Welcome to this edition of questions and answers for Novell Vibe and Filr. If you wish to ask me any questions then please email them to qanda@open-horizons.net.
Q: We are considering purchasing Filr and Vibe. What licensing options are available to us?
A: Both products are sold on a per user basis. Users in this case are individuals that you have either imported from LDAP or created locally within the product. Any external users, those are users that you share content with based on their email address, do not require a license.
You can buy a perpetual license with annual maintenance. Maintenance gives you support options and new versions, and patches, of the products as they are released. As soon as you stop subscribing to maintenance you are no longer entitled to support or updates. However you can continue running the software but it needs to remain at the version that was available when you suspended maintenance.
There is also a subscription license that is an annual fee, which includes support and updates whilst you are under subscription. However when cancel the subscription you have to stop using the product.
You will already be entitled to Filr licences if you have with current maintenance:
- Open Enterprise Server (OES),
- Novell Open Workgroup Suite (NOWS), or
- NOWS Small Business
However once you stop paying maintenance you will need to discontinue using Filr.
If you have NOWS, or NOWS Small Business you will be entitled to use Vibe. This is a perpetual license, so you can continue to run it after you stop maintenance but only the version available at that point.
There is one other licensing option that Partners have access to, which allows them to host Vibe or Filr for their customers. There are a number of partners currently using this licensing model around the world.
Q: We have 250 or so users of Filr and have just purchased new licenses for a further 50 users. How do we add these new user licences to our exiting environment?
A: With Filr, and indeed Vibe, the physical license on the server is typically not limited to a specific number of users, so the license that you already have should be adequate to cover your new users. To check your license, just go into the administration console and select the option for license (see figure 1).
You need to ensure that you have sufficient user licenses to cover all your LDAP and Local users. External users do not require a license.
Q: One of our recent security appraisals pointed out that Vibe could be open to Cross Site Scripting attacks. Is there a way of preventing this?
A: Actually Novell Vibe, and Filr, contain a built-in security filter that protects against Cross Site Scripting attacks (XSS) vulnerabilities. This security filter is enabled by default and protects against script in HTML entries and HTML files that may be uploaded.
As XSS can provide some useful functionality, you can enable individual users or groups to bypass this filter. For instructions on how to accomplish this have a look in the documentation.
To check for any existing XSS in your system there is a report that you can run. Under Reports in the Administration Console menu select the XSS report (see figure 2). After running the report be careful when you look at any entries found to be compromised as XSS attacks often are designed to run when accessed by users with elevated rights.
Q: One of our users was editing a Vibe document with the Office Add-in when they received a message about the document being changed. Is there a way of locking the document so it can not be edited?
A: Usually when you edit a document the file is locked, however this is not the case with the Office Add In. This is not a defect, but is actually one of the features of the Office Add In, with which multiple users can edit the same document concurrently. When a user saves their version of the document the other users will receive a message giving them the option to merge the changes into their document (see figure 3). Of course if they chose not to merge the changes in they are not lost as the document will just be saved as a separate version.
If you wish to prevent the document to be edited by others then there is an option to lock the file on the vibe toolbar as shown below in figure 4.
If you select the lock option then next to the file name in the Vibe dashboard you should see a padlock to indicate the locked file.
Q: Is it possible for Vibe to have different default landing pages for the Home page for different users or groups?
A: Unfortunately there is no way that we can specify different Landing Pages for different users. You only have the option for the Guest Home Page and the Users Home Page as shown below.
However there is a way they we can make the initial landing page appear different for different users based on access rights to different entries in the system. You can use the option to display the entries within a folder on a landing page. If users have access to different entries then the landing page will appear differently for each user.
This article was first published in OH Magazine Issue 32, January 2016