Administration portlets overview

WebSphere® Portal has administration portlets that assist you with managing resources. Get an overview of the administration portlets and the tasks you can complete with each portlet.

Note: Subadministrators of virtual portals might not have access to all administration portlets listed here. For information, refer to the topics about multiple virtual portals.

Portal User Interface

The following sections describe the portlets that are provided for customizing the user interface for WebSphere Portal.

Manage Pages: Use the Manage Pages portlet to export page configurations in XML, create, edit, activate, order, and delete pages and external web pages and labels. Available tasks depend on which item is selected.
Themes and Skins: Use the Themes and Skins portlet to install, edit, and delete themes and skins. You can also select a default theme and skin with this portlet. See the Themes and Skins portlet help for specific instructions on these tasks.
Page Templates: Page Templates are not accessed by a portlet, but they provide a means for managing portal pages. Page templates include common page elements and make page creation easy. To work with page templates, users can, but do not have to configure pages and their properties, such as theme or page layout. For example, web site designers can create and manage page templates that match your web site design. Content authors can then use the page templates to create content ready pages for different content types. Working with page templates is not limited to administrators. Users need only limited access permissions to work with page templates.

Portlet Management

The following sections describe the portlets that are provided for working with portlets, web modules, and applications.

Web Modules

Use the Manage Web Modules portlet to install new portlets from either a web service or a WAR file. You can also use the portlet to manage existing portlets or view a list of portlet applications for a web module. A web module is a WAR file that contains portlet applications.

Applications

Use the Manage Applications portlet to enable a portlet application as a web service or to manage existing portlet applications. It displays a list of all web modules and associated portlet applications that are installed on WebSphere Portal. You can view and change portlet application settings from this portlet. Tasks include renaming and deleting portlet applications, and modifying configuration parameters. See the Manage Applications portlet help for steps on completing these and related tasks.

Portlets

Use the Manage Portlets portlet to view or manage existing portlets, or enable portlets as web services. It displays a list of all installed portlets. Use the Manage Portlets to view and change portlet settings. Tasks include renaming and deleting portlets, and adding, modifying, or deleting portlet configuration parameters. See the Manage Portlets help for steps on completing these and related tasks.

Web Services

Use the Web Service Configuration portlet to set up your portal for consuming web services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) by configuring WSRP Producers on the Consumer side. For more details, refer to the topics about Using WSRP services.

You cannot use the Web Service Configuration portlet for the following actions:

Provide web services that make your portlets available to other systems such as remote web services. To provide web services as a Producer, use the Manage Portlets portlet.
Consume web services that integrate web services that are provided by a Producer as remote portlets. To consume web services as a Consumer, use the Manage Web Modules portlet.

Virtual Web Application Manager

Use the Virtual Web Application Manager portlet to create content provider profiles in your portal site. These profiles are required to integrate web-based content from different providers, such as Microsoft SharePoint. You can then create Web Dock applications based on the content provider application details that are rendered on a portal page in an iFrame.

Portal Access

Users and Groups: Use the Users and Groups portlet to search for, edit, and delete existing users and groups. You can also create new users and groups and modify group membership.
Resource Permissions: Use the Resource Permissions portlet to set access roles. You can assign access roles to associate users and groups with resources to determine the level of interaction a user can have with a resource.
User and Group Permissions: Use the User and Group Permissions portlet to easily assign, view, and modify the roles and permissions that users and groups have on various resources. Refer to the User and Group Permissions portlet help.
Credential Vault: Use the Credential Vault portlet to complete tasks that are specific to vault management. You can add or manage vault segments and vault slots.

Portal Settings

Global Settings

You can use the Global Settings portlet to define what the user sees, including the default language and the Find link. The default language that is specified in Global Settings applies to all users when the language preference specified in their browser is not supported. For example, the portal is configured to support English, German, and Spanish, with English as the default language in Global Settings. A user, whose browser language preference is set to Italian, would see English because Italian is not supported in this case. A user can also select a preferred language when they register.

The Global Settings portlet also determines what users see when they return to the portal. For example, you can choose to display the most recently viewed page rather than a default page. You can allow users themselves to choose what they see when they log on, or if they see the default page or the most recently viewed page. You can also determine a URL for the Find link. For more information about the Find link, refer to the topic about setting the search engine that opens when users select Find.

Note: The Global Settings portlet does not work in portal cluster configurations.

Custom Unique Names

WebSphere Portal uses object IDs to identify resources unambiguously even between different portals. They consist of an extended alphanumeric string that might be difficult to remember. Use the Custom Unique Names portlet to assign unique names to resources. You can select names that are easy to read and remember. These custom unique names make identification of resources easier than the object IDs assigned by WebSphere Portal, for example when porting resources from one portal to another.

