System Administrators' Guide

You can use the Admin Console to manage system settings, permissions, content (documents, discussions, and blogs), and people. This guide describes those things that only a system administrator can do in the admin console.

Enter the license key you purchased (you can retrieve your purchased keys by logging into www.jivesoftware.com) or click continue to accept the local system license.

Specify how to connect to the application database. You can use the included local system database or you can choose an external database. If you choose the standard database connection or JNDI datasource, you'll be prompted for required settings after you click Continue. Here's an example of a standard connection configuration:

Specify the system that the application should use for user and group data. For the Default option, the setup tool will use the user and group database tables from the application database. For the LDAP option, you'll be prompted to enter information for your LDAP server (such as host, base distinguished name (DN), and so on). Be sure to see LDAP and Active Directory Guide for details on setting up an LDAP or Active Directory connection.

For the Custom option, you'll be prompted to give the names of your implementations of interfaces from the Jive Software API (such as com.jivesoftware.base.UserManager) for user system access.

Specify defaults for feeds (such as RSS) and email sent and received by Jive SBS. The application can send email when a account is created for a new user, for email notifications, and so on. Specify the "From" name and email address that should be used in these emails, as well as the SMTP host and port that should be used. The application can also be configured to receive email, such as when a user posts a discussion response via email. To get these emails, the application needs a client account; specify those details here.

You'll be able to change these settings later via the admin console.

Specify the system administrator's name, email, and password. Be sure to change the admin email password from the default value, which is "admin".

[root@targethost ~]# sudo su - jive
[1016][jive@targethost:~]$ appstop sbs
sbs stopped successfully.
[1016][jive@targethost:~]$ appstart sbs
sbs started successfully.

You can change the name and description for the root space.

You'll find information about the environment into which Jive SBS is deployed in the admin console. This information includes the Java environment (JVM version and Java system properties), operating system, uptime, and user, group, and authorization managers in use. It also includes information about the data source.

The admin console lists the license type, capacity, current usage (how many of your allowed capacity is being used), number of cluster members, and license creation and expiration dates. Click Upgrade License to display a box into which you can paste your license key.

Jive SBS uses an SMTP email server for sending messages such as content update notifications, task reminders, registration confirmations, and so on. It uses a POP3 or IMAP server for receiving messages, such as for creating a discussion post from an email sent to the application.

With configuration settings for your email servers in hand (host name, port, login credentials, and so on), you can set up and test a connection to the servers from the admin console. After you change server settings you'll need to restart the application server in order for them to take effect.

To handle outgoing emails that bounce, use the Bounce Email Address field to enter the email address on your email server that should receive the messages that bounced (you might need to create an email account on your server if you don't have one already). You should check that account occasionally and possibly remove the email addresses that bounced.

Jive SBS includes a set of templates to shape the content of emails it sends to people in response to certain events. For each of these, you can edit template content, change template locale, and add new templates for use in other locales.

The templates cover a wide range of actions in the application. Some of these are very common, such as watch notifications sent when content is changed or added (for blogs, documents, spaces, and so on) or when someone requests a reset of their password. Others are sent for actions or events that are more rare. You'll find a complete template list in the admin console.

When you're editing templates, you use the syntax of FreeMarker, the technology used to render most of the application's user interface. Also, each template supports a specific set of tokens to hold the place of email content that will vary from message to message. For example, the notification email sent to those watching a document includes tokens for the document that's being watched, the person subscribed for notification, and the URL of the document they're watching. In the template text you refer to tokens in the FreeMaker way: ${document}, ${user}, ${docURL}, and so on. Here's an example designed to tell the receiving user that a document they're watching has been updated:

${SkinUtils.getDisplayName(user)}, The document "${document.subject}", 
was updated ${JiveGlobals.formatDate(document.modificationDate)} 
<#if versionAuthor?exists>by ${SkinUtils.getDisplayName(versionAuthor)}.</#if> 
To view the document, visit: ${docURL}

This template gets the name of the subscribing person and addresses them, then gives the document title, updated date and URL. If the person who updated the document is still in the system, then their name is given also.

