Welcome to this edition of questions and answers for Micro Focus Filr and Vibe. In Filr news, version 4 will have been released by the time you are reading this. For information on this release please have a look at the article elsewhere in this magazine. Unfortunately, due to the major changes to the appliance, this upgrade will not be available through the on-line update channel, instead you will need to download the new appliance and add the data disk, which is similar to how major version releases have been done in the past.
It looks like the following release of Filr, version 4.1, is due over the summer. The big change here should be the addition of online editing capabilities.
Let me take this opportunity to remind you of the ideas portal where you can enter enhancement requests and vote on requests others have put in. You can access the portal at:
https://ideas.microfocus.com/mfi/novell-filr
https://ideas.microfocus.com/mfi/mf-vibe
If you wish to ask me any questions then please email them to qanda@open-horizons.net, but let’s move onto answering some of the questions that I have received since the last issue.
Q: How can I remove information from the quick view that external users can see in Filr? Our security officer does not wish anyone outside the company to see internal mail addresses or phone numbers.
A: This is certainly not a supported feature, but you can change the look and feel of the quick view on users by editing the view using a Vibe feature that you can access on a url:
<filr-server>/ssf/a/do?p_name=ss_forum&p_action=0&action=manage_definitions&novl_url=1
Select Profile view, user, Profile quick view, and remove, from the Filr License file option the fields you don’t wish to be displayed (See figure 1). If you go down one more level you can delete the profile picture option as well.
This change will affect the view for both internal and external users, the difference being that if internal users click on the Profile button, they will be able to see the phone and email, whilst external users would not be able to see this. I don’t know whether this will still make a difference in the new interface that will be introduced in 4.0/4.1. (Fig. 2).
This is something that can be changed in Vibe as well. In the Vibe Administration Console select the option for ‘Form/View Designers’ and follow the instructions above, using the Vibe licence object rather than the Filr one.
Q: I gather that Filr 3.4.3 has been released but I see nothing in the online update channel. How do I get the update to apply it to my 3.x appliances?
A: The build key on the update channel has recently been updated. On a previously patched 3.x system the new build key will need to be applied. Until it is any new patches will not be visible. This is accomplished by applying a field patch within the VA administration console (port 9443).
Further information can be found at:
https://support.microfocus.com/kb/doc.php?id=7023692
The field patch itself is available from: https://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=AYMT4-1Qzf0~
If you are setting up online update against a new 3.0 system that has never been patched then you need not worry about running the patch as the appliance will accept all keys when it first connects.
Remember that to upgrade to Filr 4 your version 3 appliance needs to be patched to the latest level.
Q: When viewing some of my larger files in Vibe and Filr I get a time out, is there a way that we can extend the time out so we do not get the error:
Html conversion failed for document.pdf: (3842) The export process timed out.
A: If you look in the ssf.properties file (/opt/novell/filr/apache-tomcat/webapps/ssf/WEB-INF/classes/config) there is a setting for this timeout, conversion.timeout.ms which by default is set at 30 seconds.
Copy this line,
conversion.timeout.ms=30000
and add it to the end of the ssf-ext.properties file in the same directory. Then modify it for the timeout period that you want. I would advise not setting it to zero as this would mean no time out at all, which could leave your appliance open to having heavy utilisation.
This article was first published in OHM43, 2019.1, p37-38