Administration portlets overview

WebSphere Portal has administration portlets that assist you with managing resources. Get an overview of the administration portlets and the tasks we can perform with each portlet.

Sub-administrators of virtual portals might not have access to all administration portlets listed here. For more details about virtual portals and which portlets are available in them refer to the topics about Multiple virtual portals.

Portal User Interface

The following sections describe the portlets provided for customizing the user interface for WebSphere Portal.

Manage Pages

The Manage Pages portlet allows us to export page configurations in XML, create, edit, activate, order, and delete pages as well as external Web pages and labels. Available tasks depend on which item is selected.

Themes and Skins

The Themes and Skins portlet allows us to install, edit, and delete themes as well as install and edit skins. We can also select a default theme and skin using this portlet.

See the Themes and Skins portlet help for specific instructions on these tasks.

Theme Customizer

We can change the appearance and behavior of a theme. We can select colors, fonts, graphics, turn areas of the page on and off, and adjust the settings for areas of the page such as the navigation.

Portlet Management

The following sections describe the portlets provided for working with portlets, Web modules, and applications.

Web Modules

The Manage Web Modules portlet allows us to install new portlets from either a Web service or WAR file or to manage existing portlets, or view a list of portlet applications for a Web module. A Web module is a WAR file containing portlet applications.

Applications

The Manage Applications portlet allows us to enable a portlet application as a Web service or to manage existing portlet applications. It displays a list of all Web modules and associated portlet applications installed on WebSphere Portal. We can view and change portlet application settings from this portlet. Tasks include renaming and deleting portlet applications, and modifying configuration parameters.

See the Manage Applications portlet help for steps on performing these and related tasks.

Portlets

The Manage Portlets portlet allows us to view or manage existing portlets, or enable portlets as Web services. It displays a list of all installed portlets. Manage Portlets allows us to view and change portlet settings. Tasks include renaming and deleting portlets, and adding, modifying, or deleting portlet configuration parameters.

See the Manage Portlets help for steps on performing these and related tasks.

Web Services

The Web Service Configuration portlet allows us to set up the portal for consuming Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) by configuring WSRP Producers on the Consumer side. For more details refer to the topics about Using WSRP services.

We cannot use the Web Service Configuration portlet for the following:

• Provide Web serviceso that is make the portlets available to other systems such as remote Web services. To provide Web services as a Producer, use the Manage Portlets portlet.

• Consume Web serviceso that is integrate Web services provided by a Producer as remote portlets. To consume Web services as a Consumer, use the Manage Web Modules portlet.

Web Clipping

The Web Clipping Editor allows us to identify and extract specific portions of a document for display in a portlet. We can choose to display an entire document by referencing a URL or tag only a key section.

Portal Access

Users and Groups

The Users and Groups portlet allows us to search for, edit, and delete existing users and groups. We can also create new users and groups and modify group membership.

Resource Permissions

Resource Permissions allows us to set access roles. We can assign access roles to associate users and groups with resources to determine the level of interaction a user can have with a resource.

User and Group Permissions

The User and Group Permissions portlet allows us to easily assign, view, and modify the roles and permissione that users and groups have on various resources. Refer to the User and Group Permissions portlet help for more information.

Credential Vault


Credential Vault allows us to perform tasks specific to vault management. We can add or manage vault segments and vault slots.

Resource Policies


Resources Policies allows us to view and manage policies for efficient administration of resources. Policies apply rule-based expressions of business logis that control the user's experience with resources when specific conditions exist. From the Resource Policies portlet, we can view the list of policy types for resources. For a policy type, we can edit the policy settings, import and export policy definition files, and assign access to users who will need to work with the policy type. We can edit a policy type and refine it by creating one or more sub-policies. The policy editor makes it easy to select, create, and edit policy rules that consist of simple conditional statements.

Portal Settings

Global Settings

We can use the Global Settings portlet to define what the user sees, including the default language and the Find link. The default language specified in Global Settings applies to all users when the language preference specified in their browser is not supported.

For example, if the portal is configured to support English, German, and Spanish, with English as the default language in Global Settings, a user whose browser language preference is set to Italian would see English because Italian is not supported in this case. A user can also select a preferred language when registering.

Global Settings also determines what users see when they return to the portal.

For example, we can choose to display the most recently visited page rather than a default page. We can allow users themselves to choose what they see when logging on, or if they see the default page or the most recently visited page. We can also determine a URL for the Find link. For more details about the Find link refer to the topic about Setting the search engine that opens when users select Find.

The Global Settings portlet does not work in portal cluster configurations.

URL Mapping

The URL Mapping portlet allows us to create easily readable URLs and map them to pages. We can publish these URLs externally and thereby make them available to the users.

