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SFEE Collaboration Tools FAQ

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User: Why can't I edit an SFEE document when it open in my browser?

If you click on a document in SFEE (for example, a Word doc), and it opens in your browser instead of launching a separate MS Word window, chances are you will not be able to edit this document. The reason for this is because your browser has either called one of the MS document viewers, which do not have native edit capabilities, or the browser has "swallowed" the running MS Word process and the document has written to your %TEMP% directory as a read-only file. You can either chose to download the file to your desktop and then click on it to edit, or configure your browser to not swallow the application (this is described in various MS KB articles)

Admin: What document types are supported in SFEE?

SFEE supports all known and unknown document types. In fact, SFEE makes absolutely no distinction on a file type when uploading a document. This means that you can even upload binary files (like a Zip archive) into the document manager. Note that while SFEE will accept any incoming data stream as a document, it does use the mimetype sent by the browser to determine if it has the proper icon to display for the document. Please refer to other articles in this FAQ concerning the display of incorrect icons for documents in SFEE

User: Can I lock a document in SFEE?

Absolutely, yes. You can specify a document as locked at any point in time (document create, document edit, etc). You can do this via the normal UI or via the SOAP API. Simply check the box labeled 'Lock document' while in the 'Edit Document' screen.

User: Does SFEE automatically resolve conflicts in documents made by multiple concurrent editors?

If you store your documents in CVS, Subversion, or some other SCM tool, then that tool will handle conflict resolution per its normal means. However, if you are using the 'Document Manager' component of SFEE, then there is no automated means within the product to prevent another user from uploading a newer version of a given document that does not contain the changes you just uploaded. To prevent this, we recommend you use the document locking feature of SFEE to prevent others from editing a document you are editing.

Why can't I reply when someone comments on my review?

By default, SFEE doesn't add the review initiator to a review, which would be needed to facilitate this. To work around this, simply add yourself as an optional reviewer when creating the review. Alternatively, some customers have chosen to create a forum in SFEE, and then include the forum's posting address in the review notes.

Why doesn't an open review automatically close when a new version of the same document is uploaded?

SFEE doesn't automatically close a document review under any circumstances (new document version, review due date passes, etc). This was a conscious decision on our part in which it was decided that SFEE cannot always be aware of the business rules or personnel availability at a customer. For example, SFEE cannot know that the one person whose document review input is most needed is on vacation for the four days the document was under review. If SFEE were to close the review, then it would disappear from the user's My Page. Additionally, SFEE cannot know that a new version of a document supersedes the prior versions (or that it doesn't supersede it). You may be uploading a 'draft' or 'work-in-progress' of the new version as document review feedback is received and if SFEE were to close the review at this point, you might have received feedback from less than 1% of the reviewers.

User: Can I link to documents outside of SFEE?

SFEE has the concept of an 'url doc' to support this very usage. When creating a document in SFEE, simply choose this type from the create screen and then enter the URL that references the document in the existing external system.

This will create a 'placeholder' document in SFEE that can be associated to, reviewed, etc as if it were a normal document while maintaining the document's actual contents in the external application.

Admin: Why do only some of my uploaded documents have proper icons when displayed in SFEE

Why do only some of my uploaded documents have proper icons when displayed in SFEE but others do not? Why is there a generic icon for documents from <insert application here>?

SFEE accepts and stores the mimetype that the user's browser sends on the HTTP upload of the original document. As an example, let's examine the MS Word document. Some browsers will send strings like:

application/vnd.ms-word

while others will send:

application/msword

and yet others will send something completely different.

SFEE has a small internal mapping of which icon is associated with which mimetype(s). This mapping is necessarily small as a complete mapping would be exceedingly large, and almost always out of date. You can examine the mimetype that SFEE is receiving by examining the document's attributes using our SOAP API. You an also override this mimetype info via the API by uploading a new version of the document (which can be the exact same document contents).

Admin: Can I force files to be downloaded, rather than opened in the browser?

As of SFEE 4.2, it is possible to configure the application to force your user's to download files, instead of letting them 'open' them within the browser. If you cannot trust your users to not upload malicious content, turning this mode on can prevent some of the more basic attacks on your other users. Simply add the following line to /usr/local/sourceforge/sourceforge_home/etc/sourceforge_configuration.properties :

sf.safeDownloadMode=all

Once the line is in place, simply restart SFEE for it to take effect. The default for SFEE sets this to 'none' which means that the user's browser will present them with the 'normal' 'open/save' pop-up when clicking on files in SFEE. By setting this to 'all', that pop-up will be altered such the user's only choice is 'save'. Should you wish, you can also set this value to 'html' to force the user to 'save' only 'html' documents while allowing all other content to behave as 'normal'.

