Director Tutorials

About exteNd Director Tutorials

This chapter provides guidelines for using the exteNd Director tutorials. Please read this information before you begin the exercises:

Structure of tutorials

The exteNd Director tutorials are organized into parts, each covering a different functional area:

Part	Description
Exploring the Express Portal	Introduces you to Express Portal, a sample portal application and project supplied with exteNd Director.
Working with the Portal	Shows you how to create a container page, and customize page branding and navigation.
Using Accessory Portlets	Introduces accessory portlets, a set of production-quality portlets supplied with exteNd Director. Many of these portlets were converted from Novell Portal System (NPS) gadgets. You will learn how to create a personal page, add accessory portlets to the page, and customize portal options and portlet preferences.
Working with Pageflows and Forms	Shows you how to create a database pageflow and customize pageflow-generated forms.

Inside each part you will find short tutorials that consist of one or more exercises that walk you through key functions of the product. Each tutorial includes the following sections:

Section	Description
Objective	Describes what you will accomplish after completing all exercises
Concepts	Provides links to documentation that explains concepts related to the tutorial exercises
Exercises	Provides step-by-step instructions for performing tasks to meet the objective stated for the tutorial
What to do next	Suggests what to do or read after completing the tutorial by providing links to other exercises and documentation

How to use the tutorials

Each part is self-contained. You can run through any combination of parts in any order you wish. In most cases, you can run the tutorials independently within each part; any dependencies between tutorials are clearly stated before you begin the exercises.

Configuration for running exercises

exteNd Director tutorials require the following system configuration:

exteNd Application Server using the exteNd Server realm, installed as part of the exteNd product suite
MySQL, installed with the exteNd product suite
Express Portal project and application

TIP: See How to install the Express Portal project and application.
Accessory files supplied for the tutorials

TIP: See How to download accessory files.

How to install the Express Portal project and application

There are two ways to install Express Portal:

Type of install	What it does
Express	Adds the Express Portal project to your file system Deploys the Express Portal project to your exteNd Application Server Launches the Express Portal application in a new browser window
Custom	Adds the Express Portal project to your file system, but does NOT deploy the project to your server. IMPORTANT: Before you begin the tutorials, you must deploy the Express Portal project to your exteNd Application Server, as described in How to deploy the Express Portal project.

Type of install

What it does

Express

Adds the Express Portal project to your file system
Deploys the Express Portal project to your exteNd Application Server
Launches the Express Portal application in a new browser window

Custom

Adds the Express Portal project to your file system, but does NOT deploy the project to your server.

IMPORTANT: Before you begin the tutorials, you must deploy the Express Portal project to your exteNd Application Server, as described in How to deploy the Express Portal project.

Where the Express Portal project is installed

The Express Portal project is added to your file system in the Projects\Express folder of your exteNd install directory. The Express Portal project is a WAR application packaged inside an EAR project called Express.

How to deploy the Express Portal project

See the section on deploying the Express Portal in the exteNd Director Portal Guide.

How to download accessory files

Some tutorial exercises require accessory files that you can download from a ZIP archive called Director52Tutorial.zip. Follow this procedure:

Procedure To download accessory files for exteNd Director tutorials:

Download Director52Tutorial.zip and store it in a directory of your choice.
Extract files as required by tutorial exercises.