Web Administration Guide

Guide to using web administration for ClickMail Central Directory

ClickMail Central Directory Web Administration lets administrators add, edit, and delete entries, plus set permissions. It works much like ClickMail's local interface. Here are some features and issues specific to web administration. For more details, see the ClickMail Administrator Guide (in printed or Acrobat form).

To view this page in a separate window, click and hold on the above "Web admin guide" link to get the pop-up menu, then choose New Window with this Link.

Logging into the server
Browse mode
Searching for entries
Editing entries
Setting Permissions
Web Administration browser requirements
Security information



Logging In

Click the Administer directory link above, which opens the login page.

The ClickMail Server URL tells your browser where to find ClickMail. By default, a relative URL "../clickmail.acgi" points one folder level up from this page (login.html). You may enter an absolute URL starting with "http://" instead. The ClickMail application (or alias) must have a name ending in ".acgi" to be recognized by your web server. See the ClickMail Read Me for web interface installation instructions.

Administrator's Distinguished Name identifies you as the person authorized to work on the directory. This is the distinguished name of your entry in the directory. To use web administration, your entry must be in the "administrators" group (see ClickMail Read Me). You must enter your distinguished name exactly as shown in your directory entry. If your name is "John Doe," then your Distinguished Name is probably: "cn=John Doe, c=us".

Enter your password (also from your directory entry).

Choose an action from the pop-up menu (Find, Entries, Browse, Directory permissions, or Attribute permissions). In this version, permissions are only accessible from the login page.

If you want to edit any entries containing special characters (like é or £), check the checkbox. This tells ClickMail that entry data sent to it are encoded in UTF-8. If you check the box, also choose UTF 8 in Netscape as described in the login window. You don't need UTF-8 to view entries with special characters, but don't submit any changes unless you've logged in under UTF-8. If your entries do not have special characters, you can work in Netscape's default encoding ("Western (ISO-8859-1)).

Note: UTF-8 mode in Netscape 4 may cause pop-up menus to be cut off, missing some options. As a workaround, use the Other... option in the Attribute pop-up menu, and type in the LDAP version of the attribute name. When running in UTF-8, do not resize the window, this may interfere with character encoding.

Click the "Login" button. Your server URL and and Administrator's Distinguished Name are remembered for future logins.


Browse mode

To enter browse mode, choose Browse on the login page or from the mode pop-up menu (upper right of most pages).

When you choose the browse command, all root-level entries are listed. If your directory is "flat" (you don't use child entries in a tree structure), this is the list of all entries. From the list, click a left arrow button to view one entry, or click a down arrow button (if shown) to list children of that entry.

Tree-browsing note: The up arrow available on lists and entry views goes to a single parent, not to a list of entries at the next level up in the tree. To view the next level up in a branch, go up two levels then back down one. In other words, this lists the aunts and uncles as well as the parent.


 Searching for entries

To search for an entry, select "Find Mode" form the mode pop-up.

The browser displays an entry containing all attributes present in the directory. Type the information you want to find in the attributes, just as in the native interface. If you enter values for several attributes, only entries that contain all the values are found (boolean AND search). Values are searched as substrings; to search for an exact value instead, start it with an equal sign ("=Smith"). Searches are case- and accent-insensitive.

When you are done entering the data, click the "submit" button to start the search.

When the search has been completed, the entries found are listed. Click the arrow button on the left to view an entry in edit mode.




Editing entries

Editing entries works much like the Entries window in ClickMail's local interface. There are a few differences, however. Instead of "Save", click the "Submit" button. Or, like the local Entry window, click an arrow button to save your entry and move to another one in one step.

To add a new attribute to an entry, choose a name from the pop-up menu (choose "Other" to add a blank attribute that you name yourself). To add additional values to an attribute, Click the "+" sign to the right of the attribute. To delete an attribute value, click the "-" to the right of it.

To change a Distinguished Names (DN), edit the value for the attribute that makes up the first part of the DN. To use a different attribute as the DN, click the DN label link next to the DN text area. A smaller window will pop up. In this window, you can browse your entry for a suitable replacement.


Setting permissions

To set permissions, start at the login page (click the Administer directory link above). In the login pop-up menu, choose Directory permissions or Attribute permissions.

Directory permissions goes straight to the permissions form. Make any changes and click Submit.

For Attribute permissions, choose Attribute permissions from the login page, then choose the attribute from the pop-up menu of all attributes.

After you submit a new permission, setting, you are returned to the Attribute pop-up menu page, where you can also switch to Find entry or Edit entry mode.




Web Administration browser requirements

ClickMail Central Directory Web Administration requires Netscape 4 or later.



Make sure you have enabled JavaScript in your browser's preferences before you attempt to edit or search entries.



Security information

We recommend that you restrict access to this web site. One way to do this is put the site in a password protected directory. If possible, use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption on the site so nobody can intercept and use the data while it is in transit. If you do this, and operate in the United States, get the domestic (strong) encryption version of your web browser to make use of better security.