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People Finder

The People Finder portlet provides both quick search and advanced search options for locating people and information about people. Once found, a person is visible to other users as a person link that indicates online presence and displays a menu of instant messaging and other options.

Clicking a person link in People Finder displays the Profile, a page including the person's business card information followed by administrator-defined fields organized in sections, for example, Contact Information, Current Job, and Background. People Finder also provides a view of the person's place in the organizational context. In the Organization View, users can display the person's reporting structure: that is, the employees the person manages, if any, and the person's management chain.

The People Finder portlet appears in the People palette, so that users can find people in any context.

To display the People palette, click the small arrow below the Search box at the top right corner of the page.

People Finder is supported as a remote WSRP service.

People Finder supports the Java Portlet Specification. For more information, see the section on developing portlets in this information center.

For information about working with the People Finder portlet, see the Help that is available from the portlet title bar. There is separate Help for the page you see when you select Configure from the drop-down menu on the portlet title bar.


Use the People Finder portlet

Users interact with the People Finder portlet through the following features, which appear in one or more views of the portlet:


Test assumptions

The People Finder portlet has been tested on and is compatible with all supported platforms, as listed in the WebSphere Portal hardware and software requirements.


Setting up People Finder

Using the portlet's configuration mode, administrators can specify which fields they want to display in the People Finder portlet.

The fields that are available for selection when configuring the portlet are based on a mapping of attributes from the user repository to the Member Manager component of WebSphere Portal. People Finder requires a mapping for the uid and mail attributes.

To learn more about attribute mapping or how to determine which attributes are defined to the portal, see the section "Adapting the attribute configuration" in this information center.

For People Finder, make sure your site meets the following client and server requirements.


Client requirements

This portlet supports browsers capable of rendering HTML markup.

Table 1. Minimum requirements for HTML
Item Description
Markup level HTML 4.01 Transitional
Java applet n/a
JavaScript n/a
<iframe> No
Style sheets Portal styles only
Software The People Finder portlet is compatible with specific Web browser software releases.

For details, see the WebSphere Portal hardware and software requirements.

Accessibility Yes


Server requirements

There are no special server requirements for the People Finder portlet.


Deployment/Installation

This portlet is installed automatically as part of WebSphere Portal installation.


National language support for People Finder fields

All fields of the People Finder portlet must have associated language strings defined in each language property file, PeopleFinderUI_language_code.properties.

The field names are the names of the corresponding attributes in Member Manager.

For each People Finder field, three strings are required:

Example:

displayName = Name displayName_Long = Preferred Name displayName_Desc = Display name

The resource key for each field refers to the appropriate language property file, /nls/PeopleFinderUI_language_code.properties. Foreign language translations of People Finder fields must be stored in the appropriate language property file.

Language properties files are in the following location on the WebSphere Portal server (nnnnnnn represents a random number generated by the installation process when the lwppeoplefinder.jar file is installed):

PortalServer_root/pcc.impl/people.impl/peoplefinder/portlet/nnnnnnn.ear/lwp_peoplefinder_war.ear/lwp.peoplefinder.jsr168.war/WEB-INF/lib


Configuration parameters

Config_ResultSetLimit is the only parameter that can be edited; to do so, use the portlet's Configure command. Do not modify any configuration parameter values for the People Finder portlet using Administration > Portlets > Portlet Management. Use the Administration > Portlets > Portlet Management interface only for viewing parameters when troubleshooting portlet configuration.

Table 2. Configuration parameters
Parameter Value
ConfigHelpURI The location and name of the JSP containing topics launched from the Help command when configuring People Finder.

Default: /help/pfind_config.jsp

SearchHelpURI The location and name of the JSP containing topics launched from the Help command in the Profile page of the People Finder. Topics in this JSP include Help for person links, Quick Search, Quick Search Results, Advanced Search, and Advanced Search Results.

Default: /help/pfind_view_search_for_people.jsp

PersonRecordHelpURI The location and name of the JSP containing topics launched from the Help command in the Profile page and Organization view of the People Finder.

Default: /help/pfind_view_display_person_info.jsp

Config_RecursionSetLimit Specifies the maximum number of recursions performed by search and retrieval on the manager attribute for a given person. The limit of recursions performed on the manager attribute determines the number of managers above the found person that appear in the Organization View.
Config_ActiveFields

Config_Active_Queries

Config_VisualSets

Config_Views

Config_QuerySets

Config_QueryViews

Config_UpdateInfo

Config_Complete

These parameters appear in the portlet after fields are specified in configuration mode.

Do not modify these parameters.


Parent topic:

Finding users