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Setting up ClickMail and the Network Browser

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About ClickMail

ClickMail and Mac OS 9's Network Browser

Apple links:

Network Browser user instructions

NSL Manager admin guide (PDF)

To set up ClickMail, simply add a "labeledURI" attribute to each entry to be browsed. That name ends in "I" not "L". Set the attribute's value to a URL starting with "http://" (for a person's home page), "ftp://" or "afp://" for File Sharing over IP. You can use a "URL" attribute instead of "labeledURI". You can enter multiple values (URLs) in the attribute--use the Add Value button (or "+" in web admin). Although a "labeledURI" can include a comment (after the URL and a space), the Network Browser ignores it.

You may wish to set up a special branch in your ClickMail database for entries to be browsed by the Network Browser. Create an parent entry like "ou=nsl, c=US" and make child entries of that ("nsl" was chosen for Network Service Location--you can use any name for this parent entry). See example below.

The first part of each entry's distinguished name (DN) is displayed in the Network Browser (as a sub-neighborhood name).Specifically, the value of the RDN is shown. For example, if an entry's DN is "cn=John Smith, ou=nsl, c=US," the Browser will display "John Smith." But if the DN is "uid=8126231, ou=nsl, c=US", the Browser will display "8126231"!

When you first open an LDAP Neighborhood, Network Browser displays any URLs found in the parent entry itself ("ou=nsl, c=US" in our example) along with the child Neighborhoods. If no URLs are in the parent entry, all URLs in the children are displayed. If you’d rather not have URLs displayed at the top level, put a dummy labeledURI in the parent, but make it a protocol that Network Browser does not display (example: labeledURI: xyz://anything.com). This workaround was used for the illustration below, although the parent's labeledURI dummy attribute is not shown.

To set up the Network Browser (client): If you enter an LDAP server in the Internet Control Panel's Advanced section (and optionally a Search Base), the Network Browser creates a corresponding Neighborhood that displays the LDAP entries. You can also manually create an LDAP Neighborhood in the Browser with the Add Neighborhood command. Only common names and URLs are displayed. The URLs are clickable.

If you created a special branch for entries to be browsed, enter it in the Search Base field of the Internet Control Panel. If a user manually creates an LDAP Neighborhood, the URL/Searchbase should look like this example ("%2f" is a delimiter):

    ldap.domain.com%2fou=nsl, c=us

Only the Mac OS 9 version of the Network Browser, using NSL's "LDAPPlugin" extension, can display an LDAP Neighborhood.

  For developer-level information, download Apple's NSL software development kit.
 
  ClickMail and Mac OS 9's Network Browser

Updated 12/29/99 - Paragraph 4, dummy URL workaround added