We rolled out a mini patch last night to address issues pertaining to HTTPs access, search, and access to files with privacy of general public. We also fixed a couple broken links.

The May release is here, and boy are we thrilled to finally be able to share it with you! We hope you are as excited about this release as we are!

Clearvale is for Business. Clearvale’s cutting edge technology allows you to run your business better by providing tools to let you easily manage multiple enterprise social networks. By using an ecosystem, your network members share their profile and documents as needed across all networks in your ecosystem. Ecosystems make it easy to handle the shared information seamlessly. Ecosystems are a Premium Service. Contact BroadVision about setting up your own ecosystem.

Clearvale is a Place. When you visit Clearvale, you visit your information place. Information within Clearvale is easier than ever to find and manage because it is organized into distinct spaces:

• Network space. Use this space for content that you want to share with network members.
• Community spaces. Use these spaces for content that you want to share with groups of community members.
• Member Profile space. Use this space for your personal content. Use your profile page to share your personal information with network members.

Content spaces help you manage and share not only your files but your blogs as well.

Clearvale is for Content Sharing. Clearvale offers powerful file sharing abilities. When you upload a file, you can quickly determine who is able to read or edit the file by how you share it. You can share a file with the network space, a specific community, or to select network members. You control whether the file is shared for reading only, or for editing too. Once you share a file, the file looks as if it resides in the space with which you shared it.

Clearvale is for Integration. Through powerful APIs that we provide, you can integrate Clearvale or specific aspects of Clearvale into your own system. For example, you can integrate a series of forum widgets into your application. The APIs are based on the REST architecture, a standard in web services.

Clearvale is for Collaboration. Collaborate even more in this release by using multiple forums in your network or community spaces. For example, you can add a forum for product questions and another as a suggestion box. Get your network members collaborating and improve your business. Microblogs also encourage collaboration among network contacts, making it easy to keep up with what others in the network are working on.

Check out the online help and Clearvale Connect for more details on using all of the features included in this release.

Greetings!

As you may already know from reading previous blog posts, Clearvale has been under renovation! With the changes, you will notice some differences in how items display in your networks after the migration. While all of your content will be retained, some items in widgets and so on may not display as you expect. You can easily update your settings, though. Please refer to this document for additional information.

This blog post will discuss the impact to your image and video widgets, as well as your photo albums and video galleries resulting from the upcoming May release of Clearvale.

Image and Video Widgets: The May release for Clearvale will provide more control over the images and videos that display in your network pages.  Image and video widgets with the (show individual images) or (show individual videos) option selected will only display photos and videos that have been shared to the network space.  As a result, image and video widgets on the network homepage with the (show individual…) option selected will be blank, as there will be no photos or videos shared to the network immediately following the upgrade.  You may correct this by utilizing the sharing function to share images and videos with the network space.  Once you have completed this step, your widgets should function as normal.

Photo Albums and Video Galleries: Previously, you were allowed to pull other members’ photos into your own albums.  Similarly, you were allowed to pull other members’ videos into your own albums.  However, with the May release you will only be able to add other members’ items to your folders if those items have been shared to you.

During the upgrade process we will identify files belonging to other members and remove those files from your folders.  Once the upgrade is completed, members can begin sharing content with each other.  Shared content from other users can then be categorized within your personal folders.

One result of this is that some of your folders may contain fewer items following the May release.  Another is that Image and Video widgets that were pointing to a specific album or gallery may show fewer items following the May release.  This results from the fact that items belonging to other members will have been removed from personal folders.

Note that your content will not be lost during the migration; instead, the improved privacy and sharing controls may result in some content becoming unavailable to you until the owner shares it. Feel free to post any questions you have to forums or comment on this blog.

In May you will see many changes and improvements to Clearvale. One of the more exciting features BroadVision is introducing is the Ecosystem. What is an “ecosystem,” though, and how can it benefit you? I’ll explain in the next paragraphs.

An ecosystem is a collection of affiliated Clearvale networks that has its own administrative console for managing the networks within it. When you purchase this premium service, you obtain access to your console, from which you then create the networks in your ecosystem. For example, your ecosystem might have the following types of networks: an intranet site for your employees, an extranet site to which you invite customers, and an extranet site for sales to use with potential customers. You can add additional networks at any time, and by using the administrative console, you can assign new ecosystem admins, add members to your networks, and perform other administrative tasks. Finally, blog posts and files can be shared across different networks within an ecosystem.

How Does an Ecosystem Benefit Me, Though?

More than merely a linked affiliation between networks, an ecosystem gives organizations the ability to share information easily between networks within the ecosystem: A member profile can be propagated among all the networks in the ecosystem, without the need for the member to recreate it. Administrators can also easily add a person—a new employee, for example—to numerous networks at the same time. Additionally, members can share files with different networks within the ecosystem. If you like, you can even clone an entire ecosystem. Ecosystems are available with custom URLs if you so desire.

One of the many changes you will notice in the May release of Clearvale is that Forums are more robust. In the new release, network administrators can create as many different forums as they like. Within each forum, network members can add and then respond to forum topics. In the current release, you can have one forum per space (network level or community level).

In the May release, you will be able to have multiple forums at each level. For example, on your home page, you might have three forums:

• Home Buyer Forum
• Home Seller Forum
• Renter Forum

You can configure a widget for each of these forums, and then show the topics specific to each forums in a different widget. Or, you can use one Forum widget, and list all the forums in the widget.

