To enable your users to share documents and folders with users outside of your
organization, you must configure sharing for the repository in IBM® Content Navigator.
Before you begin
This procedure applies to configuring external Share in an on-premises environment. For external
Share information in a container environment, see Optional: Configuring external share for containers.
If you are upgrading from the previous version, see Upgrading the external share feature.
Note the following requirements and constraints for configuring and using external share:
- WebSphere Application Server V9.0 is required for external share.
- Users relying on keyboard navigation are not able to use Shift + F10 to access the context menu
on Windows 10 systems. Users must navigate to the action button instead.
- External share can be used only on one FileNet P8 domain. However, multiple repositories in the
domain can be enabled for share.
- A separate IBM Content Navigator external desktop is required for each
repository that is enabled for use with the external share feature.
- The Classic user interface style is not supported for the external desktop.
- External Share is not supported for Object Stores that have the IBM Connections add-ons.
- FileNet P8 5.5.2 is required.
For more requirements, see
Sharing objects with external users.
Note: By default,
external Share requires HTTPS. To use external Share with HTTP for development or testing on a
non-production system, you can update the ESAPI Web Application Firewall Policy XML configuration,
which is located in install_dir/WEB-INF/ESAPIWafPolicy.xml. Remove the
ECM-XSRF-Token cookie under the add-secure-flag list. Make sure that this cookie is always marked as
secure in a production system.
About this task
The configuration tasks include defining a special desktop that is used by the external users to
access any shared content. After you configure the environment to support external sharing, internal
users can specify content that they want to share with external users. An email template is used to
generate a message to the external user with a link to accept the content share. The share issuer
can choose the level of access the external user has to the content, and how long the shared content
is available to the user. The external user can also see a list of all the content that has been
shared with them.
In order for a user to share an item, that user must be the owner of the item and have the Manage
Permissions privilege.
Procedure
To configure external share, complete the following steps:
-
To make IBM Content Navigator aware of the external user LDAP directory
server, add a new Configure the Connection to Your LDAP Server task in the
IBM Content Navigator Configuration Manager, and then run the new task to
configure the external LDAP.
-
Install the Share plug-in by logging in to the IBM Content Navigator
Desktop. You must have FileNet P8 domain administrator permissions to the repository.
-
Click
-
Enter the path to the plug-in. Example:
/opt/IBM/ECMClient/plugins/sharePlugin.jar
-
Load the plug-in and save your changes.
-
Specify the REST API URL.
For an on-premises environment, you can enter either an absolute or a relative URL. For the
relative URL, enter /contentapi/rest/share/v1.
-
Click the Verify button to ensure that the URL that you specified can
access the REST API.
The IBM Content Navigator URL and the REST API URL must both be either
HTTP or HTTPS.
The context root, by default, is the /contentapi folder in the IBM Content Navigator installation path.
-
In the Repositories list, click the name of the repository where you
want to enable sharing, and then click Configure Share.
-
Add the appropriate settings for the share configuration.
- External URL: The IBM Content Navigator URL that
external users access for the share desktop.
- External desktop: Provide a desktop name and ID. A new desktop is created
for you. You can also choose an existing desktop, but you must modify the desktop to remove any
functions that are not available for external users. For more information, see Configuring an external share desktop.
- Consent agreement: Optionally add the text that share recipients see when
they are invited to accept a content share. To format the message, use HTML tags in the text that
you enter.
- Default expiration: Specify the expiration options.
-
Click OK and then save the configuration.
Repositories that are configured for share display a checkmark in the listing. If you uncheck a
repository, this action does not remove the configuration for the external share capability.
Instead, it makes the Share action unavailable for users of that repository. Users who had
previously shared content from that repository can still view and monitor their shared content, and
external recipients can still access the content that was shared with them before the repository
setting was updated.