Working with the Installed Portlets

This chapter summarizes information about the various portlets installed with exteNd Director.

Many of the installed portlets are intended for use "out of the box" in production applications. Others are provided primarily to demonstrate techniques you can use in creating production applications.

This chapter includes the following sections:

About the installed portlets

There are three types of portlets installed with exteNd Director: accessory, system, and sample:

Accessory portlets Accessory portlets are fully supported, production-quality portlets ready to be built directly into portal applications. Most of the accessory portlets can be customized by setting preferences. Many of the accessory portlets are designed to duplicate the functionality of NPS gadgets, and in most cases have names that are similar to their gadget counterparts. All of the accessory portlets are available from the Content Selector, which is one of the Portal Administration tools.

System portlets The set of system portlets comprises all the portlets necessary to present any portal application to the end user, such as the Page Navigation portlet, plus portlets used by the Portal subsystem as tools for building portal applications, such as the PortalPageAdmin portlet, which is the portlet for the Shared and Container Page Administration tool.

Sample portlets Sample portlets are provided primarily to illustrate application development techniques. They are not intended for use in production applications directly out of the box, and they are not supported as such.

Information resources

This section describes other documentation resources relevant to the installed portlets as well as the process of developing new portlets and portlet applications.

General information

Portlets and portlet applications To learn more about portlets and portlet applications in general, see the following chapters:

Developing new portlets For more specific information on developing portlets, see these chapters:

Help on working with installed portlets

Web-based Director Tutorials

The Web-based Director Tutorials include several chapters devoted to working with installed portlets.

Procedure To access the Director Tutorials:

In a Web browser, navigate to the exteNd documentation home page (www.novell.com/documentation/extend.html).
Click the exteNd 5.2 link to display the exteNd5 index page.
On the exteNd5 index page, click the HTML link for the Director Tutorials 5.2.
In the navigation pane of the Director Tutorials help system, click on the Using Accessory Portlets folder.

The Director Tutorials are sometimes updated after the product release to which they apply. At the time of this release, the following chapters are available:

Accessing Accessory Portlets, which shows you how to add accessory and other portlets to your portal pages, view built-in help, and set portlet preferences.
Using iFrame portlets for content management
Creating shortcuts with images from the resource set

Accessing built-in help and preference descriptions

Built-in help Most accessory portlets, and some other portlets, offer built-in help that is accessible from the portlet's user interface. A question mark icon in the title bar of the portlet indicates that built-in help is available. When you click this icon, the portal application replaces the content of the portlet with a help page.

The tables in the next section each include a column that indicates which installed portlets have built-in help.

For more information on accessing built-in help for portlets, see the section on Accessing help for accessory portlets in the Accessing Accessory Portlets chapter of the Web-based Director Tutorials.

Preference descriptions The preference sheets for portlets offer a technical description for each preference. These descriptions are not displayed by default, but you can see them in the Content Preferences tool by clicking the Descriptions link at the bottom of the window.

For more information on setting portlet preferences and accessing preference descriptions, see the section on Accessing portlet preferences in the Accessing Accessory Portlets chapter of the Web-based Director Tutorials.

NOTE: When working with portlet preferences, it is important to understand the way in which portlet preferences are associated with portlets and how the multi-layered paradigm for applying preferences to actual portlet instances works. For detailed information on this, see Portlet preferences.

Information elsewhere in the Director documentation

Several system and sample portlets are discussed elsewhere in the Portal Guide. Links to these sections are provided in this chapter where appropriate.

Portlets available in the Content Selector

The tables in this section list the portlets that are available from the Content Selector. The tables are organized according to the way they are categorized in the Content Selector, with the accessory portlets presented in a separate table.

For information on how to access and use the Content Selector, see the Accessing Accessory Portlets chapter of the Web-based Director Tutorials.

