3.1 Customizing the Getting Started tab 

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The Getting Started tab, which appears on the Home page starting with IBM Connections version 3.0, helps users learn and start using the product more quickly. You can customize the Getting Started tab by changing the information in the existing pages, by removing pages, or by adding pages. To customize the content on the Getting Started tab, you modify the gettingstarted-config.xml file.

By default, the Getting Started tab contains three pages, organized as vertical tabs, with these labels:

• Welcome
• Share
• Explore

Before you begin
Turn on customization debugging capability so that you can view your changes without having to restart the IBM Connections server. For more information about customization debugging, see 1.2 IBM Connections customization variables.

Procedure
In this procedure, you add a page that contains information hosted on an internal website.
Tip: To remove a page, find the <step> element that represents the page and change the value of its enabled attribute to false.

1. Access and check out the Home page configuration files using the wsadmin tool:
a. Access the configuration files for the Home page application using the command

execfile("homepageAdmin.py")


b. Check out the home page configuration file using this command: HomepageCellConfig.checkOutGettingstartedConfig("<working_directory>","<cell_name>")
where:
• <working_directory> is the directory that Connections uses to store the temporary copies of the configuration files while they are checked out.
• <cell_name> is the case-sensitive name of the WebSphere Application Server cell hosting the IBM Connections application.
  For example,

  HomepageCellConfig.checkOutGettingstartedConfig("c:/temp","foo01Cell01")

  
  Attention: Do not close the wsadmin session until you check in the configuration files. For more information about checking out configuration files, see 1.4 Publishing customizations with the wsadmin tool.
2. Navigate to the temporary location where you checked out the gettingstarted-config.xml file.
3. Open the gettingstarted-config.xml file with a text editor.
4. Copy one of the <step> elements and paste it after the <step> element that identifies the page that you want to appear above this new page. The order of the vertical pages reflects the order of the steps in the <steps> block.
5. Change the page label in one of two ways:
• Replace the title key with your text. For example, the title of the Welcome page is defined by the jsp.start.step1.tab.title key. Replace jsp.start.step1.tab.title with your text:
  

  <title bundle="com.ibm.lconn.homepage.resources.nls.jsp.jsp_resources">
  

  jsp.start.step1.tab.title <==Replace this line with your title text
  

  </title>

  
  The bundle attribute identifies where the resource bundle is stored and the title element itself contains the key value for the title string
• Specify a key that you define in a corresponding resource bundle that you also define. Using a key supports translation. For example, the jsp.start.step1.tab.title key is stored in the com.ibm.lconn.homepage.resources.nls.jsp.jsp_resources resource bundle in the Home page WAR file. Replace the existing key in the gettingstarted-config.xml file and specify the value for this new key in a file you save in <customizationDir>\strings directory. For more information about customizing product strings, see 2.2 Customizing product strings.
6. Specify what you want to display in the page body using the <body-links> element. This element must be available over the http and https protocols using the same domain as the Home page application. For example,


<step>

...

<body-links

secure="https://server.example.com/help/welcome.htm"

unsecure="http:////server.example.com/help/welcome.htm />

</step>


7. Save the gettingstarted-config.xml file.
8. Check in the gettingstarted-config.xml file using the command {{{HomepageCellConfig.checkInGettingstartedConfig("","")}}}
where <working_directory> and <cell_name> are the same as you specified when you checked out the file.
For example,

HomepageCellConfig.checkInGettingstartedConfig("c:/temp","foo01Cell01")


For more information about checking in configuration files, see 1.4 Publishing customizations with the wsadmin tool
9. Make your changes available to others by updating the value of the versionStamp configuration property. For more information, see 1.4 Publishing customizations with the wsadmin tool.

Parent topic: 3.0 Customizing the Home page