Note that the token syntax requires the dollar sign and curly braces; parentheses and square brackets, for example, won't work here. When you're editing a template, the admin console will display the tokens you can use in it.

Configuring the Openfire connection requires that you make specific settings to both Openfire and the application, as described below.

In the Openfire setup tool, on the Profile Settings page, select Jive SBS Integration to use as the user and group system to use. On the Profile Settings: Jive SBS Integration page, enter the location where Openfire can find the application via REST web services and the shared secret they'll both use. (If you get through the setup tool and decide to change this setting later, you can make the change in the Openfire admin console on the Server > Server Settings > Profile Settings page.)

On the Real Time - Connection Settings page, enter the URL at which Openfire can reach your community. In the Shared Secret box, enter the shared secret that you entered when configuring Openfire. Click Save Shared Secret to create the connection.

If you've got a running instance of Openfire and you've enabled its integration with Jive SBS, you can launch its admin console from the application's admin console.

Jive SBS caches data in order to reduce the number of trips the application makes to its database. The caches greatly improve performance by letting people get things done in the application more quickly. You can adjust the sizes of these caches so that they're best tailored for your community's needs. Adjusting cache settings is the best way to improve performance.

You'll probably do most of your cache adjustment during the first few months of your deployment, then less frequently as use of the application grows. For more information on improving performance, including adjusting caches, be sure to see Fine-Tuning Performance.

You can view the query expressions Jive SBS uses as it interacts with its database. This is handy when you're troubleshooting or looking for ways to improve performance. For example, you might use it to look for long-running queries or queries that are running too often.

When you turn this feature on, the admin console displays the query expressions executed (without the actual values used), the number of times a query is executed, the time in milliseconds it took to execute a query, and the average time the query took.

Keep in mind that turning this feature on and leaving it on will slow performance. It's best to use it only while you're collecting performance information.

If your application server supports it, you can set Jive SBS to compress HTML and CSS files to reduce bandwidth. If you want to enable compression, be sure to test it in a development environment (to be sure pages display correctly) before using it on your production server.

For more on improving performance, see Fine-Tuning Performance.

Jive SBS logs messages with application information, warning, and errors. When you want to collect information to troubleshoot or enhance application performance, you can view the log messages in the admin console. (You can also log information about database queries, as described in Examining Database Queries.) The Log Viewer page displays the log content and gives the file system location where you'll find the log files themselves.

Jive SBS logs actions you and others take through the admin console. You might find these logs useful when you're tracking down the cause of an error or misconfiguration in the system.

Each log entry includes the time the action was taken, the person whose action resulted in the entry, and the part of the application's code that executed to carry out the action.

You can choose to have Jive SBS capture data about the actions people take with part of the application. Over time, this data can a key piece of business intelligence through which you can better undertand how people are using the application.

The admin console provides a set of simple reports based on the data you're accumulating.

Jive SBS provides charts that illustrates how people are using the application. You can check these reports periodically to get a high-level sense of how content is being used, such as whether discussion posts are replied to, questions answered, and so on.

You can connect Jive SBS with a web analytics application such as Google Analytics or WebTrends. When you have an account with a web analytics provider, then add their script via the admin console, the script is automatically inserted by the application at the bottom of its pages. The script isn't typically displayed to people, nor are the analytics results displayed in the admin console (you get them from your analytics provider).

Here's are two examples of what you might enter in the admin console:

<script src="www.google-analytics.com—urchin.js <http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js>"
    type="text/javascript"> 
</script>

or

<script type="text/javascript">
    _uacct = "AB-123456-1"; urchinTracker(); 
</script>

You can configure how people first get involved. This is especially important if the application is available to people who sign up on their own. You can set whether (and how) they can sign up on their own and whether their request for membership should be moderated. You can set up the user registration so that the registration page displays only a few of your user profile fields (to make registration easier).