Members click on a forum, and then drill down to the forum and its topics. For example, the New Home Buyer Forum might have topics as follows:

Click on the forum topic link to see the topic and reply.

When your network is upgraded to the May release, your current forum topics are moved into a forum called "General Topics." The Forums widget is defined to show the contents of the the "General Topics" forum. You can leave this widget as-is, and continue using a single forum. Or, you can reconfigure your network to use multiple forums.

Good news for Clearvale users! In the upcoming release, you will be able to share files with specific people, communities, and even entire networks. What does this mean for you? You will have an even better user experience and more granular control over your files, as explained in this post.

What Happens with Files Now?

With DocuVault, you can currently share files by assigning access rights to people in your community or network; you can also assign different access rights to individuals by using Access Overrides. You can’t, however, specify access to multiple areas. For example, if you upload a document to your community, a person outside of it does not have access to it unless you grant an override to that person. If you want to grant overrides to several people, you can; however, with large groups, this can take time. Sharing a file with multiple communities or networks is not possible.

What’s Going to Happen?

In the upcoming release, you can share files with combinations of individual people, communities, and networks. You can also share files with multiple people, communities, and networks. When you share a file, you can designate different levels of access, too:

-Owner access indicates that a person has the exact access to the file as the file creator.
-View access indicates that a person, network, or community has view access only; no changes to the file can be made.
-Edit access indicates that a person, network, or community can make changes to the file.

The people with whom you share a file will see it appear in their respective file interfaces. The updated file interface displays files that you create as well as those shared with you. For example, the below screenshot displays the files created by Gina Smith. If she clicks on Shared with Me, she will see files that she did not create but that people have shared with her (either because they chose to share the file with her individually or because she belongs to a network or community with which the file is shared). She will be able to perform actions on the files shared with her based on the share access granted by the file owner.

With this level of flexibility, you will find that Clearvale makes creating, updating, and sharing important information very easy. You can distribute information and make changes to files without the need for multiple copies; you can also save time by eliminating the confusion that multiple file copies can create. Finally, because the upcoming release includes even finer sharing granularity, you can feel assured that everyone who needs access to an important file has it and that the access level is individualized based on need.

Other Benefits of the Change

With the upcoming changes, you can share files even if you do not have DocuVault. DocuVault versioning and file history options will remain available when you purchase the DocuVault feature. However, if you do not have DocuVault, you can still share files as described above.

Get ready! A new release of Clearvale is planned for mid May. Read on for a preview of the new features.

Forums: Currently, you are limited to one forum on the home page and one forum in each community. In the May release, you can create multiple forums for your network or community. Within each forum, you or members can add multiple forum topics. Network or community members can comment on the forum topics.

Content Unification: In an effort to make it easier to manage your content, we plan to combine files, images, videos, and DocuVault files into a single Files interface. The new Files interface will have a similar look and feel to the existing DocuVault screens. A Files interface will exist for each network, community, and person.

Content Sharing: We are enhancing the sharing capabilities such that members can share files to multiple individuals, communities, and even other networks within an ecosystem. (Ecosystems are described below).  This should make it easier for members to work together on shared documents, and therefore encourage collaboration across your organizations. Additionally, you can share blogs with networks and communities.

Multi-file Upload: When uploading files, you can select multiple files to upload. You are no longer limited to uploading a single file at a time. This includes documents, images, and native videos.

Ecosystems: An Ecosystem is a group of networks that enables cross-network profiles, content sharing, notification, and so forth. Each Ecosystem will have a consolidated management console. This is a Premium Service, included in the Enterprise Services package.

RESTful APIs: We are implementing a set of APIs based on the REST architecture, a standard in web services. The access to Clearvale APIs will allow customers to integrate Clearvale or specific aspects of Clearvale, such as a Forum widget, with their own systems.

LDAP Support: We are providing support for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).  This is a Premium Service.

Widget Changes: Several changes are planned for the widgets:

• On the home page, you can now choose to show or hide the Quick Stats widget. Additionally, you can add a Network Directory widget, which is similar to the Community Directory widget, and provides quick links to network pages.

• On community pages, you can now use the Blogs widget.

• On your profile page, you can place the Profile Directory widget, which provides quick links to your profile widgets.

• On all pages, you can configure the Files widget to show just files in a particular folder. The Videos widget supports both embedded videos (Youtube, etc.) and, new in this release, native Flash videos. The Pages widget is renamed the Wiki Pages. Finally, the Photos widget is renamed the Images widget.

My Feed: A new page called My Feed will allow members to quickly and easily see the newly published content from their contacts and their communities. In addition, members can see the comments and make comments on this content.  Also included in the "My Feed" page is a microblogging capability. Members can write microblogs and view microblogs from other members.

Disk Meter: The network Statistics page will show how much disk space you have used.

Member Removal: Currently, if a member leaves a network, all content associated with that member is deleted from the network. In the May release, you can disable a member, which prevents that member from being able to access the network using their login credentials. All member content and contributions are preserved.

Invitation Management: You can resend network invitations to unconfirmed invitees.

Company Field in Profile: You can include your company name in your profile. This is useful for networks that are extranets.

Teamwork: If you are using Teamwork, we are simplifying the status values that you can assign to goals and tasks. New goals and tasks have a status of New. You will no longer need to accept a goal. You can also cut and paste tasks. Teamwork notification messages are also improved.

Stay tuned! We will post additional blog updates here on Clearvale Connect with further details about the release over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, feel free to send us any questions or comments you might have.