HCL Connections , some consideration on last roadmap news and slides from DNUG Connections Day

During the last week DNUG has organized a day dedicated to HCL Connections

Christoph Stoettner wrote a nice and complete post about it  , below I will make a short recap with some consideration .

Where we are now

Connections V 6.5 has been released during December and it's the first release branded HCL. It's a bug fixing of the 6.0 with some important new features like Activity Plus , New invitation apps for external collaboration and a revisited Touchpoint app for on-boarding.

Last important thing the upgrade from previous release has better than ever.

What we have to expect from 2020

A huge number of releases and features will be added during this year !

During the first 3 quarter of 2020 will be released 3 CR with features and INTEGRATION (the bold is correct because emphasis is required..)


6.5 CR1  (Q1) :

• Mailintegration in CNX Ui
• HCL Wash
• Docs
• CEC
• Plugins

6.5 CR2  (Q2) :

• MS Teams
• New Outlook Integration
• MS Identity platform
• Orient Me enhancements + Print PDF
• Docs CR4

 6.5 CR3 (Q3) :

• Interactive OM calendar
• Leap integration
• Sharepoint integration
• OneDrive integration

And last release of the year will be V 7.0 (Q4)

• O365 Integration
• Intuite UX
• Robust mail, calendar and chat integration
• Containerization

The list of features and integrations like this is speaking by them-self , we have NEVER seen a roadmap like this planned to be released in 12 month.

From my point of view the integrations with MS products will be the most important step ahead because will transform Connections to a trasfersal product able to exist and run also in MS centric environment..

With version V 7.0 the containerization will be ultimated and the whole environment will runs inside  Kubernetes.
Some of the classical apps will still run in WAS container and will be migrated to other appservers (like openliberty ? ) in future releases.

I'm really happy to see all the work and the energy HCL is enforcing in a product where I spend most of my working time and passion at night while I work with the rest of the team organizing Let's Connect events.

The future is Bright ! I'm sure 2020 will be a year full of satisfactions !!!!!!!!!!

HCL Nomad available on Google Playstore and Apple App Store

During the last days HCL has released on the Google Playstore Nomad, today was the turn of the Apple App Store. now it's official a new star is born !

Nomad is the new mobile client release by HCL to allow the use of the NSF application on iPhone, iPad.. Android and ChromeOS devices without any changes required.

Of course you could not aspect to use an application in same way , compared to a 4k monitor , but all features are working correctly including the local replication.
Nomad support traditional NSF applications, not XPages.

This are the links to download Nomad from the appstores:

• Apple  
• Android 

HCL Master : 2020 class announced

The HCL Master class of 2020 has been announced and I'm  on the list !

This is the definition of an HCL  Master:

HCL Master is a distinction that HCL awards select members of the community that are both experts in their field and are passionate about sharing their HCL knowledge with others.
​
Masters are HCL ambassadors (not employees) and their commitment to sharing their expertise has a huge impact on the HCL community – whether they are blogging, writing books, speaking, running workshops, creating tutorials and classes, offering support in forums, or organizing and contributing to local events – they help make HCL’s mission of making technology play nice, possible.

Congrats to any of the friends on the list, I like to add it's a pleasure to see some of former IBM Champion named in this Master Class :-) and a great honor the be on the list: thanks HCL !!


I need to close this blog post with 2 big special thanks:

• Factor-y : like every year , we have continued to work on interesting projects that give me the opportunity to grow and a continue reason to study test and play with high level tech (congrats to Daniele Vistalli  for his HCL Master nomination! )
• Let's connect team :  Thanks for the opportunity you gave me to be part of a group of friends and  for the opportunity to give active contribution to our community organizing one of the most great and awesome Social Connections event. I can't wait to see what we will be able to do in 2020 !!
  

HCL Connections 6.5 available for download

During the next December 4, at 9 a.m. ET HCL will present and announce  the following new software:

• Connections 6.5
• Domino & Notes 11
• Sametime 11

today  with a huge surprise Connections 6.5 it's already available for download!

