We are trying to extend IBM Connections 4.5 CR3 with own XPages apps not on the well described widget extension level for communities but on the application level.
Our goal is to extend the applications menu and load our apps inside the connections framework just like the original blogs or forums IBM apps.
Some others tried the same thing like this one:
http://blog.riand.com/2014/06/get-your-application-integrated-within.html?m=1
It seems that the trick for coming around the CORS trouble is not well documented in there.
Mikkel has put some code onto GitHub for the server side page generation:
https://github.com/lekkimworld/ic-wrapper
Can someone over here solve this or help us to come some steps further?
There are a number of approaches you can take, depending how daring you are.
The most pragmatic approach would be:Load a connections page, steal the HTML that makes up the Menu bar, copy that into a XPages custom control and you are done (of course you had added a link to your application beforehand in LotusConnectionsConfig.xml
Check the JSP that reads the LotusConnectionsConfig.xml how it is rendering the menu bar. Configure the Apache HTTP to expose the XML for read access, so you can dynamically create that menu - saves work when your menu changes often
Use the approaches described by Phil
Add a small JS that you call in your added menu. It would remove the content of the Connections page below the menu level and insert an iFrame which loads your XPage
Cheat by building a widget for a community homepage and have just that one widget (taking the whole page as real estate) in that Community
That's just off my head. Hope it helps
Related
[Disclaimer: I am new to Notes, and am picking up a project that was started by someone else, so I'm not sure if this is the best approach, and with that out of the way ....]
We have a Notes 9.0 frameset, which is being driven by a couple of databases. There are 4 parts to the frame set, with the primary one being the selection of a client. This populates the second frame with their information, and the third frame with any related clients - such as business partners, associates, etc. The fourth frame would be any and all correspondence listed with the related clients (either one or many) which has been placed into an XPage. We cannot, though, load the XPage inside the frame, having tried multiple instances of .urlopen(XPage location) and trying to open the notes:// source, http:// source, and setting the target frame in both the inline URL and as a .SetTargetFrame("frame") fashion.
Is it possible to open an XPage from with a Frameset, or is there a better approach to this?
Thanks
Integrating or embedding XPages into a traditional Domino web application is a common approach and straightforward because it's the same protocol with the same authentication. Integrating XPages into a standard Notes Client design element is challenging for a variety of reasons, not just the URL required but also because authentication to the client is via Notes ID stored on the PC, authentication to the XPage is via HTTP protocol.
If you're wishing to display a list of the correspondence in a standard Notes frameset in the Notes Client, the approach I'd take is just to point to a View or embedded view set to a single category based on the client selected. If it's a server within a decent connectivity range, view performance will be better. If it's just a list, the data should be available for a view. If it's to navigate into the documents and you want to open the correspondence in an XPage, that's achievable from a view by setting the property on the Form to open in a specific XPage.
I'm not certain, but it sounds like your choice to use the XPage was because someone had already developed an XPage of that information for web access, possibly for the external clients themselves. While re-using the previous code may seem a good approach, the challenges of integrating one technology into another (as you see) counter the benefits.
This isn't about XPages itself, it's about embedding technologies that are not really designed for that level of integration. Similarly if the correspondence was an Angular front end using REST services to pull the information from Domino, you would have similar issues integrating it into the Notes Client application (authentication, running code on the client to run code on the server to get data for the client to process - when Notes is already designed for good nrpc communication).
There may be benefits in time of migrating all of the frameset to an XPages application or a specific set of use cases that won't require users switching between browser client and Notes Client. But if that's not the approach for now, integrating the XPage into the frameset is likely to be a challenge, no least in terms of look and feel, that may not result in a good user experience.
You can integrate an XPage into a Notes client, but it will require to learn about a number of moving parts. Instead of a Frameset you would use a composite application (same idea, more possibilities) and show various composites: Views, Forms, Pages, XPages, Navigators etc.
However you might consider reversing the process. When the XPages application in the browser works well, you could use the XPiNC feature (XPages in Notes Client) to show the same UI in the Notes client (presuming you have a current Notes version).
You will find some articles here: https://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/xpSearch.xsp?searchValue=%20XPages%20in%20the%20Notes%20client
My thought: what possibly makes you problems opening XPage in frameset (either with http:// or notes:// protocols) is incompatible browser (that one in client).
You can workaround this problem if you do not need all the bells & whistles of standard XPage - Dojo, events, themes...
So, what about making that XPage as simple as possible: make it stateless, disable Dojo, do not use any events (buttons, actions), in other words just plain HTML/CSS with no JS. That should work inside frameset. All the backend stuff - SSJS, datasources and so on is OK, of course.
Edit: another hint to make it work inside frame/internal browser. Sometimes XPage fails in XPiNC mode because of wrong datasource definition. When viewed from http of Domino server, all local databases are the server ones. But in XPiNC all local databases are treated as local replicas (usually nonexistent) and therefore fail to open. Possible solution:
run XPages from server (https://superuser.com/a/586602/17277)
redefine datasource: include server name in database property (hint: remember server!!database.nsf convention)
That's just a hint, I am not sure it will work for you.