Accessory portlets

Name	Description	Built-in help available
Applet Launcher	Launches an applet on a portal page.
Bookmark	Displays a list of favorite Web links.
Citrix	Accesses a Citrix WinFrame or MetaFrame server through an embedded applet.
Director Administration	Displays the Director Administration Console within the portlet. Can post credentials to secured URLs.
EGuide Search	Provides a query interface into Novell eGuide.
Exchange	Provides access to Microsoft Exchange calendar and messaging functions.
Flash	Runs a Flash movie.
Google	Displays the Google home page. Can post credentials to secured URLs.
GroupWise Calendar	Displays a user's GroupWise Calendar.
GroupWise Mail	Displays a user's GroupWise Mailbox.
GroupWise Mail-Calendar	Displays a user's GroupWise Mail and Calendar.
GroupWise Web Access	Provides Web access to the user's GroupWise mailbox.
HTML	Displays content from HTML pages.
IFrame	Displays a given URL in an IFrame. Can post credentials to secured URLs.
Links	Displays a list of Globally favorite Web links.
Message	Displays messages in plain text or HTML.
My Bookmarks	Displays a sample list of favorite Web links.
NetMail	Novell NetMail calendar and messaging functions.
NetStorage	Provides access to NetStorage functions.
Network File	Provides access to remote file systems.
News Groups	Displays a list of available newsgroups.
Notes	Provides access to Domino HTTP email.
Novell exteNd Introduction	Displays the exteNd Introduction Message.
Rss News Feed	Provides a mechanism for subscribing to and publishing information from RSS feeds.
Sample Message	Sample portlet that displays a text message.
Shortcut	Displays a list of Web links and program shortcuts.
SQL Query	Executes and displays the results of a SQL database query.
Stock Applet	Scrolling stock ticker that displays personalized link-enabled stock quotes.
Stock Portfolio	Tracks stock information.
Survey	Renders a survey consisting of questions and answers. Tabulates and displays the results.
Things to do...	Task List that displays a set of text messages.
Topics	Displays a list of Web links and program shortcuts.
Web Mail	Web-based mail client for reading standard POP3 and IMAP mailboxes. Also supports sending mail via SMTP.
Welcome Message	Displays basic information on how to use the portal.
XML Remote	Renders a remote XML document or source file using an XSL stylesheet.

System and sample portlets

Filter category	Name	Description
Admin Portlets (also see Other system portlets below)	Change Password	Allows users to modify their passwords.
	Page Header	Displays information (graphics, links, etc.) in the header of the page.
	Page Navigation	Provides links to shared and personal pages in the portal application.
	Wireless Layout Manager	Displays the WireLess Layout for the User. Allows the user to select and arrange portlets to be displayed on a wireless device. For information wireless applications, see Developing a Wireless Application
ContentManagement Portlets	Content List	Executes the Content Query action (CQA) For information on the content query action, see the Content Query Application chapter in the Content Management Guide.
General Portlets	Phone List	Provides phone number listing and search capabilities. NOTE: This portlet is intended for use primarily in wireless applications.
	PID Display	Displays a portal page based on HTML or XML. For information on PID pages, see Working with PID Pages NOTE: The Help button is not enabled for this portlet, but some explanatory text is included in the main portlet display.
	Stock Quote	Provides Stock Quote capabilities.
	Weather Service	Portlet using a Web Service to obtain and display weather report information
Wireless	Phone List	Provides phone number listing and search capabilities. This is the same as the Phone List portlet in the General Portlets category.
Wireless	Stock Quote	Provides Stock Quote capabilities. This is the same as the Stock Quote portlet in the General Portlets category.
Workflow Portlets	WorkflowQueue	Used in the Content LIfe Cycle sample workflow application. For more information, see the Content Life Cycle Application chapter and the discussion of the User activity in the Working with Activities chapter, both in the Workflow Guide
Workflow Portlets	WorkflowStartProcess
Uncategorized Portlets	Create Director Database Tables	Creates tables in the specified database
Uncategorized Portlets	Theme Previewer	Displays a list of available themes and allows the user to interactively preview the styles, colors, and fonts used in different themes.

Other system portlets

There are several system portlets that are important to portal applications which are not available in the Content Selector:

The Portal Page Controller portlet is required for all container and shared pages.

For information on the Portal Page Controller portlet as well as the Page Header and Page Navigation portlets, see System Portlets for Portal Pages.
The Login and New User portlets allow users to register themselves and log into your portal applications.

For information on these portlets, see the Managing Users and Groups and Managing User Profiles chapters in the User Management Guide.