Configure the portlets on a page

By default, the installation process creates sample pages for the different portlets. We can customize those pages to fit your needs or remove them and create new pages. This article describes how to configure the Connections portlets on a WebSphere Portal page

Restriction: Do not place multiple instances of the same portlet on a page. For example, putting two blog portlets on a page might result in unexpected behavior and is not supported.

IBM Connections portlets can be configured on multiple pages with different filtering and display options. Community Pages affect portlets that are configured on those pages. By default, IBM Connections portlets placed on a community page filter the user's view to display content from that community. A link to a piece of content from a community resolves to a community page if there is an appropriate portlet to display the content on a matching community page. For example, if the Blogs portlet is configured on a "New Employees" community page, the page renders a link in WebSphere Portal to blog entries from that community. If an appropriate community page is not found, links to the content in WebSphere Portal use a set of default pages to display IBM Connections content.

We can organize the pages any way you like and can even hide them from the Portal site's main navigation so that users cannot directly navigate to them. The following procedure creates one page for each service under a label named "IBM Connections" under the pre-defined "Home" page in WebSphere Portal. We can move the Connections pages or create them elsewhere in the WebSphere Portal site structure. It is only important the unique names for the pages remain the same.

1. Define a label to contain the default pages.
   Administration | Portal User Interface | Manage Pages | page | New Label

   Alternatively, create a page to place portlets or content on the page.

2. Enter "IBM Connections" for the title and click OK.

3. Define page unique names that indicate the portal page users are directed to in order to view content from the Connections services.

   These unique names are used in the Content resolver component that handles the Portal page look up The lookup retrieves the appropriate page when a user selects search results from the WebSphere Portal Search Center, selects items from the Connections summary portlets, or uses the URLs described in the Addressing IBM Connections content section. For each of the rows in the table:

   1. Define a page for each service to serve as a default page for content of that type.

   2. Click the Connections label you created in the prior step.

   3. Click New Page, enter the title and unique name and create the page by clicking OK.

      Suggested names...

      Page Title	Unique Name	Portlet Title
      Profiles	ibm.conn.profiles	Profiles
      Activities	ibm.conn.activities	Activities
      Blogs	ibm.conn.blogs	Blogs
      Bookmarks	ibm.conn.bookmarks	Bookmarks
      Forums	ibm.conn.forums	Forums
      Wikis	ibm.conn.wikis	Wikis

      Attention: Do not deploy an Activities portlet or a Forums summary portlet on an anonymous page. The portlet page must require users to authenticate.

4. Add portlets to corresponding pages:
   1. Click the pencil icon (Edit Page Layout) next to a page.
   2. Click Add Portlets.
   3. Type the portlet title in the Search box and click Search.
   4. Select the check box next to the appropriate portlet, then click OK.
   5. Click Done.

5. Follow these steps to give users access to the page.

   1. Navigate to...
      Administration | Access | Resource Permission | Pages | Content Root

      Navigate to the first page containing an IBM Connections Portlet.

   2. Click the Assign Access button for the entry.

      For example, to allow non-admin users to access the portlets, set the role "Privileged User" to "All authenticated users." To allow anonymous access, set the role "User" to "Anonymous Portal User."

   3. Click Apply and then Done.

   4. Repeat Steps a-d for each page containing an IBM Connections Portlet.

   Page access may be inherited. If page access is not inherited in the site structure, click the key icon (Edit access) next to each page and add at least user access for each user or group that will view Connections content in WebSphere Portal.

Parent topic:
Deploy the Connections Portlets

Related:

Mapping a community page to a community
Configure navigation between portlets