Portal Guide

CHAPTER 2

About the Express Portal

This chapter provides an introduction to the Express Portal. It contains the following sections:

What is Express Portal?

To give you a head start in building applications, exteNd Director provides a default EAR project called Express which includes the Express Portal WAR, a complete Portal application. You can use this application out of the box to:

Explore the features of an exteNd Director portal
Learn how to build a portal application
Build your own customized production-quality portal by adding and modifying portlets and pages, and customizing the presentation layer

How is Express Portal installed?

The Express Portal is available in several modalities, depending on how you install the exteNd^TMproduct suite:

Type of exteNd suite installation	Project available on file system	Application deployed to exteNd Application Server
Express
Custom
Server
Tools

About the Express Portal project

The Express Portal project is a WAR that is packaged in an exteNd Director EAR project called Express. The Express Portal project encapsulates the custom logic and resources of the Express Portal application.

If you install the exteNd suite using the Express or Custom install, the Express project is added to your suite install directory. You can then open the project in exteNd Director and customize it with your own business logic—for example, by adding new portlets, pageflows, forms, and other Web resources such as JSPs and servlets.

For more information To access the Express project in exteNd Director, see Opening the Express Portal project.

Express Portal project specifications

The Express Portal project has the following specifications:

Specification	Express Portal
Type of project	exteNd Director Project WAR that includes: A portal A portlet runtime A resource set For more information, see the chapter on using a resource set in an exteNd Director application.
Name of project	ExpressPortal
Directory location	exteNd suite install directory\Projects\Express
exteNd Director database	exteNd suite install directory\MySQL\data\expressportal
JDBC connection pool	JDBC/ExpressPortal
Server profile	Novell exteNd 5_x
Deployment plan	Express_DeplPlan.xml
Resource set	ExpressPortal_resource
Uses shared libraries?	No For more information, see the section on shared library configurations.
Subsystems included	All: Content Management (only included with certain product licenses) Directory Framework Pageflow Portal Portlet Rule Search Security User Workflow (only included with certain product licenses) exteNd Composer Service For more information about exteNd Director subsystems, see the overview chapter in Developing exteNd Director Applications .

Opening the Express Portal project

If you installed the exteNd suite using the Express or Custom install option, you can open the ExpressPortal project in exteNd Director.

Procedure To open the Express Portal project:

Start the Director Designer as described in Starting the development environment.

The first time you start exteNd Director, it opens the Express Portal project inside the Express EAR automatically in the Director Designer:
If the Express project does not open automatically, follow these steps:
1. Select File > Open Project.
  
  The Open Project dialog appears.
2. Navigate to the Express EAR project:
```
  exteNd suite install directory\Projects\Express
```
  For example, if you installed the exteNd suite in c:\Program Files\Novell\exteNd, you would navigate to:
```
  c:\Program Files\Novell\exteNd\Projects\Express
```
3. Select Express.spf and click Open.
  
  The Express Portal project opens inside the Express EAR.

Using the Express Portal project with other projects

In a shared library environment, only one portal application can be deployed to the application server at a time. Because the Express Portal project does not use shared libraries, you can deploy other portal applications to the server where Express Portal is running.

What you can do with the Express Portal project

You can use the Express Portal project in several ways:

As a model portal application. in exteNd Director. By exploring the structure and function of the Express Portal project, you can learn by example how to develop your own portal applications in exteNd Director.
As a starting point for a developing a production-quality application. You can customize the Express Portal project by adding your own portlets, pages, and other Web application resources.

Changing the application context If you want to use the Express Portal project as the starting point for developing your own application, you need to change the application context. To do this, you need to replace the string ExpressPortal with the context name for your application. You need to do this in several places:

Set the name of the deployment context. This varies from one application server to another.

TIP: For the exteNd Application Server, set the name of the deployedObject and url in the Express deployment plan (called Express_DeplPlan). You can optionally change the warJarName as well, but if you do this, you must also change the Archive File Path in the Project Settings for your Express Portal project.
In the web.xml file for the Express Portal WAR, change the display-name element.
In the Portal subsystem configuration file, change the value of the portal.context property.
In the config.xml file in WEB-INF/conf for the Express Portal WAR, change the name of the key for the resource set (ExpressPortal/resourceset) to specify your context rather than ExpressPortal. You do not need to change the value for this key.
In the resourceset.xml file in WEB-INF/conf for the Express Portal WAR, change the name of the resource set to match the name of the new context.