Mailing Lists and Email

User: How can I monitor a forum or mailing list?

There are two methods for monitoring a forum or mailing list in SFEE:

At the Discussion Forum level

• check the box beside the forum in question
• select the Monitor button
• select 'Monitor Selected'

At the 'My Workspace' level

• select "Monitoring'
• select the project name
• select the 'Monitored Applications' tab
• select Discussions
• click 'Save'

NOTE: You must monitor a given forum to receive email from the mailing list associated with that forum.

Admin: Can SFEE accept email for more than one domain?

You can configure James to accept email for more than one domain, by adding the additional domains to the <servernames> section in the

/usr/local/sourceforge/james/james-2.2.0/apps/james/SAR-INF/config.xml

file. Around line 53, you should see the following:

<servernames autodetect="true" autodetectIP="true">
         <servername>localhost</servername>
</servernames>

You can add other host names for James to accept mail to, by adding more <servername> blocks. The comments in the config.xml file will explain this further. Please keep in mind that this change may be over-written by future SFEE upgrades.

Due to firewall restriction I cannot send email from James. What do I do?

If James is unable to send email directly due to firewall restrictions, or mail being rejected from the application servers IP address, you may have to configure it to use a gateway mail server to send outgoing messages through. To do this, you will need to add the following to the <mailet match="All" class="?RemoteDelivery"> directive in the james config file at /usr/local/sourceforge/james/james-<version>/apps/james/SAR-INF/config.xml :

<gateway>smtp.example.com</gateway>
<gatewayPort>25</gatewayPort>

You should find these commented out on line 362 of the config file.

If your gateway mail server requires authentication to send email, you may also add the following directives:

<username>username</username>
<password>password</password>

Admin: I have made changes to the James config, how can I enable them without restarting SFEE?

You can restart James without restarting all of SFEE with the following command:

/usr/local/sourceforge/james/james-<version>/bin/phoenix.sh restart

Please keep in mind, that any changes made to the James config that are not stored in the SFEE configuration, may be overwritten upon future upgrades.

Admin: Why am I getting an error about NoEmailShouldEverBeSentToNoBody@localhost

This error is caused by the 'nobody' user somehow being set as monitoring one or more items in SFEE. You can see if this is the case with your SFEE install by running the following against your SFEE database:

select count(*) from mntr_subscription where user_id=`user1002`;

If the above returns a count greater than zero, then this is the problem. To correct this, do the following:

• completely stop SFEE
• log into the SFEE database

• execute the following code: delete from mntr_subscription where user_id=user1002;

• exit your database session
• startup SFEE

Of course, you should make a backup of your database before attempting this procedure.

Admin: Email messages not sent from SFEE.

If James is unable to send email directly due to firewall restrictions, or mail being rejected from the application servers IP address, you may have to configure it to use a gateway mail server to send outgoing messages through. To do this, you will need to add the following to the <mailet match="All" class="?RemoteDelivery"> directive in the james config file at /usr/local/sourceforge/james/james-<version>/apps/james/SAR-INF/config.xml :

<gateway>smtp.example.com</gateway>
<gatewayPort>25</gatewayPort>

You should find these commented out on line 362 of the config file.

If your gateway mail server requires authentication to send email, you may also add the following directives:

<username>username</username>
<password>password</password>

Why is my email taking a long time to arrive?

SFEE uses the James MTA to send and parse all email coming to and from the system. In this case, the best course of action is to look in the james mailet logfile. You can find information about the mailet logfile at the following knowledgebase entry:

TODO: Update Link

Your logfile will help you to determine what is going on with the emails that are being sent from your system. Your logfiles will look very similar to this:

• 07/02/07 07:54:43 INFO James.Mailet: ?RemoteDelivery: Attempting delivery of Mail1170135534355-39088-to-domain.invalid to host domain.invalid at 192.168.0.1 to addresses [invalid.user@domain.invalid] 07/02/07 07:55:43 INFO James.Mailet: ?RemoteDelivery: Could not connect to SMTP host: 192.168.0.1, port: 25; nested exception is: java.net.?ConnectException: connection to 192.168.0.1 timed out 07/02/07 07:58:43 INFO James.Mailet: ?RemoteDelivery: Storing message Mail1170135534355-39088-to-domain.invalid into outgoing after 7 retries 07/02/07 07:58:43 INFO James.Mailet: ?RemoteDelivery: Attempting delivery of Mail1170831482124-2756-to-company.com to host mx.company.com. at 127.0.0.1 to addresses [good.user@company.com]

As you can see, the James MTA stores outgoing emails to resend at a later time. These files can be located in the:

/usr/local/sourceforge/james/james-<ver>/apps/james/var/mail/outgoing/

directory. When you do a directory listing of the files, you will see a listing of files very similar to this:

• 4D61696C313137303833323131343031322.Repository.?FileObjectStore 4D61696C313137303833323131343031322.Repository.?FileStreamStore

The FileObjectStore is a binary file, but, the FileStreamStore can be viewed with an editor or your favorite paging program in order to determine the contents. Sometimes, the directory can grow to a large number, where you will not be able to use a standard bash expander to delete all of the files. In that case, use the following shell script:

• for i in * ; do /bin/rm $i; done

to remove all of the objects from the outgoing directory.

