OX6:Open-Xchange UWA

Open-Xchange and Netvibes UWA

What is Netvibes UWA?

Netvibes UWA is a abbreviation for the Universal Widget API and describes a standard to make widgets available on every platform such as Netvibes, iGoogle, Apple Dashboard, Blog Systems and many others. Now it is also possible to embed those widgets to the Open-Xchange User Interface. This means you are able to use most of the widgets available on Netvibes or iGoogle at you Open-Xchange Portal page. Technically this is no big deal but for the user it is now possible to enhance his workspace by more or less useful addons like RSS readers, stock statistics, minigames or weather prediction without leaving the groupware and dealing with external applications.

How to integrate to Open-Xchange

Every user has the possibility to add Widgets to his portal page, independently. The configuration menu is located at 'Configuration' -> 'Startpage' -> 'UWA Modules'. This configuration page allows to add seperate Widgets and customize them. Every Widgets requires a Title which could be a custom name for that widget and a URI which defines the URL of the widget. Widgets are parsed through the Netvibes API and rendered inside a customizable area at the Open-Xchange Portal Page. Please note that this implicates external (Script) Code to be executed at the Open-Xchange Interface where the availability, correctness and privacy of those services are not covered by the Open-Xchange Server.

Screenshots

Example Widgets

Title: Weather for <yourcity>
URI: http://www.netvibes.com/modules/weather/weather.html
Parameter (param1:value1, param2:value2): townName:<yourcity>,unit:1
Unit 0 = Fahrenheit, Unit 1 = Celsius

Title: My RSS Feed
URI: http://www.netvibes.com/modules/feedReader/feedReader.html
Parameter (param1:value1, param2:value2): feedUrl:<RSS-URL>
Where RSS URL is the RSS file the website offers, for example:
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss.xml
http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot
http://www.news.com/2547-1_3-0-20.xml
http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/usatoday-NewsTopStories
http://www.spiegel.de/schlagzeilen/rss/index.xml

Resources

tbd