).Portlets provide your portal users with customized tools and services as well as information. The portal comes with many portlets, but you can also create your own. Have a Web developer or a BEA portlet developer create portlets for you, or download portlets from the AquaLogic User Interaction Support Center.
This topic discusses:
To learn how to create or edit administrative objects (including portlets, portlet bundles, portlet templates, and portlet Web Services), see Creating and Editing Administrative Objects.
There are two types of portlets: intrinsic portlets and remote portlets.
An intrinsic portlet consists of one or more sets of code that are located on the portal computer. Your portal administrator needs to install this code in the correct location before an intrinsic portlet can be created.
A remote portlet is a portlet hosted by a separate remote server. When a user displays a My Page or community page that includes a remote portlet, the portal contacts the appropriate remote server to obtain updated portlet content.
Some portlets are installed with the portal and are readily available to portal users, but others require you to manually install and configure them.
Note: For information on installing portlet code, refer to the Installation Guide for AquaLogic Interaction (available on edocs.bea.com) or the documentation that comes with your portlet, or contact your portal administrator.
To make an intrinsic portlet available to portal users:
To make a remote portlet available to portal users:
Portlet Web services allow you to specify functional settings for your portlets, leaving the display settings to be set in each associated portlet. There are intrinsic portlet Web services and remote portlet Web services.
To learn about the Intrinsic Portlet Web Service Editor, see one of the following:
To learn about the Remote Portlet Web Service Editor, see one of the following editor pages:
Portlet bundles are groups of related portlets, packaged together for easy inclusion on My Pages or community pages. When users add portlets to their My Pages or community pages, they can add all the portlets in a bundle or select individual portlets from a bundle. You might want to create portlet bundles for portlets that have related functions or for all the portlets that a particular group of users might find useful. This makes it easier for users to find portlets related to their specific needs without having to browse through all the portlets in your portal.
To learn about the Portlet Bundle Editor, see one of the following editor pages:
Portlet templates allow you to create multiple instances of a portlet, each displaying slightly different information. For example, you might want to create a Regional Sales portlet template, from which you could create different portlets for each region to which your company sells. You might even want to include all Regional Sales portlets on one page for an executive overview.
To learn about the Portlet Template Editor, see one of the following editor pages:
To create a portlet from a portlet template:
).The following portlets (and their necessary portlet Web services and remote servers) are created when you install the portal:
Folder Expertise: This portlet displays the folders for which the user is an expert. Portal administrators can add users to a folder as an expert through the Related Resources page of the Folder Editor, or, if users have the Self-Selected Experts activity right, they can add themselves as experts when they are browsing folders in the Knowledge Directory. This portlet is displayed on the user profile page by default (accessible through My Account | Edit User Profile and View User Profile).
General Information: This portlet displays user profile information such as name and address, but it is configurable by the portal administrator to display any information. It is displayed on the user profile page by default. For more information on user profiles, see About User Profiles.
Job Histories Intrinsic Portlet: This portlet displays the same job history information that is displayed on the Job History page of the Automation Service Manager.
Managed Communities: This portlet displays the communities to which the user has Edit or Admin access. It is displayed on the user profile page by default.
Portal Login: This portlet allows users to log in to the portal. You probably want to add this to all your guest users' home pages so that users can log in from the default page displayed when they navigate to your portal.
Portal Search: This portlet allows users to search your portal and access their saved searches. Users might want to add this to their home page for easy access to their saved searches.
Standard Footer Portlet: This portlet allows you to easily customize the footer in communities or experience definitions.
Standard Header Portlet: This portlet allows you to easily customize the header in communities or experience definitions.
The following portlet templates (and any necessary portlet Web services and remote servers) are created when you install the portal:
Community Links Portlet Template: This template is used by the portal to create portlets that display the links saved in a Community Knowledge Directory folder. To learn more about community links portlets, see Community Links Portlet.
Content Snapshots: This template is used by the portal to create portlets that display the results of a Snapshot Query.