Below some of my preferred features from what's new:

• Activity plus : activities rebuild in collaboration with ISW has raised up his functionality and now will be a must have ! It will be also possible to upgrade Activities plus to ISW Kudos boards with a serial number . This component it's now part of the component pack without the addiction of new requirements.
• reduced TCO: Connections 6.5 it's now an upgrade like the CR, so customers could avoid side by side migration reducing the upgrade cost.
• Connections sidebar: it's a component that permit to integrate Connections easily into other sites
• New  self service invitation system for external users
• File ownership trafer: now it's possible to trasfer the ownership also from File app (one by one),  or wsadmin for bulk transfer
• .... and many more  !

here system requirements, with this MINIMUM version requred:

• WebSphere 8.5.5. FP16
• DB2 11.1, MS SQL 2016
• Oracle 12c 
• RH 7.x, SLES 12.1
• Win2016

Here at this page upgrade procedure from  6.0 to 6.5, here at this page the upgrade procedure of the component pack  , here at this page  the new 6.5 homepage doc.

As last resource available ...  the download link from Flexnet ( an entitled login is required).

During the next days I'll start the upgrade process and I'll blog more relevant info.

imcl and manageProfile: some examples to work with IBM products from linux command line

Working on linux servers could "force" System Engineers to work with command line for several reasons:

• automation (eg Ansible playbooks)
• because it's quicker
• security policy
• GUI not available

and many more..

I thinked to blog some examples of this command because could be useful to be launched from shell or cold be integrated inside script/playbooks.

Installation Manager , has a dedicated shell utility available inside

/opt/IBM/InstallationManager/eclipse/tools/


IBM Installation manager setup and update from public repo

setup with logfile

./installc -log log_file -acceptLicense

update to the last release from IBM public repo

./imcl install com.ibm.cic.agent

Updated to com.ibm.cic.agent_1.9.1000.20191001_1228 in the /opt/IBM/InstallationManager/eclipse directory.

List Available package

imcl sintax is based on product name and protuct level included in the package.
Use the following command to extract this infos from repository in zip format or from repository.xml included ::

/imcl listAvailablePackages -repositories WAS_V9.0_SUP_HTTPSVR.zip

com.ibm.websphere.IHS.v90_9.0.0.20160526_1854

in this case IBM   IHS 9.0 FP0

Combined setup

In case of WAS 9,x components (WASND,IHS;IHS_PLG) its required a combined setup because the component needed must be installed together the Java JDK.

the following example you could setup IHS 9.0 with JDK 8.0

./imcl install com.ibm.websphere.IHS.v90_9.0.0.20160526_1854 com.ibm.java.jdk.v8_8.0.3000.20160526_1317

 -repositories WAS_V9.0_SUP_HTTPSVR.zip,SDKJAVA_TM_TE_V8.0_LINUX.zip -acceptLicense

Installed com.ibm.websphere.IHS.v90_9.0.0.20160526_1854 to the /opt/IBM/HTTPServer directory.

Installed com.ibm.java.jdk.v8_8.0.3000.20160526_1317 to the /opt/IBM/HTTPServer directory.

Rollback

Installation manager keep track of the sw version installed and permit to roolback to previous version with a single command

./imcl listInstalledPackages -rollbackVersions

com.ibm.websphere.IHS.v90_9.0.11.20190312_2048 : 9.0.9.20180906_1004,9.0.6.20171205_1311,9.0.5.20170918_1844,9.0.0.20160526_1854

the output of this command say we have 

IHS 9 FP11, that coudl be rolled back to FP9,FP6, FP5, FP0

the following comamnd rollback IHS from FP11 to Fp9

./imcl rollback com.ibm.websphere.IHS.v90_9.0.11.20190312_2048 9.0.9.20180906_1004

Fixpack setup

The following example will upgrade WebSphere Plugin to FP10 from local repo

./imcl install com.ibm.websphere.PLG.v90_9.0.10.20181119_1807 

-repositories /data/fp10/IHS/repository.xml -acceptLicense

Updated to com.ibm.websphere.PLG.v90_9.0.10.20181119_1807 in the /opt/IBM/WebSphere/Plugins directory.

WebSphere Cell

DMGR

from WAS bin directory  use the following example to create  a cell with a DMGR profile

./manageprofiles.sh -create 

-profileName WasND 

-profilePath /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/WasND 

-templatePath /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profileTemplates/management 

-serverType DEPLOYMENT_MANAGER 

-cellName cellName -nodeName NodeName -hostName FQDN 

-enableAdminSecurity true -adminUserName was9admin -adminPassword Password

Custom AppServer profile creation and federation

from WAS bin directory create an appserver profile

./manageprofiles.sh -create -defaultPorts -profileName AppSrv01 

-profilePath /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/AppSrv01 

-templatePath /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profileTemplates/managed 

-hostName FQDN -nodeName nodeName -federateLater true

at this point DMGR should be tourned on and reachable and with following command  (launched from AppServer bin)  proceed with the federation

./addNode.sh dmgrFQDN 8879 -user was9admin -password Passw0rd

 Ricordatevi ovviamente di valorizzare in modo corretto i vari, cellName,hosName,nodeName e adminPassword !

