Portal, Express Beta Version 6.1
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux,Windows
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Portal, Express Beta Version 6.1
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux,Windows |
Collaboration features in IBM® WebSphere® Portal Express are provided through the Domino® and Extended Products Portlets (formerly called Lotus Collaboration Center), and through the supporting API called Lotus® Collaborative Services. Domino and Extended Products are the Domino Enterprise server, IBM Lotus Sametime® (formerly called Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing), and IBM Lotus QuickPlace® (formerly called Lotus Team Workplaces).
Although it had previously been, and still is, possible to access the functionality of Lotus Sametime and Lotus QuickPlace using only the Collaborative Services API components within WebSphere Portal Express, the Domino and Extended Products Portlets extend the capabilities beyond simple integration and access. Portlets are the mechanism by which the Domino server products are fully integrated into WebSphere Portal Express. Domino and Extended Products Portlets provide an online directory with people awareness, and integrated tools for managing online meetings and Lotus QuickPlaces. All these collaboration features help people in your organization work together and share information online to achieve their business goals. A collaborative portal can improve your organization's responsiveness, innovation, competencies, and efficiency.
In WebSphere Portal Express 6.0, the 7.0 release of Domino, Lotus Sametime, and Lotus QuickPlace is supported, bridging to the world of J2EE and open standards, and extending Domino’s capabilities by providing the means to connect different sources of data, regardless of vendor.
Configuration of the Domino and Extended Products and portlets is automated by the Domino-Portal Integration Wizard. The wizard saves many manual steps for the administrator.
Examples of all the Domino and Extended Products Portlets are supplied on the Domino Integration page. The portlets are installed with WebSphere Portal Express and deployed automatically, requiring of the administrator only a number of server and other configuration tasks before users can take advantage of a suite of integrated collaborative applications.
Domino and Extended Products Portlets include:
In addition to the Domino and Extended Products Portlets, other collaborative portlets provide access to a variety of applications. Some portlets, such as the Common PIM portlets, can be configured to use the back-end server most appropriate to your WebSphere Portal Express environment.
You can enhance the collaborative features of WebSphere Portal Express, and add features such as people awareness to collaborative portlets, by choosing to install and enable any of the following Domino and Extended Products:
When Lotus Sametime is enabled in your portal configuration, users can work with the complete set of people awareness functionality, which includes instant messaging and application sharing through e-meetings. Person names appear aware - with a dynamic online status indicator and as hyperlinks that open the Person menu. The Person menu can include the following options:
You might choose not to enable Lotus Sametime in your portal configuration. If Lotus Sametime is not enabled, then people awareness functionality will be restricted to the following features:
The availability of Lotus QuickPlace portlets is not affected by the portal configuration option to enable/disable IBM Lotus QuickPlace, because portlets launch applications and services that are independent of portal configuration. As long as a QuickPlace server is available for selection and you have installed and configured a Lotus QuickPlace portlet application, portal users can add instances of Lotus QuickPlace portlets to portal pages, or simply use Lotus QuickPlace portlets in the portal pages where they participate.
When a Domino server is available, portal users have access, using the Lotus Notes View (formerly "Notes and Domino") portlet, to any Lotus Notes database on the server. And other portlets, such as Domino Web Access, use a Domino server configured for use in the portal.
In addition to person links and the Person menu previously available, people awareness features include the ability to configure the contact information, such as telephone number, that appears on a person link. The People Finder portlet is now located on the People palette for easy availability in every application.
Lotus Collaborative Services are Java APIs that provide the building blocks for integrating the functionality of Domino, Lotus Sametime, and Lotus QuickPlace into the portal and portlets. Using Collaborative Services, application developers can design and implement user interface extensions in portals and portlets that extend the functionality of collaborative portlets.
The primary goal of Collaborative Services is to provide the data for portlets' user interface and to allow developers to execute actions on installed Domino and Extended Products. Collaborative Services include no platform-specific code, hide the configuration details of Domino and Extended Products installed in the enterprise, and (except for the Person tag) are user-interface neutral. Application developers can add collaborative functionality to a portlet without having to know the details of server configuration and with total control of user interface design and implementation. These benefits make Collaborative Services effective for implementing mobile applications.
Parent topic: Key features Related concepts