openCRX Admin Guide

Version 2.10.0

logo_openCRX

www.opencrx.org



















31-Oct-2012 @ 01:41:51 PM



Table of Contents

1 About this Book 10

1.1 Who this book is for 10

1.2 What you need to know with this book 10

1.3 Tips, Warnings, etc. 10

2 Prerequisites 11

3 Security 12

3.1 Introduction 12

3.1.1 Basic Concepts and Conventions 12

3.1.2 Permissions / Access Control 15

3.1.3 Default Principal Groups 17

3.1.4 The SQL approach to understanding security 18

3.2 Activating Security 19

3.3 Default Settings 19

3.4 Security Settings of New Objects 20

3.5 Checking Permissions 21

3.6 Login Procedure 22

3.6.1 Apache Tomcat / Application Server Login 22

3.6.2 Segment Login 22

3.6.3 Disabling Login 23

3.7 Resetting Security 23

4 Managing Users 24

4.1 Creating Users – Overview 24

4.1.1 Create Users as Segment Administrator 25

4.1.2 Import Subjects and Application Login Principals 28

4.1.3 Import Users 29

4.2 Disable/Deactivate Users 30

4.2.1 Disable Users at the level Tomcat /Application Server 30

4.2.2 Disable Users at the level openCRX 30

5 Deployment Scenarios 31

5.1 Typical Deployment Scenarios 31

5.2 Multi Entity Deployment Scenarios 33

5.2.1 Multiple Data Segments in a single DB 33

5.2.2 Multiple DBs 34

5.3 openCRX Custom Applications 34

6 Workflow Controller and Servlets 35

6.1 Workflow Controller Configuration 37

6.1.1 Startup Configuration in web.xml 37

6.1.2 ServerURL 38

6.1.3 Handler pingrate and autostart 38

6.2 Servlet IndexerServlet 39

6.3 Servlet SubscriptionHandler 39

6.4 Servlet DocumentScannerServlet 40

6.5 Servlet WorkflowHandler 41

6.6 Servlet MailImporterServlet 42

6.7 Trouble Shooting Servlets 42

7 Subscribe / Notify Services 43

7.1 Example Subscription – Account Modifications 45

7.2 Example Subscription – Activity Assignment Changes 45

7.3 Example Subscription with Filtering 46

7.4 RSS Feeds 47

7.5 Trouble Shooting Notification Services 47

8 E-mail Services 48

8.1 Install and Configure Mail Resource and E-Mail Services 49

8.1.1 Installation of JavaMail 49

8.1.2 Mail Resource for openCRX on Apache Tomcat 49

8.1.2.1 Add resource definition(s) to openejb.xml / tomee.xml 49

8.1.2.2 Mail Resource in web.xml 51

8.2 Outbound E-mail 53

8.2.1 Outbound E-mail Configuration 53

8.2.2 Outgoing E-mail's FROM value 55

8.2.3 Export E-mails 55

8.2.4 Send E-mails directly from openCRX 56

8.2.5 Send E-mails as Attachments to your Mail Client 57

8.2.6 Send E-mails to Fax-/SMS-Gateways 58

8.3 Inbound E-mail 59

8.3.1 Inbound E-mail with IMAP Adapter 59

8.3.2 Inbound E-mail with Wizard Upload E-Mail 62

8.3.3 Inbound E-mail with Wizard FetchEMail.jsp 63

8.3.4 Inbound E-mail with MailImporterServlet 65

8.4 Use openCRX as an E-mail Archive/Audit Tool 70

8.5 Trouble Shooting E-mail Services 71

9 Cloud Services 72

9.1 Directory Service / LDAP 72

9.1.1 Configuring the openCRX LDAP Port 73

9.1.2 Enabling SSL Support for LDAP 73

9.1.3 LDAP Configuration of Thunderbird 74

9.1.4 LDAP Configuration of MS Outlook 75

9.2 openCRX vcard Servlet 76

9.2.1 Account Selectors 76

9.2.1.1 Connecting MS Outlook to the openCRX vcard servlet 77

9.2.1.2 Connecting Thunderbird to the openCRX vcard servlet 77

9.3 openCRX carddav Servlet 77

9.4 Calendaring 78

9.4.1 Calendar as a Set of Activities 78

9.4.2 Calendar Selectors (ICS and CalDAV) 79

9.4.3 ActivityTracker/-Creators <username>~Private 82

9.4.4 Mapping of Activities to Calendar Events and Tasks 82

9.4.4.1 Conversions between VEVENT and VTODO 84

9.4.5 Calendaring / Free Busy 84

9.4.5.1 Free Busy Configuration of Thunderbird/Lightning 85

9.4.5.2 Free Busy Configuration of MS Outlook 86

9.4.5.3 Free Busy Information as an ICS calendar 86

9.4.6 Calendaring / iCalendar (ICS) 87

9.4.6.1 ICS Configuration of Thunderbird/Lightning and Sunbird 88

9.4.6.2 ICS Configuration of MS Outlook 88

9.4.6.3 ICS Configuration of Zimbra 89

9.4.6.4 ICS Configuration of iPhone 89

9.4.6.5 Deleting Events 91

9.4.6.6 iCalender Guard Event 91

9.4.7 Calendaring / CalDAV 92

9.4.7.1 CalDAV Collections 93

9.4.7.2 CalDAV Configuration of Thunderbird/Lightning and Sunbird 94

9.4.7.3 CalDAV Configuration of MS Outlook 94

9.4.7.4 CalDAV Configuration of iPhone (OS3.0+, iOS4+, iOS5+) 95

9.4.7.5 CalDAV Configuration of Android devices 96

9.4.7.6 Deleting Events 97

9.4.8 Calendaring / Timeline 98

9.5 Mailstore / IMAP 99

9.5.1 Configuring the openCRX IMAP Port 100

9.5.2 Configuring the IMAP Maildir Cache 101

9.5.2.1 Maildir Configuration with Apache Tomcat 101

9.5.3 Enabling SSL Support for IMAP 101

9.5.4 IMAP Configuration of Thunderbird 102

9.5.5 IMAP Configuration of MS Outlook 103

10 openCRX AirSync Server (ActiveSync compatible) 104

10.1 Configuring the AirSync Directory 104

10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects 105

10.3 A User's AirSync Profile 106

10.3.1 Creation of a User's AirSync Profile 106

10.3.2 Creating/Configuring an AirSync Calendar Feed 107

10.3.3 Creating/Configuring an AirSync Contacts Feed 107

10.3.4 Configuration of AirSync E-Mail 110

10.3.5 AirSync Security – Deleting Data on Devices 110

10.4 Connecting ActiveSync Clients to an AirSync Profile 111

10.4.1 iPhone (iOS 3.0+, iOS4.0+, iOS5+) 111

10.4.1.1 Setting up an Exchange Account on the iPhone 111

10.4.1.2 Setting up Synchronization for Contacts 113

10.4.1.3 Setting up Synchronization for Calendars 115

10.4.1.4 Setting up Synchronization for Mail 116

10.4.2 HTC Desire (Android 2.2 - Froyo) 117

10.4.2.1 Setting up an Exchange Account on the HTC Desire 117

10.4.2.2 Setting up Synchronization 119

10.4.3 Google Nexus S (Android 4.0.3 – ICS) 121

10.4.3.1 Setting up an Exchange Account on the Google Nexus S 121

11 openCRX AirSync Client (ActiveSync compatible) 124

11.1 AirSync Client Profile 125

11.1.1 Creation of an AirSync Client Profile 125

11.1.2 ActiveSync Provisioning 126

11.1.3 Synchronizing Folders 126

11.1.3.1 Prepare your MS Exchange Account 127

11.1.3.2 Retrieve Synchronizable Folders / Sync Feeds 128

11.1.3.3 Synchronization with MS Exchange Contact Folders 128

11.1.3.4 Synchronization with MS Exchange Calendar Folders 129

11.1.3.5 Synchronization with MS Exchange Task Folders 130

11.1.3.6 Synchronization with MS Exchange E-Mail Folders 131

11.1.4 Synchronizing Items 131

11.1.5 Resync – Clear all items of a feed on server 131

11.1.6 Resync – Replace all items of a feed on server 131

11.1.7 Automating Synchronization 131

12 Social Media 132

12.1 Twitter 132

12.1.1 Register with Twitter 132

12.1.2 Create Twitter Account 133

12.1.3 Using openCRX Wizards 133

12.1.4 Using the SendDirectMessageWorkflow 133

13 openCRX is a REST Service (Web Service) 134

14 Data Import/Export 135

14.1 Importing Data into openCRX 135

14.2 Importing XML Files 135

14.2.1 Importing Excel Files ( openCRX Accounts) 138

14.2.2 Importing vCard Files ( openCRX Contacts) 142

14.2.3 Importing E-Mails 142

14.2.4 Other Options 142

14.3 Exporting Data from openCRX 143

14.3.1 Exporting XML Files 143

14.3.2 Exporting Data to MS Excel / Open Office Calc Files 144

14.3.3 Exporting openCRX Contacts ( MS Excel Files) 145

14.3.4 Exporting openCRX Contacts ( vCard Files) 146

14.3.5 Exporting openCRX Meetings ( iCalendar Files) 147

14.3.6 Exporting E-Mails 148

14.3.7 Exporting openCRX Grids 148

14.3.8 Other Options 148

15 Customizing openCRX 149

15.1 Managing Locales 149

15.2 Managing Packages 150

15.2.1 Enabling/Disabling Root Menu Entries 151

15.3 Role-based GUI / GUI Permissions 152

15.3.1 Activating GUI Permissions 152

15.3.2 Managing GUI Permissions 154

15.3.2.1 Granting a role to an openCRX user 154

15.3.2.2 Revoking a role previously granted to an openCRX user 155

15.3.2.3 Enabling/Disabling GUI elements 156

15.4 Custom Layout JSPs 157

16 Integration with Office Application 158

16.1 MS Word, LibreOffice Writer, OpenOffice Writer, etc. 158

16.2 MS Excel, LibreOffice Calc, OpenOffice Calc, etc. 159

16.3 MS Outlook, Thunderbird/Lightning, Sunbird, etc. 159

17 Reporting 160

17.1 Standard Reports 160

17.2 Ad-hoc Reporting 161

17.3 Large Scale Reporting 161

18 Miscellaneous Topics 163

18.1 Configuration of AutoCompleter 163

18.2 Extended Service for openCRX/Tomcat Management 164

18.2.1 Multiple Instances of Tomcat 164

18.2.2 IMAPServer: pause / resume 164

18.2.3 WorkflowController: pause / resume 165

18.3 SNMP Monitoring (with Sun JVM) 166

18.4 Tomcat w/ openCRX and LDAP-based Authentication 167

18.5 OpenEJB / Reestablishing dropped DB Connection 168

19 Next Steps 169



List of Figures

Figure 1: Security Realms, Principals and Subjects after Initial Setup 13

Figure 2: Segment Administration 14

Figure 3: Role Drop Down with list of available Segment Login Principals 14

Figure 4: openCRX UML Model – Class Diagram SecureObject 15

Figure 5: System attributes of an openCRX object as shown in the GUI 16

Figure 6: Default Principal Groups 17

Figure 7: Table OOCKE1_SEGMENT after default installation 19

Figure 8: Table OOCKE1_SEGMENT after modification 20

Figure 9: Result of Check Permissions 21

Figure 10: Role Drop Down with list of available Segment Login Principals 22

Figure 11: New user guest – step 1 25

Figure 12: New user guest – step 2 25

Figure 13: New user guest – step 3 25

Figure 14: New user guest – step 4 26

Figure 15: New user guest – step 4 26

Figure 16: New user guest – step 5 26

Figure 17: New user guest – step 6 27

Figure 18: Operation Actions > Import Login Principals (admin-Root) 28

Figure 19: Operation Actions > Import Users (admin-Standard) 29

Figure 20: Disabling of Segment Login Principal guest by admin-Standard 30

Figure 21: 3-Tier with Apache Tomcat / OpenEJB 31

Figure 22: 4-Tier with multiple Tomcat / OpenEJB instances 31

Figure 23: 3-Tier with J2EE-compliant Application Server 31

Figure 24: 4-Tier with Clustered Application and DB Servers 32

Figure 25: Multiple Data Segments in a single DB 33

Figure 26: Dedicated DB for each Entity 34

Figure 27: Accessing the openCRX Workflow Controller 35

Figure 28: openCRX 2.10.0 Workflow Controller 35

Figure 29: Default Configuration of WorkflowController 36

Figure 30: openCRX Administration – WorkflowController 37

Figure 31: Workflow Controller Configuration – serverURL 38

Figure 32: Workflow Controller Configuration – pingrate and autostart 38

Figure 33: Default Workflow Processes created by WorkflowHandler 41

Figure 34: Event and Notification Service 43

Figure 35: Standard Topics included in the openCRX distribution 44

Figure 36: Create a new Subscription 45

Figure 37: Create a Subscription with Filters 46

Figure 38: Flow of e-mail messages between openCRX, MTA and MUA 48

Figure 39: Create a new E-Mail Account – step 1 53

Figure 40: Create a new E-Mail Account – step 2 53

Figure 41: Create a new E-Mail Account – step 3 54

Figure 42: E-mail subject prefix and Web access URL 54

Figure 43: Send E-Mail from openCRX – Overview 56

Figure 44: Send E-Mail from openCRX with Actions > Follow Up 56

Figure 45: Send E-Mail as Attachment from openCRX – Overview 57

Figure 46: Export E-Mail from openCRX with Actions > Follow Up 57

Figure 47: Import E-Mails from Mail Client 65

Figure 48: Envelope E-Mail with attached E-Mail to be imported 67

Figure 49: Activity Tracker E-Mail is created automatically 68

Figure 50: Activity Creator Default E-mail Creator 69

Figure 51: E-Mail Audit – import all inbound/outbound e-mail messages 70

Figure 52: Thunderbird LDAP Configuration 74

Figure 53: MS Outlook LDAP Configuration 75

Figure 54: openCRX Activity Groups / openCRX Activity Filters 78

Figure 55: An openCRX activity's iCal representation 83

Figure 56: An openCRX activity in the standard GUI 83

Figure 57: iCalendar conversion between VEVENT and VTODO 84

Figure 58: Configuration of Thunderbird's FreeBusy Add-on 85

Figure 59: Inviting Attendees with Thunderbird using free busy information 86

Figure 60: Timeline visualizes time-based events 98

Figure 61: Thunderbird IMAP Configuration 102

Figure 62: MS Outlook IMAP Configuration 103

Figure 63: openCRX AirSync Server – Over The Air (OTA) Synchronization 104

Figure 64: openCRX AirSync Client – backend-sync with Exchange 124

Figure 65: XML import from 3rd party system – overview 136

Figure 66: Interactive import of XML Files 136

Figure 67: Interactive import of XML Files 137

Figure 68: Import Accounts from Excel Sheet – Sample Excel Sheet 138

Figure 69: Import Accounts from Excel Sheet – Import Report 141

Figure 70: Operation vCard Import 142

Figure 71: Exporting SalesOrder as XML File 143

Figure 72: XML Exporter provides XML data file and code tables as ZIP file 143

Figure 73: Exporting SalesOrder as Spreadsheet File 144

Figure 74: Exported Spreadsheet File 145

Figure 75: Manually Export Contact as vCard 146

Figure 76: Export individual Contact as vCard with Wizard 146

Figure 77: Export multiple Contacts as vCards with Wizard 146

Figure 78: Exporting Meeting / Sales Visit as iCalendar File 147

Figure 79: Export individual Activity as iCal with Wizard 147

Figure 80: Launch Wizard User Settings 151

Figure 81: Wizard User Settings – enable/disable Root Menu Entries 151

Figure 82: RTF Document generated by merging live data with template 158

Figure 83: Contacts Export Dialog 159



List of Listings

Listing 1: File Format Subjects and Application Login Principals 28

Listing 2: Example File Subjects and Application Login Principals 28

Listing 3: File Format Users 29

Listing 4: Example File Users 29

Listing 5: web.xml – auto startup of the Workflow Controller 37

Listing 6: DocumentScannerServlet – init-param for WorkflowController 40

Listing 7: DocumentScannerServlet – Servlet Declaration 40

Listing 8: DocumentScannerServlet – Mapping 40

Listing 9: Servlets managed by Workflow Controller log to server.log 42

Listing 10: File openejb.xml/tomee.xml – mail resource outgoing mail 49

Listing 11:File openejb/tomee.xml – mail resource incoming mail POP3 50

Listing 12:File openejb/tomee.xml – mail resource incoming mail POP3S 50

Listing 13: File openejb/tomee.xml – mail resource incoming mail IMAP 50

Listing 14:File openejb/tomee.xml – mail resource incoming mail IMAPS 50

Listing 15: Uncomment mail resource definition (outgoing mail) in web.xml 51

Listing 16: add mail resource definition (incoming mail) in web.xml 51

Listing 17: add path name of MailImporterServlet to web.xml 51

Listing 18: add class name of MailImporterServlet to web.xml 52

Listing 19: add servlet mapping of MailImporterServlet to web.xml 52

Listing 20: Importing certificate into keystore cacerts 52

Listing 21: Debug Output of MailImporterServlet 68

Listing 22: Importing Certificate 71

Listing 23: init-param tags required to enable LDAP SSL 73

Listing 24: init-param tags required to enable IMAP SSL 101

Listing 25: Set org.opencrx.airsyncdir for Apache Tomcat 104

Listing 26: Apache config file httpd.conf / fronting Tomat 121

Listing 27: Importing Certificate 126

Listing 28: Locales in web.xml 149

Listing 29: Activating/Deactivating Locales in web.xml 149

Listing 30: Packages in web.xml 150

Listing 31: Activating/Deactivating Packages in web.xml 150



1 About this Book

This book describes various configuration settings and tasks that make an openCRX administrator's life easier.

openCRX is the leading enterprise-class open source CRM suite. openCRX is based on openMDX, an open source MDA framework based on the OMG's model driven architecture (MDA) standards. This guarantees total openness, standards compliance, a state-of-the-art component-based architecture, and virtually unlimited scalability.

1.1 Who this book is for

The intended audience are openCRX administrators.

1.2 What you need to know with this book

This book describes some of the settings and configurations an openCRX administrator can use to control the behavior of openCRX.

1.3 Tips, Warnings, etc.

We make use the following pictograms:

Information provided as a “Tip” might be helpful for various reasons: time savings, risk reduction, etc. - it goes without saying that we advise to follow our guides meticulously.

meticulous \muh-TIK-yuh-luhs\, adjective:
Extremely or excessively careful about details.

You should carefully read information marked with “Important”. Ignoring such information is typically not a good idea.

Warnings should not be ignored (risk of data loss, etc.).



2 Prerequisites

This guide assumes that you have access to a properly installed instance of openCRX 2.10.0 (for installation instructions, please refer to the guides available from http://www.opencrx.org/documents.htm).

You can either follow the openCRX Server Installer documentation (http://www.opencrx.org/server.htm) or you can do a manual installation of openCRX following the installation guide for TomEE.

3 Security

In this chapter we will present a high-level overview of openCRX security and discuss a few important issues.

We do not recommend learning about security with mission critical data. Backup your data before you make changes if you are not certain what the consequences are! The risk of you being locked out is real and the resources required to fix broken security settings can not be overestimated!

The default settings should work for virtually all users; the probability of getting yourself into trouble by changing default settings should not be underestimated. Read and understand at least the basics of openCRX security BEFORE you make any changes.

3.1 Introduction

3.1.1 Basic Concepts and Conventions

The following figure shows the situation after the initial setup of openCRX (assuming you installed openCRX Server or followed the installation guide for Tomat 6):

Figure 1: Security Realms, Principals and Subjects after Initial Setup

Summarizing the above:

The segment administrator (e.g. admin-Standard) creates principals and User home pages with the operation createUser():

Figure 2: Segment Administration

While each “real user” (typically) has 1 application login principal only, “real users” may have multiple segment login principals (e.g. because a “real user” is allowed to access multiple segments or because a “real user” is allowed to access a particular segment in different roles like Head of Sales or CFO).

