Portal, Express Beta Version 6.1 Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux,Windows

Application management

Manage composite applications by using a variety of features in application template libraries, applications catalogs, and portal administration pages.

Managing applications involves categorizing them for display in application catalogs; assigning user permission to work with them; maintaining roles for application members; and saving particular applications as templates for reuse. You can also use policies to monitor and manage application lifecycle.

Managing composite applications created from application templates requires an understanding of these basic principles:

• Applications are categorized for use in the application catalogs that are displayed in a work site.
• Resource Permissions primarily control user access to applications.
• Application membership roles assigned to users -- either as members or as public users of the application -- further refine user access to the application, its pages, and the components of the application. Membership role definitions can be extended to include permission to edit the application or manage its membership, or both.
• Applications can be saved as templates for quick and easy reuse.
• Applications can have policies assigned to them. Policies set limits for application size and activity. Application status that is detected by policy helps administrators and application managers determine when applications need to be backed up, archived, or restored.

Cataloging by category

Each composite application that is created from a template belongs to the category defined by its source template. The application category helps to describe the application and can be used to filter the display of the applications catalog. You can set the default category filter for the applications catalog by clicking Edit Shared Settings in the catalog portlet menu. Application users with the appropriate permission can change the application category when they edit the properties of a particular application. Application users with the appropriate permission can create a new application category when they edit the properties of the application template. New categories defined in the template will be available for selection in the Category list of the application Properties portlet.

Managing access

• Delegate another user to own an application
• Manage application roles

  By default, application managers are assigned the role that provides the highest level of manager access to the application, excluding administrator access.

• Maintain the membership of applications
• Assign users permission to work with application pages.

Managing membership

Application managers can define application membership roles that permit application editing and membership management (Manage Application Roles). Then they can assign other users to those application membership roles (Assign Application Members). Application members who have permission to edit the application can select the actions that are available on the application page menu.

Application managers and users who have permission to manage the membership of the application can add and remove members and reassign roles. Application managers can choose to enable e-mail notifications to new members. Membership managers can also choose to make the application public by permitting all authenticated users to use the application in a non-manager role. If the application manager chooses not to make the application public, the application remains restricted to members. Only an application owner can make someone else the owner of the application.

Saving applications as templates

Users with resource permission to create and edit application templates can save the applications that they own as new application templates within the currently specified category. This option is useful for preserving the definition of an application for reuse. Saving a application as a template provides a quick alternative to creating a new application template from a blank template.

From the drop-down menu of an application page, click Save Application as Template to create a new template from the application you have open. When you save the application as a template, you specify a name for the application template and type a description of the template. This new template will be listed in the Application Template Library and will be available for selection when users with the appropriate permission create new applications.

Managing applications with policies

Application managers can use policies for composite applications to monitor the size and activity of all applications running on the server. The default policy settings of the main policy for composite applications can be edited. Child policies can be created to refine the main policy for subsets of applications. Policy rules for composite applications can express conditional statements for the application template, application category, and the policy selector attribute. After policies are assigned to applications and application monitoring begins, managers receive alerts and violation notices when applications approach or exceed the limits set by the policy for application size and activity. Given the application status that is reported by the policies in force for each application, managers can determine when to backup, archive, restore, or delete particular applications. Applications are locked during backup, archive, and restore.

• Backing up, archiving, and restoring applications
  Use the applications catalog to back up, archive, and restore applications. Application status that is monitored and detected by policies will help you determine the maintenance action that you need to perform. By default, the application property Application Backup for Archiving and Restore is not available for selection in this release of the product because some business components of composite applications do not support backup, archive, and restore. You can make application backup available by editing the backup.properties file.
• Adding composite applications to portal search collections
  Add composite applications to portal search collections to enable the searching of content in application pages and portlets.