Custom Unique Names

WebSphere Portal uses object IDs to identify resources unambiguously even between different portals. They consist of an extended alphanumeric string that may be difficult to remember. The Custom Unique Names portlet enables you to assign unique names to resources. We can select names that are easy to read and remember. These custom unique names make identification of resources easier than the object IDs assigned by WebSphere Portal, for example when porting resources from one portal to another.

Supported Markups

The Supported Markups portlet allows us to determine which markups are recognized. We can add, edit, activate or deactivate, and delete a markup. The installation default is HTML.

See the Supported Markups portlet help for detailed instructions.

Leave the default HTML markup enabled. Removing or changing the HTML markup will cause access problems. If the default HTML markup is disabled, use xmlaccess.sh to re-enable the HTML markup.

Supported Clients

With Supported Clients we can determine what types of devices and Web browsers can access the portal. We can add, edit, order, or delete clients. To test a portlet with a device simulator you may need to add the user agent string of the device simulator to the portal client list. Consult the documentation included with the device simulator to determine the user agent strings the simulator supports and add these using the Supported Clients administration portlet.

See the Supported Clients portlet help for detailed steps on working with clients.

Import XML

The Import XML portlet allows us to import an XML file.

For example, from a staging server we can export pages and portlets into XML using the XML export button on Manage Pages and then use the Import XML portlet to import the configuration to a production server.

Portal Content

Web Content Libraries

Add, edit, copy and delete Web content libraries to better manage your Web content. We can also specify access control settings for the library itself and the types of content it contains.

Syndicators

Create, edit and delete syndicators used to replicate content between Web Content Manager environments. Syndicators identify the libraries available for replication by subscribers. We can define which libraries are available for syndication and change the order that libraries are syndicated.

Subscribers

Create, edit and delete subscribers used to replicate content between Web Content Manager environments. Subscribers are associated with a syndicator and receive updates from all libraries specified by the syndicator.

Search Administration

Manage Search

The Manage Search portlet allows us to create and manage search services, search collections, and search scopes. Searchable resources include various document types, for example HTML and text documents. WebSphere Portal sites can also be indexed and searched. Refer to the Manage Search portlet help for detailed instructions about working with search.

Portal Analysis

Frequent Users

The Frequent Users portlet shows how many users have been logged in for the past 90 days.

Enable Tracing

The Enable Tracing portlet allows us to enable or disable the tracing logs.

See the Enable Tracing portlet help for detailed instructions on working with logs.

The Enable Tracing portlet lets you dynamically enable or disable trace logging for individual classes and entire packages without restarting WebSphere Portal. In a WebSphere Portal cluster, the portlet lists and changes the currently running trace loggers on only one individual server (not the entire cluster). To dynamically change the trace specification for the entire cluster, use the Enable Tracing portlet on each individual server (horizontal or vertical cluster member).

Manage Virtual Portals

Manage Virtual Portals

The Virtual Portal Manager portlet allows us to create, list, modify, and delete virtual portals. When creating a virtual portal, it is filled with the initial default content for virtual portals. For more information about how to work with Virtual Portal Manager, refer to the portlet help.

Other portlets that are useful for administration

There are other portlets not accessible from Administration that are also useful in administering WebSphere Portal.

Site Map

WebSphere Portal provides the Site Map portlet. It serves two purposes:

• We can use the Site Map portlet to navigate the site. It displays a list of the pages and portlets. We can access this portlet by logging in to the portal, clicking Search Center, then clicking the Site Map tab

• The Site Map portlet enables external search crawlers to collect pages more efficiently.

Properties

The Properties portlet allows us to modify properties on pages and portlets. We can access this portlet when creating a new page, editing an existing page, or from the Manage pages administration portlet.

Current limitations for the Properties portlet include:

• The list of shareable pages displayed by the Properties portlet is limited to those pages that the user can navigate to. As a result, a user might not be able to create explicitly derived pages from some shareable pages.

• A user must have at least Editor privileges on a page to be able to edit the properties on that page. Privileged users will not be able to edit a page's properties or edit personalization rules, because Personalization rules are part of a page's properties.

Portlet Palette

The Portlet Palette allows us to add portlets to the page for quick and easy page customization. We can drag a portlet to the page from the Portlet Palette to add the portlet to the page.

Administrator self-help pages and portlets

There are two pages with portlets that provide additional help information for using the administration features. These portlets are included in the default portal installation, but are not deployed. To deploy these pages and portlets, see the following topic in this Information Center: Deploy the administration self-help pages and portlets.

After you deploy the portlets, we can access them in the Administration section as follows:

• A page named What's Installed Here. This page contains the followings two portlets:

  • The Show Version Info portlet. This portlet lists the versions and fixethat are installed for WebSphere Portal, WAS, Process Server and Java™ SDK levels. This portlet does not require an internet connection to function properly.

  • The Upgrade Planner portlet. This portlet shows relevant recommended or required minimum upgradenecessary for the portal to upgrade to the current service release.

Parent: Portal administration portlets
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Work with administration portlets