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Managing portlets, portlet applications, and iWidgets

You must do some preparatory tasks before you make your portlets, portlet applications, or iWidgets available to your users by putting them on portal pages. This preparatory task includes installing, deploying, and configuring portlets, applications, and iWidgets.

You can further work with portlets by using the administration portlets that are available under the portal Administration menu > Portlet Management. Refer to the portlet helps for details. After you complete preparing your portlets or iWidgets, you can make them available for your users.

  • Web modules, portlet applications, and portlets
    A web module represents a web application. It is used to assemble servlets and JSP files as well as static content, such as HTML pages, into a single deployable unit.
  • Installing a portlet
    Installing a portlet makes it available to portal users. Adding a portlet to a page makes the portlet accessible to users with the appropriate rights.
  • Deploying Java Platform, Enterprise Edition resources
    You can manually predeploy portlet application WAR files by using the WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console and later register them into HCL Portal, together with other Java Platform, Enterprise Edition resources and artifacts.
  • Activating and deactivating portlet applications or portlets
    By default, portlet applications and portlets are set to an active state after installation. You can deactivate a resource to prevent users from accessing it without changing their user roles. When a portlet application or portlet is in the active state, portal users with appropriate access can include it on their personal pages and customize it. Users that have active references to those inactive portlets on a portal page will see a message stating that the portlet is temporarily disabled.
  • Modifying portlet apps and portlets
    You must perform some preparatory tasks before you make your portlets and portlet applications available to your users by putting them on portal pages.
  • Copying portlet applications
    Using the Manage Portlet Application, you can copy a portlet application, which includes some or all of the portlets from the original portlet application. If you want additional instances of a portlet application, use the Manage Portlet Application to make copies.
  • Copying portlets
    Use Manage Portlets to copy a portlet. If a portlet is copied or a remote portlet is integrated, a new portlet application is created by the portal that holds the new portlet.
  • Updating Web modules, portlet applications, and portlets
    Update a portlet application by updating the WAR file in Manage Web Modules. The newer version of the resource in the WAR file updates the existing portlet application, without breaking the links between user data and the resource. User-specific settings for portlets within the updated resource remain unchanged.
  • Deleting Web modules, portlet applications, or portlets
    Web modules can be deleting or uninstalled in Manage Web Modules and portlet applications can be deleted using Manage Applications. Portlets can be deleted using Manage Portlets.
  • Disabling anchors in portlet URLs
    When you access a portlet in HCL Digital Experience, the portal appends an anchor to the portlet URL. If several portlets are arranged vertically on a page, this appended anchor forces the browser to scroll down to the portlet rather than display the start of the page. You might prefer to have the start of the page that is displayed, even if the link that was clicked points to a portlet, which is placed further down on the page. To achieve this, you can disable the anchors.
  • Managing iWidgets in your portal
    You can add iWidgets to your HCL Digital Experience.
  • Portlet management
    Manage the portlets and Web services that the site uses.

HCLSoftware U learning materials

For an introduction and a demo on developing Java portlets, go to Java Portlet Development. To try it out yourself, refer to DX JSP Portlet Development Lab.