If you enable moderation for membership requests, new requests will appear on administrators' Pending Approvals profile tab. To get to the tab, in the end user UI click Your Stuff > Items Awaiting Approval. (If you have a user administrator, that person will approve or decline requests; otherwise, the system administrator will get those requests.)

You can also set whether you send them a welcome message (and what the message contains), whether they can request a reset of their password, and so on. This is also where you specify that someone registering should validate with a captcha image.

You can block a person's access to Jive SBS. For example, if someone becomes abusive in their messages (or moderating their content is too time-consuming), you might want to ensure that they can't post any more. You can ban them through their login credentials or their IP address. (If you want to ban them using their IP address, you'll need to enable IP address tracking with a system property (skin.default.trackIP); the admin console has more information.)

A blog can live in any of several different contexts. How the blog's administered depends on the context that contains it.

For the most part, these contexts contain other kinds of content, as well, including discussions and documents. For example, a blog can be contained by a space, a project, or a social group. You can't administer these through the admin console. Instead, they're administered by the blog's owners in the blog's Manage Blog page in the application's end user interface.

Two kinds of blogs — system and personal blogs — can be said to live in a top-level context. These are blogs you can administer with the admin console (although, like other blogs, they're also managed by their owners).

The following table lists blog contexts, along with where each is administered.

Remember that top-level blogs (personal and system blogs) are the only kind you can administer from the admin console. The following table summarizes administrative tasks related to top-level blogs. All of these are available to a blog's author on their Blog Management page. Some are also available to system administrators in the admin console.

You can migrate an existing blog from one context to another. For example, you can migrate a space blog so that it becomes a group blog. There aren't any restrictions -- you can migrate from any context to any other context. When you migrate, all of the blog's posts and settings will move to the destination context.

On the admin console's Blog Migration page, you choose the blog you want to migrate and the destination context. Under destination, you'll only see contexts that are able to accept the blog. For example, a space that already has a blog won't be listed (so no space will be listed if all spaces have blogs). To migrate, select the blog and destination, then click Submit.

Support for searching internal content and user profiles is provided by the Lucene open source search engine. Lucene works by periodically creating an index of content, then searching against the index. As a result, search results are affected by, say, how often the index is updated.

You can make some external search engines available to people using Jive SBS. If a search engine supports OpenSearch, you can add support for it so that the search engine will be used (in addition to the internal search engine) when people search for content. Examples of OpenSearch engines include Technorati and Wikipedia, not to mention Jive SBS communities.

Engines that support OpenSearch provide a descriptor XML file and usually publish the file at a public URL. The descriptor tells OpenSearch clients what they need to know to query the search engine.

A community uses REST to retrieve information from other connected communities, presenting much of the same information that people can get by going to the community itself.

When you set up the bridge, you're not just making the connection possible. You're also setting how people using the community will see the connected community. So as you set up the bridge, be sure to enter values that make sense from a user's perspective.

With themes, you can customize the way Jive SBS looks, adding your own logo and brand information. You can even change the composition of Clearspage pages, rearranging them, adding and removing features.

Depending on how much you want to change the UI, there are three approaches you can take. For information, see Customizing UI the Basic Way, Customizing the UI with the Theme Resource Kit and Advanced Theming Topics.

You can substitute your own words for phrases you find in the user interface. For example, you might want to rename "Documents" to "Articles." Your substitutions are part of a theme.

For more information on making substitutions and developing themes, see the theming topics in the Jivespace developer guide.

If your community has any plugins installed, you can view a list of them on the Installed Plugins page. If you don't have any yet, Jive Software offers a few you can get started with. The Add Plugin page lists plugins that are available free from Jive Software. It also provides a place to add plugins for which you have a JAR file.

Whenever you add or remove a plugin, you'll need to restart the application server.

Jive SBS comes with a set of widgets people can use to customize pages. If you don't want certain widgets to show up where people can customize page layouts, you can remove them using the admin console. You can also add new widgets. At the bottom of the page, under Add a new widget, enter the fully-qualified class name of the class for the widget you're adding, then click Add Widget. The JAR containing the widget you're adding must be on the application's classpath.