WebSphere Portal - Learning about the interface

 

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Overview

This learning topic provides step-by-step instructions for using the default portal interface. You do not have to be an administrator to perform the following steps;

The following steps are provided in this topic:

 

Launching the portal

After you install portal, a default portal is ready to use.

To open the default portal, complete the following steps:

  1. Open a supported Web browser. See the Supported hardware and software section in the Information Center for specific supported browser details.

  2. Type the following URL:

    http://<hostname.yourco.com>:<port_number>/wps/portal

    ...where hostname.yourco.com is the fully qualified host name of the machine that is running WebSphere Portal and port_number is the port number. For example, http://www.ibm.com:9081/wps/portal.

 

Signing up and logging in

This section details how to sign up and log in a user. A user must sign up to receive a user ID, and a user ID is required to log in to the portal.

Only users that have been signed up will be able to log in.

To sign up, complete the following steps:

  1. Click Sign up in the banner.

  2. Type in the necessary information in the field boxes. Fields marked with an asterisk are required. Be sure to note the user ID and password.

    • Use the Preferred Language drop-down menu to select a preferred language for the interface. If no language is specified, English will be selected by default.
    • Use the Interests drop-down menu to select a theme to correspond to the user's interests.

  3. Click Continue to display a confirmation page, or click Cancel to return to the default portal page.

  4. Review the displayed information. Click Continue to complete the enrollment, or click Cancel to edit the information.

  5. Click Continue to return to the default portal page.

You can now log in with the user account that you created.

To log in, complete the following steps:

  1. Click Log in in the banner.

  2. Type the user ID and password.

  3. Click Log in to continue, or click Cancel to return to the default portal page.

 

Navigating the interface

This section provides an understanding of how to navigate within the default portal. After reading this section, be more familiar with how to move around the portal interface.

  1. Locate the banner. The banner includes the main structural elements of the default portal page.

  2. Locate the Welcome tab. The larger tabs within the banner represent the sections at the highest level of the default portal page structure.

  3. Locate the Home page. Pages are housed within the larger sections; for example, the Home page is located within the Welcome tab.

  4. Locate the visible portlets. From a user's perspective, portlets are content channels or applications to which users subscribe, add to their personal portal page, and configure to show personalized content. Portlets that you see might include Welcome to WebSphere Portal, Reminder, Bookmarks, and World Clock.

  5. Locate other user options available from the banner. These options allow the user to click one of the following options:

    • I forgot my password: offers solutions for retrieving the password. These solutions are configured by the administrator.

    • Sign up: enrolls the user for access to the portal.

    • Helphelp icon: opens additional information in a new browser window.

    • Log in: allows current users to access the portal.

After logging in, the options within the banner become more advanced. Additional tabs and pages might be available. The user will be able to click between the tab sections and pages to locate additional portlets. The My Favorites drop-down menu will be available for quick links to the user's preset favorites.

 

Understanding portlets

From an administrator's perspective, a portlet is a content container that can be registered with the portal, so that users can subscribe to it. Examples of portlets that you might see include Welcome to Websphere Portal, Reminder, Bookmarks, and World Clock.

If the administrator and user have a skin activated, the user will see a box around the portlet. The portlet title bar contains the name of the portlet and some icons. The number of icons that appear in the portlet vary depending on the specific portlet.

The displayed icons can include one or more of the following icons:

 

Work with Pages: Steps for creating a page and portlets to a page

This section provides step-by-step instructions on how to create a page and edit page content. After reading this section, have a better understanding of the following:

  1. Click the down arrow next to the drop down menu and choose the option Work with Pages.

Click on the down arrow next to the drop down menu and choose the option Work with Pages. This is the area where individual users can customize the portal for themselves.

"Work with Pages" has three pages below it - "Edit Layout and Content", "Manage Places and Pages", and "Choose Skins". Editing Layout and Content gives the user the ability to change what portals appear on his or her pages and their arrangement on the screen. Managing places and pages lets users create new pages and set them in new or existing places. Choosing skins allows users to choose the look of the bounding box that surrounds the portlets on their pages. The degree to which the user to do any of these things is dependent on how much control the Administrator allows them to have.

We will first take a look at Manage Places and Pages.

 

Manage Places and Pages

Let's look at the manage places and pages first. Click on the Manage Places and Pages option. There are two text boxes. One is labelled Places you can manage and the other labelled Places you can view and edit. Under Places that you can manage are places that you have permission to edit and delete resources that will affect all users using that place. Under Places you can view and edit are those that you can personalize for yourself but cannot affect the way other users see or use.

First, let's create a place. (Remember that places are the options that you have in the drop down box on the upper left of the screen.) Click on the "Create a place" option next to the top text box. It will bring you to a page where you can name your page, choose the theme and choose which markups will be supported, i.e. which devices will be able to be used to view the page. You have the option of setting locale-specific titles if you expect your Web page to be displayed in various places that use different languages.

For our first place name, choose "My First Place". You can also set which theme you want to use and check it out in the preview window. (Avoid the theme labelled Admin - it doesn't create a title bar around portlets.) For now, let's choose the Corporate theme. Click 'OK' when you've entered the place name and the theme.

Notice that "My First Place" appears in the top text box. That's because any place that you create, you automatically have rights to manage. Make sure the place you just created in the top text box is highlighted and click the "Manage place properties" option. This page looks just like the "Create place" page, but this allows you to modify a place that was already created. Change the theme to Science and click OK.

The next option is 'Activate/deactivate place'. This basically turns a place off and on. Turning it off doesn't delete it, just makes it so it can't be used. Try it. A place is activated by default after it's created so you can see that clicking it once deactivates the place, labelling it inactive. Clicking a second time reactivates it.

Delete place will remove a place from the list. Once you've deleted a place, you can't get it back without completely rebuilding it so if you have any doubts that you may want the place again, just deactivate it, don't delete it.

The Order all places option lets you move all your pages up and down in the list so you can control in what order they appear in the drop down menu. We only have one place that we can manage at the moment so there is really nothing that we can do with this at the moment.

The next two options are for the pages that exist within the place. Click the Manage pages option. This will bring you to a new page that allows you to create and modify pages. The list is currently empty because we just created the place and haven't populated it with any pages yet.

Click on 'Create page'. Here we can name a new page and choose the basic layout of it.

Name the page 'Page 1'. Choose the layout you prefer. This basically means to choose the number of columns that the portlets will be displayed in. Choose the option that allows two columns. We only have the option of HTML as markup because the parent place of this page was only in HTML since we didn't specify any other markup types. You also have the option of choosing locale-specific titles just like we did when creating a place. Click 'Ok'.

The 'Manage page properties' option works just like 'Manage place properties', it gives us the ability to change the properties we specified when we created the page. 'Activate/deactivate page' and "Delete page' also work just like their 'place' counterparts.

Define a list of permitted portlets lets the creator specify which portlets whoever uses the page will be able to place on it. Click on that option.

As you can see, you can choose to allow the user to put any portlet that he has access to on the page or you can limit it to specific portlets. Click on 'Allow only these portlets'. Then press 'Add portlets'.

You are brought to a page that will show you the portlets available. It will also let you search through the available portlets with specific criteria. Click the 'Show all portlets' radio button and then click 'Go'.

As you can see, there aren't many portlets to choose from at the moment. Let's choose the 'Reminder', 'Welcome Portlet', and 'QuickLinks' portlets to be available for this page. Clicking on the + icon to the left of the portlet adds it to the list. When all three portlets appear in the text box, press the 'Ok' button. You are returned to the page to define the list of portlets. Notice you also have the option to delete portlets and clear the entire list from this screen, but we don't want to do that at the moment, so just click 'Ok'.

Now we're back at 'Manage pages'. For an exercise, create another page. Call it 'Page 2', give it a single column and only allow the user to add the 'World Clock' portlet to it. When you are done, be returned to this page. When you've done that, click the 'Done' button.

Now go back up to the top of the page and open the drop-down menu. The place you created, 'My First Place', should appear in it. Click on it.

As you can see, you created an empty page that looks different than the other pages we have seen. That's because we've changed the theme for this page. Also notice that although the drop-down box to move between pages remains in the same spot, the 'page buttons' no longer look like tabs, but rather like buttons down the side of the page. These things are controlled by the administrators, who can make the portal appear any way that they choose. If you click on the 'Page 2' button, you'll see the second page you created, but since we haven't placed any portlets on it yet, it looks just like the first.

Go back to the drop down menu and choose Work with Pages again. You should be brought back to the last page you were in under that place. Now we want to learn how add portlets to the pages we just created. For that we have to visit the 'Edit Layout and Content' page.

 

Logging out and closing the Web browser

This section explains how to log out from the portal.

  1. Click Log out in the banner.
  2. Close the browser window.