Available segment login principals are listed in the so-called Role Drop Down:

Figure 3: Role Drop Down with list of available Segment Login Principals

3.1.2 Permissions / Access Control

The openCRX security framework makes a clear distinction between Ownership Permissions (permissions granted on a particular object) and Model Permissions (permissions granted on a particular model element). As the latter are not implemented (yet) we only talk about Ownership Permissions in this guide.

Ownership permissions are used to control browse/delete/update access to openCRX objects by Users and UserGroups (i.e. Ownership access control). Every openCRX object is a SecureObject. The following figure shows an extract from the UML model (if you are interested in all the details and the formally correct and complete specifications you should refer to the latest openCRX UML models):

Figure 4: openCRX UML Model – Class Diagram SecureObject

If you see N/P in a reference field instead of a more meaningful value you probably do not have browse access to the respective object (N/P stands for No Permission)

If you see N/A in a reference field instead of a more meaningful value the object cannot be retrieved (N/A stands for Not Available); maybe the object was deleted or the respective provider is not accessible/available.

The most important security attributes of an object X are discussed below:

Figure 5: System attributes of an openCRX object as shown in the GUI

The following access levels are available to control which users/user groups are granted permission to browse/delete/update a particular object X:

Access Level

Meaning

0 – N/A

no access

1 – private

access is granted if the user is owning user of object X

2 – basic

access is granted if at least one of the following conditions is true:

(a) the user is owning user of object X

(b) the user is member of any of the owning groups of object X

(c) any of the owning groups of object X is a subgroup** of any group the user is member of

3 – deep

access is granted if at least one of the following conditions is true:

(a) the user is owning user of object X

(b) the user is member of any of the owning groups of object X

(c) any of the owning groups of object X is a subgroup** of any group the user is member of

(d) any of the owning groups of object X is a subgroup** of any supergroup* of any group the user is member of

4 – global

all users are granted access

* Owning group Gsuper is a supergroup of an owning group G if every user who is member of G is also member of Gsuper

** Owning group Gsub is a subgroup of an owning group G if every user who is member of Gsub is also member of G



3.1.3 Default Principal Groups

The figure on the right shows the openCRX default principal groups and their memberships:

  • Unassigned

  • Public

  • Administrators

  • Users

  • Unspecified

Figure 6: Default Principal Groups



3.1.4 The SQL approach to understanding security

If you are familiar with SQL, the following approach to understanding security might be helpful. Let's put ourselves into the role of the AccessControl Plugin; accessing an object (read mode) results in a SELECT statement as follows:

SELECT * FROM T WHERE owner IN (p1, p2, ....)

Access Level

Set P = {p1, p2, ...}

0 – N/A

P = {}

1 – private

P = Pp

where

Pp = {all groups directly assigned to the principal p}

2 – basic

P = Pp + Pupper

where

Pp = {all groups directly assigned to the principal p}

Pupper = {all groups that contain at least one group contained in Pp}

3 – deep

P = Pp + Pupper + Plower

where

Pp = {all groups directly assigned to the principal p}

Pupper = {all groups that contain at least one group contained in Pp}

Plower = {all groups contained in Pupper}

4 – global

the where-clause “WHERE owner IN (p1, p2, ....)” is not required, i.e. the SELECT statement reduces to

SELECT * FROM T



You can mark PrincipalGroups as “Base group” to better control the inclusion of PrincipalGroups with Access Level 3.

3.2 Activating Security

Security (including Access Control) is not just a fancy add-on, rather it is an integral part of openCRX; openCRX Access Control is always activated.

The openCRX security provider manages all security data and provides access control services for all requests through the openCRX API. Hence, you can rely on openCRX access control even if you write you own clients or adapters for openCRX.

The only “hardening” you might want to do is the one described in the following chapter: set browse access level to 3 for non-Root segments.

3.3 Default Settings

Default access level settings for non-Root segments (e.g. segment Standard) after a clean install are as follows:

Browse Access Level:

4 – global

Update Access Level:

3 – deep

Delete Access Level:

1 – private



Figure 7: Table OOCKE1_SEGMENT after default installation

Due to the setting access_level_browse = 4 (global) any user with access to a particular segment is allowed to browse top level objects (i.e. any user can browse all accounts, all activities, all documents, etc.).

These default settings are suitable for test environments and deployments in smaller companies/teams with a generous access policy; for most real-world applications, however, it is more appropriate to set access_level_browse = 3 (deep) for non-Root segments. You can do this by changing the values in the column access_level_browse from 4 to 3 (table OOCKE1_SEGMENT).

After this change, the table OOCKE1_SEGMENT will look as follows:

Figure 8: Table OOCKE1_SEGMENT after modification

Segment security settings are loaded during the initialization of the openCRX servlet. Hence, if you change settings you must redeploy openCRX for the new settings to become active.

3.4 Security Settings of New Objects

New objects are by default created with the following security settings:

Browse Access Level:

3 – deep

Update Access Level:

2 – basic

Delete Access Level:

2 – basic

Access Granted by Parent

in general: Parent object as modeled

exceptions: there are some select exceptions, but they are all pre-configured

Owning User:

User who is creating the object

Owning Groups:

Primary User Group of the user who is creating the object and (meaning as well as) Owning Group(s) of the parent object of the new object (except Users, see below).

Please note that the User Group Users (e.g. Standard\\Users) is not added to the list of Owning Groups of newly created objects unless the creating user's Primary User Group is equal to Users.

By default, a user's primary user group is <user>.Group. This group is created automatically when the segment administrator runs the wizard User Settings from a user's homepage (see chapter 4.1 Creating Users – Overview).

Please note that a User's Primary User Group can be set by the segment administrator with the operation Create User . To change an existing user's primary group, the segment administrator simply executes the operation Create User again with a new parameter for primary user group.

In the context of activity management there are various operations that set/change the Owning Groups of objects based on the settings of an assigned Activity Creator or assigned Activity Group and not based on the settings of the user who executes the operation.

3.5 Checking Permissions

You can check security permissions on any SecureObject with the operation Security > Check Permissions. Provide the principal name as a parameter. The following figure shows the result of the operation on a user's homeage:

Figure 9: Result of Check Permissions

The meaning of the above result is as follows:

Has read permission:

principal can browse this object

principal cannot browse this object

Has update permission:

principal can modify/update this object

principal cannot modify/update this object

Has delete permission:

principal can delete this object

principal cannot delete this object

Membership for read:

principal has read permission if the intersection of the resulting list of groups and the list of owning groups of the respective SecureObject is not empty

Membership for update:

principal has modify/update permission if the intersection of the resulting list of groups and the list of owning groups of the respective SecureObject is not empty

Membership for delete:

principal has delete permission if the intersection of the resulting list of groups and the list of owning groups of the respective SecureObject is not empty



3.6 Login Procedure

The openCRX login procedure consists of 2 levels:

3.6.1 Apache Tomcat / Application Server Login

The Apache Tomcat / application server login procedure depends on various parameters:

Please note that even though openCRX might be involved in managing some of the above-mentioned realms (e.g. DB-based realm) the login procedure is not really under control of openCRX. As a consequence, many login problems are related to incomplete/faulty configuration settings of the servlet container.

Detailed documentation about the many Realms supported by Apache Tomcat is available at http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/realm-howto.html

3.6.2 Segment Login

Access to segments is managed/controlled by the ObjectInspectorServlet. The included DefaultRoleMapper identifies all Segment Login Principals of a given Subject and grants access to the respective segments through the Role Drop Down:

Figure 10: Role Drop Down with list of available Segment Login Principals

It is possible to deploy user-specific implementations of the DefaultRoleMapper so that you can adapt the segment login procedure to your requirements.

3.6.3 Disabling Login

Please refer to the chapter “Disable/Deactivate Users”.

3.7 Resetting Security

If you get the setting of Update Access Level wrong you may not be able to change the respective object from the GUI anymore (and that includes the security settings of that object!). For example, the only way to recover from setting Update Access Level to 0 – N/A for a particular object is to edit the data directly in the database!

It is simply not possible to disable openCRX Security.



If you (or one of your users) managed to screw up the security settings in a major way you might be forced to reset all security settings to a well-defined state. Not an easy task – and it typically involves a lot of manual work.



Educate your users about openCRX security. You might also consider disabling some of the more powerful operations and/or security attributes in the default GUI.

4 Managing Users



Read through the chapter Basic Concepts and Conventions (Security) before reading this chapter. It is quite helpful to have a good understanding of the terms Subject, Application Login Principal, Segment Login Principal, User, etc. before you start reading here.

4.1 Creating Users – Overview

Even though you can create users with a variety of methods, “behind the scenes” the following steps are always required to create a new openCRX user:

Who

Steps

Root administrator
admin-Root

  • create a new Subject

    • set the qualifier to the desired login id

  • create a new Principal in the realm Default
    (--> Application Login Principal)

    • set the qualifier to the desired login id

    • link this Principal to the Subject created in the previous step

    • make this Principal member of the appropriate Principal Group(s), e.g. Users

Segment administrator
admin-<SegmentName>

  • create a new Contact

  • create a new User

    • link this new User to the Contact created in the previous step

    • the Segment Login Principal is created automatically

    • the userhome is created automatically

  • run the wizard Edit > User Settings from the new user's homepage

Depending on how you create a new user, some of the above steps might be taken care of by a wizard. If you want to have full control over the user creation process, however, then you can certainly create new users following the above instructions step by step.

Have a look at Figure 1: Security Realms, Principals and Subjects after Initial Setup and Figure 2: Segment Administration to see how this all fits together.

4.1.1 Create Users as Segment Administrator

The Segment administrator can create new users with the following steps:

Figure 11: New user guest – step 1

Figure 12: New user guest – step 2

Figure 13: New user guest – step 3

Figure 14: New user guest – step 4

Figure 15: New user guest – step 4

Figure 16: New user guest – step 5



Figure 17: New user guest – step 6

4.1.2 Import Subjects and Application Login Principals

Creating large numbers of subjects/principals by hand can be quite a tedious job. If you prepare a text file containing the appropriate information in the file format as outlined below, the Root administrator (admin-Root) can use the operation Actions > Import Login Principals to create Subjects and Application Login Principals automatically.

Figure 18: Operation Actions > Import Login Principals (admin-Root)

Listing 1: File Format Subjects and Application Login Principals

Subject;<subject name>;<subject description>

Principal;<principal name>;<principal description>;<subject name>;<groups>





Listing 2: Example File Subjects and Application Login Principals

Subject;joe;Doe, Joe
Subject;mark;Ferguson, Mark
Subject;peter;Lagerfeld, Peter
Principal;joe;Doe, Joe;joe;Users,Administrators
Principal;mark;Ferguson, Mark;mark;Users
Principal;peter;Lagerfeld, Peter;peter;Users



4.1.3 Import Users

Similarly to importing Subjects and Application Login Principals from a file you can also import Users from a file. If you prepare a text file containing the appropriate information in the file format as outlined below, the Segment administrator (admin-<SegmentName>) can use the operation Actions > Import Users to create Users automatically.

Figure 19: Operation Actions > Import Users (admin-Standard)

Listing 3: File Format Users

User;<principal>;<account alias>;<account full name>;<primary group>;<password>[;group [, group] ]


Parameter

Description

<principal>

required, name of principal

<account alias>

at least one value per user must be provided, i.e. either the alias name of the contact, or then the full name

<account full name>

<primary group>

optional, default is <principal>.Group

<password>

required, clear text value

group

optional, the user is made a member of each provided principal group

Please note that a “-” value (a dash without the quotes) means empty in the context of a user file. Example: if you don't want to explicitly define a primary group, you can just put a dash and the importer will create the default primary group <principal>.Group for the respective user.

Listing 4: Example File Users

User;joe;JD;Doe, Joe;Users;2%jOd.IT;MGMT,SALES
User;mark;Fergi;Ferguson, Mark;Users;maFe&.3-;MGMT
User;peter;-;Lagerfeld, Peter;-;PlF*;ReGaL;SALES


Contacts are not created automatically; existing Contacts are first searched by <account alias>. If no matching account alias is found, Contacts are search by <account full name>. If still no matching account is found, the UserHome is not created.

Users are only imported/created if the referenced Principals exist.



4.2 Disable/Deactivate Users

There are various ways of disabling/deactivating users. To fully understand your options it is helpful if you are familiar with the openCRX Login Procedure.

4.2.1 Disable Users at the level Tomcat /Application Server

Depending on the configuration of your application server you can disable users at that level. For example, if you rely on file-based realms, you can simply remove users from the file tomcat-users.xml (with Apache Tomcat) or users.properties (with JBoss) to prevent access to openCRX. If you block access at the level Tomcat / application server such users are locked out from accessing any application and any openCRX segment. However, as the servlet container's login procedure is not entirely controlled by openCRX you might have to consult the documentation of your respective servlet container (e.g. Tomcat or JBoss) or ask your administrator for details.

4.2.2 Disable Users at the level openCRX

The segment administrator (e.g. admin-Standard) can prevent a user from accessing a particular openCRX segment by either disabling the respective Segment Login Principal or by deleting it altogether. Disabling is the preferred option to prevent access temporarily. If a user has multiple Segment Login Principals you must disable all of them to prevent access to the openCRX application.

Figure 20: Disabling of Segment Login Principal guest by admin-Standard


You should not delete a particular Subject as long as it is referenced by any Principal. Otherwise you'll end up with “dangling” Subject references.


5 Deployment Scenarios

openCRX supports a multitude of deployment scenarios.

5.1 Typical Deployment Scenarios

The following table lists some of the pros and cons of the most common openCRX deployment scenarios. Please note that the list is by no means complete:

3-Tier with Tomcat/OpenEJB

Figure 21: 3-Tier with Apache Tomcat / OpenEJB

  • Tomcat engine extended by openEJB (lightweight EJB 3.0 implementation) so that EARs with EJBs and WARs can be deployed

  • simple setup and manage­ment (Server Installer)

  • limited scalability and availability (no clustering)

  • highest performing 3-Tier deployment with full transaction service



4-Tier with Tomcat/OpenEJB

Figure 22: 4-Tier with multiple Tomcat / OpenEJB instances

  • Multiple Tomcat engines extended by OpenEJB and fronted by load balancer (subsequent session requests are sent to the same Tomcat instance)

  • database cluster

  • good scalability and avail­ability

  • high performance 4-Tier deployment with full transaction service



3-Tier with AppServer

Figure 23: 3-Tier with J2EE-compliant Application Server

  • J2EE-compliant Application Server (JBoss is supported out of the box)

  • simple setup and manage­ment (one application server)

  • limited scalability and avail­ability (no clustering)

  • Transaction Service



4-Tier with Clusters

Figure 24: 4-Tier with Clustered Application and DB Servers

  • demanding setup (four and more application servers)

  • multiple security zones for highest security (Internet, DMZ, Intranet)

  • maximum availability

  • fully fault tolerant

  • unlimited scalability

  • Transaction Service



5.2 Multi Entity Deployment Scenarios

The open source MDA platform openMDX supports a multitude of deployment scenarios and persistency configurations. The most common multi entity deployment scenarios are discussed in the following sections.

5.2.1 Multiple Data Segments in a single DB

The setup “Multiple Data Segments in a single DB” provides adequate security for many use cases and is relatively easy to manage. As all the data is stored in a single database, however, security configuration mistakes (e.g. principals linked to the wrong subject, etc.) might lead to situations where a user is granted access to the data of a particular company/client that should not be accessible (please note that human error is the real root cause here, not a malfunction of openCRX). Furthermore, this setup is not recommended if users can get direct access to the database, e.g. with third party reporting tools as those tools typically bypass the openCRX API (and hence openCRX security)!

Figure 25: Multiple Data Segments in a single DB

Detailed instructions on how you can create and configure new segments are provided in the installation guide for Tomat 6.

5.2.2 Multiple DBs

The highest level of security is provided by setting up a dedicated database for each entity so that data sets of the various entities are physically separated:

Figure 26: Dedicated DB for each Entity

5.3 openCRX Custom Applications

Information about openCRX custom projects is available from the openCRX wiki, e.g. http://sourceforge.net/p/opencrx/wiki/Sdk210.CustomProject/

6 Workflow Controller and Servlets

With the Workflow Controller the openCRX Root administrator (admin-Root) can enable/disable various servlets (configured in web.xml) included in the openCRX distribution. This chapter gives an overview over the currently available servlets and explains how to start/stop them.

You can access the Workflow Controller by navigating to the URL

http://127.0.0.1:8080/opencrx-core-CRX/WorkflowController

or starting the Workflow Controller Wizard as shown in the figure below:

Figure 27: Accessing the openCRX Workflow Controller

You should connect to the Workflow Controller with http. If you use SSL-secured connections to start/stop servlets you must ensure that your server's certificate is available in cacerts.

The following figure shows the Workflow Controller of openCRX 2.10.0:

Figure 28: openCRX 2.10.0 Workflow Controller

Please note that access is granted to the openCRX Root administrator (admin-Root) only. Hence, if you see the openCRX login screen instead of the Workflow Controller you must first login as Root administrator. Also, ensure that openCRX is properly initialized before you connect to the Workflow Controller.

The first time the Workflow Controller is started it will create a default configuration:



Figure 29: Default Configuration of WorkflowController

If you ever need to recreate this default configuration, you can do so with the following steps:

  • stop the WorkflowController

  • delete the Configuration with the name WorkflowController

  • start the WorkflowController



You can manually start (stop) servlets that are managed by the Workflow Controller by clicking on “Turn On” (“Turn Off”). Please note that you can control servlets of each segment individually. For example, if you created a segment “OtherSegment” in addition to the segment “Standard” you can start/stop servlets of the segment “OtherSegment” without interfering with the servlets of the segment “Standard”.

6.1 Workflow Controller Configuration

In addition to configuring the Startup option of the Workflow Controller you can also configure various options related to the servlets managed by the Workflow Controller. The configuration of the Workflow Controller is available to the openCRX Root administrator (admin-Root) by navigating to the tab [Administration] and then clicking on the icon of the WorkflowController:

Figure 30: openCRX Administration – WorkflowController

In case you create the WorkflowController configuration manually, please note that both name and qualifier are equal to the string WorkflowController.

6.1.1 Startup Configuration in web.xml

You can start the Workflow Controller manually by navigating to the URL

http://127.0.0.1:8080/opencrx-core-CRX/WorkflowController

or starting the Workflow Controller Wizard. However, it is also possible to start the Workflow Controller automatically by activating the corresponding option in the file web.xml:

Listing 5: web.xml – auto startup of the Workflow Controller

<!-- WorkflowController -->
<servlet id="WorkflowController">
  <servlet-name>WorkflowController</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>org.opencrx.kernel.workflow.servlet.WorkflowControllerServlet</servlet-class>
  ...
  <!-- activate if WorkflowController should be initialized at startup-->
  
<load-on-startup>10</load-on-startup>
</servlet>


With the value of load-on-startup (10 above) you can control the order of starting up servlets in case there is more than one servlet.

6.1.2 ServerURL

Adapt the value of serverURL to your environment:

Figure 31: Workflow Controller Configuration – serverURL

6.1.3 Handler pingrate and autostart

Use pingrate to define the interval (in minutes) between successive calls of the respective handler and autostart (true/false):

Figure 32: Workflow Controller Configuration – pingrate and autostart

6.2 Servlet IndexerServlet

The openCRX IndexerServlet updates index entries (used for keyword/index based search) by indexing all objects which do not have an IndexEntry newer than the modification date of the object. The IndexerServlet creates an index by invoking the operation updateIndex() on the object to be indexed.

Please note that indexing can put some heavy load on your database server. Hence, you might consider turning off (or at least lowering the frequency of calling) the IndexerServlet during busy hours.

If you are looking for a way to define advanced schedules for calling the openCRX indexer you might consider cURL in combination with a scheduler provided by your operating system (e.g. Scheduled Tasks on Windows, cron on Linux).

