The thread is about central control of Spark clients.
Currently one can disable roster or group based broadcasting in Spark (menu and context menu entry dissapears). But it’s still possible to do massive broadcast by selecting all group’s members with Ctrl-A. Maybe broadcast disabling should cover all the ways? What other administrators think or need? Logically Broadcast Disabling means disabling of any possible client broadcasting to me.
Also, i have mentioned this in blog comment. There was a request for centralised transcripts disabling in Spark clients. This could be important in enterprise networks, where auditing is only done on the server and no local logs should be saved (security reasons as well).
Maybe there are some other ideas, requests, bug reports?
I can fill some of these in JIRA, but as this should be done both in Spark and Openfire (plugin), i dont know how to do this better. Gato, Daniel?
Avatar/VCard - (Spark Only) - just a bit of info. Admin user is always able to edit his profile.
Group Chat - when i block joining and then try to open a bookmark in Spark, it shows nothing. But if i enable joining again and try to open that bookmark, i will join the room, but there will be a few tabs more in the chat window (all the previous unsuccessful tries). Spark issue probably. SPARK-1007
Permitted Clients:
Should be a way to change the message shown for the users violating client policy. JM-1362
I just don’t know of any other clients that support it. =/ There have got to be some.
If I do recall correctly, there is at least -something- we extended about it though. Added an additional info field or something. Don’t recall at the moment.
Spark Version: I am not sure what you mean here. I prevent notification of the current version by placing a really old copy of spark here. Do you mean restricting access to openfire to a certain version of spark? If this is an issue what would also prevent the user from using any other XMPP client to bypass this setting. If they can install an unapproved version of spark they can install other clients. Seems like wasted hours of coding to me, no offence.
Pasted from the comment section on the Client Control plugin blog:
A thought on the client features for the plugin. Would it be possible to add options to enable/disable Spark only items such as tasks, notes, and even invite/join conference? Small companies who only have one location probably wouldn’t need a chat conference room. And removing some of the buttons on Spark would help keep the interface buttons at a minimum.
Personally, I like having clients able to view their history is a good thing. It saves the admin from getting requests to retrieve history for a conversation for whatever reason. Although I can see some other networks would like to have the control over history, probably very helpful for some admins.
No, i just meant that there is no GUI for disabling that option. I have uploaded Spark 2.5.8 and checked the radio button. And now i cant remove it in Admin Console. No Delete or such button. So i have to go to openfire folder, find it and delete manually. It’s an additional step. I want everything to be done via AC, like plugins installing/upgrading, etc.
You can add any custom client in the form on the Permitted Clients page. But as it was discussed recently in last blog comments, this plugin can’t guarantee that policy. Only novice and obeying the rules can be restricted with that plugin. Advanced users can find a workaround.
Ok, I figured out how to do it, but still I have lots of noob users and I want to force them to one specific client and one specific version, any chance to somehow permit only Adium v.1.2.5 and Miranda 0.8.0 ?
Also, it would be nice if the notice form server could be modified so I can write something on my own language, becouse noob users don’t know any english
Also, it would be nice if the notice form server could be modified so I can write something on my own language, becouse noob users don’t know any english
This is already requested in my second message. JM-1362 But there won’t be much development on this plugin after it’s being open-sourced. It’s up to community members to step in and fix it.
As about controlling clients and versions it would be hard to implement. Especially in such way, that absolutely noone could use anything else. One community user mentioned that client certificates support should be added to openfire, etc. You can’t control sophisticated users. More over, you can’t control versions of every client, which is not developed by Jive Software. Unless you will write your own plugin.
Can the ‘client control plugin’ control the Spark plugins on every client? That would be nice to centrally control all clients’ plugins.
Virtually anything is possible. But as i understood in yesterday live chat, official development on this (and other parts of enterprise plugin) plugin won’t be very active. That was the main cause to open-source them, so that community members can improve them. So, it’s time to learn java Or to find a developer here or at your place.
I am really not a programmer, but how hard is it to learn java programming for openfire/spark development?
That’s the point. It’s not hard to learn a new language if you are a programmer. All languages has many common things. In some thread one said that it is useful to study MOTD plugin for Openfire (it has some manual i think). There is also the sparkplug package (for making Spark plugins) Ignite Realtime: Spark IM Client