Is there are web framework that allows creating of custom Web UI designers that can be embedded into a webpage/webapp?
What I am looking for is to create a web UI that allows users to edit the UI in a drag and drop style editor. It should be possible to select some widgets (like these: http://scaffy.railsware.com/futurico/#pagination) and to select a data source (will be provided by back-end, nodejs).
Background: I am not a web designer and have no previous web experience. I just want to know if it possible to create what I am looking for and how much effort it would be. My background is in embedded Linux development and I would like to create an easy way for people to create machines with single board computers. The embedded stuff is pretty much complete and I am exploring ways to create nice and user editable user interfaces.
I think what you want is possible.
However... as far I know nothing exists which will do exactly what you require.
There are thousands of UI widgets on the Web to choose from but you would need a custom built backend cms developed especially for your needs
There plenty of Web agencies who could provide a bespoke solution. They could also assist with updates and adding new widgets.
So it can be done (and may encounter some browser incompatability issues), but you'll just have to be prepared to spend money.
I have been working on maximo anywhere apps recently and have a requirement to completely change the look and feel of the work execution app, the oslc layer which talks to maximo in the backend remains the same and all the functionalities are the same but there are some new buttons, notification messages and all sorts of UX aspects to be added to the app, I have just started looking at the architecture and code of the app but does anyone know how can I make changes to the front-end or is it even possible? I could find very few documents available online and all of them spoke of customizing features and functionalities but I coudlnot find any document for adding UX aspects.
It would be great someone could point out any documents or kick-off points which I can start looking into.
Thanks.
Thanks for asking, if you're just talking about adding new fields, layouts, screens to the UI, you can do that all through the app.xml, and there are lots of examples on our knowledge center, for example this one:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSPJLC_7.5.2/com.ibm.si.mpl.doc_7.5.2/config_apps/t_add_rw_fields.html?lang=en
If you're talking about changing the "look" of the existing widgets, this can all be done through css, by overriding our out of the box css classes. Use Chrome inspector to figure out which css class is being used for each element type, and just override it through standard css approaches.
If you're talking about more advanced customization, for example adding your own new widget types to our screens, it is possible to programmatically instantiate/destroy your own widgets through javascript and add them to our standard application views. This code is usually hooked on the initialize and back event of our views. But you'll be responsible for writing the code to synchronize the data layer with your custom widget. We unfortunately don't have a published example of this customization usecase yet.
We always adding new widget capabilities to our Anywhere UI framework, so I'd love to hear feedback on the new widget types you're interested in.
I'm transferring huge chunks of data while my users work with their forms. Besides trying to optimize the code to ensure for the fastest connections, I'd like to display a spinning image in the middle of the form to notify the user that the software is sweating it's parts of to get the info as quickly as possible.
I'd like to point to following considerations.
Can I use an arbitrary animated image (e.g. abc.gif)?
Is it possible (suggested, even) to use the default spinner seen in the CRM?
Can such a solution be applicable even for older versions of CRM?
IS is possible (recommended, maybe) to use jQuery and it's cool effects?
Yes you can use any animated gif. Add as a web resource in CRM 2011.
You can take the default spinner and add as a web resource. I'd strongly recommend you don't try and address it directly.
Yes but the way you manage your scripts is less prescribed. No solutions or web resources to use in CRM4.
Absolutely. See below.
The jQuery plugin BlockUI is one of the most popular for potentially long running OData calls from which you need to prevent further UI interaction.
Since you'll need to attach directly to a DOM element it's use won't be supported. However, as long as you stick with attaching to the <body> element and avoid digging too far down into the DOM like for example onto the markup for specific form sections you'll be OK.
For CRM 2011 we use our own Web Resource to wrap BlockUI providing a very simple API enforcing consistent binding to the <body> element which also checks for the inclusion of jQuery and BlockUI scripts (Web Resources) on the form.
Same deal applies for CRM 4 but script management is much more down to how your team are currently managing customisations and dependencies.
The easier you can make it to use, the less likely other developers on the team are to go off and try and roll their own causing horrible inconsistencies in the final UX.
Hi:
In our application,there are so many sub pages and menus,for example:
the main menu for the whole site:
Index/Document/News/SysConfig and etc.
And inside the Sysconfig page,there are also other menus like :
user managment,roles,logs... and etc.
Now we use the iframe to make the layout of the site,we change the related iframe's src attribute according to user's choice. but I wonder if this is a good idea?
I thought use the tempalte,for example the apache tiles in jsp and the masterpage in asp.net.
I wonder which is the best pratice?
Best Practice would be to go the templated route ...
I haven't really looked into web accessibility for a long time ... but in the past when I used to work on externally facing sites, using frames of any sort was a big no-no. Screen readers would have problems with frames including iframes. I'm not sure if the current generation of screen-readers handle them better.
There's also the search result/deep linking issues to consider. For example, will your google result link point directly to the page in the iframe? do you have to do a hack to redirect the user to the main page?
Also going the templated route may not be that difficult as long as you don't have a lot of content to migrate. There are fantastic content management solutions out there like Wordpress, or Drupal and Joomla if you have more complex needs.