Philadelphia, April 26-27 2018
13
IBM Connections Customizer:
From Zero To Hero
Brian Gleeson, IBM @BGleesonIE
Martin Donnelly, IBM @TweeterDonnelly

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given that an individual user will achieve results similar to those stated here.
3

Social Connections 13 Philadelphia, April 26-27 2018
Agenda
• IBM Connections Customizer – A Brief Overview
• Hello World Examples
• Advanced Examples
• Events, CSS and Themes
• Wrap Up

13
IBM Customizer
Brief Overview

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
• Proxy between the request and response
• Customizer can:
• change behavior of the service it’s sitting in front of…
• rewrite requests
• rewrite responses
• inject custom items
• do predictive caching
• proxy requests
• log traffic
• do pretty much anything :-)

Simple Request Routing
Connections
21

Simple Request Routing
Connections Customizer
1
2
3
4

IBM
Customizer
Request
Lifecycle

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 declare Extension Points
2. Apps are just containers for one or more extensions
3. Extension = 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 | com.ibm.customizer.proxy
• path – in Customizer context it identifies the URL path
https://apps.na.collabserv.com/profiles/html/myProfileView.do#&tabinst=Updates
activities
blogs
communities
files
forums
global *
homepage
mycontacts
meetings
news
profiles
search
GET /appregistry/api/v3/services/Customizer/extensions?type= com.ibm.customizer.ui&path=profiles
App Reg
REST
Query
Valid
Paths
social
viewer
wikis

13
Hello World Examples

The Object of the Exercise…
• Make a simple UI change to the IBM Connections Homepage
Replace
“Share Something:”
with
“Hello World!”

• What is needed:
1. IBM Connections Cloud organization
2. IBM Connections Cloud admin user id
3. GitHub Account

Use App Registry to enable a Hello World customizaton
• Click Admin > Manage Organization > Organization Extensions
• Choose New Apps Manager from the apps workspace window

Hello World App Design
• Click on Code Editor
• Note the highlighted props:
• services
• type
• payload
• path

Enable and validate the app
• Click on the Basic Information tab
• Select Enabled
• Click Save Changes
• Navigate to Connections Homepage
• Check that “Hello World!” text appears

Verify the Customizer Code Injection
• Right-click View Page Source in the Homepage to view the HTML source
• Jump to the source window
• See the JavaScript link injected by Customizer …
• Click on the src link to view the JavaScript source code
include-file include-repoJS injection

helloWorld.user.js
JS locates a DOM
element and sets
its value to “Hello
World! “

Validate the DOM element using the browser debugging tools
The DOM element
span.shareSome-title
used in JS as a target

Recap
• Customizer used to insert custom text into the Homepage
• The text was inserted by injected JavaScript code
• The JS code assigned “Hello World!” to a Homepage DOM element
• The element can be identified via browser DOM inspector
Questions
• Where do the JavaScript resources live ?
• How do you add your own JS customizations ?

Where do the “include-files” reside?
• On-Cloud include-files always live in GitHub repositories
• GitHub repository is identified by the include-repo property
• That repo is located in:
(A) public IBM Connections Developer GitHub organization
OR
(B) a private repository in github.ibm.com
• IBM projects like “Visual Update 1” and “global-samples” live in github.ibm.com
• All other Customizer projects live in the public IBM Connections Developer GitHub organization
On-Prem Customizer resources stored here: /pv-connections/customizations

To customize Hello World …
• Edit helloWorld.user.js by clicking the pen icon
• Find and modify the “Hello World! ” string
• Save the changes by committing
Change string value to
your name
Click here
Click here1.
2.
3.

In Connections Cloud App Reg…
• Edit the Introductory Customizer App
• Select the Code Editor
• Change the include-repo value
• Click Save Changes
• Validate that the Homepage reflects the change

Hello World Examples – Dynamic JS
Challenge – Update helloWorld.user.js to display user name dynamically
• HINT: Global lconn JS object exists in Conn. Cloud
• You can explore the lconn object from the browser debug console
• Let’s take advantage of it in our JavaScript code injection

Hello World Examples – Dynamic JS
Solution – use lconn.homepage.userName in the JS code

Hello World Examples – API Calls
Challenge – Use Connections APIs to display the user name
• JS code injected by Customizer is authenticated to call any Connections APIs
• For more info on People APIs - https://ibm.biz/ConnectionsPeopleAPI