Admin: How to set up a local alias via James

How to set up a local alias via James

In situations where you need to obtain a SSL certificate for your domain, and your SSL certificate provider only permits you to use addresses related to your SFEE domain, it may be necessary to generate an email alias from within SFEE. Since there is currently no way to do this through the UI, you'll have to do it from the James Administrative Interface.

First, you'll need to connect to the James Administrative Interface on your system. If you've followed our best pratices guide in our knowledgebase, you'll know that you should have port 4555 firewalled to everyone but localhost. SSH to your SFEE server, and then issue the following command:

telnet localhost 4555

This will bring up the Remote Administraton Tool:

[root@app1 root]# telnet localhost 4555 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1). Escape character is '^]'. JAMES Remote Administration Tool 2.2.0 Please enter your login and password Login id: admin Password: (text is echoed locally) Welcome admin. HELP for a list of commands

First, we'll need to add a new user:

adduser <username> <password>

Then, we'll need to set the forwarding address of that user

setforwarding <username> <email address where you want email to go>

finally, we'll exit the James Administrative Interface.

quit

Your changes should be in place.

Wikis

What wiki engine does SFEE use?

SFEE currently uses the JSPWiki engine to render the wiki component pages in SFEE. You can visit the JSPWiki homepage at http://www.jspwiki.org/wiki/Main . Please keep in mind though that SFEE does restrict JSPWiki and not all functionality found on that site applies to the SFEE wiki (plugins for example).

What is the complete wiki syntax that SFEE supports?

Since SFEE makes use of the JSPWiki rendering engine internally, you may reference the JSPWiki syntax docmenation at http://www.jspwiki.org/wiki/TextFormattingRules for a complete list. Please note however that JSPWiki has progressed beyond the release available in SFEE currently, so there may be a slight discrepancy between what JSPWiki supports and what SFEE supports. SFEE also does not currently support the JSPWiki plugin framework, so any formatting plugins referenced on the above URL will not be available for SFEE.

User: How do I edit the wiki home page?

Once you've enabled the 'wiki as project home page' option in the 'Project Admin' screen, you will need to return to the project home page by clicking the 'Project Home' button. There will now be an 'edit' button to the bottom right of the page under the graphs. You may need to scroll your browser window to the right to see this button, as it can be rendered "off screen" on some browsers.

User: Why would I attach things to a wiki?

The most common example of when you would attach something to a wiki would be when you have a need for an image in the wiki page and you're concerned that if the image is hosted remotely (corporate web server, for exampe), it might be moved or removed. Additionally, you might wish to attach a file to a wiki page if the attachment is only truly "important" in the context of the wiki page and therefore isn't "important enough" to be uploaded to the Document Manager of SFEE.

User: How do I delete an attachement from a wiki page

browse to the wiki page that contains the attachment

click on the 'edit' button

'update' the wiki page, even though you've not made any changed to it

click on 'show details'

click the 'attachments' tab

check the attachment you want removed and click 'remove'

User: I set my project to 'use wiki homepage' but my wiki is not showing up. Why not?

SFEE currently uses two distinctly different wikis. There is the wiki you've already edited which available by clicking on the 'Wiki' button at the top of any project page, and their is the 'project home' wiki, which is what you enabled in the 'Project Admin' screen. If you visit the project home page, and have the proper RBAC permissions, there should now be an 'Edit' button in the bottom right corner of the home page under the graphs. Use this button to edit the project home page wiki.

Admin: As a project admin, why don't I have permissions to the wiki?

Most likely, your site was installed before SFEE contained the wiki component. When the wiki was added to SFEE, it was decided that there was no way for us to know the security requirements at customer sites, so permissions for the new wiki component were not assigned to project admins by default. As a project admin, you can alter any existing role to grant this permission, or create a new role for this permission and then assign to the appropriate project members as needed.

Admin: How do I make the version comment required for wiki updates?