With curl, calling the indexer boils down to calling curl with the appropriate URL as a parameter. The following example shows how to call the indexer for the provider CRX and the segment Standard:

curl "http://localhost:8080/opencrx-core-CRX/IndexerServlet/execute?provider=CRX&segment=Standard"




6.3 Servlet SubscriptionHandler

The openCRX SubscriptionHandler is the backbone of the openCRX Subscribe / Notify Services. The Subscription Handler does not require any configuration by the openCRX administrator other than setting the pingrate and autostart options, i.e. it is designed to work “out of the box”.

Turning on the SubscriptionHandler of a particular segment is required if you want that segment to provide Alerts, E-mail Notifications, witter Updates (see chapter 12.1 Twitter) and XMPP (Jabber) Messages to its Users. The polling frequency can be set by the Root administrator (see Figure 32: Workflow Controller Configuration – pingrate and autostart).

The SubscriptionHandler checks openCRX audit entries on a regular basis and – if matching Subscriptions exist – executes the Workflow Process referenced by the Subscription using Userhome.executeWorkflow().



Userhome.executeWorkflow() – implemented by the openCRX plugin – creates an entry in Userhome.wfProcessInstance (accessible through the grid Workflow Process Instances). Synchronous workflows are executed immediately, asynchronous workflows are left alone (the Servlet WorkflowHandler is specialized in dealing with asynchronous workflows – see below for details).



6.4 Servlet DocumentScannerServlet

The DocumentScannerServlet scans a file system directory and its subdirs for files and maps them to openCRX Documents and DocumentFolders. The DocumentScannerServlet is configured in the file web.xml as follows:

Listing 6: DocumentScannerServlet – init-param for WorkflowController

...
<!-- init-param for WorkflowController -->
<init-param>
  <param-name>path[3]</param-name>
  <param-value>/DocumentScannerServlet</param-value>
</init-param>
...

Listing 7: DocumentScannerServlet – Servlet Declaration

...
<!-- DocumentScannerServlet -->
  <servlet id="DocumentScannerServlet">
  <servlet-name>DocumentScannerServlet</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>org.opencrx.application.document.DocumentScannerServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
...

Listing 8: DocumentScannerServlet – Mapping

...
<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>DocumentScannerServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/DocumentScannerServlet/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
...



The servlet can be configured as admin-Root by adding entries to the WorkflowControll configuration (see chapter 6.1 Workflow Controller Configuration). The following options are supported:

All options are multi-valued, i.e. can optionally have an index suffix [0]..[9]. All options must be prefixed with {Provider name}.{Segment name}., e.g. CRX.Standard.scanDir or MyProvider.MySegment.urlPrefix.

The openCRX administrator can set the pingrate and autostart options; alternatively, you can call it servlet with cron/cUrl.


6.5 Servlet WorkflowHandler

The openCRX WorkflowHandler is responsible for executing WfProcessInstances based on asynchronous WfProcesses like:

The execution frequency can be set by the Root administrator (see Figure 32: Workflow Controller Configuration – pingrate and autostart).

Please note that the WorkflowHandler is required for outbound E-Mail Services.



The WorkflowHandler executes Workflow Process Instances that have not been executed yet.

The first time the WorkflowHandler is started it will create various default Workflow Processes:

Figure 33: Default Workflow Processes created by WorkflowHandler

If you ever need to recreate these default Workflow Processes, you can do so with the following steps:

  • stop the Servlet WorkflowHandler

  • delete the Workflow Processes that were originally created by the WorkflowHandler (or at least the ones that still exist)

  • start the Servlet WorkflowHandler

All WfProcesses with undefined/unknown runtime length should be defined as asynchronous. This is particularly true for WfProcesses that might block. The default setup ensures that blocking WfProcesses cannot block openCRX.


6.6 Servlet MailImporterServlet

A sample configuration (which you need to adapt to you own environment) of the MailImporterServlet is contained in
TOMCAT_HOME/apps/opencrx-core-CRX/opencrx-core-CRX/WEB-INF/web.xml

You also need a ComponentConfiguration named MailImporterServlet. The following configuration options (String Properties) are supported:

A sample ComponentConfiguration looks as follows:

Name

Description

String value

CRX.Standard.mailServiceName

Mail service name in web.xml

/mail/provider/CRX

CRX.Standard.deleteImportedMessages

Delete imported messages

false

CRX.Standard.mailbox

Mailbox name

INBOX



To activate the servlet, you also need to add the relevant entries to the WorkflowController (see chapter 6.1 Workflow Controller Configuration).

6.7 Trouble Shooting Servlets

All the openCRX servlets controlled by the Workflow Controller log their actions to the server log file (e.g. TOMCAT_HOME\log\catalina.<date>.log). The following log file extract shows, for example, that the three Servlets Indexer­Servlet, SubscriptionHandler, and WorkflowHandler seem to be working fine:

Listing 9: Servlets managed by Workflow Controller log to server.log

20:25:18,388 INFO [STDOUT] Tue Mar 04 20:25:18 CET 2008: Indexer CRX/Standard
20:27:18,400 INFO [STDOUT] Tue Mar 04 20:27:18 CET 2008: SubscriptionHandler CRX/Standard
20:27:18,400 INFO [STDOUT] Tue Mar 04 20:27:18 CET 2008: WorkflowHandler CRX/Standard

openCRX Exceptions (like NullPointers, etc.), however, are still logged to the application log file as configured during the installation.

It is always worth checking whether the Workflow Handlers actually are active; they must be started by the Root administrator. You can find out by connecting to the Workflow Controller (see Figure 28: openCRX 2.10.0 Workflow Controller).

After restarting the application server all servlets managed by the WorkflowController are inactive, i.e. the Root Administrator must explicitly turn them on again (if desired) unless the respective servlet's autostart option is set to true in the WorkflowController's configuration and the WorkflowController's Startup option is set to true in the file web.xml. The servlets do not automatically resume the state they were in before the application server was shut down.

7 Subscribe / Notify Services

openCRX features a powerful event subscription and notification service:

Figure 34: Event and Notification Service

Once a topic is created, openCRX users can subscribe to it. Users manage their subscriptions individually on their UserHomes (with the Wizard UserSettings or by editing their subscriptions manually). If a topic has subscribed users and a monitored event occurs then the predefined actions are performed. If the action is set to – for example – creating an alert for subscribed users, then each subscribed user will receive an alert on the UserHome.

Please note that event and notification services depend on the Servlet SubscriptionHandler, i.e. you must turn on the openCRX Subscription Handler for the respective segment with the Workflow Controller, otherwise Topic Actions are not executed, i.e. no Alerts will be created and E mail Notifications will not be delivered.

Furthermore, outbound E-Mail Services must be configured (see chapter 8.1 Install and Configure Mail Resource and E-Mail Services) and you must activate the Workflow Handler (see chapter 6.5 Servlet WorkflowHandler) to receive E-Mail Notifications.

The openCRX distribution includes quite a few default topics (see Figure 35: Standard Topics included in the openCRX distribution) to get you started:

Please note that newly created Segments do neither contain Workflow Processes nor Topics (i.e. the respective grids are empty). Both Workflow Processes and Topics can be created by the segment administrator with the wizard Segment Setup.



Figure 35: Standard Topics included in the openCRX distribution

Users can easily custom-tailor their subscriptions with filters and by selecting event types like Object Creation, Object Replacement, and Object Removal.

7.1 Example Subscription – Account Modifications

In this example we will create a subscription to the standard Topic Account Modifications for the user “guest”.

Figure 36: Create a new Subscription

Please note that the Root administrator must start the Subscription Handler – otherwise you will not get any Alerts/Notifications.



7.2 Example Subscription – Activity Assignment Changes

With the following steps you can create a subscription to activity assignment changes:

To locate the identity of a user's homepage, you can navigate to the respective homepage and inspect the tab [System]. The pattern is as follows:

xri://@openmdx*org.opencrx.kernel.home1/provider/<providerName>/segment/<SegmentName>/userHome/<principal>
e.g. xri://@openmdx*org.opencrx.kernel.home1/provider/CRX/segment/Standard/userHome/guest





7.3 Example Subscription with Filtering

In combination with openCRX security the subscription filter feature enables you to provide highly specific subscriptions. Imagine the following situation: there are 2 Activity Trackers DivisionA:ProjectX and DivisionA:ProjectY and some of your users are interested in receiving notifications related to activities of ProjectX only, whereas some users want to receive notifications related to activities of ProjectY only. A third group of users wants to receive notifications from both projects. Such a situation could be handled as follows:

Figure 37: Create a Subscription with Filters

Enter the name of the attribute (owner in our example) into the name field and then enter the value(s) to match into the value field (in our case Standard:DivisionA.ProjectX and Standard:DivisionA.ProjectY)

Multiple values of a named filter are combined with OR.

Multiple named filters are combined with AND.





7.4 RSS Feeds

New alerts are also available as RSS feeds. Users can subscribe to their news feed directly from their homepage:

7.5 Trouble Shooting Notification Services

The following table lists some of the common issues and how to fix them:

Problem

Solution

The grids Workflow Processes and/or Topics are empty.

  • verify that the Segment Administrator created Workflow Processes and Topics with the wizard Segment Setup

  • click the filter button to see all rows without filtering (maybe you defined a default filter in the past?)

I started the Subscription Handler but I never receive any Alerts / Notifications

  • verify that you started the correct Subscription Handler (each segment has its own Subscription Handler)

  • in case you upgraded to a new version of openCRX and forgot to delete Workflows and Topics provided by openCRX, stop the Subscription Handler, delete Workflow Processes and Topics, recreate Workflow Processes and Topics with the wizard Segment Setup, and then start the Subscription Handler again

  • check the openCRX log files to find out whether bad/corrupt data might be causing problems (e.g. NullPointer Exception during Workflow execution)

I receive Alerts triggered by my Subscriptions but no Notification E mails

  • verify that JavaMail is properly installed and the mail service properly configured (see chapter 8.1 Install and Configure Mail Resource and E-Mail Services for more information)

  • verify your e-mail settings (see E-mail Services)

  • verify that the Servlet WorkflowHandler of the respective segment is actually turned on



8 E-mail Services

Please note that we have no intention to duplicate mail server (MTA) or mail client (MUA) functionality in openCRX as there are lots of excellent products available (Open Source and commercial). It is our goal, however, that openCRX integrates with all the major products that adhere to the major standards and support standard protocols like SMTP, POP3, IMAP, etc. This ensures that you can continue to use your favorite mail server (qmail, postfix, Zimbra, etc.) and your favorite mail client (Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.).

Installation of JavaMail is required if you want to make use of E-mail Services (see chapter 8.1.1 Installation of JavaMail).

The following figure shows the possible flows of mail messages between openCRX, mail server, and mail client as it is supported with openCRX 2.10.0:

Figure 38: Flow of e-mail messages between openCRX, MTA and MUA

In this chapter we will first guide you through the required installation and configuration steps before we discuss various important use cases.

8.1 Install and Configure Mail Resource and E-Mail Services

The following chapters explain how to install JavaMail and how to configure the Java mail service and various in- and outbound E mail services.

Please note that E-Mail Services depend on JavaMail (i.e. JavaMail must be installed) and outbound E-Mail Services depend on the Servlet WorkflowHandler of the respective segment being turned on.

8.1.1 Installation of JavaMail

Detailed installation instructions are provided at the JavaMail home:

http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/FAQ.html

And here is the short version:

8.1.2 Mail Resource for openCRX on Apache Tomcat

8.1.2.1 Add resource definition(s) to openejb.xml / tomee.xml

Open the file TOMCAT_HOME\conf\openejb.xml (with TomEE v1.0 it is called tomee.xml) and add (or modify) the mail resource definition. Typically you would add one (smtp) mail resource definition per provider for outgoing mail and one mail resource definition for each segment that requires the MailImporterServlet. Below are some sample files which you can use as a starting point (adapt the highlighted strings to your own environment):

Listing 10: File openejb.xml/tomee.xml – mail resource outgoing mail

...
<Resource id="mail/provider/CRX" type="javax.mail.Session">
  mail.transport.protocol smtp
  mail.smtp.user crx_mail_user
  mail.smtp.password crx_mail_user_password
  mail.smtp.starttls.enable true
  mail.smtp.ssl.trust *
  mail.smtp.auth true
  mail.smtp.host mail_server_name_or_ip_address
  mail.smtp.port 25
  mail.from noreply@opencrx.org
  mail.debug true
</Resource>
...


Please note that the above mail resource definition for provider “CRX” will apply to all segments (including “Standard”) of that provider.

Make sure that you set mail.from to a reasonable value as this value might be used in outgoing mails (see also chapter 8.2.2 Outgoing E-mail's FROM value).

If you set the option mail.smtp.ssl.trust to “*” then any smtp server will be trusted, even if you didn't import its certificate into your keystore. It is probably a good idea to replace * with the name of your mail server, e.g. mysmtp.mydomain.com.


The following mail resource definitions apply to the segment “Standard” (of the provider “CRX”) and show default configurations for the various mail protocols supported by mail.jar (pop3, pop3s, imap and imaps):

Listing 11:File openejb/tomee.xml – mail resource incoming mail POP3

<Resource id="mail/CRX_Standard" type="javax.mail.Session">
  mail.store.protocol pop3
  mail.pop3s.host mail_server_name_or_ip_address
  mail.pop3s.port 110
  mail.pop3s.auth true
  mail.pop3s.user crx_mail_user
  mail.pop3s.password crx_mail_user_password
  mail.debug true
</Resource>



Listing 12:File openejb/tomee.xml – mail resource incoming mail POP3S

<Resource id="mail/CRX_Standard" type="javax.mail.Session">
  mail.store.protocol pop3s
  mail.pop3s.host mail_server_name_or_ip_address
  mail.pop3s.port 995
  mail.pop3s.auth true
  mail.pop3s.user crx_mail_user
  mail.pop3s.password crx_mail_user_password
  mail.debug true
</Resource>



Listing 13: File openejb/tomee.xml – mail resource incoming mail IMAP

<Resource id="mail/CRX_Standard" type="javax.mail.Session">
  mail.store.protocol imap
  mail.pop3s.host mail_server_name_or_ip_address
  mail.pop3s.port 143
  mail.pop3s.auth true
  mail.pop3s.user crx_mail_user
  mail.pop3s.password crx_mail_user_password
  mail.debug true
</Resource>



Listing 14:File openejb/tomee.xml – mail resource incoming mail IMAPS

<Resource id="mail/CRX_Standard" type="javax.mail.Session">
  mail.store.protocol imaps
  mail.pop3s.host mail_server_name_or_ip_address
  mail.pop3s.port 993
  mail.pop3s.auth true
  mail.pop3s.user crx_mail_user
  mail.pop3s.password crx_mail_user_password
  mail.debug true
</Resource>



Additional information about configuration options of JavaMail is available from the JavaMail home: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/faq-135477.html

8.1.2.2 Mail Resource in web.xml

In the file web.xml in the directory <Tomcat Install Dir>\apps\opencrx-core-CRX\opencrx-core-CRX\WEB-INF you must uncomment the following section to activate outgoing mail:

Listing 15: Uncomment mail resource definition (outgoing mail) in web.xml

...
<!-- Wizards, Workflows (e.g. MailWorkflow), etc. can use mail resources.
     Configure a mail resource for each used mail resource.
-->
<resource-ref id="mail_opencrx_CRX">
  <res-ref-name>mail/provider/CRX</res-ref-name>
  <res-type>javax.mail.Session</res-type>
  <res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>
...



Please note that the res-ref-name must match the id of the respective mail resource definition in the file openejb.xml.(tomee.xml since TomEE v1.0).



The following steps are only required if you want to activate incoming mail (i.e. MailImporterServlet) for a particular segment (e.g. “Standard”):

Listing 16: add mail resource definition (incoming mail) in web.xml

...
<!-- incoming mail for provider CRX segment Standard -->
<resource-ref id="mail_opencrx_CRX_Standard">
  <res-ref-name>mail/CRX_Standard</res-ref-name>
  <res-type>javax.mail.Session</res-type>
  <res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>
...



Listing 17: add path name of MailImporterServlet to web.xml

...
<!-- WorkflowController -->
<servlet id="WorkflowController">
  <servlet-name>WorkflowController</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>org.opencrx.kernel.workflow.servlet.WorkflowControllerServlet</servlet-class>
  ...
  <init-param>
    <param-name>path[3]</param-name>
    <param-value>/MailImporterServlet</param-value>
  </init-param>
  <!-- activate if WorkflowController should be initialized at startup -->
  <load-on-startup>10</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
...



Listing 18: add class name of MailImporterServlet to web.xml

...
<!-- IndexerServlet -->
<servlet id="IndexerServlet">
  <servlet-name>IndexerServlet</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>org.opencrx.kernel.workflow.servlet.IndexerServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<!-- MailImporterServlet -->
<servlet id="MailImporterServlet">
  <servlet-name>MailImporterServlet</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>org.opencrx.application.mail.importer.MailImporterServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>

...



Listing 19: add servlet mapping of MailImporterServlet to web.xml

...
<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>IndexerServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/IndexerServlet/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>MailImporterServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/MailImporterServlet/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
...

See also chapter 6.6 Servlet MailImporterServlet for important information about the MailImoprterServlet.

Restart Tomcat for these changes to become active. Please note that additional steps are required to fully configure the MailImporterServlet (see chapter 8.3.4 Inbound E-mail with MailImporterServlet).



If you want to enable TLS/SSL connections to your mail server (smtp, pop3s, imaps) you must either set the value of mail.smtp.ssl.trust in openejb.xml (tomee.xml) or you must import the mail server's public key into the file cacerts of your JRE:

Listing 20: Importing certificate into keystore cacerts

keytool -keystore cacerts -import -storepass changeit -file mailserver.cer




8.2 Outbound E-mail

8.2.1 Outbound E-mail Configuration

openCRX users can configure e-mail accounts on their homepage indicating where they would like to receive e-mail notifications (e.g. generated by subscriptions):

Figure 39: Create a new E-Mail Account – step 1

Figure 40: Create a new E-Mail Account – step 2

If a user does not define the name of the mail service in his E-Mail Account settings the default name /mail/provider/<provider>/segment/<segment> is used; if there is no resource with this name the fallback name /mail/provider/<provider> is used (and if this name does not exist either, then an error is logged).

Figure 41: Create a new E-Mail Account – step 3

Figure 42: E-mail subject prefix and Web access URL

You can easily test your e-mail settings if you create a subscription for Account Modifications (see Example Subscription – Account Modifications) and then work through the following steps:

8.2.2 Outgoing E-mail's FROM value

The openCRX Workflow Handler uses the mail.from value in the file openejb.xml / tomee.xml (see chapter 8.1.2.1 Add resource definition(s) to openejb.xml / tomee.xml).

If mail is sent as an openCRX user, the FROM value of outgoing e-mails is determined as follows:

Please note that many mail servers reject incoming mails if the hostname contained in an e-mail's FROM value cannot be resolved. (and FROM: noreply@localhost is very likely to cause delivery issues). Hence, ensure that at least the value in openejb.xml / tomee.xml makes sense.

8.2.3 Export E-mails

Please refer to chapter 9.5 Mailstore / IMAP.



8.2.4 Send E-mails directly from openCRX

Any openCRX E-Mail Activity can be sent as e-mail directly from openCRX:

Figure 43: Send E-Mail from openCRX – Overview

The idea behind this functionality is less that you will use openCRX as a mail client (MUA), rather the SendMailWorkflow is an important element of the openCRX campaign management functionality. E-Mail Activities of type “E Mails” are controlled by the Activity Process E-mail Process. Send E-Mail Activities to all recipients by executing the operation Actions > Follow Up and then selecting the Transition Send as mail as shown below:

Figure 44: Send E-Mail from openCRX with Actions > Follow Up

Please note that the transition “Send as mail” is only available after the Transition “Assign” has been executed.

Media attached to E-Mail Activities are sent as e-mail attachments.

