Connections 2.5 Preview - Customizable Communities

Suzanne O Minassian  January 21 2009 06:14:08 PM

A common request we hear is that many of your communities have different needs. You need community tools which are flexible and can provide different functionality to different communities. We’ve completely redesigned the Community pages to adhere to this type of flexibility. Let’s start with the Widgets.

Lotus Connections Communities in 2.5 will have a widgetized user interface which allow for Community owners to choose the widgets they want to be used in the Community. Using the widget palette, which you can see expanded here, you can select the elements you need for your Community. Perhaps you want the community to have a blog but they really don’t need to share files. Or maybe you want everything. It’s up to you. You have control over what you want and need and if you don’t need something, you can remove it. It’s plain and simple.  You can even bring in 3^rd party widgets just like you can do in the home page and in the profile.

If you want to rearrange the widgets you’ve selected, they are enabled with drag and drop, so you can move them around on the page and place them where you need them.



You can also give your Community a custom look. There is a theme selector in Communities which allows you to choose a theme from among the default ones we have provided or a custom one you have added to the system. This gives the Community page a new skin with colors, fonts, and other CSS elements to match.

[I need to make a disclaimer here that anything shared in these blog entries is undergoing development and is subject to change! Do not consider these designs final in any way. They are current as of today but they may change. Also capabilities are always subject to change as well. I’ll be repeating this disclaimer over and over again. Sorry!]

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