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I am trying to connect Social Connected to Facebook using Sitecore 8's (rev 5) Social Connected functionality (we are unable to use Komfo for budget reasons) however i've had a few issues. I was following this walkthrough from the Sitecore documentation site.

I was getting this error when trying to connect a Facebook account:

"Invalid Scopes: read_stream. This message is only shown to developers. Users of your app will ignore these permissions if present. Please read the documentation for valid permissions at: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/permissions"

So I went ahead and did some reading and found this Stack Overflow question which from the information there I was able to find that the particular permissions that Sitecore is asking Facebook for are deprecated.

From there I changed the permission from publish_stream to publish_actions and was able to give Sitecore the permissions it needed in Facebook. The problem is that Sitecore wanted this to be done in the browser window it provided, and so it did not acknowledge that the permissions were set in Facebook, even though they were.

I then tried to manually add a social media account from a template, hoping to input the data it would need manually now that it had the appropriate permissions. However after doing this Sitecore then started to throw an error when adding other social media accounts:

"The Social Connected Module is not configured. There are no social networks available with applications that you can use to create an account."

Social connected is in fact configured, and before making these changes I was still able to add other social media accounts. Recreating the Applications solves this issue but puts me back at square one.

Any ideas on how we can rectify these issues would be greatly appreciated.

Community
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Tom
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  • _“The problem is that Sitecore wanted this to be done in the browser window it provided”_ – not really sure what you mean by that. // Perhaps you should rather go look/ask Sitecore for an updated version, that uses current permissions. Otherwise, there is not telling what else might go wrong later on. – CBroe Mar 30 '16 at 11:06
  • Thanks for the reply @CBroe, I meant that Sitecore provided me with a pop up with a locked link where I was supposed to allow the Facebook app permissions. Even though I granted permissions in another window Sitecore would not accept that the permissions had been granted. I have managed to get around this using Fiddler to intercept the request to Facebook, however if the client wants to add a social media account they would have to go through this same process, which is a problem. – Tom Mar 31 '16 at 02:14
  • I think modern browsers tend to “lock” the address bar of popups in certain situations, meaning they won’t allow you to change the address right there. Copy&pasting the URL from the address bar usually works though, so that you can copy it into a new tab, and modify it. – CBroe Mar 31 '16 at 15:41

2 Answers2

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I managed to get around this issue. First, in the content editor, I created a Facebook application under System/Social/Applications. Then, I created a social media account under System/Social/Accounts for LinkedIn and then duplicated it, changing the configuration to suit Facebook.

Once I did this I was able to post text posts to Facebook and Twitter. I was not able to get image posts working, and by this time, we abandoned the idea.

It's worth noting that Sitecore continued to push us toward Komfo. It's pricey and is essentially an iframe placed in the Sitecore UI with limited functionality. There are other tools out there that will give you similar analytics features for a fraction of the price.

It's also worth noting that the social connected functionality in Sitecore 8.1 appears to ask Facebook for the correct permissions, so you wont have this issue. I cannot vouch for its functionality in terms of actually posting as I haven't fully tested it.

Tom
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Fortunately, Facebook permissions are only string and you can easily modify it using reverse engineering. It was done for Sitecore 7 version, but I think same approach will work for Sitecore 8.

Also, you are able to create a ticket in Sitecore support and they will provide you hotfix for this issue.

Anton
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