Configuring dynamic feeds for the Outlook Social Connector
Configure the IBM® Connections Profiles server and the IBM Connections Outlook Social Connector provider to support dynamic feeds to bring data from Connections to the outlook client via the Microsoft Outlook Social Connector.
By default, the IBM Connections OSC provider does not have the dynamic contacts capabilities enabled. The IBM Connections server must be configured to support this feature. Dynamic contacts capability can potentially make many server requests and so server load is reduced by disabling the capability until the server supports the required information.
Dynamic contacts are those members not in the authenticated user’s network. As Microsoft Outlook switches emails, the sender’s email address is sent to the OSC providers to check whether that email address exists on the server. The IBM Connections server must do an additional step to populate its repository with a hash of the Profiles members email address. For security purposes, the OSC does not provide the email address in plain text. Instead, it is hashed according to your specified function, either as MD5 or SHA1. To improve efficiency, the IBM Connections OSC provider designates any hashed email address as not available when the server returns no information for that address. This hashed email address is kept in memory for the life of the Microsoft Outlook process and is not requested again until Microsoft Outlook restarts.
- Dynamic Contact Lookup – This dynamic feature allows the authenticated user to look up the picture, name, and job title for the OSC user.
- Dynamic Contact Activities – This dynamic feature allows the authenticated user to retrieve the activities for the OSC user.