Customize standard notifications

We can customize the standard email messages sent by the applications in Connections, including the auto-generated notifications that are generated by News application.

Important: Before making any customizations, first back up the original notifications folder. In addition, ensure that any customized files are backed up before performing a product upgrade or applying a cumulative refresh or fix pack, as we might need to merge the changes again manually after making updates.

The content of individual notifications is defined in templates that are processed by the FreeMarker engine. We can customize the content of notifications by modifying the existing template files or by replacing the files with custom templates that you create yourself. We can also modify the notification properties files to add custom strings to the templates and modify the images used in the notifications.

Customize the content of an email message by completing the following steps.

• To customize an existing template file:

  1. Locate the FreeMarker template that corresponds to the notification to customize. For more information about the notification types used in Connections, see Configure notifications.

     Notifications are stored in...

     app_server_root/profiles/Dmgr01/config/cells/cell_name/LotusConnections-config/notifications/

     We can find folders for each application in this location and a shared resources folder. Look for the FreeMarker template for the notification to customize in the relevant application folder. When you find the template to modify, open the .ftl file in a text editor.

  2. Make the customizations to the template as needed. For information about editing the templates, refer to the FreeMarker documentation on the following web page: http://freemarker.sourceforge.net/docs/index.html

     The FreeMarker version currently used is 2.3.15.

  3. Save the changes and then close the file.

  4. Synchronize all the nodes using the WAS console.

  5. Stop and restart the News application.

• To edit the text strings used in the notification:

  1. Use a text editor, open the notification_language_code.properties files in one of the following directories and make the changes:

     • Application-specific strings:
       app_server_root/profiles/Dmgr01/config/cells/cell_name/LotusConnections-config/notifications/application_name/resources/nls

     • Shared strings:
       app_server_root/profiles/Dmgr01/config/cells/cell_name/LotusConnections-config/notifications/resources/nls

     Where language_code is the locale of the language. For example, notification_fr.properties.

     To see where each string that we are editing is used, look at the .ftl template files in the same directory, and check the statements with the following format:

     u.resource("key")

     where key is the key of a translated string in the resource bundle notification_language_code.properties files. Note the notification framework will look in the application-specific resources folder before moving to the shared strings in the shared resources folder.

  2. Save the changes and then close the files.

  3. Synchronize all the nodes using the WAS console.

  4. Stop and restart the News application.

• To customize the images used in the notification:

  1. Locate the images in one of the following directories:

     • Application-specific images:
       app_server_root/profiles/Dmgr01/config/cells/cell_name/LotusConnections-config/notifications/application_name/resources/images

     • Shared images:
       app_server_root/profiles/Dmgr01/config/cells/cell_name/LotusConnections-config/news/notifications/resources/images

     Note the application-specific images are loaded before images in the shared location. If an image is loaded from the application-specific folder, the shared location is not checked for that image.

  2. Replace any image to customize with our own version using the same file name. The images are sent as MIME attachments to each email digest, so ensure the image size is small.

  3. Synchronize all the nodes using the WAS console.

  4. Stop and restart the News application.

Parent topic:
Customize notifications

Related:

Configure notifications

Customize notification strings

Customize email digests

Customize shared resources for notifications

Related reference:

Language codes