These properties must all have matching values for the context name.

To ensure that your application runs as expected, you should use a new database for exteNd Director data.

For more information To get started, see the chapters on working with projects in Developing exteNd Director Applications.

About the Express Portal application

The Express Portal application is a working portal that you can use as soon as you install exteNd Director. It provides the full complement of functions contained in the exteNd Director Portal subsystem.

If you installed the exteNd suite using the Express install option, the Express Portal is deployed to the exteNd Application Server as part of the Express EAR project at installation time and ready to run. To get started, see Starting the Express Portal application.

If you installed the exteNd suite using the Custom install option, you need to deploy the Express EAR project to your exteNd Application Server before you can run the Express Portal application. See Deploying the Express Portal.

Starting the Express Portal application

The following procedure assumes that the Express EAR has been deployed to your exteNd Application Server. If you need to deploy the Express EAR, see Deploying the Express Portal.

Procedure To start the Express Portal application:

Start your server.
Open a browser and enter the following URL:
```
  http://server name/ExpressPortal/portal
```
The default portal page opens in your browser, allowing you to enter the portal Web tier as a guest user:

Guest users have limited access to the exteNd Director portal. To take full advantage of its features—for example, to personalize the portal as an end-user or administrator—you must log in as an authorized user.
Click Login in the upper right corner of the page.

The exteNd Director Login portlet opens in your browser and prompts you to log in to the portal:
Enter your user name and password, then click Login or press the Enter key.

The default Express Portal page opens in your browser.

If you are a portal administrator (member of the PortalAdmin group with PROTECT permission) or a locksmith user, you'll see a default portal page with content tailored to administrators:

To learn about portal administration capabilities, see the chapter on administering the portal.

If you are any other type of user, you'll see a default portal page with content designed for users who do not have administrative privileges:

To learn how to customize your portal environment, see the chapter on personalizing your portal.

Now you are ready to work with the Express Portal application. To get started, see What you can do with the Express Portal application.

What happens when your session times out If you've logged in to the Portal, the portal tracks your session and notifies you if the session has timed out. When your session times out, the Portal redirects you to a session timeout page (which is rendered by the SessionHandler portlet). This page provides a link that allows you to return to the previous page with a new session.

NOTE: The web.xml file for the portal application includes a context parameter called UseSessionHandlerPortlet that allows you to control the behavior of session timeouts. If you do not want the SessionHandler portlet to manage timeouts, you can set this parameter to false. The default setting is true.

What you can do with the Express Portal application

Different levels of access are available for the Express Portal application. All users can work with Express Portal to personalize their private portal environments; administrative functions are more restrictive, available only to portal administrators and shared page owners.

A portal administrator is a user who has been assigned to the PortalAdmin administrative group with PROTECT permissions. The portal administrator can assign users to be owners of shared pages.

The following table summarizes how different types of users can work with Express Portal:

Task	Shared page owner	How?
Create and modify Personal Pages		Select Personalize Follow procedures in chapter on personalizing your portal.
Create and modify Container Pages		Select Portal Administration Follow procedures in the section on creating and maintaining container pages.
Create Shared Pages		Select Portal Administration Follow procedures in the section on creating shared pages.
Modify Shared Pages	NOTE: These users can modify only the shared pages that they own	Select Portal Administration Follow procedures in the sections on adding content to a shared page, modifying the layout of a shared page, and arranging content on the shared page.
Assign pages to users and groups		Select Portal Administration Follow procedures in the section on assigning pages to users and groups.
Assign shared page owners		Select Portal Administration Follow procedures in the section on assigning shared page owners.
Apply a theme to your portal		Select Personalize Follow procedures in section on setting the theme for your portal

Deploying the Express Portal

You deploy the Express Portal application by deploying the Express EAR. See the chapter on deploying exteNd Director applications in Developing exteNd Director Applications.

Undeploying the Express Portal

You undeploy the Express Portal application by undeploying the Express EAR. See Undeploying archives.