As of SFEE 4.3 SP1, you can now use Velocity to customize the pages of SFEE. Using Velocity, you can make the version comment required. Simply create /usr/local/sourceforge/sourceforge_home/templates/body_footer.vm with the following contents:

<script>
var updateButton = document.getElementById('edit_wiki_page.update');
if ( updateButton ) {
updateButton.href = 'javascript:submitWikiPageUpdate();';
}
function submitWikiPageUpdate () {
if ( document.editPage.versionComment.value ) {
submitForm(document.editPage, 'submit');
return;
}
alert("Please include a detailed Version Comment for this change.");
}
</script>

Then, make sure the file is owned by the sf-admin user:

chown -R sf-admin.sf-admin /usr/local/sourceforge/sourceforge_home/templates

And ensure proper permissions:

chmod 0644 /usr/local/sourceforge/sourceforge_home/templates/body_footer.vm

And you're all set. SFEE picks up the change immediately.

Admin: How do I detect orphan wiki pages?

Unfortunately at this time, SFEE does not have the ability to locate or display orphaned wiki pages within the UI. This functionality is slated to be included in a future release. If you have an immediate need, please contact Technical Support and a suitable SQL query will be devised.

Forums

User: How do I create a new forum topic?

A forum can have any number of topics. Topics start a message thread to which other users can reply. Create a new forum topic to begin discussion of a new subject.

To create a forum topic:

1. Click Discussions in the project navigation bar. The Forum Summary page is displayed.
2. Click the title of the forum in which you want to create a topic. The Topic Summary page is displayed.
3. Click Create. The Create a Topic page is displayed.
4. Enter a description of the topic in the Subject field.
5. Enter the message text in the Message field. After the topic is created, other users can reply to this message.
6. (Optional) If you want to add an attachment to the topic, click Browse to select the file. Click Save. The forum topic is created.

User: How do I post a reply to a forum topic?

To post a reply to a forum message

1. Click Discussions in the project navigation bar. The Forum Summary page is displayed.
2. Navigate to the forum topic in which you want to post a message.
3. In the section containing the message to which you want to respond, do one of the following:
   • Click Quote to quote the original message in your response message. The Post a Reply page is displayed with the original message quoted.
   • Click Reply to omit the original message from your response message. The Post a Reply page is displayed without the original message.
4. Enter the message text.
5. (Optional) If you want to add an attachment to the message, click Browse to select the file. Click Save. The forum message is now posted. Other project members can reply to it using the same process.

User: How do I find the email address for a forum?

The email address for the forum is displayed on the Topic Summary page. If a mailing list is not enabled, you will not see an email address on the Topic Summary page.

To find the email address for a forum

1. Click Discussions in the project navigation bar. The Forum Summary page is displayed.
2. Click the title of the forum in which you want to create a forum topic. The Topic Summary page is displayed. The email address is listed in the Mailing List field.

User: Why are some of the discussion threads not threaded while others are?

Posts that are sent the mailing list address of the discussion will create new topics, and hence will not be threaded. Posts that are made in response to another post will be threaded beneath the original post.

User: I sent a message to the discussion form mailing list and I see it in the web UI, but I didn't receive any of the responses via email?

In order to receive form posts via email, you must monitor the forum. You can do this by placing a check next to the forum you wish to monitor and choosing "monitor selected" from the Monitor drop down at the bottom of the Forum list.

For more information on this see "Monitoring a folder" on page 280 of the User Guide.

User: How do I remove a user from a discussion?

Unfortunately there is not currently a way for a SFEE admin to remove a user from monitoring. You will need to have the user login and remove themselves from monitoring via the "Monitoring" button on the "My Workspace" page

Announcements

User: How do I put a notice to my users on the project home page?

To do this you will need to create a news item within the project. News items are posted and displayed on the project home page. News items are also displayed on the SFEE home page.

To post a news item:

1. Navigate to the home page of the project in which you want to post the news item.
   • From within the project, click Project Home in the project navigation bar.
   • From anywhere in SFEE, choose the project from the Projects menu in the SFEE navigation bar.
2. In the Project News section, click Add. The Create News Post page is displayed.
3. Enter a title for the news item.
4. Enter the text for the news item in the message field. The news item can be up to 4000 characters long, including spaces. Click Add.

The news item is submitted. It is displayed on the project home page and the SFEE home page immediately.

User: How do I remove a news item?

You can delete any news item that you no longer want displayed on the project home page. Deleting a news item from a project also deletes it from the SFEE home page.

To delete a news item:

1. Navigate to the project home page.
   • From within the project, click Project Home in the project navigation bar.
   • From anywhere in SFEE, choose the project from the Projects menu in the SFEE navigation bar.
2. In the Project News section, click Delete next to the news item that you want to delete. When prompted, confirm that you want to delete the news item. The news item is deleted.