8.2.5 Send E-mails as Attachments to your Mail Client

Any openCRX E-Mail Activity can be sent to your mail client as an attachment. The idea behind this functionality is that you might want to put some finishing touches on an e-mail before you actually send it from your mail client (MUA):

Figure 45: Send E-Mail as Attachment from openCRX – Overview

E-Mail Activities of type “E-Mails” are managed by the standard Activity Process E mail Process, i.e. they can be exported to the user's default mail account by executing the operation Actions > Follow Up and then selecting the Transition Export as mail attachment:

Figure 46: Export E-Mail from openCRX with Actions > Follow Up

Please note that the transition “Export as mail attachment” is only available after the Transition “Assign” has been executed.

Exported messages are sent as attachments to the user's default mail address. See Outbound E-mail Configuration for details.

Media attached to E-Mail Activities are sent as e-mail attachments.



8.2.6 Send E-mails to Fax-/SMS-Gateways

The SendMailWorkflow supports mail gateways if you set the attribute gateway of the respective e-mail activity. The gateway address is used for addresses which are not of type EmailAddress. For example, in the case of a phone number, the address is converted to an e-mail address as follows:

Example: if the domain address of an e-mail activity is set to the email address noreply@fax-gateway.opencrx.org, the the phone number +41 (44) 111-2233 is converted to the email address _41441112233@fax-gateway.opencrx.org.

This conversion feature allows you to mix e-mail addresses and phone numbers in member lists of address groups. Depending on the recipient's type of addresss the SendMailWorkflow will either send an e-mail to the listed e mail address as is (e-mail address) or first convert the recipient's phone number to an e-mail address so that the resulting e-mail can be handled by your fax-/sms-gateway.



If you are looking for reliable fax software, you might want to look into Hylafax+ http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/ (Linux only).

8.3 Inbound E-mail

Instead of offering platform-specific plugins for a multitude of mail clients like MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Eudora, Elm, etc. openCRX features a platform-neutral IMAP adapter. The advantages are obvious:

In addition to the IMAP adapter there is also the possibility to import e-mails (previously saved as eml files) with a wizard (see Inbound E-mail with Wizard Upload E-Mail) or with the MailImporterServlet (see Inbound E-mail with MailImporterServlet).

8.3.1 Inbound E-mail with IMAP Adapter

The openCRX IMAP adapter is well-suited to import e-mails from your mail client (MUA) into openCRX. Importing an e-mail into openCRX is as easy as dragging/dropping it on an openCRX IMAP folder in your mail client.

Please refer to chapter 9.5 Mailstore / IMAP for information on how to setup/configure the openCRX IMAP adapter and your mail client.



Assuming you have configured your mail client to connect to the openCRX IMAP adapter and subscribed to the relevant folders (openCRX Activity Groups) you can import an e-mail message into openCRX as follows:



If you move an e-mail message from a non-openCRX IMAP folder to an openCRX IMAP folder and the target folder does not have a valid E-Mail Activity Creator defined, openCRX will not be able to create an EMailActivitiy in that folder. Due to the move operation the message is deleted from the source folder and your e mail message is lost.

Hence, it is good practice to copy (and not move) e-mails to openCRX IMAP folders. Only after verifying that the EMailActivitiy was actually created by openCRX in the target folder should you delete (if necessary) the message from the source folder.



Since openCRX v2.9.1, unknown e-mail addresses are created as composites of the segment administrator, e.g. admin-Standard.

E-mail address UNASSIGNED.

If the openCRX IMAP Adapter is not able to link a sender/recipient address to an existing e-mail address in openCRX, the adapter can assign such senders/recipients to an account of your choice. Simply add an e-mail address UNASSIGNED to the desired account

In order to detect missing e-mail addresses (and then enter them and reassign the respective e-mail activities) you can simply work through the activities assigned to the account with the above e-mail address.

Once you've created the missing e-mail addresses (and potentially contacts) you can reimport such mails and the IMAP adapter will automatically update the links to sender/recipient.





The IMAP adapter features some advanced import functionality that helps you import mail messages and automatically link them with new or already existing activities including creation of follow ups. This functionality is quite powerful in the context of e-mail based support and incident management. Let's look at a simple example:

If you import all the e-mails related to this support case you will have the complete history of your exchange with the client available as follow ups in your incident #10009555.

If you prefer, the IMAP adapter can even create new activities upon importing e-mails. All you have to do is provide the necessary information in the subject line of wrapper message. You can build a wrapper message by creating a new e-mail message and then adding the e-mail(s) to be imported as attachments; the subject line of the wrapper message is interpreted by the IMAP adapter.

If the subject line starts with "> " the message is treated as wrapper message. All attachments are treated as mime messages which are imported instead of the message itself. The subject line of the wrapper message has the following form:

> @<email creator name> [#<activity creator name or activity#>] <subject>

Separate e-mail creator name, activity creator/numer and subject with at least 2 space characters to make sure the parser can correctly identify the information provided.



Example subject lines:

> @E-mails #10009555 log file with exception

> @E-mails #GadgetASupport does not boot

> @E-mails #10009555 log file with exception

> @E-mails #10009555 log file with exception



This allows the user to specify the email creator and an optional activity creator or an activity number. If an activity creator is specified, an activity is created (name = subject, detailed description = body) and the imported email(s) are linked with this activity using linkToAndFollowUp(). If an activity number is specified than the imported email(s) are simply linked with this activity using linkToAndFollowUp().



8.3.2 Inbound E-mail with Wizard Upload E-Mail

If you only want to import the occasional e-mail message you can save such messages as eml files (Thunderbird) or msg files (Outlook) and import them with the Wizard Upload E-Mail as follows:

The wizard also supports imports with a wrapper message with the same functionality as the IMAP adapter if you launch it from the tab [Activities] (see chapter 8.3.1 Inbound E-mail with IMAP Adapter).

MSG-Files (produced by MS Outlook) sometimes do not contain SMTP-addresses, but rather they contain X.500-addresses. If the respective X.500-address is assigned to an account in openCRX that also has an SMTP-address, then the wizard automatically converts the address to the SMTP-address. In all other cases the wizard asks you to enter the SMTP-address that should be used as a mapping target:

8.3.3 Inbound E-mail with Wizard FetchEMail.jsp

The wizard FetchEMail.jsp can retrieve e-mails from a mail store interactively; supported are the standard protocols pop3, pop3s, imap and imaps. You can call the wizard from the Activity Segment or any Activity Creator.

The following parameters can be set:

Host

IP address or host name of openCRX Server
Examples: localhost, 127.0.0.1, myCrxServer.myCompany.com, etc.

Protocol

choose from imap, imaps, pop3, pop3s

Port

default ports: 143/imap, 993/imaps, 110/pop3, 995/pop3s

User

user name to access mailstore

Password

password to access mailstore

Max Messages

maximum number of messages to retrieve

Activity Creator

reference to activity creator for new e-mail activity
(if not specified, the default e-mail creator will be used)


Alternatively, you can automate importing of inbound e-mail by setting up a cron job and have curl call the wizard WizardInvoker.jsp with the appropriate parameters, e.g.

curl "http://127.0.0.1:8080/opencrx-core-CRX/WizardInvoker.jsp?
wizard=/wizards/en_US/FetchEMail.jsp&provider=CRX&segment=Standard
&xri=xri:
//@openmdx*org.opencrx.kernel.activity1/provider/CRX/segment/Standard
&user=admin-Standard&password=pw_crx&para_0=command=ok.button
&para_1=host=mail.mycompany.com
&para_2=protocol=imap&para_3=port=143
&para_4=user=joe@opencrx.org
&para_5=password=joespw&para_6=messageCount=10
&para_7=activityCreatorXri=xri:
//@openmdx*org.opencrx.kernel.activity1/provider/CRX/
segment/Standard/activityCreator/LASV1EAOIR1EO2O0JQG1L4NMI" &> /dev/null

Please note that the above command is on a single line (formatting was added for readability purposes only). Also, you have to adapt the parameters of the above call to your environment.





8.3.4 Inbound E-mail with MailImporterServlet

The following figure shows an overview of how you can import e-mails from your mail client (MUA) into openCRX:

Figure 47: Import E-Mails from Mail Client

The whole setup is quite straightforward; in a first step you configure the MailImporterServlet so that it fetches e-mails from a mailbox, e.g. named “import”. Optionally, you can create a custom-tailored Activity Creator to handle imported E-mails exactly the way you like, but in most cases the provided Default E-mail Creator is sufficient. To import an e mail message from your mail client into openCRX, you create a new message to be sent to your importer mailbox, e.g. by entering import@company.com into the TO field of the new message. Optionally you can specify the name of the Activity Creator in the Subject of the new message. Next you attach the message(s) to be imported to that new message (yes, you can attach multiple e-mail messages and if those messages contain attachments themselves they will also be imported) and send it off. Once delivered to the appropriate mailbox (called “import” in our example) the MailImporterServlet will fetch it from there and then import the messages attached to that envelope message.

This process works for messages in any of your mail client's folders, e.g. Inbox, Outbox, Sent, Trash, etc.

See chapters 8.1.2.1 (Add resource definition(s) to openejb.xml / tomee.xml) and 8.1.2.2 (Mail Resource in web.xml) for details on activating/configuring the MailImporterServlet the MailImporterServlet. With the following steps you can configure the MailImporterServlet:



There is no need to delete default entries as they are ignored as soon there exists an entry with the same name without the suffix “.Default”.

Example:
Once you created the property CRX.Standard.mailServiceName the property CRX.Standard.mailServiceName.Default will be ignored.

Test your settings by sending an e-mail to the account specified in the steps above (import@company.com). Attach the message to be imported to this “envelope” e-mail (please note that the attached e-mail only is imported by the MailImporterServlet):

Figure 48: Envelope E-Mail with attached E-Mail to be imported

Please note that neither Subject nor message body should be empty. Use the subject to pass the name of the Activity Tracker you want the imported e-mail to be assigned to (by default imported e-mails are assigned to the Activity Tracker E-Mails).



Once the Workflow Controller triggers the MailImporterServlet you will see the debug output of the servlet on the console (or Tomcat's catalina.log):

Listing 21: Debug Output of MailImporterServlet

18:42:57,810 INFO [STDOUT] DEBUG: setDebug: JavaMail version 1.3.3
18:42:57,826 INFO [STDOUT] DEBUG POP3: connecting to host "mail.company.com", port 995, isSSL true
18:42:58,654 INFO [STDOUT] S: +OK Dovecot ready.
18:42:58,654 INFO [STDOUT] C: USER xxxxxxxx
18:42:58,670 INFO [STDOUT] S: +OK
18:42:58,670 INFO [STDOUT] C: PASS xxxxxxxx
18:42:58,701 INFO [STDOUT] S: +OK Logged in.
18:42:58,717 INFO [STDOUT] C: STAT
18:42:58,748 INFO [STDOUT] S: +OK 1 3204
18:42:58,748 INFO [STDOUT] C: NOOP
18:42:58,779 INFO [STDOUT] S: +OK
18:42:58,842 INFO [STDOUT] C: TOP 1 0
18:42:58,889 INFO [STDOUT] S: +OK
...



Figure 49: Activity Tracker E-Mail is created automatically

openCRX includes an Activity Creator Default E-mail Creator and an Activity Tracker E-Mails. The latter is referenced in the grid Activity Groups of the former:

Figure 50: Activity Creator Default E-mail Creator

By default, the MailImporterServlet applies this Activity Creator to newly imported e-mails (which is the reason why they are shown in the grid Activities of the Activity Tracker E-Mails).

You can easily change the contents of the grid Activity Groups so that newly imported e-mails will be attached to different Activity Tracker(s). It is also possible to create additional Activity Creators with different behavior (just make sure that these Activity Creators create Activities of type E-Mails). With the the subject line of your envelope e-mail you can indicate which Activity Creator should be used to import your e-mail. If you omit the subject line the Default E mail Creator is used.

Once the MailImporterServlet works as desired you can switch off the debugging output in the respective resource definition of the file openejb.xml /tomee.xml (see chapter 8.1.2.1 Add resource definition(s) to openejb.xml / tomee.xml).















8.4 Use openCRX as an E-mail Archive/Audit Tool

openCRX can easily keep track of all your e-mail traffic, inbound and/or out­bound.

The following figure shows a configuration where the mail server puts a copy of each received message (inbound traffic) and all sent messages (outbound traffic) into the mailbox audit; configuring such audit accounts can easily be done with most Mail Transport Agents (MTAs) like qmail, postfix, etc. With the appropriate configuration (see Inbound E-mail), the MailImporterServlet can import all messages from that audit mailbox and attach it to an Activity Tracker of your choice:

Figure 51: E-Mail Audit – import all inbound/outbound e-mail messages

8.5 Trouble Shooting E-mail Services

The following table lists some of the common issues and how to fix them:

Problem

Solution

openCRX does not initiate TLS session with mail server

It seems that JavaMail sometimes does not (even try to) establish a TLS session when connecting to a mail server (smtp) if the certificate of the mail server has not been imported into the keystore (e.g. cacerts). If the mail server requires TLS for authentication (e.g. SASL) and authentication is required to relay messages such failure to establish a TLS session will prevent openCRX from properly sending outbound mail.

If you intend to use TLS/SSL to secure the connection to the outbound e-mail server (smtp) we recommend you import the mail server certificate into the keystore.

Listing 22: Importing Certificate

cd $JAVA_HOME/lib/security
keytool -import -alias <dom> -file <name>.cer -keystore cacerts

Replace <dom> with the domain of the mail server (e.g. mail.company.com) and <name> with the name of the certificate file.



As a quick fix you can also try to set the following option in openejb.xml / tomee.xml:

mail.smtp.ssl.trust *

If you know the name of your mail server, you should replace “*” by that name, e.g.
mail.smtp.ssl.trust mail.mycompany.com

I receive Alerts triggered by my Subscriptions but no Notification E mails

  • verify that JavaMail is properly installed and the mail service properly configured (see chapter 8.1 Install and Configure Mail Resource and E-Mail Services for more information)

  • verify your e-mail settings (see E-mail Services for details)

  • verify that the Servlet WorkflowHandler of the respective segment is turned on



9 Cloud Services

openCRX features the following cloud services:

Type of Service

Standard

Service Provider

Contacts

LDAP

openCRX/core (native provider ldap)

VCF/vCard

openCRX/core (native provider vcard)

CardDAV

openCRX/core (native provider carddav)

ActiveSync

openCRX/core (native provider airsync)

Calendar

FreeBusy

openCRX/core (native provider ical)

iCalendar (ICS)

openCRX/core (native provider ical)

CalDAV

openCRX/core (native provider caldav)

ActiveSync

openCRX/core (native provider airsync)

E-Mail

IMAP

openCRX/core (native provider imap)


ActiveSync

openCRX/core (native provider airsync)

Documents

WebDAV

openCRX/core (native provider webdav)

News/Messages

RSS

openCRX/core (native provider news)


XMPP (Jabber)

openCRX/core (Smack)


For information about over-the-air (OTA) synchronization of PDAs, mobile phones, pads, etc. with openCRX please refer to chapter 10 openCRX AirSync Server (ActiveSync compatible).

9.1 Directory Service / LDAP

openCRX provides LDAP Server functionality (get more information about LDAP or read what Wikipedia has to say about LDAP). In a nutshell this means that you can use any LDAP client to connect to openCRX and view openCRX accounts. openCRX LDAP supports SSL. Here is how to connect:

Host

IP address or host name of openCRX Server
Examples: localhost, 127.0.0.1, myCrxServer.myCompany.com, etc.

Port

1389 (note that the LDAP standard port is 389); if your LDAP client supports SSL (Thunderbird does, MS Outlook does not), you can enable SSL for increased privacy/protection. With SSL enabled you might want to change the port from 1389 to 1689

BaseDN

ou=filter/[filter name],ou=Persons
Example: ou=filter/All Accounts,ou=Persons

BindDN

<principal>@<segment name>
Example: guest@Standard



9.1.1 Configuring the openCRX LDAP Port

The openCRX LDAP port is by default set to 1389 (to avoid conflicts with other LDAP daemons listening on the LDAP standard port 389). You can change this configuration in the file web.xml located in
opencrx-groupware-CRX.ear\opencrx-ldap-CRX.war\WEB-INF\

Look for the param-name port.

If you build your own EARs you can change the openCRX LDAP port in your project's file build.properties (ldap.listenPort) or directly in your build.xml.



9.1.2 Enabling SSL Support for LDAP

With the following steps you can enable SSL support for LDAP:

Listing 23: init-param tags required to enable LDAP SSL

...
  <init-param>
    <param-name>sslKeystoreFile</param-name>
    <param-value>/var/ssl/keystore.jks</param-value>
  </init-param>
  <init-param>
    <param-name>sslKeystoreType</param-name>
    <param-value>JKS</param-value>
  </init-param>
  <init-param>
    <param-name>sslKeystorePass</param-name>
    <param-value>changeit</param-value>
  </init-param>
  <init-param>
    <param-name>sslKeyPass</param-name>
    <param-value>changeit</param-value>
  </init-param>
...

9.1.3 LDAP Configuration of Thunderbird

The following steps are required to configure Thunderbird 3 for LDAP:

Field

Entry

Example

Name

any name you like

local-CRX.Standard [All Accounts]

Hostname

host name or IP address

localhost

Base DN

ou=filter/[filter name],ou=Persons

ou=filter/All Accounts,ou=Persons

Port number

1389

1389

Bind DN

<principal>@<segment name>

guest@Standard

9.1.4 LDAP Configuration of MS Outlook

The following steps are required to configure MS Outlook 2007 for LDAP:

Server Name

localhost

This server...

check “This server requires me to log on”

User Name

<principal>@<segment name>, e.g. guest@Standard

Password

<enter your openCRX password for user guest>



Custom

ou=filter/All Accounts,ou=Persons

Figure 53: MS Outlook LDAP Configuration

9.2 openCRX vcard Servlet

The openCRX vcard servlet does for accounts what the openCRX ical servlet does for activities: it makes them available to third-party clients who access the openCRX server with the http protocol.

9.2.1 Account Selectors

openCRX can map sets of accounts to a vcard file (a sequence of vcards). The resulting vcard file can be imported and/or processed by vcard-enabled clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, etc. At this time, account filters are the only supported account selectors. Account filters support reading and updating, but not creating of accounts (R=read, U=update):

Set of Accounts

RUC

vCard Selector

Account Filter

RU

accounts?id=<provider>/<segment>/filter/<account filter name>&type=vcf



VCF Selector Examples:

accounts?id=CRX/Standard/filter/All+Accounts&type=vcf

accounts?id=CRX/Standard/filter/Accounts+with+missing+or+broken+vCard&type=vcf

Use the openCRX Wizard “Connection Helper” to generate valid VCF Selectors. You can start the wizard from your homepage:

Choose the resource role “Contact” and the selector type “Saved Search - Accounts” and then select the desired saved search:



9.2.1.1 Connecting MS Outlook to the openCRX vcard servlet

Detailed instructions on how to connect MS Outlook are available from http://www.opencrx.org/opencrx/2.4/Outlook_ICS_VCF_adapter.htm

9.2.1.2 Connecting Thunderbird to the openCRX vcard servlet

A Thunderbird add-on (supporting TB3 and newer) is available that enables you to map Thunderbird address books to openCRX account selectors:

http://www.opencrx.org/opencrx/2.10/Thunderbird_Contacts_Add-on.htm

9.3 openCRX carddav Servlet

openCRX provides CardDAV Server functionality (get more information about CardDAV from Wikipedia or check out the RFC).

Once a user has created a Card Profile he/she can connect to openCRX with any CardDAV client to retrieve/manage contacts.

See http://www.opencrx.org/faq.htm#CardDAVClients for a list of clients tested with openCRX.

