Collaborative Services and user authentication

 

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The Lotus Collaborative Services search an LDAP directory for user information. You can enable the Collaborative Services to get the required information in two different ways:

• Set up a bind user for authenticated LDAP
• Enable anonymous user access to attributes

The user information requested by the Collaborative Services consists of the following attributes:

• mailserver
• mailfile
• http-hostname
• http-port

The information in these attributes is used by Collaborative Services Services to support automatic detection of users' mail files by any of the collaborative portlets that use an IBM Lotus Domino back-end server for messaging. In addition, if the server is a Lotus Domino LDAP, Collaborative Services uses the information in the attributes to support the server or database drop-down lists that appear in Lotus Domino portlets.

The portlets that use auto-detection to locate users' source mail files are:

• Domino Web Access

• Lotus Notes View (when configured as My Notes Mail - All, My Notes Mail - Inbox, My Notes Mail - Calendar, or My Notes Mail - To Do)

The portlets that use a drop-down server list are:

• Domino Web Access
• Lotus Notes View

 

Effects of choosing to set up the bind user

IBM recommends that you set up a bind user instead of enabling anonymous access, because the bind user solution is most consistent with the way WebSphere Portal accesses LDAP directories.

If you use the Domino-WebSphere Portal Integration wizard, the wizard automatically sets the bind user, so if for any reason you also want to enable anonymous access, do it manually after running the wizard.

If you use a bind user, any time you change the bind user's password, to keep collaborative features working, remember to edit it in the CSEnvironment.properties

 

Effects of choosing to enable anonymous access

If you prefer to enable anonymous access, your portal site will support the same features in collaborative portlets as the bind user does, and you will not need to manage passwords.

 

Choose a method of user authentication:

• Binding Collaborative Services to LDAP for support of automatic mail detection and server selection lists
  The bind user ID is used by Lotus Collaborative Services to retrieve user attributes required for authentication from the selected LDAP directory. Setting the bind user ID to use the LDAP server for Collaborative Services supports automatic detection of users' mail files for any of the collaborative portlets that use a Lotus Domino back-end server for messaging (Lotus Notes View and Domino Web Access). If the server is a Lotus Domino LDAP, setting the bind user also supports the server or database drop-down lists that appear in Lotus Domino portlets.

• Set a Domino LDAP server to allow anonymous access
  Allowing anonymous access to attributes on the Domino LDAP server is one of two ways to enable Collaborative Services to retrieve user information needed to support collaborative portlet features. To allow anonymous access, you modify a Configuration Settings document stored in the Domino Directory database (names.nsf) on the Domino LDAP server.

 

Parent topic

Checklist of tasks: LDAP server for Lotus Collaborative Services

 

Previous topic:

Specifying the Internet host name of the Lotus Domino server

Next topic:

Supporting automatic mail detection with an LDAP directory other than Lotus Domino

 

Related tasks

Edit CSEnvironment.properties file