Portal Express, Version 6.0
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux, Windows
The Portal User resource collection
Out of the box, Portal Personalization comes with a Portal User resource collection. This collection uses public APIs provided by IBM® WebSphere® Portal Express to access user information.
The collection will allow rules to be written based on all properties of the WebSphere Portal Express user.
You can also use the Portal User resource collection to profile based on Member Manager Lookaside repository properties. Use the Manage Properties menu option in the rule editor to add or remove dynamic or Lookaside properties from the collection. You may add any properties to this collection, but for them to function at runtime some values must be stored in Member Manager for the properties being used and the user executing the rule. The Manage Properties screen can also be used if the server on which you author rules has a different Member Manager configuration than the one on which the rules are deployed.
The resource collection is not new to WebSphere Portal Express Version 6.0, but it now shows the list of Portal User attributes automatically. You no longer have to add each WebSphere Portal Express property you want to use as a dynamic property in the Personalization rule editor. You do not need to generate Java code to use this collection or configure a security ID translator as is often required for Personalization User collections. You cannot currently write rules to select or recommend a list of users from this collection. This collection works with update rules as long as your member repository allows writes. The collection works as if it is an LDAP collection that is automatically configured for the Portal LDAP. The collection will work against whatever repository is used for Member Manager. For example, in the default installation, Member Manager is configured to use a DB2 database.
You may continue to use your existing SQL Server, LDAP or custom user resource collections, and even use them in the same rules as the Portal User Collection. This is useful if you have multiple user repositories, you a have repository that is generally not used for Portal and only used for Personalization rules, or you requirements for attribute value translation ('CHI' should be interpreted as 'Chicago' for instance).
Use the Groups Attribute
The Groups attribute on the Portal User object exposes the distinguished names (dn) of the groups. An example of a distinguished name of a group is cn=wpsadmins, o=default organization, though the exact form will vary by your installation. Using distinguished name allows for more exact matching of groups, since it is possible for two groups to share a common name, such as wpsadmins. The includes operator may be used for inexact string matching, but will perform slightly slower. When possible, use the is operator and match to the distinguished name of the group.
Configure which properties show up for the Portal User Collection
The Personalization rule editor discovers the list of properties to show in rules through a public API (com.ibm.portal.um.PumaProfile). The list exposed by this API is configurable in your Member Manager configuration. See Member Manager for more information.
You may have a long list of properties which are available on the portal user, but do not want all of them to show up in the Personalization rule editor. For this purpose, there is a property in the portal_server_root/shared/app/config/services/PersonalizationService.properties file:
The wmm.property.hide property is a comma-delimited list of Member Manager properties which should be hidden from the Personalization rule editor. You may customize this list to show or hide additional properties. This list is checked only when authoring the rule, so it will not prevent rules previously written using one of these attributes from running. The collection comes pre-configured, and at runtime the collection will find the correct user.
wmm.property.hide=mobile,pager,roomNumber,secretary,carLicense,telephoneNumber, facsimileTelephoneNumber,seeAlso,userPassword,ibm-firstWorkDayOfWeek, ibm-alternativeCalendar,ibm-preferredCalendar,ibm-firstDayOfWeek,ibm-primaryEmail, ibm-otherEmail,ibm-generationQualifier,labeledURI,createTimestamp,modifyTimestamp, ibm-middleName,ibm-timeZone,initials,jpegPhoto
The Portal User collection and the Personalization Server installed without Portal
The Portal User collection can only be used in rules running within a WebSphere Portal Express installation. The system will not prevent you from publishing rules using this collection to a Personalization Server installed outside of WebSphere Portal Express, but the rules will not function in this environment since Member Manager is not available. When WebSphere Portal Express is installed, the security context of the logged in user must have access (through Portal resource permissions) to the user information being accessed through the collection.