9.4 Calendaring

9.4.1 Calendar as a Set of Activities

openCRX supports a wide range of types of activities, including E-Mails, Tasks, Meetings, Phone Calls, etc. Even though all activities are kept in a flat structure (think of a box containing activities), openCRX offers a multitude of ways to structure, filter, and group activities:

To fully understand the power of this approach, consider a large project X (e.g. building a power plant) with millions and millions of activities. With openCRX, a project is typically mapped to an activity tracker (e.g. all activities of project X are assigned to the activity tracker Project X). As a large project is often times structured, i.e. broken down into subprojects, milestones, etc., let us assume that the respective subset of activities related to a milestone of Project X is assigned to an activity group Milestone 2. With openCRX, it's a single click and you can browse all the activities assigned to Milestone 2, or you can view all these activities in a calendar application like Sunbird or MS Outlook:

Figure 54: openCRX Activity Groups / openCRX Activity Filters

It goes without saying that different users have different needs. It is also quite natural that the needs change over time. With openCRX, it is easy to deliver as there are virtually unlimited possibilities to slice and dice the universe of activities. For example, instead of pulling a set of activities based on their assignment to activity groups, there are many use cases where one would like to define a filter to define a subset of activities. On the one hand, openCRX features lots of default filters, on the other hand, there are powerful tools to define custom filters virtually any way you like. For example: an auditor might be interested in all activities involving a particular subcontractor, another user could be interested in browsing through all the meetings related to Project X. Hence, in the context of calendaring it helps if you think of a calendar as a set of activities, nothing more and nothing less.

9.4.2 Calendar Selectors (ICS and CalDAV)

openCRX can map each of the above-mentioned set of activities to a calendar. Depending on the mapping, the resulting calendar can be presented in various formats, e.g. ICS calendar, Free Busy calendar, XML file, Timeline, etc. Some typical ICS calendar selectors are listed below (R=read, U=update, C=create):

Set of Activities

RUC

ICS Calendar Selector

Tracker

RUC

activities?id=<provider>/<segment>/tracker/<name>&type=ics

\__ Filtered

RUC

activities?id=<provider>/<segment>/tracker/<name>/filter/<filter name>&type=ics

Category

RUC

activities?id=<provider>/<segment>/category/<name>&type=ics

\__ Filtered

RUC

activities?id=<provider>/<segment>/category/<name>/filter/<filter name>&type=ics

Milestone

RUC

activities?id=<provider>/<segment>/milestone/<name>&type=ics

\__ Filtered

RUC

activities?id=<provider>/<segment>/milestone/<name>/filter/<filter name>&type=ics

Global Filter

RU

activities?id=<provider>/<segment>/globalfilter/<activity filter name>&type=ics

Homepage

RU

activities?id=<provider>/<segment>/userhome/<home qualifier>&type=ics

Resource

RU

activities?id=<provider>/<segment>/resource/<resource name>&type=ics

Birthdays

R

bdays?id=<provider>/<segment>/filter/<account filter name>&type=ics



Use the openCRX Wizard “Connection Helper” from your Homepage to generate valid Calendar Selectors:

Choose the option “Calendar” and then make your selections:

CalDAV calendar selectors look as follows (R=read, U=update, C=create):

Set of Activities

RUC

CalDAV Calendar Selector

Tracker

RUC

<provider>/<segment>/tracker/<name>

\__ Filtered

RUC

<provider>/<segment>/tracker/<name>/filter/<filter name>

Category

RUC

<provider>/<segment>/category/<name>

\__ Filtered

RUC

<provider>/<segment>/category/<name>/filter/<filter name>

Milestone

RUC

<provider>/<segment>/milestone/<name>

\__ Filtered

RUC

<provider>/<segment>/milestone/<name>/filter/<filter name>

Global Filter

RU

<provider>/<segment>/globalfilter/<activity filter name>

Homepage

RU

<provider>/<segment>/userhome/<home qualifier>

Resource

RU

<provider>/<segment>/resource/<resource name>



CalDAV calendar selectors return either only VEVENT items or only VTODO items – it is not possible for a CalDAV collection (by design) to contain both types at the same time. By default, openCRX returns VEVENT items, if you want to get VTODO items, you can append the suffix “/VTODO” to the above CalDAV calendar selectors. Example:

  • VEVENT only: <provider>/<segment>/tracker/<name>

  • VTODO only: <provider>/<segment>/tracker/<name>/VTODO

Also note that this behavior of CalDAV calendar selectors is different from the behavior of ICS calendar selectors. The latter can return both types of items, i.e. VEVENT and VTODO, as a reply to the same request, whereas the CalDAV calendar selector can only return either VEVENT or VTODO (by design of the CalDAV protocol, i.e. this is not a choice made by the openCRX developers).

One of the consequences is that if you work with CalDAV you need to define 2 calendars per selector with clients like Sunbird or Lightning (one calendar for VEVENT and one for VTODO), whereas you only need to define 1 calendar if you work with ICS (because it contains both VEVENT and VTODO items).



Use the openCRX Wizard “Connection Helper” from your Homepage to generate valid Calendar Selectors:



The wizard can also build URLs for CalDAV calendar collections (iPhone, etc.):

Set of Calendars

RUC

CalDAV Calendar Collection Selector

Collection

RUC

<provider>/<segment>/user/<principal name>/profile/<profile name>



Example: http://demo.opencrx.org/opencrx-caldav-CRX/CRX/Standard/user/guest/profile/MyCals



By default, at most 500 activities (VEVENT or VTODO) are returned per request by the ical (caldav) servlet. You can increase that limit by (as admin-Root) creating component configurations with name and qualifier ICalServlet (CalDavServlet, respectively) and then adding a String property named maxActivities with the desired value, e.g. 5000 as shown below:



9.4.3 ActivityTracker/-Creators <username>~Private

Each openCRX user has a private Activity Tracker <username>~Private (e.g. guest~Private for the user named guest) and several private Activity Creators:

Activities created with one of the above Activity Creators are automatically assigned to the respective user's Activity Tracker <username>~Private and security is set such that only the respective user can read/write such activities.



See also chapter Error: Reference source not found Error: Reference source not found for information on how to manage privacy at the event-level.

9.4.4 Mapping of Activities to Calendar Events and Tasks

Both the openCRX ical servlet and the openCRX caldav servlet map openCRX activities to calendar events (VEVENT) and tasks (VTODO) as follows based on the openCRX activity class and the iCal type at hand:



openCRX Activity Class

iCal Type

Mapped to

* (any)

VEVENT

VEVENT

* (any)

VTODO

VTODO

Incident

Automatic

VEVENT

Meeting

Automatic

VEVENT

Sales Visit

Automatic

VEVENT

Task

Automatic

VTODO

Phone Call

Automatic

VEVENT

E-Mail

Automatic

VEVENT

Mailing

Automatic

VEVENT

Absence

Automatic

VEVENT

External Activity

Automatic

VEVENT



The openCRX AirSync Adapter uses a different mapping (see chapter 10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects for details).



Hence, all openCRX activities correspond to either calendar events (VEVENT) or tasks (VTODO). An openCRX activitiy's iCal representation is stored in the iCal attribute:

Figure 55: An openCRX activity's iCal representation

In the openCRX standard GUI the same activity is presented as follows:

Figure 56: An openCRX activity in the standard GUI

9.4.4.1 Conversions between VEVENT and VTODO

Many calendar applications differentiate between events (entries in a calendar with well-defined start and end date) and tasks or to-dos (entries in a task list with a well-defined due date). openCRX also supports this distinction and can even convert activities from VEVENT to VTODO and vice versa without loss of information. To convert an openCRX activity from one type to the other, edit the activity and change the value of the iCal type dropdown:

Figure 57: iCalendar conversion between VEVENT and VTODO

9.4.5 Calendaring / Free Busy

Free Busy is part of the iCalendar standard (RFC 2445) for calendar data exchange (see also Wikipedia). Many calendar clients rely on this information for group scheduling. openCRX can derive free busy information on-the-fly from the respective activities; as most clients do not support authentication the default configuration of the openCRX ical servlet does not require authentication to retrieve Free Busy information. However, the principal guest must exist (but you can disable the login):

Free Busy URL (without authentication, requires openCRX principal guest):

http://<crxServer>:<Port>/opencrx-ical-<Provider>/freebusy
?id=<Provider>/<Segment>/<Calendar Selector>

Example:
http://localhost:8080/opencrx-ical-CRX/freebusy?id=CRX/Standard/userhome/guest



Please note that free busy information is provided by the openCRX server in a read-only fashion (i.e. free busy clients cannot update such information).

Instead of the user name you can also provide the e-mail of the respective user, for example

http://localhost:8080/opencrx-ical-CRX/freebusy?id=CRX/Standard/userhome/guest@opencrx.org

If you prefer authentication for Free Busy clients you can add the url-pattern /freebusy to the web-resource-collection (in the file web.xml of the ical servlet).



openCRX calculates/derives the free busy information for each activity on the fly based on the following algorithm:

If the requesting user has at least one resource assignment with workingUnitPercentage > 0 then TRANSP=OPAQUE, otherwise TRANSP=TRANSPARENT.

TRANSP is managed by the CalDAV, ICS and FREEBUSY servlets. The attribute TRANSP TRANSP is mapped to the activity's assigned resources.



See http://www.opencrx.org/faq.htm#FreeBusyClients for a list of clients tested with openCRX.

9.4.5.1 Free Busy Configuration of Thunderbird/Lightning

Thunderbird supports free busy if the following add-ons are installed:

For detailed information on how to configure Thunderbird's Free/Busy add-on, please refer to the information provided by the respective developer. With version 2.0 of this add-on one can specify a pattern for both e-mail addresses and URLs to retrieve the free busy data from:

Example:
e-mail address pattern:
*@opencrx.org
URL pattern: http://demo.opencrx.org/opencrx-ical-CRX/freebusy?id=CRX/Standard/userhome/*

Figure 58: Configuration of Thunderbird's FreeBusy Add-on

Once the Free/Busy add-on is configured, it will retrieve free busy information directly from your openCRX server whenever you invite attendees:

Figure 59: Inviting Attendees with Thunderbird using free busy information

9.4.5.2 Free Busy Configuration of MS Outlook

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291621. Please note that Outlook does not support SSL with free busy.



9.4.5.3 Free Busy Information as an ICS calendar

It is also possible to view the free busy information in the form of an ICS calendar. This may be useful for users who frequently plan events on behalf of another user without access to the full calendar of that person. Given a free busy URL you simply add &type=ics to retrieve the respective ICS calendar:

Free Busy URL as an ICS calendar:

http://<crxServer>:<Port>/opencrx-ical-<Provider>/freebusy
?id=<Provider>/<Segment>/<Calendar Selector>&type=ics

Example:
http://localhost:8080/opencrx-ical-CRX/freebusy?id=CRX/Standard/userhome/guest
&type=ics



The free busy ICS calendar is read-only and the title of events is set to ***, description and location are not available for privacy reasons.

9.4.6 Calendaring / iCalendar (ICS)

iCalendar is implemented/supported by a large number of products (see RFC 2445 or Wikipedia for information about the iCalendar standard, sometimes referred to as “iCal”). openCRX can derive iCalendar information on-the-fly from the respective activities. iCal clients must authenticate to read and/or write iCalendar data.

ICS URL (with authentication):

http://<crxServer>:<Port>/opencrx-ical-<Provider>/activities
?id=<Provider>/<Segment>/<Calendar Selector>&type=ics

Example:
http://localhost:8080/opencrx-ical-CRX/activities?id=CRX/Standard/tracker/main&type=ics


See chapter 9.4.2 Calendar Selectors (ICS and CalDAV) for information on how to construct calendaring URLs.

Please note that calendars without “C” (create) in the table provided in chapter 9.4.2 Calendar Selectors (ICS and CalDAV) do not support creation of new events/tasks with external ICS clients. The reason being that without a well-defined ActivityCreator associated with the respective calendar selector it is not possible to create an activity and assign it to the appropriate activity groups.



While the mapping of most of openCRX's activity attributes to iCal attributes is obvious, the following hints might still be helpful:

VEVENT:

VTODO:

Please note that Activity.percentComplete cannot be changed upon import of a vCard as openCRX activities are managed by activity processes. Hence, changing the status of an activity outside of openCRX does not change the status of this activity in openCRX (even if it is reimported).

9.4.6.1 ICS Configuration of Thunderbird/Lightning and Sunbird

Thunderbird with the Lightning add-on (or Sunbird, the stand-alone client) is a fully-fledged calendar client. Creating a remote calendar (hosted on your openCRX server) is rather straightforward:

Thunderbird/Lightning and Sunbird require a life connection to openCRX (i.e. no support for offline viewing/editing) unless you enable the experimental Cache of Ligthning/Sunbird.

9.4.6.2 ICS Configuration of MS Outlook

Out of the box Redmond's “flagship” MS Outlook does not offer you much choice with ICS calendars. You are stuck with one of the following 2 options:

Not to leave you out in the rain, we put together a bunch of VBA scripts that teach your Outlook a few new tricks. The scripts and detailed instructions for both MS Outlook 2003 and MS Outlook 2007 are available from http://www.opencrx.org/opencrx/2.4/Outlook_ICS_VCF_adapter.htm

9.4.6.3 ICS Configuration of Zimbra

Zimbra (v7.1) does not offer you much choice with remote ICS calendars. It is possible to subscribe to a remote calendar, but in read-only mode and https does not seem to be supported; furthermore, only a minimal set of iCal attributes is actually visible in the Zimbra calendar. Nevertheless, here is how to subscribe:

Please note that the ICS URL in the field URL must also include your openCRX user name and password because Zimbra does not really manage your remote credentials.

9.4.6.4 ICS Configuration of iPhone

With iPhone OS3.0+ you can connect to any remote ICS calendar (read-only) as follows:



This ICS calendar feature is particularly useful to connect your iPhone to a birthday calendar generated by openCRX (use the wizard “Connection Helper” to calculate the URL (server name respectively) for any desired Account Filter:



9.4.6.5 Deleting Events

The openCRX ICS Adapter does not support deleting events (because deleting objects is typically not an acceptable operation in an enterprise environment). openCRX does support disabling of objects, however. If there is a need to disable events directly from your ICS Client, here is how to do it:



9.4.6.6 iCalender Guard Event

If you retrieve an iCalender from the openCRX ICS Adapter, the very first event is a so-called Guard Event:

The openCRX ICS Adapter supports the creation of new events/tasks as long as a calendar's Guard Event is posted to the adapter together with the new event/task. The openCRX ICS Adapter also verifies the UID of the Guard Event.



9.4.7 Calendaring / CalDAV

CalDAV is implemented/supported by a growing number of products (see http://caldav.calconnect.org/ or Wikipedia for information about the CalDAV standard). openCRX is a fully-fledged CalDAV server; the functionality is implemented by a native CalDAV servlet. CalDAV clients must authenticate to read and/or write CalDAV data.

CalDAV URL for individual calendar:

http://<crxServer>:<Port>/opencrx-caldav-<Provider>/<Provider>/<Segment>/<Calendar Selector>

Example:
http://localhost:8080/opencrx-caldav-CRX/CRX/Standard/tracker/main


CalDAV URL for CalDAV calendar collection:

http://<crxServer>:<Port>/opencrx-caldav-<Provider>/<Provider>/ <Segment>/user/<principal name>/profile/<Calendar Profile>

Example:
http://localhost:8080/opencrx-caldav-CRX/CRX/Standard/user/guest/profile/MyCals


See chapter 9.4.2 Calendar Selectors (ICS and CalDAV) for information on how to construct calendaring URLs. The easiest way to construct CalDAV URLs is to use the openCRX Wizard “Connection Helper” from your Homepage.

Please note that calendars without “C” (create) in the table provided in chapter 9.4.2 Calendar Selectors (ICS and CalDAV) do not support creation of new events/tasks with external CalDAV clients. The reason being that without a well-defined ActivityCreator associated with the respective calendar selector it is not possible to create an activity and assign it to the appropriate activity groups.

In the case of calendar collections/profiles, it depends on the feed whether the respective calendar supports activity creation or not. If openCRX can determine a well-defined ActivityCreator, activity creation is supported, otherwise not.

Beware of CalDAV clients that do not provide feedback if a write operation did not succeed (the iPhone is unfortunately not very user-friendly in that respect). If you create a new event (or change an existing one) with your CalDAV client and the write operation does not succeed, you might still see your new event (or the changes to the existing event respectively) in your CalDAV client but such data is not available on the server!


9.4.7.1 CalDAV Collections

Some CalDAV clients (e.g. Apple's iPhone, CalDAV-Sync for Android) support CalDAV collections. With openCRX you can define CalDAV collections as follows:

9.4.7.2 CalDAV Configuration of Thunderbird/Lightning and Sunbird

Thunderbird 10.x with the Lightning add-on (at least version 1.2.1) is a fully-fledged calendar client. Creating a remote calendar (hosted on your openCRX server) is rather straightforward:

9.4.7.3 CalDAV Configuration of MS Outlook

MS Outlook does not support CalDAV. There are third-party extensions you might want to try. Some of them are listed at http://wiki.davical.org/w/CalDAV_Clients/Outlook.

See also http://www.opencrx.org/opencrx/2.4/Outlook_ICS_VCF_adapter.htm



9.4.7.4 CalDAV Configuration of iPhone (OS3.0+, iOS4+, iOS5+)

Connect to any openCRX calendar collection as follows with your iPhone:

  • tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars

  • tap on Add Account...

  • tap on Other

  • tap on Add CalDAV Account

  • and then enter or paste the CalDAV URL into the field Server and populate the fields User Name and Password as shown below:

  • tap [Next] to verify the account information

If you get a message “Cannot Connect Using SSL” tap [No] to move on to the next screen where you can enter the connection details.





Unfortunately, neiter iPhone OS3.0+ nor iOS 4.0+ supports Tasks over CalDAV, i.e. you will only see openCRX Activities of type VEVENT in your iPhone calendar. Tasks are supported since iOS5.



9.4.7.5 CalDAV Configuration of Android devices

Android does not support CalDAV out of the box, but there are applications available from the Android Market (search for “CalDAV” in the Android Market to locate them). We have tested “CalDAV-Sync” and it works reliably. It even supports CalDAV collections, so it's fairly easy to configure (see 9.4.7.1 CalDAV Collections for more information).

9.4.7.6 Deleting Events

The CalDAV protocol supports deletion of events/tasks. openCRX honors such requests, although the respective activity is disabled and not deleted. If you absolutely want to delete an activity you can do so with the openCRX standard GUI.

9.4.8 Calendaring / Timeline

Timeline is an extremely interesting DHTML-based AJAX widget for visualizing time-based events. It is like Google Maps for time-based information. A live example is available at http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/

Figure 60: Timeline visualizes time-based events

CrxObjects with sets of activities (e.g. Userhome, Activity Groups, Activity Filters, etc.) typically feature the wizard Timeline. Simply call that wizard to construct a timeline to visualize activities right in your browser:



9.5 Mailstore / IMAP

Instead of offering platform specific plugins for a multitude of mail clients like MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Evolution, Eudora, Elm, etc. openCRX features a platform neutral IMAP adapter (get more information about IMAP or read what Wikipedia is saying about IMAP). The advantages of such a standardized IMAP adapter are:

In a nutshell this means that you can use any IMAP client to connect to openCRX and view openCRX EMailActivities. openCRX activity groups are mapped to IMAP folders. The folders contain openCRX EMailActivities.

Viewing/exporting of EmailActivities is always possible, creating/updating of EmailActivities requires that an E-Mail Activity Creator is defined for the respective Activity Group, and deleting of EmailActivities is not supported. Please refer to chapter 8.3.1 Inbound E-mail with IMAP Adapter for details.

If you move an e-mail message from a non-openCRX IMAP folder to an openCRX IMAP folder and the target folder does not have a valid E-Mail Activity Creator defined, openCRX will not be able to create an EMailActivitiy in that folder. Due to the move operation the message is deleted from the source folder and your e mail message is lost.

Hence, it is good practice to copy (and not move) e-mails to openCRX IMAP folders. Only after verifying that the EMailActivitiy was actually created by openCRX in the target folder should you delete (if necessary) the message from the source folder.

E-mail addresses should be unique!

