Use libraries

Libraries provide community members document management capabilities to upload, manage, organize, and collaborate on community files. A community can contain multiple libraries.

Attention: When the Connections Content Manager add-on is deployed, community owners can create libraries directly from a community using the Library widget. Community owners can also link to existing libraries using the Linked Library widget available in Connections 3.0.1 and later. In this documentation, the libraries created directly from a community using the Library widget are referred to as community libraries. The libraries connected to a community using the Linked Library widget are referred to as linked libraries. Community libraries are currently only supported in IBM FileNet Content Manager deployments. Linked libraries are supported by IBM FileNet Content Manager and IBM Content Manager.

Community libraries provide owners and members with the following content management capabilities and enhanced social features:

• Checkin and checkout. Members can check out files and edit them using private drafts. Checked out files are locked to prevent other users from making updates at the same time.

• Version control. Members can see who has updated content at a glance and roll back to previous file versions if there is a need to recover older content.

• File organization. Members can copy, move, and delete files, and use Trash view functionality to manage deleted content.

• Draft review. Members can collaborate on shared files and send them through an established review cycle to obtain the approval of selected members of the community.

• Sharing. Community owners can set file-level access to the library, giving them tighter control over who can edit content.

• Social content management. Members can interact with content in the community library in a social and dynamic way.

  For example, they can use tags to categorize content and improve file retrieval, and like files to recommend them to fellow members. Members can also track file updates in the community activity stream, follow files, comment on files, and see who has downloaded files.

• Document types and properties. Community owners can set the default document type for a library, allowing them to specify a defined set of information and properties for library files.

Existing linked libraries from earlier versions of Connections can also leverage many of the content management capabilities and enhanced social features provided by community libraries, depending on the deployment specification. Where there are limitations for specific linked library deployments, these are noted in this help.

• Access to linked libraries is managed on the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) server unlike community libraries, where the access is managed from the community. Access to a linked library does not include the community owners and members groups, so having access to a community does not necessarily mean you have access to its linked libraries. We can find the Linked Library widget but unless you have access to the linked library, we cannot see any content in the library.

• If we remove the Linked Library widget from the community, the linked library content is not deleted from the ECM server. We can access the content by adding the Linked Library widget to the community again and recreating the connection with the ECM server. If we remove the Library widget from the community, the associated library content is permanently removed from the community and cannot be retrieved.

• We can search for files in community libraries, however, searching in linked libraries is disabled by default. If search is enabled for linked libraries, a Linked Libraries tab is available in the Communities search results. Linked library search results display all matching files in the library. The search results do not include any social features, such as tagging, or document type information. When you click a search result, we are taken to a generic landing page that is outside the scope of a community. When a linked library is connected to a subfolder of a library, the search results are scoped to the library rather than to the folder.

• How do I add a library to my community?
  Add a library to the community to give members a central place to store and work with community files.

• Add files to a library
  Add files to the library to share them and work on them with fellow community members.

• How do I edit files?
  Download files from a library to edit them.

• How do I copy or move files?
  We can organize library files by moving them or copying them to different folders.

• How do I delete library files?
  We can delete a file to remove it from a library. Deleted files are moved to the Trash view. We can restore files from the Trash view, but we must do so before the trash is emptied.

• How do I see information about library files?
  View information about library files from the file summary page.

• What else can I do with library files?
  In addition to downloading, checking out, and uploading new versions of files, we can use the rich social features provided by community libraries to interact with files and collaborate on them with the colleagues.

• Share library files and folders
  We can update sharing settings for library files and folders to control how other users access them. To view the current sharing status of a file or folder, click the Sharing tab on the summary page for the file or folder.

• How do I work with folders?
  We can add, rename, share, and delete folders in community libraries. To move folders, we must do so from the IBM FileNet user interface.

• How do I work with attachments?
  Add, replace, delete and download attachments from the file summary.

• How do I work with file versions?
  From the file summary, we can restore and download versions of a file, view the change summary of a version (with some ECM repositories), and upload a new version of a file.

• Work with draft files
  Community owners can edit library settings to require that all new and updated files must be reviewed and approved by specific users or groups. When new or updated files are approved, they can be published to the library.

• Document types
  A document type is a defined set of information and settings for a file. For example, a license application form is a file that might have required and optional information, and that might be set for manual versioning. That information and setting can be defined in a document type. Document types are defined on the ECM server.

• Library views
  The library views provide a quick way to access files.

Related:

How do I add a library to my community?

Related reference:

What can I do as a community member?