Before you begin, make sure to check the prerequisites to Create User account and Set Access Rights.

Step 1. Launch Aspire and open the Content Source Management Page


Launch Aspire (if it's not already running). See:


Step 2. Add a new IBM Connections Content Source


To specify exactly what shared folder to crawl, we will need to create a new "Content Source".

To create a new content source:

  1. From the Content Source , click on "Add Source" button.
  2. Click on "IBM Connections Connector".

Step 2a. Specify Basic Information

In the "General" tab in the Content Source Configuration window, specify basic information for the content source:

  1. Enter a content source name in the "Name" field. 
    1. This is any useful name which you decide is a good name for the source. It will be displayed in the content source page, in error messages, etc.
  2. Click on the Scheduled pulldown list and select one of the following: Manually, PeriodicallyDaily, Weekly or Advanced.
    1. Aspire can automatically schedule content sources to be crawled on a set schedule, such as once a day, several times a week, or periodically (every N minutes or hours).For the purposes of this tutorial, you may want to select Manually and then set up a regular crawling schedule later.
  3. Click on the Action pulldown list to select one of the following: Start, StopPause, or Resume.
    1. This is the action that will be performed for that specific schedule.
  4. Click on the Crawl pulldown list and select one of the following: Incremental, FullReal Time, or Cache Groups.
    1. This will be the type of crawl to execute for that specific schedule.

After selecting a Scheduled, specify the details, if applicable:

  • Manually: No additional options.
  • Periodically: Specify the "Run every:" options by entering the number of "hours" and "minutes."
  • Daily: Specify the "Start time:" by clicking on the hours and minutes drop-down lists and selecting options.
  • Weekly: Specify the "Start time:" by clicking on the hours and minutes drop-down lists and selecting options, then clicking on the day checkboxes to specify days of the week to run the crawl.
  • Advanced: Enter a custom CRON Expression (e.g. 0 0 0 ? * *)

 

You can add more schedules by clicking in the Add New option, and rearrange the order of the schedules.


If you want to disable the content source just unselect the the "Enable" checkbox. This is useful if the folder will be under maintenance and no crawls are wanted during that period of time.


Real Time and Cache Groups crawl will be available depending of the connector.


Step 2b. Specify the Connector Information

You basically just have to fill this section

In the "Connector" tab, specify the connection information to crawl the IBM Connections.

  1. Server URL: IBM Connections Server URL to crawl.
    1. Example: https://ibm2-wserver.qa.local
  2. Username: Enter the username for the IBM Connections server.
  3. Password: Enter the password for the user provided above.
  4. Page Size: Specifies the number of entries per page to return in the crawl.
  5. Use LTPA Token for authentication:  Indicates if the connection with the IBM Connection server requires a LTAP token for authentication.
    1. Security check URL: This is the login URL for extracting the LTPA token (IBM Connections login page).
  6. Use LDAP to Extract ACLs: IBM Connections uses an specific type of ACL (<wplc:acl>4F6A3B85-BF45-40B3-89E9-932080F215D5</wplc:acl>), in order to convert this UUID value to a proper LDAP user, we need to connect to LDAP used by IBM Connections server.
    1. Ldap Cache: If we need to connect to the LDAP server, we need to configure the LDAP-Cache service from Services section (Make sure you enable Return user's GUID option).
  7. Index Specific Endpoints: Indicates if the connector will crawl all available applications (Activities, Blogs, Bookmarks, Communities, Files, Forums, etc). If is selected, the user could choose the application one by one.
  8. Work with limited internet network access: Indicates if you have limited access to your network or internet access, this will avoid errors during extracting content for unreachable items. 
    1. In order to specify the accessible servers you can add server names or patterns to match against the URL of every item. Only the ones that fulfill the criteria will perform the fetch and extract content processes, the rest of items will have only basic metadata.

 

Step 2c. Specify Workflow Information

In the "Workflow" tab, specify the workflow steps for the jobs that come out of the crawl. Drag and drop rules to determine which steps should an item follow after being crawled. This rules could be where to publish the document or transformations needed on the data before sending it to a search engine. See Workflow for more information.

  1. For the purpose of this tutorial, drag and drop the Publish To File rule found under the Publishers tab to the onPublish Workflow tree.
    1. Specify a Name and Description for the Publisher.
    2. Click Add.

After completing this steps click on the Save then Done and you'll be sent back to the Home Page.

Step 3: Initiate a Full Crawl


Now that the content source is set up, the crawl can be initiated.

  1. Click on the crawl type option to set it as "Full" (is set as "Incremental" by default and the first time it'll work like a full crawl. After the first crawl, set it to "Incremental" to crawl for any changes done in the repository).
  2. Click on the Start button.

During the Crawl

During the crawl, you can do the following:
  • Click on the "Refresh" button on the Content Sources page to view the latest status of the crawl.

    The status will show RUNNING while the crawl is going, and CRAWLED when it is finished.

  • Click on "Complete" to view the number of documents crawled so far, the number of documents submitted, and the number of documents with errors.

If there are errors, you will get a clickable "Error" flag that will take you to a detailed error message page.

 

Step 4: Initiate an Incremental Crawl

If you only want to process content updates from the IBM Connections (documents which are added, modified,  or removed), then click on the "Incremental" button instead of the "Full" button. The IBM Connections connector will automatically identify only changes which have occurred since the last crawl. There is an issue with IBM Connections REST API, because for some changes or additions in the applications like activities, forums or wikis, the rest API returns Update as an action instead of Add. So, keep that in mind when running an incremental and the connector reports an update item instead of an add item.

If this is the first time that the connector has crawled, the action of the "Incremental" button depends on the exact method of change discovery. It may perform the same action as a "Full" crawl crawling everything, or it may not crawl anything. Thereafter, the Incremental button will only crawl updates.

Statistics are reset for every crawl.