If you import e-mails into openCRX with the IMAP Adapter, openCRX tries to match sender and recipients based on e-mail addresses. For obvious reasons, this will produce unexpected (if not undesired) results if e-mail addresses in openCRX are not unique.

You can test your openCRX database for duplicate e-mail addresses with the following query:

SELECT email_address, count(*)
FROM OOCKE1_ADDRESS
GROUP BY email_address HAVING count(*) > 1

Since openCRX v2.9.1, unknown e-mail addresses are created as composites of the segment administrator, e.g. admin-Standard.

E-mail address UNASSIGNED.

If the openCRX IMAP Adapter is not able to link a sender/recipient address to an existing e-mail address in openCRX, the adapter can assign such senders/recipients to an account of your choice. Simply add an e-mail address UNASSIGNED to the desired account.

In order to detect missing e-mail addresses (and then enter them and reassign the respective e-mail activities) you can simply work through the activities assigned to the account with the above e-mail address.









The following information is required to connect an IMAP client to openCRX:

Host

IP address or host name of openCRX Server
Examples: localhost, 127.0.0.1, myCrxServer.myCompany.com, etc.

Port

1143 (note that the IMAP standard port is 143)

User name

<login principal name>@<Segment>
Example: guest@Standard

Password

principal's openCRX password



The openCRX IMAP adapter supports SSL. It is probably a good idea to make use of that feature and connect your IMAP client securely to openCRX. See chapter 9.5.3 Enabling SSL Support for IMAP for more information.



9.5.1 Configuring the openCRX IMAP Port

The openCRX IMAP port is by default set to 1143 (to avoid conflicts with other IMAP daemons listening on the IMAP standard port 143). You can change this configuration in the file web.xml located in the directory
opencrx-core-CRX\opencrx-imap-CRX\WEB-INF\

Look for the the param-name port.

If you build your own EARs you can change the openCRX LDAP port in your project's file build.properties (imap.listenPort) or directly in your build.xml.

9.5.2 Configuring the IMAP Maildir Cache

For increased performance the openCRX IMAP Adapter works with a cache. The location of this cache, the so-called Maildir, can be set as a JAVA_OPTS.

You can reset the cache by deleting it. The openCRX IMAP Adapter will recreate the cache automatically.

9.5.2.1 Maildir Configuration with Apache Tomcat

Add the option -Dorg.opencrx.maildir="%CATALINA_HOME%\maildir" to the JAVA_OPTS in your Tomcat start batch file (e.g. tomcat.bat, run.sh, etc.).

9.5.3 Enabling SSL Support for IMAP

With the following steps you can enable SSL support for IMAP:

Listing 24: init-param tags required to enable IMAP SSL

...
  <init-param>
    <param-name>sslKeystoreFile</param-name>
    <param-value>/var/ssl/keystore.jks</param-value>
  </init-param>
  <init-param>
    <param-name>sslKeystoreType</param-name>
    <param-value>JKS</param-value>
  </init-param>
  <init-param>
    <param-name>sslKeystorePass</param-name>
    <param-value>changeit</param-value>
  </init-param>
  <init-param>
    <param-name>sslKeyPass</param-name>
    <param-value>changeit</param-value>
  </init-param>
...

9.5.4 IMAP Configuration of Thunderbird

The following information is required to configure an IMAP account:



Email account

<login principal name>@<Segment>
Example: guest@Standard

Password

openCRX password of the respective principal

Your name

<login principal name>@<Segment>
Example: guest@Standard

Email Address

your e-mail address
Example: guest@mycompany.com

Type of server

IMAP

Incoming Server
Outgoing Server

name or IP address of your openCRX server
Example: 127.0.0.1

Port

1143

Incoming User Name

<login principal name>@<Segment>
Example: guest@Standard



Figure 61: Thunderbird IMAP Configuration


If you move an e-mail message from a non-openCRX IMAP folder to an openCRX IMAP folder and the target folder does not have a valid E-Mail Activity Creator defined, openCRX will not be able to create an EMailActivitiy in that folder. Due to the move operation the message is deleted from the source folder in your IMAP client and your e-mail message will be lost.

Hence, it is good practice to copy (and not move) e-mails to openCRX IMAP folders. Only after verifying that the EMailActivitiy was actually created by openCRX in the target folder should you delete (if necessary) the message from the source folder.

9.5.5 IMAP Configuration of MS Outlook

The following steps are required to configure MS Outlook 2007 for LDAP:

Email account
User Name

<login principal name>@<Segment>
Example: guest@Standard

Password

openCRX password of the respective principal

Your Name

<login principal name>@<Segment>
Example: guest@Standard

E-mail Address

your e-mail address
Example: guest@mycompany.com

Account type

IMAP

Incoming mail server
Outgoing mail server

name or IP address of your openCRX server
Example: 127.0.0.1

Incoming Port

1143

Incoming User Name

<login principal name>@<Segment>
Example: guest@Standard



Figure 62: MS Outlook IMAP Configuration

10 openCRX AirSync Server (ActiveSync compatible)

openCRX AirSync allows you to connect your ActiveSync-enabled PDAs and mobile phones (e.g. Apple's iPhone, Android-based devices, RIM's BlackBerry, Windows Mobile devices, etc.) with openCRX to synchronize e-mails, contacts, events and tasks, including push functionality:

Figure 63: openCRX AirSync Server – Over The Air (OTA) Synchronization


Even though openCRX AirSync aims to be compatible with Microsoft's ActiveSync (see what Wikipedia has to say about ActiveSync), we are probably not quite there. Feel free to provide feedback, good or bad.



10.1 Configuring the AirSync Directory

The openCRX AirSync Adapter stores information about the “Folders to be monitored” in a directory on the server (one .ser file per ActiveSync client). The location of this AirSync directory can be set as a JAVA_OPTS (e.g. in a batch file like tomcat.bat, run.bat, run.sh, etc.):

Listing 25: Set org.opencrx.airsyncdir for Apache Tomcat

...
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Dorg.opencrx.airsyncdir="%CATALINA_HOME%\airsyncdir"
...



If the content of the AirSync directory gets lost, ActiveSync clients must renew the ping information (which recreates the respective .ser file). The iPhone, for example, does this if you enter/exit the respective Exchange Account settings.

10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects

The openCRX AirSync servlet maps openCRX objects to ActiveSync objects (Contacts, Events, Tasks, Mails) as follows based on the openCRX object class and additional information at hand:



openCRX Object Class

Additional Requirement(s)

Mapped to

R=read
U=update
C=create

AccountGroup

referenced by ContactsFeed

Contact Folder


ActivityGroup


referenced by CalendarFeed and with
assigned ActivityCreator for Meetings

Calendar Folder


referenced by CalendarFeed and with
assigned ActivityCreator for Tasks

Task Folder


referenced by CalendarFeed and with
assigned ActivityCreator for E-Mails

E-Mail Folder


ActivityFilter

referenced by CalendarFeed

Calendar Folder
Task Folder
E-Mail Folder


Account

referenced by member of AccountGroup
that is mapped to Contact Folder

Contact

RUC

Meeting

assigned to ActivityGroup
that is mapped to Calendar Folder

Event

RUC

Incident, SalesVisit, PhoneCall, Mailing, Absence, ExternalActivity

assigned to ActivityGroup
that is mapped to Calendar Folder

Event

RU

Task

assigned to ActivityGroup
that is mapped to Task Folder

Task

RUC

EMailActivity

assigned to ActivityGroup
that is mapped to E-Mail Folder

E-Mail

RUC

Meeting, Incident, SalesVisit, PhoneCall, Mailing, Absence, ExternalActivity

filtered by ActivityFilter
that is mapped to Calendar Folder

Event

RU

Task

filtered by ActivityFilter
that is mapped to Task Folder

Task

RU

EMailActivity

filtered by ActivityFilter
that is mapped to E-Mail Folder

E-Mail

RU



The openCRX ical and caldav Adapters use a different mapping for activities (see chapter 9.4.4 Mapping of Activities to Calendar Events and Tasks for details).

Creation of openCRX objects by an ActiveSync client requires that there is no ambiguity about the object class of the openCRX object to create and in the case of Activities an ActivityCreator must exist. That's the reason why it is not possible to create openCRX incidents or sales visits (Events are always mapped to openCRX Meetings).



10.3 A User's AirSync Profile

10.3.1 Creation of a User's AirSync Profile

openCRX users can create a personal AirSync profile as follows:



If the name of a feed does not end with the string “~Private” such a feed is considered a “user created” feed for ActiveSync purposes. Depending on your phone (or the implementation of the respective ActiveSync client) you will not be able to synchronize such feeds. Hence, if synchronizing with your device does not work, ensure that your feeds name ends with “~Private”.

If you prefer device-specific profiles, you can create such profiles by naming them “AirSync~<Device ID>”.

Examples: AirSync~HTCAnd922379b0, AirSync~Appl88922G1B3NA

Note: Stock Android (up to and including ICS) does not support device-specific profiles because the Android code is broken (during the signup negotiation a bad device id is sent to the server...).



10.3.2 Creating/Configuring an AirSync Calendar Feed

openCRX users have a private Activity Tracker <username>~Private (e.g. guest~Private for the user named guest) and several private Activity Creators:

If the name of a feed does not end with “~Private” such a feed is considered a “user created” feed for ActiveSync purposes. Depending on your phone (or the implementation of the respective ActiveSync client) you will not be able to synchronize such feeds.

Activities created with one of the above Activity Creators are automatically assigned to the respective user's Activity Tracker <username>~Private and security is set such that only the respective user can read/write such activities.

If you only need one private “calendar” to manage your activities, the wizard User Settings does all the work for you, i.e. there is nothing more to configure.

You can, however, add more calendar feeds (activity group calendar feeds or activity filter calendar feeds) to your AirSync profile just as you would add calendar feeds to a calendar profile (see chapter 9.4.7.1 CalDAV Collections).

10.3.3 Creating/Configuring an AirSync Contacts Feed

openCRX users have a private Account Group called <username>~Private (e.g. guest~Private for the user named guest). Any openCRX Account that is a referenced by a member of this Account Group is synchronized through your AirSync Contacts Feed. Think of a Contacts Feed as an Address Book.

The private Account Group created by the wizard “User Settings” is empty initially, i.e. there are no members defined. You can add members to your private Account Group as follows:



Seeing an account (and being able to retrieve it through AirSync) does not imply that you can also update such an account. Whether you have update access to a particular account depends on the security settings of the respective account. Please note that certain ActiveSync clients do not notify the user when an update fails (the iPhone, for example, does not tell you that an update request failed).

Deleting an account through AirSync does not really delete the account in openCRX, only the respective member of your Account Group (referenced in the respective Contacts Feed) is disabled. If required, you can reactive such a member, e.g. with the wizard Manage Members.

Please note that accounts in your private AirSync Contacts Feed are not necessarily private. Whether other openCRX users can see, update and delete such accounts depends on the security settings of the respective account.



10.3.4 Configuration of AirSync E-Mail

openCRX users have a private Activity Tracker called <username>~Private (e.g. guest~Private for the user named guest). E-Mail Activities assigned to this Activity Tracker will be synchronized with a corresponding E-Mail folder <username> – Mails (e.g. guest – Mails) in your ActiveSync client.

Furthermore, all the alerts on your homepage are mapped to E-Mails that are also synchronized with an E-Mail folder named <username> – Alerts (e.g. guest – Alerts):

10.3.5 AirSync Security – Deleting Data on Devices

Some devices (like the iPhone, for example) feature built-in security (e.g. deletion of data if the pin or access codes is not entered correctly) and it is also possible to force deletion of data on the device as soon as the device synchronizes with openCRX. All you have to do is to deactivate all the Sync Feeds of the respective device-specific AirSync Profile (see the tip at the end of chapter 10.3.1 Creation of a User's AirSync Profile for details on how to create a device-specific profile).

Unfortunately, as long as the device does not connect to openCRX there is not much that openCRX can do to force deletion of the data on the device...



10.4 Connecting ActiveSync Clients to an AirSync Profile

In principle, any ActiveSync client should be able to connect to an openCRX AirSync Profile. The following clients have been tested and confirmed to work:



10.4.1 iPhone (iOS 3.0+, iOS4.0+, iOS5+)

Steps to configure your iPhone to connect to an openCRX AirSync Profile:



Please note that with iOS3.0+ the number of Exchange Accounts is limited to 1, i.e. if you want to connect to more than 1 account you need to upgrade your iPhone to iOS4 (or Jail Break your iOS3).



10.4.1.1 Setting up an Exchange Account on the iPhone

  • tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars

  • tap on Add Account...

  • tap on Microsoft Exchange

  • and then enter your e-mail address (e.g. guest@opencrx.org) into the field Email and populate the fields Domain, Username and Password as shown to the right:

  • tap [Next] to verify the account information


If you get a message “Cannot Connect Using SSL” tap [No] to move on to the next screen where you can enter the connection details.



10.4.1.2 Setting up Synchronization for Contacts

  • tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars

  • tap on the Exchange Account, e.g. guest@opencrx.org

  • enable synchronization of contacts by setting the ON/OFF button of Contacts to ON

  • you are asked whether you want to keep your existing local contacts on your iPhone; that's probably a good idea, i.e. tap on Keep on My iPhone

  • you are warned about duplicate entries, but just tap on Keep on My iPhone again



  • now your Exchange Account settings should look similar to the screen shot on the right:



  • leave the Exchange Account settings (e.g. by pressing your iPhone home button) and start your Contacts app; you should see the following contacts groups of your Exchange account, similar to the screen shot on the right:

  • guest – Contacts

  • Global Address List



Search in the Global Address List is not implemented yet as of openCRX v2.9.1



  • tap on guest – Contacts to open your openCRX Contact group; you should see all the accounts referenced by members of your Account Group in openCRX

  • tap on one of the Contacts to see the details as shown on the right




You can synchronize multiple iPhone Contact Groups by defining multiple AirSync Contacts Feeds in openCRX (each of them will be mapped to an iPhone Contacts Group).

openCRX address information supports multiple lines (separated by EOL or CR LF) – the iPhone maps this to two consecutive blanks (i.e. a blank immediately followed by another blank).

If you don't have update rights in openCRX for a particular openCRX account, you will not be able to update this contact with the iPhone either. Unfortunately, the iPhone does not tell you about failed update requests (the update fails “silently”), i.e. make sure that your updates actually make it to openCRX before spend too much time correcting data...



10.4.1.3 Setting up Synchronization for Calendars

  • tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars

  • tap on the Exchange Account, e.g. guest@opencrx.org

  • enable synchronization of calendars by setting the ON/OFF button of Calendars to ON

  • you are asked whether you want to keep your existing local calendars on your iPhone; that's probably a good idea, i.e. tap on Keep on My iPhone

  • you are warned about duplicate entries, but just tap on Keep on My iPhone again

  • now your Exchange Account settings should look similar to the screen shot on the right:



  • leave the Exchange Account settings (e.g. by pressing your iPhone home button) and start your Calendar app; you should see an entry corresponding to your iPhone Exchange Account settings with subcalendars for each active calendar feed in your AirSync Profile (openCRX demo in the screen shot).





Neither iPhone OS 3.0+ nor iOS4.0+ synchronizes tasks through Exchange Account settings, i.e. you will see Events only (see also chapter 10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects).

If your Calendar Feed references an Activity Group without a corresponding Activity Creator for the required activity type (you can verify this by navigating to the Activity Group and checking the grid [Activity Creators]) you will not see a calendar corresponding to your Calendar Feed.

See also 10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects).



10.4.1.4 Setting up Synchronization for Mail

  • tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars

  • tap on the Exchange Account, e.g. guest@opencrx.org

  • enable synchronization of mail by setting the ON/OFF button of Mail to ON

  • now your Exchange Account settings should look similar to the screen shot on the right:



  • to enable push mail you can tap on Mail Folders to Push and then select the desired folders by tapping; the screen shot on the right shows a push subscription for openCRX alerts sent to the user guest:





  • leave the Exchange Account settings (e.g. by pressing your iPhone home button) and start your Mail app; you should see an entry corresponding to your iPhone Exchange Account settings. If you open up the respective account you will see your mail folders provided by openCRX:





E-Mails sent through this account will be created in openCRX if an appropriate Activity Creator for E-Mails is available. By default, the user's private E-Mail Activity Creator <username>~E-Mails will be used.



10.4.2 HTC Desire (Android 2.2 - Froyo)

Here are the steps to configure your HTC Desire to connect to an openCRX AirSync Profile:

Please note that the HTC mail client can only handle 1 Exchange account even though Android could actually handle multiple accounts.

If you installed the plain vanilla Google mail client for Android 2.2, you will run into another problem: the server field does not accept URLs with port numbers or special characters like '/', i.e. you must front openCRX with an Apache server so that Android can connect to openCRX with a simple URL like demo.opencrx.org.



10.4.2.1 Setting up an Exchange Account on the HTC Desire

  • select Accounts & sync and tap the button [Add account]

  • select Exchange ActiveSync

  • and then enter your e-mail address (e.g. guest@opencrx.org) and your password

  • tap [Next] to continue



Name

Value / Description

Email

your (openCRX) e-mail

Server

server info as calculated by the wizard “Connection Helper”, e.g.
demo.opencrx.org:80/opencrx-airsync-CRX

Domain

openCRX domain as calculated by the wizard “Connection Helper”, e.g. Standard

User Name

your openCRX user name

Password

your openCRX password

Use SSL

if you use SSL, check it





  • if you use SSL in combination with a self-signed certificate, you will get a warning --> tap Continue

  • if everything works out, you can tap [Finish setup] to store the settings







10.4.2.2 Setting up Synchronization



  • select Accounts & sync

  • enable Auto-sync and then tap on Exchange ActiveSync to configure the details

  • in order to verify that synchronization actually works, tap on [Sync now] and verify that the time-stamps of the selected collections (mail, contacts, calendar) are updated

  • detailed configuration of the synchronization schedule is possible by tapping on [Schedule]



HTC Desire supports push for the folder Inbox only (which is not mapped to openCRX). Hence, you might as well save the battery and disable push until Android/HTC get their act together.

Search in the Global Address List is not implemented yet as of openCRX v2.9.1



HTC Desire / Android 2.2 do not support synchronization of tasks through Exchange Account settings. Hence, you will only be able to see Events.

If your Calendar Feed references an Activity Group without a corresponding Activity Creator for the required activity type (you can verify this by navigating to the Activity Group and checking the grid [Activity Creators]) you will not see a calendar corresponding to your Calendar Feed.

See also 10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects).



E-Mails sent through this account will be created in openCRX if an appropriate Activity Creator for E-Mails is available. By default, the user's private E-Mail Activity Creator <username>~E-Mails will be used.

10.4.3 Google Nexus S (Android 4.0.3 – ICS)

Here are the steps to configure your Google Nexus S to connect to an openCRX AirSync Profile:

The stock Android ActiveSync client is quite limited: the server field does not accept URLs with port numbers or special characters like '/', i.e. you must front openCRX with an Apache server so that Android can connect to openCRX with a simple URL like airsync.opencrx.org.

In your Apache config file (httpd.conf) you can do something like this:

Listing 26: Apache config file httpd.conf / fronting Tomat

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName airsync.opencrx.org
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ServerAdmin admin@opencrx.org
ErrorDocument 404 http://demo.opencrx.org/
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyPass / http://demo.opencrx.org:8080/opencrx-airsync-CRX/
ProxyPassReverse / http://demo.opencrx.org:8080/opencrx-airsync-CRX/
ProxyHTMLURLMap / /opencrx-core-CRX/
<Location />
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Location>
</VirtualHost>


10.4.3.1 Setting up an Exchange Account on the Google Nexus S

  • once you have the fronting Apache (see above) configured, you're ready to setup your Google Nexus S device (we assume that the virtual host airsync.opencrx.org is fronting the openCRX AirSync servlet)

  • on your device, tap the [MENU] button and select System Settings

  • select Accounts & sync and tap the button [Add account]

  • select Corporate

  • and then enter your e-mail address (e.g. guest@opencrx.org) and your password

  • tap [Next] to continue

Name

Value / Description

Domain

openCRX domain as calculated by the wizard “Connection Helper”,
e.g. Standard

User Name

your openCRX user name, e.g. guest

Password

your openCRX password

Server

name (or IP address) of the fronting Apache server,
e.g. airsync.opencrx.org

Use SSL

if you use SSL, check it



  • if everything works out, you'll get a screen as shown on the right – select the options you like and then tap [Next] to continue



  • finally, name your account and then tap [Next] to finish





Google Nexus S supports push for the folder Inbox only (which is not mapped to openCRX). Hence, you might as well save the battery and disable push until Google get their act together.