Hello World Examples – API Calls
Solution – Update helloWorld.user.js to use Connections APIs
• Use Dojo Ajax capabilities to call the /opensocial/rest/people/@me/@self API
• Pick the displayName from the result and insert it in the DOM
Insert this code
fragment in
helloWorld.user.js

13
Advanced Examples
Handling Events, CSS and
Themes

Advanced Examples – CSS Customizations
Customize the look and feel of the Connections Profile page
• Click the Person icon in the top right corner, then select My Profile
• Observe the layout of the standard Profile page – below:

• Return to the App Registry apps workspace
• Click on the Profiles Customization Sample

• Enable the app
• Select the Code Editor and view the app design (relevant fragment below)

• All global-samples are open sourced in the IBM Connections Developers GitHub org
• https://github.com/ibmcnxdev/customizer/blob/master/samples/profiles/profilesCustomization.js

• profilesCustomization.js just inserts a CSS resource into the HTML page
• i.e. profilesCustomization.css from the same folder
• Save the app (to enable it)

• Refresh the Profiles page and observe the new layout
OLD NEW

• Can anyone think of a more efficient way of applying this CSS resource ?
• HINT: Think about Line 17 …

Load the CSS file directly rather than via the JS file
• CSS files can now be listed as “include-files”

Use Visual Update 1 to decorate your whole organization
• Visual Update 1 is a Customizer application that will do just that !
• Available free from the IBM Connections App Catalog
• Project code name = Persicope

• Install and enable Visual Update 1 to the org
• Explore Connections components like Files, Homepage, Communities etc
• After the app is enabled … note the different fonts, buttons, colors, images…
Old Files New Files

• Visual Update 1 is an open source project
• See cnx-custom-theme project on the IBM Connections Developers

• The JSON for this app comes from cnx-custom-theme

Extend Visual Update 1 to change the NavBar rendering
• Create new extension called Xtend Visual Update 1
• Change the repo name
• Change the include file name to visualUpdate/navbar-lab.css
Delete this line

• Save the app updates and refresh the UI
• Observe the newly decorated NavBar

• Right click and view the source of the Homepage
• Observe that the extensions are loaded in alphabetical order
• First Visual Update 1 then Xtend Visual Update 1
• The properties at the top of visualUpdate/navbar-lab.css override Visual Update 1

13
Wrap Up

Summary
In the pipeline
• Managed Proxy Service for 3rd party URIs
• Enhanced Matching Capabilities, e.g. arbitrary header values, local payload JS code
• Customizer Payload Validation via App Reg Schema Rules
• App Reg Wizard Experience for Customizer to move beyond JSON-only editing
Recent additions
• Out-of-the-box browser cache management support
• Roll out to Asia Pacific data center (apps.ap.collabserv.com)

Payload Properties
Customizer payload section offers various control 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 value(s) to the currently logged in user
• user-email – compares value(s) to the email of current user
• user-id – compares value(s) to user id (a.k.a. subscriber id)
• include-files – one or more files to inject e.g. “main.js”
• include-repo – name of GitHub repository containing the include files

Managing Include Files
How to upload your include files to IBM Connections Cloud?
a) Share your repo with IBM – add "ibmcndev" as a collaborator
b) IBM creates a fork of your repo in github.com/ibmcnxdev and
grants you read access by default
c) Continue to work on your extension using your original repo,
and once ready create a pull request
d) IBM merges your pull request once acceptance criteria are met
e) Upon merge, the repo files are automatically pushed to IBM
Customizer via a webhook
f) Rinse & repeat starting at Step (c) for extension updates.

IBM Customizer Big Picture

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

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 Weather App
• https://github.com/OpenCode4Connections/bluemix-weather-widget
• https://github.com/OpenCode4Connections/watson-workspace-links
• Brian Gleeson

3D Search
IBM internal sample - ! Not Open Source

Summary
Customizer is available now for public and private cloud
• Customizer operates on a server-side proxy approach
• Works with App Reg to intercept and modify appropriate request/responses
• In public cloud, orgs need to be enabled for Customizer on request (24hr turnaround)
• Contact: ibmcndev@ibm.com
• Very useful for customizing Connections Green/Blue components
• Customizer also works with Pink components
• Pink components (OrientMe, ITM) also have extensions points for customization

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 the 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

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