All commands in this blogpost could be used on linux and windows with some minor change. 
This examples are showed with minimal options, but you could add a tons of options to imcl and manageProfile to specify all the details  needed.

 I invite you to read more details on official docs:
  

• here for imcl
• here for manageProfile

From 0 to DX 9.5 developer hero in 20 minutes with HCL official docker images

HCL with the release of DX 9.5 has build also an official docker image for OpenShift 4.x  .
As I read HCL has in plan to support Kubernetes vanilla and other cloud implementations very soon.

One of the possible way to use this image is use it with docker on your laptop so you could start to develop your DX 9.5 experience from 0 to portal up&running in 20 minutes :-) .

I made my test on my corporate laptop with Windows10 , Hyper-V and docker desktop 2.1.0.4.
If you haven't docker installed yet I suggest you to start from this page..

System Preparation

If you have just installed docker or if you haven't tuned the docker machine I suggest to augment the docker machine resources:

click with right button on docker icon in the sys-tray and than settings

go to advanced section and check the CPU/Memory/Swap /Disk Image Max size

Now if you haven't one already create a working directory to be used as wp_profile mount point and exclude it from your AV setting for performance reasons (at the first run wp_profile will be delated with almost 40k files) and for data integrity.

Execution

Unzip the package downloaded from Flexnet (right now it's  hcl-dx-openshift-v95-20190929-1242.zip

First step needed is importing the DX image to your docker image repo

docker load -i .\hcl-dx-core-image-v95_20190928-2258.tar.gz 

after some minutes while docker was importing all layer involved you will get the confirmation message:

Loaded image: hcl/dx/core:v95_20190928-2258 

Now it's time to create the container from the image exposing the port needed and mounting the wp_profile to the local filesystem to guarantee the persistance of the data:

docker run -p 10038:10038 -p 10039:10039 -p 10041:10041 -p 10042:10042 -p 10200:10200 -p 10202:10202 -v C:\docker\dx-store\wp_profile:/opt/HCL/wp_profile hcl/dx/core:v95_20190928-2258

where C:\docker\dx-store\wp_profile  it's my docker data directory.

At the first start some extra time will be required because DX profile will be generated on the path used in the command.

The image does not include HTTP and Plugin so this will be the URL

Url Portal   :       http://localhost:10039/wps/portal   
Url Console :     https://localhost:10041/ibm/console

Utenza default:  wpsadmin / wpsadmin

if you need to enter into the container

 
                                               docker exec -it  container_name bash

The image is build using RHEL 8.0  , Portal security it's set to local was and  database it's local Derby.

When an upgraded image will be shipped you will need to repeat the first command to import and create the new container using the existing mounted wp_profile that will be upgraded (if needed) to match the new version.
After the upgrade the old container could be removed.

To close this post some others usefull docker commands

to check active container

docker ps

to check all container

docker ps -a

to rename a container

docker rename container_name new_name

to stop the container 

docker stop container_name

to start the container
docker start container_name

to remove the container
docker rm container_name

to remove a container image
docker rmi nome_immagine 

The official documentation about the DX docker images it's available at this page.

HCL Digital Experience 9.5 released

Yesterday HCL has released the new Digital Experience 9.5 (formerly know as WebSphere Portal

Il what's new include :

• HCL Digital Experience 9.5 Docker Image (official images available for k8s o OpenShift)
• HCL Digital Experience 9.5 Practitioner Studio (new user interface for content managements)
• Woodburn Studio (a complete new site shipped as example )
• New HCL Experience API 

This is a good step ahead because it's a start of a journey to a new modern word based on k8s.
9.5 it's the start, soon will be released 9.6 and 10 will be out in the 2020.

I suggest you to read  the what's new at this page and also for technical docs.

 

 

Update: I've just created a channel on the OpenNTF slack workspace dedicated to Digital Experience. If you are interested you could create your account  clicking here and here you could find the direct link to the channel.