Microsoft Outlook connector

The Microsoft Outlook connector allows you to publish emails and their attachments to a MindTouch Page. The below example is done in Outlook 2007. Before we publish an email to MindTouch, we need to configure the Outlook connector so that it can connect to our MindTouch instance. To get started click the drop down arrow next to the publish button and click Manage Accounts:

This will open up the connector settings screen. Click the Add button to add a new MindTouch instance.

Once you click the Add button this will open the Account Settings Screen. For this example I'm going to use a local install that I have which has the ip address of http://192.168.168.174.

Notes:

• With MindTouch installs Lyons and higher you are able to query the Authentication providers to specify the auth service for the user that you are adding.
• For installs pre-Lyons you will need to use the default Authentication provider to login and you will be unable to query the Authentication providers.
• If you are authenticating with an External auth user and are unable to login, try logging into MindTouch and verify that the logged in username is the same as the username you are logging in with. If a username already exists in MindTouch for your external auth user then a local user will be created with a 1 appended after it. This is the username you will need to login with. Ex: If my external authentication user is coreyg but when I log into MindTouch it shows me logged in as coreyg1, then I will use coreyg1 as the username to authenticate in the connector.

Once you have it filled out, click Ok

If the credentials are wrong then you will see the following screen:

If MindTouch is down or the address is wrong then you will see the following:

Once you have all of the settings correct then your MindTouch instance will show in the Settings screen as follows. If you want to add more MindTouch instances, repeat the Add steps and they will appear in your Settings window.

Next let's look at the Options for the Word Connector. To access the options click the dropdown arrow next to the Publish button and select Options as follows:

This will open up the following window which allow you to specify the following:

1. Remove all CSS styles when publishing - This removes the Word styles before publishing the document to MindTouch. This can cause your document to lose structure and formatting so it will not look the same when it is published to MindTouch.
2. Remove all tables of contents allows you to remove the automatic table of contents that is included in MS Word documents
3. Prompt for destination path and title when publishing - This will prompt you with a dialog where you can select where you want to publish the email along with the name of that page that is created.
4. Show published document in browser will automatically open a browser window to show the newly published Word Document on your MindTouch site

Once you have specified the options then click OK to apply them

Now that you have an account configured and the options specified, we can publish a document to a MindTouch page. To do this click the dropdown next to the Publish button and specify the account that you want to publish the document to:

I have an email that I sent out to the sales team and include a new proposal, new logo, and wording. Our proposal is constantly evolving with new wording, the marketing department is making changes, and we need to add more supported logos, because of this I want to put it in MindTouch. I can easily do this with the MindTouch Outlook connector. To access the Outlook Connector from an email click the Add-Ins tab, otherwise you will be able to access the Publish button in the toolbar of the Outlook program. First click the drop down arrow next to the Publish button and select the MindTouch instance that you want to publish to.

Now that you have the correct MindTouch site selected that you want to publish to, either open the email that you want to publish, go to Add-Ins and click Publish or highlight the email and click the Publish Button

Once you click Publish, this will start publishing the email including attachments to MindTouch to the user space of the user that you added to the Settings of the Outlook Connector unless you selected to be prompted for a Destination path in the Options section under Settings. If you selected that then you will be prompted with the following dialog where you can specify the path for the parent page of which the email will be published under and the Page Title you want it to be. The Default page title is the subject of the email.

Once you hit OK, or if you didn't have the options configured to prompt you for a parent page and page title, it will continue with a dialog that will look like the following:

This will then redirect you to the MindTouch install where your email will be including attachments:

Microsoft Word connector

Open up a Microsoft Word document that you want to publish to MindTouch. When Microsoft Word opens click on the Add-Ins tab and you'll see a button that says Publish which is seen as follows:

Before we publish the Word document to MindTouch, we need to setup the MindTouch instances. Note: If you already setup MindTouch instances through the Outlook Connector, then they will be available for the other connectors including the Microsoft Word connector. To add MindTouch Instances to the Word Connector, click the drop down arrow next to the Publish word and click Manage Accounts as follows:

This will then give you the following page:

Once you click the Add button this will open the Account Settings Screen. For this example I'm going to use a local MindTouch install that I have which has the ip address of http://192.168.168.174.

Notes:

• With MindTouch installs Lyons and higher you are able to query the Authentication providers to specify the auth service for the user that you are adding.
• For installs pre-Lyons you will need to use the default Authentication provider to login and you will be unable to query the Authentication providers.
• If you are authenticating with an External auth user and are unable to login, try logging into MindTouch and verify that the logged in username is the same as the username you are logging in with. If a username already exists in MindTouch for your external auth user then a local user will be created with a 1 appended after it. This is the username you will need to login with. Ex: If my external authentication user is coreyg but when I log into MindTouch it shows me logged in as coreyg1, then I will use coreyg1 as the username to authenticate in the connector.

Once you have it filled out, click Ok

If the credentials are wrong then you will see the following screen:

If the MindTouch Site is down or the address is wrong then you will see the following:

Once you have all of the settings correct then your MindTouch instance will show in the Settings screen as follows. If you want to add more MindTouch instances, repeat the Add steps and they will appear in your Settings window.

