Is it necessary to setup OpenSocial component on the Domino 9.0.1 Server?

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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First off, I’m a developer so I don’t really have much knowledge regarding Domino Server or even have 1 for myself to fully play with. The only one that I usually tinker with is the one setup by the admin so that I can demo to him what he needs to configure to the production server regarding XPages and OSGi plugins. But even with that I am restricted from having full control of it. By the way, we’re using all 9.0.1 version of Notes and Domino.

What I’m currently working on is the embedded experience thing. Even after a lot of talk about it being associated with activity streams and so on, what I want is to just extend my workflow application (XPages) to allow the reviewer to approve/reject a request/application right in the email (iNotes and Notes) they received which I believe is achievable via embedded experience. Kind of like what’s already possible with classic Notes all along (buttons, embedded view etc in email for review).

I’ve read the Getting Started With Embedded Experiences https://www.ibmdw.net/social/getting-started-with-embedded-experiences/ and understand what it’s about. I’ve tried the new ‘Send Mail’ simple actions in the Domino Designer which is the easy way of sending an embedded experience email but I can never get it to appear in my emails. It always resorts to simple HTML mail.

So what I don’t understand is why it doesn’t work even though there’s no error whatsoever. I believe at the ‘Embedded Experience’ part of the ‘Send Mail’ simple actions I only need to select the ‘Format’ (I choose XML though from what I understand it doesn’t really matter which one is chosen) and the ‘HTML URL’ which I compute something like this - “http://myserver.com/mydb.nsf/myform.xsp?documentId=” + doc1.getDocument().getUniversalID(). The gadget part is left empty because I’m not planning on using gadget whatsoever.

That being said, do I need to also do the things on Enabling OpenSocial & Embedded Experiences Support on IBM Notes & Domino 9.0.x Social Edition https://www.ibmdw.net/social/documentation/enabling-opensocial-gadget-support-on-ibm-notes-and-domino-9-0/ too? I thought with the ‘Send Mail’ simple action already available in Designer 9.0, the Domino 9.0 Server should also have everything already installed to support embedded experiences?

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Subject: Short answer…yes

Yes, you must install and enable OpenSocial on the Domino server. For Notes, install the OpenSocial component, which is installed by default if the user does not change the install options.

There are several reasons why this is necessary.

In Notes gadgets that do not require authentication can be rendered locally, but gadgets that require oAuth (like IBM Connections) are rendered on the Domino server (or rather the Shindig server running in Domino). In iNotes all gadgets are rendered via Domino.

The main reason that Domino setup is required is for security. An embedded experience runs active code, JavaScript, etc, so it is very important that your administrator specifically approve any embedded experiences gadget. This prevents potentially malicious gadgets being rendered in your client. The approved gadgets are pushed to the client via policy or selected from the MyWidgets catalog by the end user.

Even if you’re only using a URL Embedded Experience, the same rules apply for the same security reasons.

To your last question, the code in Designer that allows you to create an embedded experience is separate from the Domino and Notes side code to render the embedded experience. And even if it is all installed, to make it work you need to configure the correct policies, MyWidgets catalog, etc. There is no error message, because it is not an error condition. As far as the client is concerned, it is not enabled for embedded experiences, and so it ignores the embedded experiences MIME part.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Simon