Today I got the question of how to disable the highlights app in Connections 7. When you follow the documentation for Connections 6.0CR6 you get an error message (and the document is not available in Connections 7).
I commented out the widget definition in widgets-config.xml
like described in the documentation for the former release.
<!-- IBM CONNECTIONS ENGAGEMENT CENTRE - ICEC4Communities -->
<!--
<widgetDef bundleRefId="highlights" defId="Highlights" description="Highlights.description" modes="view fullpage" showInPalette="true" themes="wpthemeNarrow wpthemeWide wpthemeBanner" uniqueInstance="true" url="{webresourcesSvcRef}/../../xcc/templates/iWidgetXCCCommunityDefinition.xml">
<itemSet>
<item name="lang" value="{lang}"/>
</itemSet>
</widgetDef>
-->
<!-- IBM CONNECTIONS ENGAGEMENT CENTRE - ICEC4Communities -->
<templates>
<!-- default template will be used to display the default widgets -->
<template id="default">
<widgetInstance defIdRef="ImportantBookmarks" instanceId="ImportantBookmarks1" uiLocation="col3"/>
<widgetInstance defIdRef="MembersSummary" instanceId="MembersSummary1" uiLocation="col3"/>
<widgetInstance defIdRef="StatusUpdates" instanceId="StatusUpdates1" uiLocation="col2statusposts"/>
<widgetInstance defIdRef="description" instanceId="description1" uiLocation="col2"/>
<widgetInstance defIdRef="Forum" instanceId="ForumInstance1" uiLocation="col2"/>
<widgetInstance defIdRef="Bookmarks" instanceId="BookmarksInstance1" uiLocation="col2"/>
<widgetInstance defIdRef="Files" instanceId="FilesInstance1" uiLocation="col2"/>
<widgetInstance defIdRef="Tags" instanceId="Tags1" uiLocation="col1"/>
<!-- <widgetInstance defIdRef="Highlights" instanceId="Highlights1" uiLocation="col1"/>-->
<widgetInstance defIdRef="Blog" instanceId="Blog1" uiLocation="col1"/>
<widgetInstance defIdRef="Wiki" instanceId="Wiki1" uiLocation="col1"/>
<widgetInstance defIdRef="RichContent" ifGatekeeperSet="COMMUNITIES_TOP_MENU_WITH_BANNER_DEFAULT_LAYOUT" instanceId="RichContent1" uiLocation="banner"/>
</template>
</templates>
- Sychronize the nodes
- Restart the application server hosting WidgetContainer and Communities Application
- Now create a new community and you will get one of the following errors

Error with Community Template Wizard: Bad Request

Error with default Community create dialog: Your session timed out or a server error occurred. Please resubmit your changes
The error message does not help to find the issue, no errors are written to the SystemOut.log
.
Solution
Open the Gatekeeper settings on https://YOUR_CNX_URL/connections/config/highway.main.gatekeeper.tiles and change the setting COMMUNITIES_HIGHLIGHTS_AS_OVERVIEW
from True
to False
.
To access the gatekeeper settings, you need the admin role in the Common
application.

Gatekeeper Setting for COMMUNITIES_HIGHLIGHTS_AS_OVERVIEW
No need to restart an application or application server, just go back to Communities and try to create a community again. This time it works without error messages.