then, site visitors can use tags to find community content faster in blogs, wikis, and more.

Profiles integration

You can configure your portal site to show Connections Business Card information. Names that are associated with Connections profiles display as active links. Your site visitors click the name to see the business card. From the business card visitors can link to communities, blogs, and more for the selected user.

Files integration

Content authors can easily create links to files stored on Connections. From the rich text editor, in IBM Web Content Manager, the author can browse Files. Authors can also use Web Content Manager markup generation to render the current contents of specific IBM Connections Folders.

Integration with Connections Files is based on the generic Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS).