Portal, V6.1

 

Portal new features

 

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Improved installation

  1. Files are arranged by read/write access requirements.

  2. The use of system applications for many EAR files provides faster federation as well as simpler and faster corrective services.

  3. Simplified questionnaire in the Installation Wizard makes installation easier.

  4. The installation process is faster.

  5. Installation provides two options...

    • administration
    • full

  6. Reduced and restructured tasks make configuration easier.

  7. The launchpad provides all install and start using the product in one screen.

  8. The Configuration Wizard can be launched from the Installation Wizard.

 

Improved configuration

  1. The predefined access group, contentAuthors, simplifies granting WCM rights, allowing users to create and edit contents and components in both out-of-the-box portal pages and in the authoring portlet.

  2. By default, all authenticated portal users have privileged user access to all non-administrative portlet applications and to all non-administrative pages.

  3. Administrators can use a set of default credential slots to configure various out-of-the-box portlets that use the portal credential vault to store user credentials for authentication with back-end systems.

    Default slots are provided for...

    • WCM
    • E-mail
    • Web Clipping
    • Feeds
    • Miscellaneous

 

Security

Administrators can enable a Remember me cookie which allows a computer to remember the user's login information. In addition, they can enable step-up authentication to increase the level of authentication that is required to access pages and portlets.

 

Enriched search experience

  1. The Search Center in all themes is more responsive because it uses Asynchronous Java™Script and XML (AJAX) with a Dojo-based client-side Java™Script programming model.

  2. Extend Search beyond the portal by displaying results from external search engines such as Yahoo! through the External Search Results portlet.

  3. Suggested search results can be displayed separately from the regular results and can be based on either keywords only or on keywords and documents content, depending on the setup. The administrator can control the results by adding keywords to the indexed documents.

  4. Configuration of the default scope and removal of "AllSources" scope if required is now available. The first scope on the list is the default scope and "AllSources" is the first scope that is predefined for out-of-the-box use.

  5. Searching portal content is remotely accessible through REST Service.

  6. The configuration of search collections is backed up and used for automatic reconfiguration of collections after upgrading.

 

New infrastructure supports Web 2.0 theme

  1. More responsive user interfaces provide better context awareness for the user through client-side aggregation of portal pages.

  2. Client-side mashups and interactive portal applications can be developed using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) with a Dojo-based client-side JavaScript programming model.

  3. Portal models like Navigation, Page Layout, and User information are remotely accessible through REST Services.

  4. Improved scalability results from enhanced caching capabilities. Page fragments can be cached separately rather than caching entire pages.

  5. Dynamic behaviors such as context menus, annotations, highlighting, and drag-and-drop interaction can be applied by an extensible set of semantic tags.

  6. The new Feedreader portlet is based on AJAX.

 

Site management

The new Resource Manager portlet allows administrators to create a page on a source server and publish it to a target server where only a selected group of users can see and test the new page. After testing is complete, you can promote the new page so that all users on the target server with the appropriate access rights can view the new page.

  • Customization through themes and skins

    The new Theme Customizer portlet features a tabbed design and live preview that let you quickly and customize key site elements including the banner, navigation, fonts, and colors. The Theme Customizer portlet is available from the More menu in the portal banner.

     

    IBM Lotus WCM

    1. Seamless multi-realm support.

    2. Enhanced API support for multi-locale sites.

    3. Web content library export and import.

    4. Access and security enhancements including automatic access control inheritance from Web content libraries.

    5. Enhancements to the Web content authoring portlet to improve usability.

    6. Enhanced authoring templates to improve content authoring customizations.

    7. API enhancements related to custom Workflows, Web content libraries, syndication and in-line editing.

    8. Improved Web content library management and reporting.

    9. Optional active content filtering on HTML elements.

    10. Addition of a Short Text element.

    11. Improved people awareness.

    12. Contextual linking for shared content

    13. Web content tag enhancements

    14. Page navigation element enhancements

    15. Improved performance

     

    Enhanced rich text editing

    1. Loading and response times are improved.

    2. New formatting effects are available: subscript, superscript, and strikethrough.

    3. Create custom colors by altering the RGB (Red Green Blue) values in the color palette.

    4. Easily format tables using these new features:

      1. Cell width, height, spacing, padding, text alignment, and table border
      2. Table header options
      3. Background and border colors for tables
      4. Table templates

    5. Apply individual styles of one or more cascading style sheets in the rich text elements of authoring templates.

     

    Improved integration with IBM Lotus Quickr

    WebSphere Portal supports federation over remote Lotus Quickr server content while reusing their defined scopes.

  • Improved integration with IBM WebSphere Process Server

    1. WebSphere Portal V6.1 integrates business processes and related tasks that are managed by WebSphere Process Server Version 6.1.0.1. Using process integration, you can manage human tasks for business applications within the portal environment to support service-oriented architecture (SOA). WebSphere Portal configurations that provide the interface for human tasks in business processes that are managed by WebSphere Process Server are referred to as process portals.

    2. Install the WebSphere Process Server Client V6.1.0.1 on the WebSphere Portal Version 6.1 server and connect to a remote WebSphere Process Server.

    3. Choose from among several configuration options to determine which one meets the needs of your enterprise for full-scale business process integration: single-cell or cross-cell management of stand-alone servers or clusters.

    4. Run automated configuration tasks to enable business process integration for your deployment scenario: single-cell or cross-cell.

    5. After enabling business process integration in the portal environment use the generic portlets provided on the Applications > Process Integration pages to start work immediately on business processes without the need for custom coding:

      1. The My Processes page displays the new Manage Processes portlet, where you can manage process templates, process instances, and templates. If you are an application developer, use the Manage Processes portlet for piloting proof of concept deployments, rapid prototyping, and testing and debugging.

      2. The My Tasks page displays the Task List portlet, which allows users to claim and work with tasks assigned to them. Business application users use the Task List to claim and work with the tasks assigned to them. Administrators can configure the Task List for users working with portal-based business process tasks. Application developers use the Task Processing portlet as a starting point when creating dedicated task pages for the human tasks contained in a business process application. They can use the generic Task Processing portlet or custom-coded, dedicated task processing portlets to work with and complete individual tasks contained in the workflow of the business process definition.

      3. The generic Task Processing page displays the new Task Processing portlet, which renders a simple form-like user interface for all kinds of human tasks by dynamically analyzing the structure of the business data used by the human task at hand. Relevant business data collected in a preceding step is used to pre-fill that part of the generated form that represents the input data of the human task. The other part of the form collects the output data from the user. In addition, the task processing portlet provides the buttons to let the user save, complete, or cancel the given task.

      Customize your process portal environment by modifying the default configuration settings, the task pages, other pages of process integration, and adding your own custom Task List filters. You can also create virtual portals for process integration and extend the portal theme to notify users about new pending tasks.

      Migrate your existing deployment of business process integration to your upgraded portal environment using the portal migration tasks.

      To get started with business process integration in this release of WebSphere Portal, follow this reading path in this information center:

      1. Planning integration with WebSphere Process Server
      2. Migrating WebSphere Process Server integration
      3. Integrating with WebSphere Process Server

     

    Ease of use

    1. Updated categories in the Portlet Palette make it easier to group and organize the individual portlets that you can add to a page.

    2. By default the portal now recognizes whether a general language code is secondary or lower in the browser priority list and ignores all regional variations that do not directly match a language defined by the portal. This behavior conforms to the HTTP specification. For example, if the browser locale list specifies "ja-JP", "de", "ja", the portal ignores the entry "ja-JP" and uses the second entry of "de" because it recognizes that "ja-JP" does not have a match among the portal-defined locales and that the more generic version "ja" of this locale is lower in the list behind "de". If you want your portal to behave as it did in previous portal versions, you can set a language fallback filter.

     

    Serviceability

    1. Install the IBM Support Assistant tool from either the WebSphere Portal media or downloaded image, then use a plug-in to streamline the process of collecting data and log files to diagnose and resolve problems in WebSphere Portal.

     

    Documentation

    1. Viewlets let you explore different ways to work with the information center and provide handy tips for more effective searches.

    2. To streamline access to information about known problems, the information center contains a release notes topic that links to the online support knowledge base where users can search for up-to-date workarounds and solutions.

    • Web 2.0 user interface features
      new portal features that pertain to the next generation type of Web user interface.

    • Portal Search
      Portal Search has been significantly enhanced with new features for IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1. The new features of Portal Search are highlighted in this topic.

       

      Parent topic

      Product overview