The Activity Stream portlet

Find out what is new in the network and the wider organization using the activity stream views available from the Activity Stream portlet.

Use the Activity Stream portlet

• Make sure you have imported the Connections security certificate for the browser or this portlet will not work properly. For details, see Import the certificate for the browser.

• The Activity Stream portlet does not support basic authentication.

The Activity Stream portlet has three possible modes for displaying information: Homepage Experience, Community Experience, and Profile Board Experience. The mode controls what types of activity we see in the portlet. When the Activity Stream portlet is added to a page, it will default to the Homepage Experience mode unless the page is a community page, in which case it defaults to the Community Experience mode and displays updates from the associated community. To see the Profile Board experience, we must explicitly configure that option for the portlet.

We can use the activity stream to view the latest news stories and updates from across IBM Connections. The updates are displayed in list format, making it easy for you to scan through the entries and quickly identify the updates that are most important to you. Interact with and respond to content faster.

Only one Activity Stream portlet on a portal page is supported.

A variety of views are available in the Activities Stream portlet. The views available depend on the mode you choose.

Select a view from the Show list. The following views are available when we are viewing the Homepage Experience mode for the Activity Streams portlet:

View	Description
I'm Following	Display updates related to the people and content that we are following.
Status Updates	Display the latest status update messages from across your organization.
My Notifications	Display the latest notifications that you received and sent in Connections.
@Mentions	Display messages that mention you directly. This feature requires IBM Connections 4.5 or later. The view does not display if we are using IBM Connections 4.0.
Action Required	Display the latest to-do items from Activities, network and community invitations, requests to join moderated communities, and any third-party events requiring an action on the part.
Saved	Display the updates that you saved.
Discover	Display the latest public updates from all the applications.

By default, all updates display in the view. To filter the view, for example, to see only the updates for communities you follow when we are using the Homepage Experience mode, click a component name in the Filter By list.

There is no Filter By option in the Community Experience.

Follow these guidelines for working with content in the activity stream.

• To show that you like an update or a comment on a status update, click Like, if this feature is enabled for your deployment. We can tell how many people liked an update or comment from the number that displays next to the Like icon. Click the icon to see who liked the update or comment.

• To comment on an update, hover over the update and click Comment. Enter the comment in the field, and then click Post.

• To mention a colleague in the comment and share the comment directly with them, enter the at (@) symbol followed by the person's name, and then select the person's name from the drop-down list that displays. When you post the comment, the person's name is linked to their profile. A message is also posted to the person's profile to let them know that you mentioned them.

  This feature may not be available in your deployment.

• To delete a comment added, hover over the comment, click the Delete comment icon, and click Delete.

• To save an update for following up later, hover over the update and click Save this.

• To stop receiving updates about an item or person, click Stop Following.

• To access more options for working with an update, hover over the update and click it. The options that display depend on the type of update we are looking at and what is enabled in terms of embedded experience. For example, to share a status update with the people who are following you, click Repost. To close the window, click the X icon or click anywhere outside the window.

Edit the settings for the Activities Stream portlet

We can personalize the portlet to show the mode and features to see. If we have at least editor access for the page and for the portlet choose Edit Shared Settings and choose what displays by default when users access the portlet. For more information about access levels, see the WebSphere Portal wiki. To edit the settings for yourself, choose Personalize from the portlet menu and choose what to display. Settings in the Personalize panel overwrite settings in the Edit Shared Settings panel. If we have administrator access to the Portal application, we can also set these options by choosing Configure from the portlet menu. Options set using the Configure panel apply to all portlets but can be overwritten by settings made in the Edit Shared Settings or Personalize panels.

Choose the mode for the portlet.

If we do not explicitly select a mode, no radio buttons appear as selected and the portlet defaults to the Homepage Experience for a stand-alone portlet, or the Communities Experience for a portlet on a community page.

Mode	Description
Homepage Experience	Homepage Experience is the default unless the Activity Stream portlet is placed on a Community page.
Communities Experience	Communities Experience is the default when the Activities Stream portlet is placed on a Community page. Choose Recent Updates or Status Updates to view updates from the community associated with the Portal page.
Profile Board Experience	Profile Board Experience displays the stream as you would see it on a Connections profile associated with the page for a profile that's displayed in the profiles portlet. To use the Profile Board experience, either navigate to a profile or identify the user to follow and pin the user's profile in the Profiles portlet. Add the Profiles portlet to the page containing the Activity Stream portlet. Depending on how the Profiles portlet is configured, you might see a message that pin a user to display their activity in the Activity Stream portlet. Configure the Activity Stream portlet to show the Profile Board experience. To view the profile board for a person: In the Profiles portlet, click on a profile picture in the Network section of the profile being displayed, or click any name in the Same Manager, People Managed or Full Report-to Chain views. Or, click Find a Profile to search for and choose the person whose board to view. Choose Edit Shared Settings from the portlet menu on the Profiles portlet and select Always pin to the current profile or Dynamically pin to the most recently selected profile. Selecting Always pin to the current profile always displays the profile of the person selected when the pin is applied. Selecting Dynamically pin to the most recently selected profile allows the administrator to dynamically pin to the last profile viewed in the Profiles portlet at any given time.

Choose which of the following features to display in the portlet:

• Status Updates displays a text box so we can enter a status update.

• Activity Stream displays updates about content we are following.

• Embedded Experience allows you to view and interact with content.

Parent topic:
Use the Connections Portlets for WebSphere Portal