Hiding email addresses 

Run a script provided with the product to configure IBM Connections to prevent email addresses from being displayed in the product and protect the privacy of your users.

Before starting

Install all of the applications and test notifications to make sure that your mail servers are set up correctly before you configure the product to prevent email addresses from being displayed. Also, edit the notification-config.xml file to define a valid email address for the global administrator and alternate addresses for the different types of notifications sent by each application. See Define valid administrator email address for more details.

Attention: Do not configure IBM Connections to hide email addresses if you are using any of the IBM Connections extensions. The extensions, such as the IBM Connections Plug-in for Notes or IBM Connections Plug-in for Sametime , require addresses to be exposed because they rely on email addresses to identify users. See the Extending section of the product documentation for a list of available IBM Connections extensions.

About this task

When you prevent emails from displaying, email addresses are hidden in the following places:

• Members fields. When you begin to type a name into a name field, such as while adding members or creating a name field in an activity entry, a list of options is displayed. By default, this list is composed of email addresses. If you configure IBM Connections to hide email addresses, the list is composed of display names instead.

• URLs. email addresses are often sent as parameters in URLs generated by actions that you can perform in the product. This setting prevents the email address from being used in URLs. A customer ID is used instead.

• Notifications. Some actions that you perform in the product generate email notifications. For example, when you add members to an activity, they receive email notifications informing them about the activity. Other notifications are generated automatically by the server. For example, automatic notifications are sent to activity owners to warn them that an activity will be marked complete due to lack of use. When you indicate that you do not want to expose email addresses, all emails are shown to originate from the administrator email address defined for the application in the notification-config.xml file. In addition, the email addresses of the recipients are added to the blind carbon copy (BCC) field of the notification, which hides recipient email addresses from recipients.

• Profiles business card. The email address that usually is displayed in business cards is not displayed nor is the Send Mail button.
  

Note to programmers: If you configure IBM Connections to keep email addresses private, you cannot use the email parameter to represent a person in GET requests sent to retrieve Atom feeds. Instead, use the userid parameter. See Determining whether email addresses are hidden in the Developing section for more details.

To hide email addresses...

Procedure

1. Open a command prompt, and then change to the following directory on the WAS hosting the IBM Connections server:
   

   • AIX or Linux™:

     /opt/IBM/LotusConnections/ConfigEngine

     
     

   • Microsoft™ Windows™:

     C:\IBM\LotusConnections\ConfigEngine

     
     

2. Enter the following command to run the script that configures IBM Connections to hide email addresses on the WAS profile to which you installed the applications. For a network deployment, run it on the system hosting the deployment manager, which is typically the first node.
   

   • AIX or Linux:

     ./ConfigEngine.sh action-hide-email > /tmp/hide_email.log 2>&1 

     
     

   • Microsoft Windows:

     ConfigEngine.bat action-hide-email > D:/hide_email.log 2>&1 

     
     

   For example, on the Microsoft Windows operating system, you would enter the following command:

   ConfigEngine.bat action-hide-email > D:/hide_email.log 2>&1 

   
   

3. You must perform some additional steps to remove email address references from user profiles. Follow the steps in the topic Configure advanced search.

4. Restart the server.
   

Parent topic

Administer applications

Related concepts
Extending

Related tasks
Define valid administrator email addresses
Customize directory search results
Configure Profiles directory search options
Enable single sign-on between all applications
Change common configuration property values
Apply common configuration property changes
Determining whether email addresses are hidden

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