Search in the Global Address List is not implemented yet as of openCRX v2.9.1



Google Nexus S / Android 4.0.3 do not support synchronization of tasks through Exchange Account settings. Hence, you will only be able to see Events.

If your Calendar Feed references an Activity Group without a corresponding Activity Creator for the required activity type (you can verify this by navigating to the Activity Group and checking the grid [Activity Creators]) you will not see a calendar corresponding to your Calendar Feed.

See also 10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects).



E-Mails sent through this account will be created in openCRX if an appropriate Activity Creator for E-Mails is available. By default, the user's private E-Mail Activity Creator <username>~E-Mails will be used.



11 openCRX AirSync Client (ActiveSync compatible)

The openCRX AirSync Client enables backend-synchronization of contacts and calendars between openCRX and MS Exchange. Thus, MS Outlook and PDAs connecting to MS Exchange get easy access to contacts and calendars that are managed in openCRX, without the need to install any additional software or changing the configuration:

Figure 64: openCRX AirSync Client – backend-sync with Exchange


Even though openCRX AirSync aims to be compatible with Microsoft's ActiveSync (see what Wikipedia has to say about ActiveSync), we are probably not quite there (we have tested with MS Exchange 2003 and MS Exchange 2007), so feel free to provide feedback, good or bad.



Due to the fact that Microsoft prevents the creation of E-Mails on the Exchange server through ActiveSync (unless you want to actually send e-mail) it is not possible to really synchronize e-mails between MS Exchange and openCRX.

We recommend IMAP to access openCRX E-Mails (see chapter 9.5 Mailstore / IMAP for more information).



11.1 AirSync Client Profile

Each MS Exchange account that should be synchronized with openCRX requires an AirSync Client Profile.

11.1.1 Creation of an AirSync Client Profile

openCRX users can create an AirSync Client profile as follows:


The string Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync is fixed (referring to a virtual directory on the Exchange server).



If you intend to use SSL to secure the connection to your Exchange server you must import the server's certificate into the keystore.


Listing 27: Importing Certificate

cd $JAVA_HOME/lib/security
keytool -import -alias <dom> -file <name>.cer -keystore cacerts

Replace <dom> with the name and domain of the mail server (e.g. owa.my.company.com) and <name> with the name of the certificate file.



11.1.2 ActiveSync Provisioning

ActiveySync Provisioning (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd299443(v=EXCHG.80).aspx) specifies an XML-based format to communicate security policy settings to client devices (in this case openCRX, acting as an ActiveySync client). Depending on the settings/configuration of your account on the MS Exchange server you might have to run the provisioning wizard to enable synchronization. You can fetch the provisioning information from the MS Exchange server by navigating to your AirSync Client Profile and running the wizard AirSync – Provision:



11.1.3 Synchronizing Folders

You can retrieve a list of all the synchronizable folders, converted to openCRX Sync Feeds, from the MS Exchange Server by navigating to your AirSync Client Profile and running the wizard AirSync – Synchronize Folders. Sync Feeds created by this wizard are initially set to inactive and the reference to Account group (for Contact Feeds), Activity group (for Activity Group Feeds) or Activity filter (for Activity Filter Feeds) respectively are not set. You will find such feeds in the tab [All Sync Feeds].

11.1.3.1 Prepare your MS Exchange Account

In principle you can synchronize any Exchange folder with openCRX. It might make sense, however, to create a set of special folders, i.e. prepare your Exchange account as follows (use your own openCRX username instead of guest):



11.1.3.2 Retrieve Synchronizable Folders / Sync Feeds

Now that your Exchange account is prepared you can navigate to your AirSync Client Profile and run the wizard AirSync – Synchronize Folders to retrieve the Sync Feeds:

In the tab [All Sync Feeds] you should now see various Sync Feeds including the following ones corresponding to the folders you created with MS Outlook:

11.1.3.3 Synchronization with MS Exchange Contact Folders

In order to configure synchronization between an MS Exchange contact folder and an openCRX Account Group (see also 10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects) follow these steps:

With the next execution of the wizard Synchronizing Items the synchronization will be initiated.

11.1.3.4 Synchronization with MS Exchange Calendar Folders

In order to configure synchronization between an MS Exchange calendar folder and an openCRX Activity Group (see also 10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects) follow these steps:

In case you want to synchronize with an openCRX Activity Filter instead of an openCRX Activity Group, follow these steps:

With the next execution of the wizard Synchronizing Items the synchronization will be initiated.



11.1.3.5 Synchronization with MS Exchange Task Folders

In order to configure synchronization between an MS Exchange task folder folder and an openCRX Activity Group or an openCRX Activity Filter (see also 10.2 Mapping of openCRX Objects to AirSync Objects) follow these steps:

In case you want to synchronize with an openCRX Activity Filter instead of an openCRX Activity Group, follow these steps:

With the next execution of the wizard Synchronizing Items the synchronization will be initiated.



11.1.3.6 Synchronization with MS Exchange E-Mail Folders

MS Exchange servers do not support pushing e-Mails from an ActiveSync client to a folder on the MS Exchange server (which is one of the reasons why you cannot store draft e-mails written on your iPhone to the MS Exchange server, for example). The only way to transfer e-mails from an ActiveSync client to an MS Exchange server is by actually sending the e-mail (which is not exactly what you want in order to synchronize).

On an experimental basis the import of e-mails from MS Exchange into openCRX using AirSync is implemented, but we actually recommend the use of the openCRX IMAP Adapter (see 9.5 Mailstore / IMAP for more information).

11.1.4 Synchronizing Items

The wizard AirSync – Synchronize Items synchronizes active Sync Feeds. Please note that per sync call up to 50 items are synchronized per feed, i.e. you might have to call this wizard multiple times for a full synchronization if there are a lot of changes.

11.1.5 Resync – Clear all items of a feed on server

Increasing the value of a feed's Generation by 1 leads to the removal of all items of that feed on the MS Exchange server. The wizard Resync – Clear all items on the server automates this task.

11.1.6 Resync – Replace all items of a feed on server

Increasing the value of a feed's Generation by 1 and setting the value of a feed's SyncKey.Client to 0 leads to the replacement of all items of that feed on the MS Exchange server followed by the removal of items on the MS Exchange server that are no longer included in the feed. The wizard Resync – Replace all items on the server automates this task.

11.1.7 Automating Synchronization

One way of automating synchronization is by setting up a cron job and have curl call the wizard WizardInvoker.jsp with the appropriate parameters, e.g.

curl "http://localhost:8080/opencrx-core-CRX/WizardInvoker.jsp
?wizard=/wizards/en_US/AirSyncSyncWizard.jsp&provider=CRX
&segment=Standard&xri=xri://@openmdx*org.opencrx.kernel.home1/
provider/OB/segment/Standard/userHome/guest/syncProfile/
9QF54GOKYPT5RD77B0UAW34NB&user=guest&password=guest" &> /dev/null

12 Social Media

12.1 Twitter

openCRX features to support/connect to Twitter:

12.1.1 Register with Twitter

  1. Before openCRX can invoke the Twitter API, you need to register your instance of openCRX at http://twitter.com/oauth_clients/new to acquire a consumer key and a consumer secret. Register your openCRX instance as follows:

If registration is successful you should get a 'Consumer Key' and a 'Consumer Secret' for your application.

  1. Login as admin-Root and navigate to Administration > Configuration.

  1. Logout (Users are now able to setup Twitter accounts).

NOTE: segment-specific tokens are configured using the pattern

  • <provider name>.<segment name>.OAuth.ConsumerKey

  • <provider name>.<segment name>.OAuth.ConsumerSecret



12.1.2 Create Twitter Account

  1. Login as user, e.g. guest

  2. Twitter accounts are configured on a user's home in the tab [Service Accounts]. A Twitter account is created as follows:

  1. Invoke the wizard 'Twitter - Create access token'. The wizard shows an URL and a field to enter a PIN code. Open the URL in a new browser window. This redirects you to Twitter asking to grant access for the openCRX instance. If you grant access a PIN code will be displayed. Enter the PIN code and click OK. If all goes well, the fields 'Access token key' and 'Access token secret' are set now.

12.1.3 Using openCRX Wizards

On most objects the following two wizards are available:

12.1.4 Using the SendDirectMessageWorkflow

The SendDirectMessageWorkflow works much the same way as the SendMailNotificationWorkflow. However, instead of sending an e-mail to the user in case of alert updates, the alert title including a tiny url pointing to the underlying openCRX object is sent as direct message to the default Twitter account of the subscribing user. The SegmentSetupWizard (can be executed by the segment administrator, e.g. admin-Standard) creates the required entries for the workflow and topic. Users simply need to subscribe to the topic Alert Modifications (Twitter).

13 openCRX is a REST Service (Web Service)

The openCRX REST servlet allows easy 3rd party integration with openCRX. The full functionality of the openCRX API can be accessed via REST requests, i.e. you can use openCRX as a REST Service.

See http://code.google.com/p/rest-client/ for a REST client.

Sample REST requests are available from
http://www.opencrx.org/opencrx/2.3/new.htm#REST

You might also want to look at the following Wiki page:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/opencrx/wiki/Sdk210.Rest

14 Data Import/Export

There are many ways of importing data (from other systems into openCRX) and exporting data (from openCRX to other systems). Generally speaking, there is no best way of doing imports/exports because depending on how much weight you put on the pros and cons of the various methods you may come to a different conclusion. Some issues to consider are:

In this chapter we will cover some of the basic options you can choose from, but there are obviously other (and sometimes better) options to consider.

While it may be tempting to connect to the openCRX database for “quick and dirty” imports/exports, you should really consider using the openCRX API. On the one hand, importers/exporters accessing the database directly are bypassing openCRX security (this is actually more of a warning than a tip...). On the other hand, the openCRX database schema is subject to change (whereas the API is stable).



14.1 Importing Data into openCRX

The task of importing data is handled by importers. In principle, you can import almost anything into openCRX, it’s really only a matter of writing an appropriate importer.

You must ensure that (legal) values are assigned to all mandatory (i.e. non-optional) attributes of openCRX objects created/updated during the import; in particular, all code attributes are mandatory!

The Open Source distribution of openCRX includes importers for vCard (see Importing vCard Files)and iCalendar files (see Error: Reference source not found) in addition to the XML importer.

14.2 Importing XML Files

You can import virtually any data into openCRX as long as you provide it in the form of schema-compliant XML files. The openCRX schema files can be found in the file opencrx-kernel.jar (unzip and look for xmi subdirectories). Alternatively, you can export example objects as XML files and look at the produced XML files (although the generated XML file also contains all the derived and optional attributes; hence, you will have to prune the generated XML file before you can use it as a template).

Some of the configuration information and data provided with openCRX are also provided in the form of XML files and imported during system setup (e.g. units of measurement are loaded from opencrx-core-CRX\opencrx-core-CRX\WEB-INF\config\data\ Root\101_uoms.xml).

An XML import from a third party system might typically involve the following steps:

Figure 65: XML import from 3rd party system – overview

You can import schema-compliant XML files with the following methods:

Once the import is started you can close the browser, i.e. there is no need to keep the session alive until the import is completed. Some information regarding the progress of the import is written to the console.

In case you have data dependencies between/among your XML files (e.g. some files contain Contact data while others contain address data which is composite to Contact data) you should make sure that parent data are imported before child data gets imported. This should be relatively easy to achieve as XML files are imported in alphabetical order.





14.2.1 Importing Excel Files ( openCRX Accounts)

You can directly import Excel Sheets that contain field names in the first row and then data in the rows 2, 3, .... An example sheet is shown below:

Figure 68: Import Accounts from Excel Sheet – Sample Excel Sheet

The following field attributes are supported by the importer wizard:

Field Name

openCRX Attribute / Description

XRI

(optionally) provide XRI of openCRX account to be updated; if there is no match with an existing account, a new one will be created

DTYPE

(optionally) provide the type of openCRX account; acceptable values are: CONTACT, LEGALENTITY, GROUP, and UNSPECIFIEDACCOUNT

TITLE

mapped to Contact.salutationCode (if the text can be located as a code value), otherwise mapped to Contact.salutation

SALUTATION

mapped to Contact.salutation (a text field)

FIRSTNAME

Contact.firstName

MIDDLENAME

Contact.middleName

LASTNAME

Contact.lastName

ALIASNAME

Contact.aliasName

NICKNAME

Contact.nickName

SUFFIX

Contact.suffix

COMPANY

depending on the type of imported Account, the value is mapped to one of the following attributes:
- Contact.organization
- LegalEntity.name
- Group.name
- UnspecifiedAccount.name
if the imported account is of type Contact and a matching account with name equal to COMPANY is found, then the imported Contact is made a member of the matching account; furthermore, COMPANYROLE is mapped to Member.member­Role and JOBTITLE is mapped to Member.description

JOBTITLE

Contact.jobTitle

DEPARTMENT

Contact.department

BIRTHDAY

Contact.birthdate

the following formats are recognized:
dd-MM-yyyy, dd-MM-yy, MM/dd/yyyy, MM/dd/yy

HOMEPHONE

Account.PhoneNumber.fullNumber (with usage = home)

HOMEPHONE2

Account.PhoneNumber.fullNumber (with usage = other)

HOMEFAX

Account.PhoneNumber.fullNumber (with usage = fax home)

HOMEADDRESSLINE

Account.PostalAddress.postalAddressLine (usage = home)

HOMESTREET

Account.PostalAddress.postalStreet (usage = home)

HOMECITY

Account.PostalAddress.postalCity (usage = home)

HOMEPOSTALCODE

Account.PostalAddress.postalCode (usage = home)

HOMESTATE

Account.PostalAddress.postalState (usage = home)

HOMECOUNTRY or
HOMECOUNTRYREGION

Account.PostalAddress.postalCountry (usage = home)

BUSINESSPHONE

Account.PhoneNumber.fullNumber (with usage = business)

BUSINESSPHONE2

Account.PhoneNumber.fullNumber (with usage = other)

BUSINESSFAX

Account.PhoneNumber.fullNumber (with usage = fax business)

BUSINESSADDRESSLINE

Account.PostalAddress.postalAddressLine (usage = business)

BUSINESSSTREET

Account.PostalAddress.postalStreet (usage = business)

BUSINESSCITY

Account.PostalAddress.postalCity (usage = business)

BUSINESSPOSTALCODE

Account.PostalAddress.postalCode (usage = business)

BUSINESSSTATE

Account.PostalAddress.postalState (usage = business)

BUSINESSCOUNTRY or
BUSINESSCOUNTRYREGION

Account.PostalAddress.postalCountry (usage = business)

MOBILEPHONE

Account.PhoneNumber.fullNumber (usage = mobile)

EMAILADDRESS

Account.EMailAddress.emailAddress (usage = business)

EMAIL2ADDRESS

Account.EMailAddress.emailAddress (usage = home)

EMAIL3ADDRESS

Account.EMailAddress.emailAddress (usage = other)

X500ADDRESS

Account.EMailAddress.emailAddress (usage = N/A, type X.500)

WEBPAGE

Account.WebAddress.webUrl (usage = business)

ASSISTANTSNAME

if a matching account with full name equal to ASSISTANTSNAME is found, then the matching account is made a member of the imported account; furthermore, ASSISTANTSNAMEROLE is mapped to Member.memberRole

MANAGERSNAME

if a matching account with full name equal to MANAGERSNAME is found, then the imported account is made a member of the matching account; furthermore, MANAGERSROLE is mapped to Member.memberRole

BUSINESSTYPE

Account.businessType

you can provide a list of business types (each business type on a separate line) – see drop down / code table for valid values

NOTES

Account.description

MEMBEROF

if a matching account with full name equal to MEMBEROF is found, then the imported account is made a member of the matching account; furthermore, MEMBERROLE is mapped to Member.memberRole (you can provide a semicolon-separated list of member roles (e.g. founder;owner;Board of Directors)

note: with this powerful feature you can establish relationships between accounts right at the time of importing accounts

MEMBERROLE

Member.memberRole (see MEMBEROF for more details)

CATEGORIES

Account.category

you can provide a semicolon-separated list of categories (e.g. Business;Birthday;Xmas) and the importer will add all missing items to the list of categories contained in Account.category

NOTE_TITLE

creates or updates (if a note with the given title already exists) a note attached to the imported account; furthermore, NOTE_TEXT is mapped to the text attribute of the note

generic / model-driven

  • String

  • Boolean

  • Short

  • BigDecimal

the importer can also handle single-valued attributes of the types listed in the left-hand column in a generic / model-driven fashion; examples are:

  • userString0, userString1, … , userString3

  • userBoolean0, userBoolean1, …, userBoolean3

  • userCode0, userCode1, …, userCode3

  • userNumber0, userNumber1, …, userNumber3

  • extString0, extString1, …

  • extBoolean0, extBoolean1, …

  • extCode0, extCode1, …

  • extNumber0, extNumber1, ...

the importer also handles multi-valued code attributes:

  • extCode20, extCode21, …

individual values for multi-valued attributes can be separated by a semicolon (“;”), e.g. 2;29;113;468

consult the openCRX UML Model for information on which attributes are available:

http://www.opencrx.org/documents.htm#Doclatestuml

Field names supported by MS Outlook match the names produced
if you export Contacts from MS Outlook to an Excel Sheet:

The Importer produces a detailed on-screen report with clickable links and a summary report stating the total number of created/updated accounts:

Figure 69: Import Accounts from Excel Sheet – Import Report

Before you launch an import of thousands of accounts, verify the structure of your Excel sheet with a few lines/accounts only.





14.2.2 Importing vCard Files ( openCRX Contacts)

vCard is file format standard for personal data interchange, specifically electronic business cards (additional information is for example available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard).

These are the steps to import a vCard file:

14.2.3 Importing E-Mails

Please refer to the Chapter 8 E-mail Services, in particular chapter Error: Reference source not found Error: Reference source not found.

14.2.4 Other Options

There are various other options to consider. You could for example develop a custom-tailored JSP Wizard to import data on demand or on a regular basis (e.g. controlled by the openCRX WorkflowController).

Sometimes it is more appropriate to develop a specific openCRX client to handle imports, and in a typical enterprise class environment you will probably consider developing adapters to connect/integrate openCRX with 3rd party systems on a real-time basis.

14.3 Exporting Data from openCRX

The task of exporting data is handled by exporters. The Open Source distribution of openCRX includes exporters for vCard and iCalendar files in addition to the XML exporter.

This allows you to export contacts and meetings/sales visits or any other object from openCRX. vCard and iCalendar files can be imported by a large variety of other applications, including Microsoft Outlook. This chapter shows how to export data.



14.3.1 Exporting XML Files

Navigate to the object to be exported as XML file and execute the operation File > Export Advanced as shown below:

In order to better control which additional objects (composites, referenced objects, ...) the XLM exporter should export together with the object loaded in the Inspector, you can (optionally) provide a reference filter (optionally with a navigation level). By default, only the current object will be exported. If you provide – for example when export­ing a sales order – customer;address as a reference filter, the customer and all referenced addresses will be exported together with the main object. If you export a contact and provide the reference filter member[1] you will get direct members of this contact.

If the export is successful the exporter will terminate with status OK and you will be provided with a link to the file Export.zip containing the raw data:

The openCRX ICS Adapter can also export iCalendars in XML format:

ICS URL (to get XML file with authentication):

http://<crxServer>:<Port>/opencrx-ical-<Provider>/activities
?id=<Provider>/<Segment>/<Calendar Selector>&type=xml

Example:
http://localhost:8080/opencrx-ical-CRX/activities?id=CRX/Standard/tracker/main&type=xml



See chapter 9.4.2 Calendar Selectors (ICS and CalDAV) for information on how to construct calendaring URLs.