Supported Markups

Use the Supported Markups portlet to determine which markups are recognized. You can add, edit, activate or deactivate, and delete a markup. The installation default is HTML. See the Supported Markups portlet help for detailed instructions.

Note: Leave the default HTML markup enabled. Removing or changing the HTML markup causes access problems. If the default HTML markup is disabled, use the XML configuration interface to re-enable the HTML markup.

Supported Clients

With the Supported Clients portlet, you can determine what types of devices and web browsers can access the portal. You can add, edit, order, or delete clients. If you need to test a portlet with a device simulator, you might need to add the user agent string of the device simulator to the portal client list. Consult the documentation included with the device simulator to determine the user agent strings the simulator supports and add them with the Supported Clients portlet. Read the Supported Clients portlet help for detailed steps on working with clients.

Import XML

Use the Import XML portlet to import an XML file. For example, from a staging server you can export pages and portlets into XML with XML export on Manage Pages and then use the Import XML portlet to import the configuration to a production server.

Portal Content

Web Content Libraries: Add, edit, copy, and delete web content libraries to better manage your web content. You can also specify access control settings for the library itself and the types of content it contains.
Syndicators: Create, edit, and delete syndicators that are used to replicate content between Web Content Manager environments. Syndicators identify the libraries that are available for replication by subscribers. You can define which libraries are available for syndication and change the order that libraries are syndicated.
Subscribers: Create, edit, and delete subscribers that are used to replicate content between Web Content Manager environments. Subscribers are associated with a syndicator and receive updates from all libraries that are specified by the syndicator.
Feed Configuration: The Feed Configuration portlet helps you create and manage RSS feed consumers for creating and updating web content.
Feed Jobs: The Feed Jobs portlet helps you create and manage schedules for the web content RSS feed consumers.

Search Administration

Manage Search: Use the Manage Search portlet to create and manage search services, search collections, and search scopes. Searchable resources include various document types, for example HTML and text documents. WebSphere Portal sites can also be indexed and searched. Refer to the Manage Search portlet help for detailed instructions about working with search.

Portal Analysis

Theme Analyzer: Use the Theme Analyzer to view, but not edit, all parts of the theme optimization framework of WebSphere Portal. With this portlet, you can view which pages have specific profiles that are set or inherited. You can also see which profiles are available and belong to which theme.; Additionally, you can browse and explore all aspects of the available modules: You can see which modules are loaded for a specific profile or all modules of the whole system. You can drill down into the dependency hierarchy to understand interdependencies and get different views on it, such as a parent view. The module explorer also features a rich search set so that you can easily find modules that contribute certain resources or capabilities, or browse all exposed data.; This portlet also provides a number of utilities to help you debug theme issues such as client-side tracing, export module languages, and other debugging tools. In case of problems, you can also export your set of data as a compressed file and share it with others. They can then import your data set and examine your profiles and modules.
Frequent Users: The Frequent Users portlet shows how many users are logged in for the past 90 days.
Enable Tracing: Use the Enable Tracing portlet to enable or disable the tracing logs. See the Enable Tracing portlet help for detailed instructions on working with logs.
Use the Enable Tracing portlet to dynamically enable or disable trace-logging for individual classes and entire packages without restarting WebSphere Portal. In a WebSphere Portal cluster, the portlet lists and changes the currently running trace loggers on only one individual server (not the entire cluster). To dynamically change the trace specification for the entire cluster, you must use the Enable Tracing portlet on each individual server (horizontal or vertical cluster member).
About WebSphere Portal: This portlet shows the version and fix level of your WebSphere Portal. It also shows the product numbers and the Copyright years.

Manage Virtual Portals

Manage Virtual Portals: Use the Virtual Portal Manager portlet to create, list, modify, and delete virtual portals. When you create a virtual portal, it is filled with the initial default content for virtual portals. For more information about the Virtual Portal Manager, refer to the portlet help.

Other portlets that are useful for administration

There are other portlets not accessible from Administration that is also useful in administering WebSphere Portal.

Site Map

WebSphere Portal provides the Site Map portlet. It serves two purposes:

You can use the Site Map portlet to browse the site. It displays a list of the pages and portlets. You can access this portlet by logging in to the portal, clicking Search Center, then clicking the Site Map tab
The Site Map portlet enables external search crawlers to collect pages more efficiently.

Properties

Use the Properties portlet to modify properties on pages and portlets. You can access this portlet when you create a new page, editing an existing page, or from the Manage pages administration portlet.

Note: The current limitations for the Properties portlet are:

The list of shareable pages that are displayed by the Properties portlet is limited to those pages that the user can go to. As a result, a user might not be able to create explicitly derived pages from some shareable pages.
A user must have at least Editor privileges on a page to be able to edit the properties on that page. Privileged users are not able to edit a page's properties or edit personalization rules because Personalization rules are part of a page's properties.