Configure Tiki and add features to the groupware tool

I recently covered the installation of the groupware server tool Tiki. Out of the box, you might think Tiki has very little to offer, but your assumption would be way off. In fact, once you start setting up Tiki, you’ll realize just how much this tool can do for you. It isn’t intuitive how to add features to the platform, but once you know where to look and what to do, you’ll be working some serious groupware mojo.

For this tutorial on adding features to Tiki, I assume that you have the tool installed, up and running, and have successfully logged in as the administrative user. I will walk you through configurations that are required before you can add the features I cover later in the tutorial.

Shore up the configuration

When you first log in to Tiki, you will see a warning that the sender email has not been set. Click the link embedded in that warning and on the resulting page (Figure A) set the Sender Email.

Figure A

Everywhere there is a suggested page to view for configurations, you should click the link. (Click the image to enlarge.)

The Browser Title configuration option sets what the browser titlebar displays for the site. Be sure to set that bar, along with the sender email. From this same page, if you click the Look & Feel link, you’ll be able to configure the Theme and the Theme Options.

Permissions

One of the most important elements of the setup will be the user permissions; here you can create users and groups and manage the security of users and groups. To get to this section, do the following:

1. Log in to your Tiki site.
2. Hover your mouse over the Admin menu (Figure B).
3. Select Community.

Figure B

You can go straight to Users, but there are options available on this page you won’t want to miss. (Click the image to enlarge.)

From this new page (Figure C), you’ll see the Administration Features section. Below that are links for Users, Groups, Security, TikiCacheSystem, SysLogs, phpinfo, Mods.

Figure C

There’s a lot to configure from this page. (Click the image to enlarge.)

You’ll want to configure the first three in that list. Note that you cannot assign a user to a group during the creation of the user; you must create the user, and then go to Groups and put that member in the target group. Remember, using groups is a powerful way to control who can do what without having to manage individual preferences for each user.

To create a new group, follow these steps:

1. Click the Groups link under the Administration Features section in Community.
2. Click the Add A New Group tab (Figure D).
3. Enter the group’s details.
4. Click Save.

Figure D

You cannot get granular with permissions yet. (Click the image to enlarge.)

It is possible to inherit permissions to a new group from an existing group. If you want to make this new group unique, select None and save the group. Then you can manage the group’s permissions with the following steps:

1. Click Manage Permissions.
2. Select the new group from the list.
3. Click Select.
4. In the next screen (Figure E) you can assign specific permissions to the new group.

Figure E

If the new group isn’t selected on this page, make sure to select it before going through the various permissions. (Click the image to enlarge.)

Once you finish assigning the group permissions, click Assign and you’re done. To add a user to a group, follow these steps (the user must already be added to the system):

1. Click the Groups link under the Administration Features section in Community.
2. Click the Group in question from the list.
3. Click the Members tab.
4. Select the member to be added to the group from the User drop-down (Figure F).
5. Click Add To Group.

Figure F

You can also ban a user from the group by selecting the user and clicking Ban User From Group. (Click the image to enlarge.)

Add new features

By default, all that is enabled is the wiki portion of Tiki; to add to this, you need to follow these steps:

1. From the Admin menu, click Admin Home.
2. Click Features.
3. Select all of the features you want to add.
4. Click Apply.

Your menu will change according to the features you add. If you add features after you manage the permissions for groups, you’ll need to revisit the group and make any changes to the permissions to include the new features.

Congratulations! Your Tiki installation has just become far more useful. In future posts, we’ll dig even deeper into Tiki and manage some of the newly added features.