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I know there has been a short discussion about this here but I'd like to point out a specific use-case. Maybe there is other ways to accomplish this or IBM could take the use-case and evaluate if this would make a good addition to an upcoming feature release of IBM Connections:

Knowing that the Connections search engine is basically a nicely configured lucene with some seedlist agents crawling profiles, wikis, etc. makes me think it can't be too hard to do this:

Use-Case:

1.) There's an application that posts its updates to users' ActivityStream as AS entries/events (not status updates).
2.) There's OpenSocial Gadgets that make an EE (Embedded Experience) for these entries - users can work with the application directly from their ActivityStream. Makes an excellent user experience.

PROBLEM:

3.) ActivityStream entries with their fancy markup and specific EE gadget attached can't be tagged or searched. Only StatusUpdates can be searched - but these can't have fancy markup and can't have a custom EE.

As a result - there is no way for a user to find a specific work item via Connections search.

SOLUTION:

4.) Add a custom search option. The 3rd party app would have to provide an endpoint to be crawled, but that's the least.

5.) Add a way to add result categories to the Connections search result page (I mean, in addition to wikis, profiles, status updates,... etc. have e.g. 'work items').

I don't think that should be too hard to implement, but there should be an "official" or at least "tolerated" way to do that. I don't really want to dissect and reverse-engineer the lucene configuration, the search agents and search result JSPs...

What do you think - that's not really a far out use-case, is it?
Has anyone out there done anything in that direction?

Cheers.

Community
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Markus Nagel
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  • I don't think we want to try to search anything from inside the embedded experience. The content in the gadget is dynamic and nothing that is stored on the Connections server. I don't see why Connections wouldn't be able to index the content of the activity entry, although I am not sure if it does already today, sounds like from what you are saying it doesn't. OpenSocial actually allows gadgets to extend the containers search functionality via integration with Open Search. We do this in IBM Notes, however Connections does not offer this. – Ryan Baxter May 16 '13 at 23:57
  • That's sad - because that (extending the search) would exactly be what we're looking for. We're not trying to search from within an EE, but want to find the Activity Entry (or the underlying event that posted it, if we could crawl external sites) in the Connections search results. You know, we would like our users to find their Work Items along with all other Connections content on the Connections search results page. – Markus Nagel May 21 '13 at 11:18

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According to the documentation here it seems like you can search the activity stream in IBM Connections.

Ryan Baxter
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  • Hi Ryan, thanks for taking the time. Yes, you can search the ActivityStream, but still this is not included in the Connections search (oddly enough). I mean the Connections search page that lists my search results by "All / Blogs / wikis /.../Status Updates". – Markus Nagel May 21 '13 at 11:10
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    Ah so you want it to show up in the search results page in Connections as opposed to having to execute the search yourself. Let me make sure that is not how it works today. – Ryan Baxter May 21 '13 at 23:45
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    OK I confirmed that is correct, it does not appear in the search results. It is something we have on our list. – Ryan Baxter May 22 '13 at 20:47
  • Thanks, Ryan... looking forward to upcoming releases ;-) – Markus Nagel May 23 '13 at 16:20