Publish&Subscribe

What is the purpose of publish&subscribe?

Publish&subscribe enables you to easily exchange data between users and different applications. The users are

  • internal Open-Xchange Server users,

  • external users without Open-Xchange account.

Applications are

  • the Open-Xchange Server,

  • various social networks like XING or LinkedIn.

Goals and features of publish&subscribe:

  • Data from different social networks can be re-used.

  • The Open-Xchange Server combines the data of the social networks.

  • The data format is based on HTML and can be displayed by standard browsers without any further tools. The data format is called OXMF.

Particular contact data from XING can be exchanged with external partners e. g., in the following way:

  • By using the Subscribe function your XING contacts can be imported to a contact folder.

  • If needed, use the Open-Xchange Server functions to edit or restructure the contacts.

  • Create a folder that contains the contacts that should be made available to external partners.

  • By using the Publish function the contacts in this folder are made available. The Publish function provides an URL that can be sent to external partners per E-Mail.

Which data are supported?

You can subscribe the following data:

  • XING! contacts

  • LinkedIn contacts

  • Facebook contacts

  • Google Mail contacts

You can publish the following folders:

  • Contact folders

  • InfoStore folders

Subscribing data

How to subscribe data :

  1. Right-click a folder and from the context menu select Properties. The folder properties are displayed in the overview window.

  2. Switch to the Subscriptions tab.

  3. In the panel click Add.

  4. Select the subscription source from the Select a source drop-down list.

  5. Enter the access data for the subscription source.

  6. If you want to subscribe data from additional sources for the selected folder, repeat steps 3-5.

  7. In the panel click Save.

To retrieve the data click the Retrieve icon next to the data source.

Privacy

The data and any references contained in this webpage are shared with you under the assumption that the owner of the data was entitled to make them available to you. Neither Open-Xchange, nor any of its subsidiaries or affiliates shall be liable for its publication or re-publication.

Any unauthorized use or dissemination of this data is prohibited. If you intend to store, process, or pass on this data, please make sure that you have the right to do so.

If you are one of the people listed or responsible for a resource listed on this page and you don’t agree with the publication, please send an email containing the URL (the link) to this webpage to the publisher of the data:

Data published by < > on < >

How to delete a subscription:

  1. Right-click on a folder and select Properties. The folder properties are displayed in the overview window.

  2. Switch to the Subscriptions tab.

  3. Select a subscription under Name in the overview window.

  4. Click on the panel entry Remove.

  5. Click on Yes in the confirmation dialog.

Publishing data

Privacy

When using this publish feature, you as the current owner of the data are responsible for being careful with privacy rules and for complying with legal obligations (Copyright, Privacy Laws).

Especially when publishing personal data you are the responsible party according to the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG, Germany) or other Privacy Acts of your country.

According to European and other national regulations you as the responsible party are in charge of data economy, and must not publish or forward personal data without the person’s consent.

Beyond legal obligations, Open-Xchange would like to encourage extreme care when dealing with personal data. Please consider carefully where you store and to whom you forward personal data. Please ensure appropriate access protection, e.g. by proper password protection.

How to publish data from a folder:

  1. In the context menu of a contact folder or InfoStore folder click Properties. The folder properties are displayed in the overview window.

  2. Switch to the Publications tab.

  3. In the panel click Add.

  4. Enter a publication name in the Site entry field e. g., your name. An URL for accessing the published contacts is displayed next to the URL field.

  5. In the panel click Save.

  6. Choose the wanted target from the Select a target drop-down field:

    • When publishing a contact folder select OXMF Contacts.

    • When publishing a InfoStore folder select OXMF InfoStore.

  7. To prevent the URL from being guessed by others, activate the hide with secret checkbox. By doing so a random character string is added to the URL i. e., the URL cannot be guessed.

Result: The folder is published. Next to URL, an URL for accessing the published folder is displayed.

Other persons will see the published data when entering the Open-Xchange server address followed by the displayed URL in a browser.

How to remove a publication:

  1. Right-click on a folder and select Properties. The folder properties are displayed in the overview window.

  2. Switch to the Publications tab.

  3. Select a publication under Name in the overview window.

  4. Click on the panel entry Remove.

  5. Click on Yes in the confirmation dialog.

Customizing the template

The layout of the web page containing your published data is set by a template. You can customize the web page layout by modifiying the template. If you do not modify the template the default template is used.

In order to customize a template the following actions are required:

  • Entering a template file name when publishing

  • Downloading the template from the personal InfoStore folder

  • Customizing the templates with a text editor

  • Uploading the customized template to the InfoStore

Note: Customizing a template requires knowledge in web design, especially in HTML and CSS. If a faulty template is used, your published data might no longer be displayed.

How to customize a template:

  1. Right-click on a folder and select Properties. The folder properties are displayed in the overview window.

  2. Switch to the Publications tab.

  3. Enter a file name for the template in the Template name input field.

  4. Click on the panel entry Save. Result: Your personal InfoStore folder contains the template in the OXMF Templates folder. The template has the name entered by you in step 2. Note: Prior to being able to see the template you have to retrieve the objects from the server by clicking the Refresh button in the title bar.

  5. Download the template from the InfoStore. Edit the template with a text editor. Information on the content of the template can be found later in this section.

  6. Upload the modified template as new, current document version to the InfoStore.

Result: The page with the published data is displayed with the modifications.

Note: In order to view the changes, the page has to be reloaded.

Tip: You can also directly modify the template by using WebDAV.

Information on the template structure: A template is written in HTML. It consists if the following sections:

  • Macros

  • Page layout in XHTML format

    • Layout defined with CSS

    • HTML contents