This article describes how you deploy your XPages Library so that administrators who have XPage Applications that depend on certain libraries can be installed to clients. We are leveraging the Widgets technology that was introduced in 8.5.1 which allows administrators to install widgets on their users clients via policies pushed down from the Domino Server or alternatively allows users to install libraries as they need.

The first part of this article deals with deploying XPage libraries for the Notes Client

Creating the Widget Catalog
As an administrator you would create a new Widget Catalog like below on a Domino Server



Create Updatesite nsf that contains the plugins and features
After completing the steps in the previous article to create the plugin and feature for your library. There is an Eclipse Update Site template that can be used to store the plugins and features. It then can be used to host the plugins so that they can be provisioned to client machines.



After creating the updateSite, you just need to point it at the site.xml of your library and it will import the plugins and features into the nsf.





There is a handy option in the menu for showing the URL's which will need for your extension.xml so that you us can provision the plugins and features.



Creating the extension.xml
Here is a sample extension.xml file for some XPage Libraries.



Note: Provided that shared="true" is set in the install manifest snippet ,as above, the plug-in is installed to Notes_install_dir\framework\shared\eclipse. If there is no write access to that directory, the plug-in is installed to Notes_install_dir\data\workspace\applications.

Creating a Widget in the Widget Catalog
Click on the "Add Widget to Catalog" and fill in all the fields and then attach the extension.xml to the widget.



Enabling the Widgets in your Notes Client
There are two ways to enable widgets in your Notes Client, either manually or these preferences can be pushed down using a policy. The quick way to enable Widgets, is to go to File->Preferences->Widget and fill in the fields.




Then you can choose the categories to install and it will automatically install those plugins. If you don't tick any categories, and if your administrator has give you the correct rights, you can just install the widget manually by opening the widget catalog and dragging the extension.xml across to the MyWidgets Panel.

If you are an administrator then you can create a policy which enforces what widget catalog server a users client can use and also what categories to install on the clients machine.

From DP forum- Need to add in something about this maybe so admins can install libraries and they won't appear in the MyWidgets sidebar. So the user won't mistake them as a component that can be used in composite application for example.

To answer your question about hiding a widget in the My Widgets sidebar panel... we are adding this feature to 8.5.2. You will be able to add an attribute to the widget's xml that tells the My Widgets sidebar panel to hide it.



More information on widgets can be found here: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.domino.admin.doc/DOC/H_CREATING_A_TOOLBOX_CATALOG_OVER.html


Deploying a XPages Library on a 8.5.2 Domino Server
In Lotus Domino Server 8.5.2 there is a new deployment method as we have moved to having OSGI on the server. In previous releases users will be familiar with deploying their libraries as jars to c:\Domino\xsp\shared\lib. For 8.5.2 your libraries will continue to work if they are located in \xsp\shared\lib but we recommend that you think about moving them to the new directories as plugins.



You need to follow the same steps as this article describing how to test your library in a Lotus Domino Designer install. Then copy the same feature and plugin to the shared directory under the OSGI folder.You will need to restart your server for your library to be installed correctly.