Next let's look at the Options for the Word Connector. To access the options click the dropdown arrow next to the Publish button and select Options as follows:

This will open up the following window which allow you to specify the following:

1. Remove all CSS styles when publishing - This removes the Word styles before publishing the document to MindTouch. This can cause your document to lose structure and formatting so it will not look the same when it is published to MindTouch.
2. Remove all tables of contents allows you to remove the automatic table of contents that is included in MS Word documents
3. Prompt for destination path and title when publishing - This will prompt you with a dialog where you can select where you want to publish the email along with the name of that page that is created.
4. Show published document in browser will automatically open a browser window to show the newly published Word Document on your MindTouch site

Once you have specified the options then click OK to apply them

Now that you have an account configured and the options specified, we can publish a document to a MindTouch page. To do this click the dropdown next to the Publish button and specify the account that you want to publish the document to:

Once you have selected the account then click the Publish button:

When you click the publish button and you have specified in your options to "Prompt for destination path and title when publishing" then you will see the following screen where you can specify the path where you want to publish the document to along with a different title for the page:

Once you hit OK, or if you didn't have the options configured to prompt you for a parent page and page title, it will continue with a dialog that will look like the following:

This will then redirect you to the MindTouch install where your email will be including attachments:

Windows Desktop connector

The Windows Desktop connector gives you drag and drop access to a MindTouch install. To access the Windows Desktop connector click on Start -> Programs -> MindTouch Desktop Suite -> Desktop Connector This will open up the following interface:

Before we can access a MindTouch Directory we need to add the MindTouch Instance(s) through the Settings menu. Click Settings and then click Manage Accounts... As with the Outlook connector and the Word Connector, if you have already setup MindTouch instances, they will be available in the Desktop connector. To add a MindTouch instance click the Add button in the Settings window:

This will present the following screen where you can add the details for your MindTouch install:

Once you have added the details click OK and the account will be added to the list, if you encounter an error please see above in the Outlook or Word documentation for configuration. Before we can access our MindTouch install we need to configure the options. You can do this by clicking the Settings menu and then selecting Options as follows:

This will then show the following screen where you can specify these options:

1. Prompt for new page content will give you a text area that you can add text to which will be added when you create a new page through the Desktop Connector
2. Replace existing page content references when you drag and drop text onto a folder which will add it to the bottom of the page by default but if you check this box then it will replace the content on the page with the text that you dragged and dropped onto the folder
3. Insert HTML content as citation will add a link at the bottom of drag and dropped text of where the content came from
4. Attach embedded images will specify if when you drag and drop text onto a folder and there are images included in the text an image link, then those images are downloaded and attached to the page

Once you have specified all of the options then click OK. Now you are ready to connect to your MindTouch install. Click Settings and then the account that you want to connect to:

This will then connect to the MindTouch instance you selected and present you with a hierarchy of pages in it which can be seen here:

Looking at the File Menu we see the following options:

Note: You have to select a folder in the Pages section in order for the File options to not be greyed out

1. Open will open the selected page in a browser
2. Copy Link Location will copy the link for the page that you are located on
3. Download will download the selected files to your local computer
4. Upload will present you with an upload dialog where you can select files to attach to the selected page
5. New page will create a subpage below the selected page
6. Delete will remove a selected page or attachment
7. Rename will rename a selected page or attachment
8. Refresh will refresh the hierarchy and attachments to show any recent changes
9. Exit will exit out of the Desktop connector

Also in the header Menu is the Help menu which has About MindTouch Desktop Connector. If you click on it you will then see the current version of your MindTouch Desktop Connector as follows:

Now that you are familiar with all of the configuration options for the Desktop Connector, let's look at what you can do with it. To get started you can create new pages on the fly by right clicking in the white window in the Explorer View and then clicking New Page as follows:

Page creation and organization

When you click New Page it will then create a blank page that you can rename like the following:

Also if you have "Prompt for New Page content" set in your options you will receive the following dialog:

Here you can specify the content you want the new page to be seeded with or you can select the Default page content and then the default system content will be added to the page. Now that your page has been created you can move the page to anywhere in the wiki including to the Templates and Users pages. To move the page just click and drag the folder from the explorer view or the hierarchy view and drag it to the page that you want it to be a subpage of. Example: if I want our newly created page called Page Title under the Admin Devices subtree I would drag it like the following:

Once I drag and drop the Page Title onto Admin Devices I will then be able to expand Admin Devices and see it below it as follows:

This is a great way to restructure the MindTouch hierarchy on the fly along with creating new spaces. Note that if you want to expand the hiearchy click the + sign next to any folder. Here is a screen shot of the Templates, Users, and Main hierarchy expanded:

To add a new template you can click the Templates page and then right click in the white space to the right of the hierarchy and add a new page. Note: You don't have to add Template: to the page name, the system will automatically do that for you.

Web View

If at anytime you want to preview any of the newly created pages or modified pages, click on the page in the hiearchy and then click the WebView tab. This will then allow you to see how the page appears in a web browser:

Drag and Drop Files

The same way that you can drag and drop pages within the hierarchy, you can also drag and drop files from your local computer or from within the MindTouch install. To add files to a page from your computer just drag and drop the files from your computer onto the folder that you want the files to be attached to. From there if you decide you want to move the files to a different location you can drag and drop the file from within the explorer view to a different folder like the following:

Then when you click on Advanced Search test you will see the file has been attached to that page:

One really nice thing that the MindTouch Desktop connector does is it allows you to drag and drop a folder from your computer, with subfolders, and it will replicate the folder structure on your MindTouch site and attach files that are within those folders. This makes it really easy to move content that used to reside only on your computer onto your MindTouch site so that you can share it with others.

Drag and Drop Text onto a page

The MindTouch Desktop Connector also allows you to drag and drop text onto a folder which will append the content to the page or replace the content (this depends on the option Replace existing page content) To utilize this functionality first have a window open with text that you want to drag and drop along with the desktop connector open like the following. Then highlight the text that you want to add and drag it to the page that you want to add it to:

This will then add the content to the end of the page or replace the content depending on your options. As you can see here:

If you specified Insert HTML content as citation in the Desktop Connector options, then a note will be added underneath the inserted text as follows: