IBM Connections Customizer – A Whole New World of Possibilities

Vienna, October 16-17 2017
IBM Connections Customizer – A
Whole New World of Possibilities
Martin Donnelly
Brian Gleeson
Room 3, Oct 17 2017, 9:40am - 10:40am

Social Connections 11 Chicago, June 1-2 2017Social Connections 12 Vienna, October 16-17 2017
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Performance is based on measurements and projections using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled
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given that an individual user will achieve results similar to those stated here.

Brian Gleeson
Software Developer
@BGleesonIE
Martin Donnelly
Software Architect
@TweeterDonnelly

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Agenda
• IBM Connections Customizer – What, Why & How…
• Say Hello to IBM Connections App Registry
• Demo Time
• Technical Summary
• Art of the Possible
• Wrap Up

IBM Customizer
Why, What & How…

IBM Connections Customizer
• … formerly known as Muse
• tool for modifying the IBM Connections UI
• an intelligent server that acts as an
intermediary between and endpoint device
and another server from which a user is
requesting a service - a proxy

IBM Connections Customizer
• As a proxy between the request and response it can:
• change behavior of the service its sitting in front of…
• rewrite requests
• rewrite responses
• inject custom items
• do predictive caching
• do pretty much anything :-)

Simple Request Routing
Connections
21

Simple Request Routing
Connections Customizer
1
2
3
4

Customizer with App Registry
Connections Customizer
Adjust payload
Customer1 Customer2
ForUser1
Customization
Manager
AppRegistry
ForCommunityX

Say Hello to the
IBM Connections App Registry

What is App Registry ?
In general terms…
• A central app design repo with UI and API access
• Helps manage and deploy apps on a per-org basis
• Provides a hierarchical model for defining applications
1. Services (e.g. OrientMe, ITM etc) declare Extension Points that expose customizable features
2. Apps are just containers for one or more extensions
3. An Extension is an implementation of an Extension Point
Service
App
Ext1 Ext2
App
Ext

Simplified Anatomy of an App
{
"services": ["Customizer"],
"name": "Custom Communities",
"extensions": [ {
"type": "com.ibm.customizer.ui",
"path": "communities",
"payload": {
"include-files":["flipcard.js"]
}}]}
Customizer
Homepage
Customizations
Kanban
Watson Tone
Analysis
Custom
Communities
Flip Card
Layout

App Reg Design Properties
• type – identifies the extension point being implemented
com.ibm.customizer.ui | com.ibm.customizer.api
• path – in Customizer context it identifies the URL path
https://apps.collabservintegration.com/profiles/html/myProfileView.do#&tabinst=Updates
activities
blogs
communities
files
forums
global *
homepage
mycontacts
news
profiles
search
wikis
GET /appregistry/api/v2/services/Customizer/extensions?type= com.ibm.customizer.ui&path=profiles
Sample
URL
App Reg
REST Query
Valid
Paths

Demo
Time

Technical Summary

Customizer Design Properties
Customizer payload section exposes various properties
• match - url
• A regular expression can be used to match against the current request
• e.g. id=[a-z0-9]{8}-([a-z0-9]{4}-){3}[a-z0-9]{12} to test for a GUID in the URL
• user-name – compares specified value to the currently logged in user
• user-email – compares specified value to the email address current user
• user-id – compares specified value to user id (aka subscriber id)
• include-files – one or more files to inject e.g. “main.js”

Managing Include Files
Where do the “include-files” reside?
• On Cloud injected resources are synched and managed by a Files microservice
How to upload your include files to IBM Connections Cloud
o Store your extension resources in your own GitHub repo
o Share your repo with IBM (https://github.com/ibmcnxdev)
o Issue a pull request to IBM when your extension is ready
o IBM merges pull request once acceptance criteria are met
o Repo files are pushed to Cloud via a webhook upon merge
o Rinse & repeat starting at Step #3 for extension updates

IBM
Customizer
Request
Lifecycle

IBM Customizer Big Picture

Art of the Possible

Enhanced Activity Stream
• https://github.com/OpenCode4Connections/enhanced-activity-stream
• Jay Agrawal

Status Tone Analyzer
• https://github.com/OpenCode4Connections/status-update-tone-analyzer
• John Jardin

Communities 3D Search
• https://github.com/OpenCode4Connections/bluemix-weather-widget
• https://github.com/OpenCode4Connections/watson-workspace-links
• Brian Gleeson

3D Search
• IBM China Dev Team

Summary
• Customizer is a Tactical Solution – not everything is a nail !
• Strategic solution for customizations is based on extension points
• Services declare extension points for customizable features
• Customizations are contributed according to the extension point rules
• Customizer extensions are based on a “man-in-the-middle” approach
• Intercept and modify interesting request/responses
• More fragile than an extension point mechanism
• But a good tactical solution where no extension points are in place

Wrap Up

Expand your Customizer Horizons
• A new open source community puts more extensions at your fingertips
• https://opencode4connections.org
• Associated open source repo – github.com/opencode4connections

Our Next Session
• For a preview of Pink customization via extension points…

Useful Resources
Check out the doc and samples on the Connections Developer GitHub site
https://github.com/ibmcnxdev/customizer/
https://github.com/ibmcnxdev/customizer/blob/master/README.md
https://github.com/ibmcnxdev/customizer/tree/master/docs
https://github.com/ibmcnxdev/customizer/tree/master/samples
https://github.com/ibmcnxdev/customizer/blob/master/docs/IBMConnectionsCustomizer.pdf
Help start a new community :https://opencode4connections.org
Watch some short videos on the OpenNTF YouTube channel http://bit.ly/2xmUuj5

Useful Resources
For a Jump Start with User Script Add-Ons etc.
• https://greasyfork.org/en
• https://tampermonkey.net/
• http://www.greasespot.net/
• https://zach-adams.com/2014/05/best-userscripts-tampermonkey-
greasemonkey/
• https://www.lifewire.com/top-greasemonkey-tampermonkey-user-scripts-
4134335

IBM Connections Customizer – A Whole New World of Possibilities

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