content server UI tweaks
Years of developer activity retired…. Just like that
How would a developer who does not have access to KB find anything informative?
Is that intentional?
Why wouldn’t OT give out a fair warning to migrate content for content owners?
Much of code I kept for public consumption was here
So if anybody is looking for that write me I will try to find from local copies
Start with my first article in this series
BTW this is kind of a cookery show kind where they put the main course in the oven and take another finished one .I did not accomplish any of this in one day it took a lot of homework and trial runs.I read the case studies by the great Rob Coutts many times over.
For sanity we decided to use a new box for CS10.5
Privileges
Privileges apply to you as the “user” versus permissions are what the Object allows a “user” to do.There are differences.For e.g for installing something in windows you need to be part of the “administrators” group similarly to install something you need to be in the “system administrators” group. A “administrator group user” has almost very high privileges to do things in a OS similarly they have a high degree of authority in livelink as well.So when a user is created we set at the minimum these privileges Login Enabled and Public Access So when a objects is accessed at run time livelink’s algorithm is does user have login,does user have PA and does Object have PA and what like S,or SC so it is a given that the user will be able to click the link. In very simple terms use PA effectively to address contents that is useful for the whole environment almost like using livelink as a glorified web server.
Now other things are self explanatory has User Creation,System administration and others leading to making Group Leaders etc.In short if you spend some time understanding the architecture you will be amazed and the simple but very effective thought being given into its devlopment.
The Add New Item Truth Table
The livelink system is replete with several subtypes some of the are very useful and harmless like folders,documents etc so nobody changes anything from default. However you would be very concerned if somebody go unauthorized access to Live Reports,workflows,form templates etc,so what I do is I will look at the personal workspace of a default user and see all the “New Items” being shown there.Then I evaluate what should a untrained user be allowed to create in my system.For all the complicated ones I will create a manual group called “r-Form Template Creators” and add ‘Admin’ to that.Now if I have trust to give a group or a user I would expand my group.So when these new person goes and he has permissions to “Add Items,Reserve , Delete” this user will see “Form Template” there. However h(s)e moves to another folder where he has only “S,SC” he does not see it there.Note different object subtypes do different things.I am not keen to explain everything like Tasks,Discussions,Projects ec they are for you to explore and set right.Before releasing a system to production give a simple user access and do some Gorilla Testing that will help you more than the amount of money spent on stress testing.Obviously you should have at laest oe or two good front ends and a good beefy admin server to do your search stuff.
Oscript is a 4GL that is the basis of the application that the OpenText company adopted when they chose to market Livelink the Document Management System.It is safe to say that anything the Livelink product lacks and is a valid requirement can be coded in this language.The power of the the Oscript language takes root in the philosophy that was prevalent in the 60’s . Oscript is a superior offering to traditional OOP languages such as Java or C++ that is what Pundits say.
To a trained Oscripter one is able to understand how livelink code is received as well as change it.Now change to any COTS product comes at a cost.That is where the strategy as well as overall grasp in the product comes into mind.If the organization has decided for itself that it will spend the big bucks on livelink, one approach is to identify the ways to use it more.Where the organization is going to make mistakes is when it sees the cost of the “customization”.Many decision makers wrongly decide to go after fly by night programmers/vendors to be totally left in the fray.OT has a professional vested interest to sell customers more code and services so I have been in decisions where sales and marketing will say do not customize livelink, but that is only half truth in them.If you buy these OT customizations, they are almost certain to be written in Oscript .In many cases it would have been written by senior Oscripters with thought on maintenance aspects and upgrade ability as well.The same kind of service can be bought by other Oscript houses,in many cases these are extremely talented ex OT ‘ers. Many of the Professional Services modules sometimes outgrows the intents and becomes a marketable module as well.I have no knowledge and am just speculating on that.Once you have identified and decided to use livelink the best avenue is to hire or ask services of reputed vendors.Modules that contained Oscript code that I used to code in 1999 (first time was on a livelink 8 system) livelink 9.1 version I can almost compile in the modern 10.5 version.My entire career was and is fruitful because I tried to interact/collaborate and share with the OT team in the KB as well as smaller websites like Greg Griffiths.I was also able to mentor myself amongst very die hard oscripters that I knew from work and just by tracing code to find bugs that needed closure before OT could provide fixes.The knowledge of OT code also allows me to become a better application architect,administrator and integrator.
If the organization is strong in Java and .Net skills then note that the user interface at this time cannot be changed using those languages,however you may use exposed API’s to make functioning applications that use Livelink as the data store
Typical things organizations can and should do.
Opentext Programmers have black boxed thing so that many things acts as internal API’s.For e.g we are able to do work without understanding how the “Node” itself is created in livelink. Other examples are the way Oscript can talk to the search system.
Not many people know that livelink uses a api to search.
Out of the world Oscript Offerings.
Christopher Meyer a Long OT veteran his website . It is un believable stuff that I have seen.
Patrick Vitali the maker of AnswerModules
IDE’s one can use
CSIDE a eclipse jar file for versions CS10.5
Livelink Builder CS10 and Versions prior.
Finally I found the link to my original blog.In 2007 I joined Alitek as a senior person and was instrumental in training/mentoring most of the people there to fearlessly transgress Oscript .I am not sure if OT marketing /sales because of their vested interests trying to scare people from using the language of the application would create rumors in less technical decision makers of the org.What has happened is a reckless decline of proper design architects in the beautiful language of livelink .It is written in un paralleled style withstanding many patterns of OOP.
In any case what I would advise decision makers is if you have installed and said that Content Server I even hate that name, Livelink it is for me is there for the ORG then hire/train good developers.It does not matter if you cannot get Oscripters. All you need to do is get a good thinking programmer either versed in java or .net technologies.The person could be set for training and that is it.
Do not employ cheap gimmicks like skins,reporting avenues etc. What a org needs can be handled by Oscript. You DO NOT HAVE to look anything other than oscript to get 150 % out of your livelink application.
Link to Patrick Vitali’s Stuff out of the world
Link to Christopher Meyer’s
The above links are concrete proof of why Oscript Rocks Really.
Now anyone who knows their computer science one on one would not be questioning why Oscript could not be mastered.
I was very thrilled to get accolades from OT and was told it was done by a peer group which does mean something to me.Now they gave me a blog and I lost the blog because I could not obey one of their time things.I doubt if OT has a award for selfless souls now most awards I see at CW is for huge accounts and managers .Money talks in software decisions one must conclude.
https://communities.opentext.com/communities/cs.dll?func=ll&objId=8298936&objAction=view
In CS10 it comes up with this kind of deal see img
Now in 9.7 and below there was perhaps the [Chicklet] method one used to out a new banner
Here is a quick and dirty way
Put code like this in img/appearances/custom.jsjavascript:document.write(“Hello World!”);javascript:document.write(“<img src=\”/img/appearances/custom.png\”>”);
anything that you can do with custom.js will be put on that page
– logo_otcs224x43.png (this is the image that appears to the left side by default)
– banner_right_ecmsuite320x43.png (this is the one that appears to the right one by default)
Now we can edit this images to whatever images we want by not changing the names. Below are the before and after screens
Appukili's Weblog 