Social object resolution
When a portal user clicks a link to an object, the portal takes the user to the details view of that object. This process is called social object resolution. For example, a user might click a specific forum topic that is listed in the Community Forum Topics list. In this case, the social object resolution takes the user to a portal page that provides a details view of the forum topic that the user clicked. You can influence the result of the resolution that the user views by setting various parameters. These parameters are described here.
The social object resolution process is implemented by the connections resolver that is contained in the IBM® Connections Portlets for IBM WebSphere® Portal. To enable social object resolution, you need to install this resolver first.
- The type of link that points to the social object. This link can be either of the following two types:
- A portal URL. In this case, the link is called a POC (piece of content) link.
- An Connections URL.
- The resolution root page parameter that is defined in your view definition.
- Whether the social object is contained in a community or not, and if it is contained in a community, which community that is.
- The type of object that the user clicked, for example whether it is a forum topic or a blog post.
- Connections URL:
- If the link to the social object is an Connections URL, the social object resolution process is not triggered. Instead, the user is taken directly
to the corresponding Connections user interface that
shows the details of the object that the user clicked. You can set the portal-wide default type for
your social object links in the portal configuration. For more information about how to do so, read
Configuring globally how social object links are resolved. You can always overrule that
default in your appearance components by using the [AttributeResource
attributeName=""] tag as follows:
- To generate default links to the current social object, specify [AttributeResource attributeName="link"].
- To generate a WebSphere Portal type link, specify [AttributeResource attributeName="portalLink"].
- To generate an Connections type link, specify the [AttributeResource attributeName=rawLink].
- WebSphere Portal URL:
- If the link to the social object is a WebSphere Portal URL,
the connections resolver starts the social object resolution. It evaluates this process in the
following three phases:
- Determine the set of candidate pages
- Determine the appropriate page from the set of candidate pages
- Determine the final fallback resolution target for the case that the resolver finds no matching page from the set of candidate pages.
If the connections resolver finds no candidate page or candidate page that contains a suitable viewer portlet, the portal takes the user to the default page for the social object that the user clicked. To identify the default pages for specific types of social objects, you assign those pages-specific unique names. For example, the default name for identifying the default page for social objects that are served by the Forums service is ibm.conn.forums. An administrator can change the default unique names. For more information, read Connections Portlets for WebSphere Portal: Configuring unique names.
If the connections resolver does not find the default page, the final fallback is either to redirect the user to a defined portal error page or to take the user to the details view in the Connections user interface. An administrator can control this behavior by running the portal configuration tasks disable-poc-redirect-to-connections or enable-poc-redirect-to-connections. For more details about the social object resolution, read Connections Portlets for WebSphere Portal: IBM Connections Portlets for WebSphere Portal: Configuring navigation between portlets.