You can also export the data contained in an openCRX grid to an XML file by executing Actions > Export --> XML on any grid.

14.3.2 Exporting Data to MS Excel / Open Office Calc Files

Navigate to the object to be exported as spreadsheet file and execute the operation File > Export Advanced as shown below:

In order to better control which additional objects (composites, referenced objects, ...) the XLM exporter should export together with the object loaded in the Inspector, you can (optionally) provide a reference filter. By default, only the current object will be exported. If you provide – for example – :*/:* as a reference filter, all composites up to 2 levels deep will be exported together with the main object (this should be sufficient for most use cases). You can also provide a reference filter to dereference and export referenced objects like the customer or the salesRep of a sales order.

If the export is successful the exporter will terminate with status OK and you will be provided with a link to the file Export.xls containing the raw data:

Based on such spreadsheet files end-users can easily create reports or do some ad-hoc data analysis without the need to know anything about Java or writing JSPs. The standard distribution of openCRX includes various example reports based on this technology.

You can also export the data contained in an openCRX grid to an Excel file by executing Actions > Export --> XLS on any grid.

14.3.3 Exporting openCRX Contacts ( MS Excel Files)

These are the steps to manually export group of contacts to an Excel file:



The exported MS Excel file can be imported again. Hence, if you want to make bulk changes (e.g. change to domain of an e-mail address, etc.) you can first export the relevant accounts to an Excel file, make the desired changes in Excel and then reimport the Excel file with the Importer wizard (see 14.2.1 Importing Excel Files ( openCRX Accounts)).







14.3.4 Exporting openCRX Contacts ( vCard Files)

These are the steps to manually export a contact to a vCard file:

There is also a wizard vCard.jsp available which allows you to export individual accounts or batches of accounts as vCards.

Navigate to an Account and select File > Save as vCard to start the export:

In order to export multiple accounts as vCards, create an Account Filter that selects the desired accounts and then navigate to this Account Filter. Select File > Save Filtered Accounts as vCard:

14.3.5 Exporting openCRX Meetings ( iCalendar Files)

These are the steps to export an individual activity (e.g. a meeting or a sales visit) to an iCalendar file:

There is also a wizard iCal.jsp available which allows you to export individual activities or batches of activities as iCals.

Navigate to an Activity and select File > Save as iCal to start the export:

In order to export multiple activities as iCals, navigate to an Activity Group (Activity Tracker, Category, Milestone), to an Activity Filter (or to any other object that features a list of assigned activities like Userhome, Account) and then select File > Save Filtered Activities as iCal (Save Assigned Activities as iCal).

14.3.6 Exporting E-Mails

Please refer to the Chapter 8 E-mail Services, in particular chapter 8.2.3 Export E-mails.



14.3.7 Exporting openCRX Grids

Any openCRX Grid can be exported to an XML or an XLS file. The exporters are accessible through Actions > Export → xxx:



14.3.8 Other Options

There are various other options to consider. You could for example develop a custom-tailored JSP Wizard to export data on demand or on a regular basis (e.g. controlled by the openCRX WorkflowController).

Sometimes it is more appropriate to develop a specific openCRX client to handle exports, and in a typical enterprise class environment you will probably consider developing adapters to connect/integrate openCRX with 3rd party systems on a real-time basis.

If you have a REST client available, then exporting via REST is also a very viable option.

15 Customizing openCRX

Please refer to the guides available at http://www.opencrx.org/documents.htm for detailed information regarding UI customization and localization.

15.1 Managing Locales

The default installation of openCRX activates all locales that are included in the Open Source distribution. The openCRX administrator may wish to deactivate certain locales from the locale list. This chapter shows how you can achieve this.

The locale list is contained in the file

opencrx-core-CRX\opencrx-core-CRX\WEB-INF\web.xml

Look for the section <!-- locales --> to find a list of available locales:

Listing 28: Locales in web.xml

<!-- locales -->
<init-param>
  <param-name>locale[0]</param-name>
  <param-value>en_US</param-value>
</init-param>
<init-param>
  <param-name>locale[1]</param-name>
  <param-value>de_CH</param-value>
</init-param>
<init-param>
  <param-name>locale[2]</param-name>
  <param-value>es_MX</param-value>
</init-param>
...



You can deactivate locales by simply commenting them out. The following example shows how to deactivate the locale de_CH.

Listing 29: Activating/Deactivating Locales in web.xml

<!-- locales -->
<init-param>
  <param-name>locale[0]</param-name>
  <param-value>en_US</param-value>
</init-param>
<!--
<init-param>
  <param-name>locale[1]</param-name>
  <param-value>de_CH</param-value>
</init-param>
-->

<init-param>
...



Please note that you must not deactivate the base locale (that is the locale with the id 0, typically en_US) as the base locale contains a lot of customizing information not present in other locales.



15.2 Managing Packages

The default installation of openCRX activates all packages that are included in the Open Source distribution. The openCRX administrator may wish to deactivate certain packages if they are not used. This chapter shows how you can achieve this.

The package list is contained in the file

opencrx-core-CRX\opencrx-core-CRX\WEB-INF\web.xml

Look for the section <!-- Admin --> to find a list of available packages:

Listing 30: Packages in web.xml

<!-- Admin -->
<init-param>
 <param-name>rootObject[0]</param-name>
 <param-value>xri:@openmdx:org.opencrx.kernel.admin1/provider/CRX/segment/${SEGMENT}</param-value>
</init-param>
<!-- Home -->
<init-param>
 <param-name>rootObject[1]</param-name>
 <param-value>xri:@openmdx:org.opencrx.kernel.home1/provider/CRX/segment/${SEGMENT}/userHome/${USER}</param-value>
</init-param>
<!-- Accounts -->
<init-param>
 <param-name>rootObject[2]</param-name>
 <param-value>xri:@openmdx:org.opencrx.kernel.account1/provider/CRX/segment/${SEGMENT}</param-value>
</init-param>
...



You can deactivate packages by simply commenting them out. The following example shows how to deactivate the package depot1:

Listing 31: Activating/Deactivating Packages in web.xml

...
</init-param>
<!-- Depots -->
<!--
<init-param>
  <param-name>rootObject[6]</param-name>
  <param-value>xri:@openmdx:org.opencrx.kernel.depot1/provider/CRX/segment/${SEGMENT}</param-value>
</init-param>
-->

<!-- Documents -->
<init-param>
  <param-name>rootObject[6]</param-name>
  <param-value>xri:@openmdx:org.opencrx.kernel.document1/provider/CRX/segment/${SEGMENT}</param-value>
</init-param>
<!-- Buildings -->
...



Please note that you must renumber all the packages listed after the package you deactivated so that the package numbering does not have any gaps (i.e. package numbering starts at 0 and it must be consecutive).

It is also possible to change the order of the active packages by renumbering them. However, you must still ensure both that the numbering starts at 0 and that the numbering is consecutive.



15.2.1 Enabling/Disabling Root Menu Entries

Individual user can enable/disable root menu entries with the wizard User Settings (available on a user's Homage):

Once the wizard has loaded, uncheck entries you don't need (note that the settings can be different for different perspectives):

Figure 81: Wizard User Settings – enable/disable Root Menu Entries

Please note that entries corresponding to packages disabled by the openCRX administrator cannot be enabled with this wizard. Packages disabled in web.xml are not available at all!

Depending on the width of your screen you can adjust the number of items shown as tabs in the top-level navigation in the same wizard by changing the value of Show max items in top navigation (fewer items for narrow screens, more items for wider screens).

If you uncheck Show top navigation sub-levels the top-level tabs will not contain menus for sub-levels.

15.3 Role-based GUI / GUI Permissions

15.3.1 Activating GUI Permissions

With the following steps you can active GUI permissions:





15.3.2 Managing GUI Permissions

Only segment administrators (e.g. admin-Standard) can manage GUI permissions.

15.3.2.1 Granting a role to an openCRX user

With the following steps you can grant a role to an openCRX user:



If permissions granted to roles contradict each other, the last role in the list of granted roles “wins”, i.e. the order in which roles are granted to a principal matters!

You can use Edit > Move up object and Edit > Move down object to change the order of roles in the grid [Granted Roles].

Grant the role Public to all users (including segment administrators), but grant the role Admin to segment administrator only, to make it easy to disable certain GUI elements for normal users.


15.3.2.2 Revoking a role previously granted to an openCRX user

With the following steps you can revoke a role previously granted to an openCRX user:



15.3.2.3 Enabling/Disabling GUI elements

With the following steps you can disable a GUI element:



It usually takes a few seconds before the new permissions are applied by the GUI rendering engine.



15.4 Custom Layout JSPs

openCRX is distributed with 2 default layout JSPs located in the directory opencrx-core-CRX\opencrx-core-CRX\WEB-INF\config\layout\en_US:

This layout JSP renders all pages that show information (typically an Inspector containing information about the current object and all the grids containing associated information). This layout JSP is generic (it is provided by openMDX/portal) and it can handle any object.

Similarly, this layout JSP renders all pages that are used to edit objects.

If you have a need for specialized screens for a particular object in edit and/or show mode, you can write your own layout JSP and deploy it to the above-mentioned directory. The file name of your custom layout JSP determines which objects (or rather: objects of which class) will be handled by your custom layout JSP.

Example:

Let's assume you want to replace the default edit screen for openCRX Contacts (i.e. class org.opencrx.kernel.account1.Contact) with a custom layout JSP. Name your file

edit-org.opencrx.kernel.account1.Contact.jsp

and deploy it to the directory ...\WEB-INF\config\layout\en_US. After restarting Tomcat or your application server your new layout JSP will be active.

If you develop localized JSPs you can create new directories for the respective locales and then deploy your localized JSPs there. The fallback algorithms are comparable to those in ui customization.

16 Integration with Office Application

openCRX provides various technologies that enable you to easily integrate common office suites like Open Office or Microsoft Office.

16.1 MS Word, LibreOffice Writer, OpenOffice Writer, etc.

openCRX supports the JSP-wizard-based generation of RTF documents. You can generate RTF documents from scratch or merge data with existing RTF templates. The RTF documents are generated on the fly and can be opened with any RTF-compatible word processor including OpenOffice Writer and MS Word.

You can test this feature on our demo server (or on your own installation if you installed the openCRX Server) with the following steps:

Figure 82: RTF Document generated by merging live data with template

If you installed the openCRX SDK you will find the templates and the JSP wizard in the following locations:

With this approach it is quite easy to generate all kinds of documents, including letters, invoices, purchase orders, etc.

16.2 MS Excel, LibreOffice Calc, OpenOffice Calc, etc.

openCRX supports both a raw spreadsheet export of data and the JSP-wizard-based generation of XLS documents. You can generate XLS documents from scratch or merge data with existing XLS templates. The XLS documents are generated on the fly and can be opened with any XLS-compatible spreadsheet program including OpenOffice Calc and MS Excel.

You can test this feature on our demo server (or on your own installation if you installed the openCRX Server) with the following steps:

You might also want to look at the information provided in the chapters

16.3 MS Outlook, Thunderbird/Lightning, Sunbird, etc.

See chapters 9 Cloud Services and 10 openCRX AirSync Server (ActiveSync compatible) for more information.

17 Reporting

openCRX provides various technologies that enable you to create reports of a wide variety, anything from simple ad-hoc reports to large scale bulk reports.

17.1 Standard Reports

Included in the openCRX standard distribution are the following reports:

You can install these standard reports into any openCRX Segment with the wizard Segment Setup. The reports are based on spreadsheet templates. If you installed the openCRX SDK you will find the templates in the following location:

<SDK_Install_Dir>\opencrx-2.5.1\core\src\data\org.opencrx\documents\

The templates contain VBA macros to “beautify” the reports. These macros will probably not work in Open Office Calc...

You can test – for example – the Report Account List with the following steps:

17.2 Ad-hoc Reporting

See chapter 14.3.2 Exporting Data to MS Excel / Open Office Calc Files.

Standard office suite know how (and maybe a bit of macro programming) should get you a long way. Once you're ready to “institutionalize” a report you can prepare a template and an openCRX Export Profile. Consult the templates and the Export Profiles provided by the opeCRX distribution for examples.

17.3 Large Scale Reporting

If your task is to produce a large number of reports (e.g. monthly reporting for all your clients) or reports based on large amounts of data, spreadsheet-based reporting is probably not the way to go. Maybe you want to generate reports in a format other than XLS. On the one hand, openCRX already includes libraries to generate reports and documents in various formats, on the other hand you can easily add additional libraries to openCRX.

Format

Library / Additional Information

XLS

Apache POI / http://poi.apache.org/

PDF

iText / http://www.lowagie.com/iText/

RTF

Simple RTF Writer / http://www.it-s-easy.com/downloads.htm



Obviously, there are many more possibilities, like for example exporting data in XML format and then doing some kind of fancy transformation. One such example is available from http://www.koalix.org/

In terms of how to generate your reports, there are also various options available depending on your preferences:



18 Miscellaneous Topics

18.1 Configuration of AutoCompleter

The AutoCompleter works by default with objects in the current segment. To determine the so called 'lookup object' it also considers the 'root objects' configured in web.xml. By default, web.xml has two configured UOM segments:

If there are multiple root objects of the same type, the AutoCompleter takes the first (see org.openmdx.portal.servlet.DefaultPortalExtension.getLookupObject() for details).

Hence, if you want to give the root UOMs priority you can switch the orders of the UOM XRIs in the web.xml. If you want to have some more sophisticated logic you can override the method getLookupObject() or getAutoCompleter().

18.2 Extended Service for openCRX/Tomcat Management

18.2.1 Multiple Instances of Tomcat

Extended Service is a Tomcat extension which allows to start multiple Tomcat instances with the same configuration and allows to stop / start the connectors of these instances individually.

The class org.openmdx.catalina.core.ExtendedService allows to handle the requested scenario. Adapt the server.xml as follows:

...
<Server port="${tomcat.server.port}" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">
...
<Service name="Catalina" port="${tomcat.service.port}" className="org.openmdx.catalina.core.ExtendedService">
...



The system properties are set per Tomcat instance, e.g.

Instance A:



Instance B:



If instance A and instance B have to run with different versions of EARs/WARs, create a Tomcat directory for each instance.



* Start instance A. The connectors are started.

* Start instance B. The connectors can not be started because of port conflicts.

Switch from instance A to B as follows:

* telnet localhost 8006 and enter command stopConnectors

* telnet localhost 8106 and enter command startConnectors

If the property org.openmdx.catalina.core.ExtendedService.autostartConnectors is unset or the property is set to true then the connectors will be started at startup of Tomcat. Otherwise the connectors are not started.

18.2.2 IMAPServer: pause / resume

The IMAPServlet (opencrx-imap-CRX/IMAPServlet) provides a GUI which allows to pause and resume the IMAPServer. The Wizard IMAPServer.jsp available as admin-Root redirects to the IMAPServlet. The IMAPServlet accepts the system property org.openmdx.catalina.core.ExtendedService.autostartConnectors. If unset or set to true, the IMAPServer is started at startup. If set to false, then the IMAPServer has to be started manually.

18.2.3 WorkflowController: pause / resume

The WorkflowControllerServlet accepts the new commands pause and resume. Pause stops pinging the controlled WorkflowServlets. The new commands are available via the GUI. The WorkflowControllerServlet accepts the system property org.openmdx.catalina.core.ExtendedService.autostartConnectors. If it is unset or set to true the WorkflowController is activated on startup. If set to false the WorkflowController has to be started/resumed manually.

18.3 SNMP Monitoring (with Sun JVM)

The SNMP agent for the Sun JVM can be enabled as described at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/management/SNMP.html and http://www.ilikespam.com/blog/monitoring-the-jvm-with-snmp.

  1. Put snmp.acl in TOMCAT_LWC_HOME/bin and give read access to the file for the owner only.

      #The communities public and private are allowed access from the local host.
      acl = {
        {
          communities = public, private
          access = read-only
          managers = localhost
        }
      }
      # Traps are sent to localhost only
      trap = {
          {
            trap-community = public
            hosts = localhost
          }
        }



  1. Add the following options to tomcat.sh -Dcom.sun.management.snmp.port=8161 -Dcom.sun.management.snmp.acl.file=TOMCAT_LWC_HOME/bin/snmp.acl

  2. After startup the variables can be retrieved with
    snmpwalk -c public -v2c localhost:8161 .1.3.6.1.4.1.42.2.145.3.163.1.1.4.1.
    See http://support.ipmonitor.com/mibs/JVM-MANAGEMENT-MIB/oids.aspx for a list of all OIDs supported by the JVM.

A simple cron-based monitoring environment can invoke snmpwalk periodically and send mail if a monitored parameter violates a predefined constraint. Use gkrellm with the snmp extension (see http://triq.net/gkrellm_snmp.html) or OpenNMS (see http://www.opennms.org/) for more advanced monitoring.

This approach only works for the Sun JVM.

18.4 Tomcat w/ openCRX and LDAP-based Authentication

You can connect Tomcat w/ openCRX with OpenLDAP as follows:

 <Realm
  className="org.apache.catalina.realm.JNDIRealm"
  debug="99"
  connectionName="cn=Manager,dc=opencrx,dc=org"
  connectionPassword="secret"
  connectionURL="ldap://localhost:389"
  userPassword="userPassword"
  userPattern="cn={0},ou=people,dc=opencrx,dc=org"
  roleBase="ou=groups,dc=opencrx,dc=org"
  roleName="cn"
  roleSearch="(uniqueMember={0})"
/>

# Users
dn: cn=guest,ou=people,dc=opencrx,dc=org
objectClass: organizationalPerson
sn: guest
cn: guest
userPassword: opencrx

dn: cn=admin-Root,ou=people,dc=opencrx,dc=org
objectClass: organizationalPerson
sn: admin-Root
cn: admin-Root
userPassword: opencrx

dn: cn=admin-Standard,ou=people,dc=opencrx,dc=org
objectClass: organizationalPerson
sn: admin-Standard
cn: admin-Standard
userPassword: opencrx

# Groups
dn: ou=groups,dc=opencrx,dc=org
objectClass: organizationalUnit
ou: groups

dn: cn=OpenCrxRoot,ou=groups,dc=opencrx,dc=org
objectClass: groupOfUniqueNames
cn: OpenCrxRoot
uniqueMember: cn=admin-Root,ou=people,dc=opencrx,dc=org

dn: cn=OpenCrxAdministrator,ou=groups,dc=opencrx,dc=org
objectClass: groupOfUniqueNames
cn: OpenCrxAdministrator
uniqueMember: cn=admin-Standard,ou=people,dc=opencrx,dc=org

dn: cn=OpenCrxUser,ou=groups,dc=opencrx,dc=org
objectClass: groupOfUniqueNames
cn: OpenCrxUser
uniqueMember: cn=guest,ou=people,dc=opencrx,dc=org





18.5 OpenEJB / Reestablishing dropped DB Connection

Add the 3 highlighted lines (TimeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis, ValidationQuery, TestWhileIdle) to the datasource definition in the file openejb.xml (or tomee.xml) so that dropped database connections are reestablished automatically:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<openejb>
...
<!-- openCRX with PostgreSQL, DB: CRX_CRX -->
<Resource id="jdbc_opencrx_CRX" type="DataSource">
...
 ValidationQuery SELECT object_oid FROM prefs_preference WHERE object_oid = 'PERSISTENCE:type' AND object_idx = 0
 TestWhileIdle true
 TimeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis 1000

</Resource>
...
</openejb>

More information is available from http://openejb.apache.org/3.0/containers-and-resources.html.

19 Next Steps

You might want to have a look at some of the additional documentation published at http://www.opencrx.org/documents.htm.

License

The contents of this file are subject to a BSD license (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.opencrx.org/license.htm

Copyright 2010-2012 © CRIXP Corp. All rights reserved.