Portal Guide

CHAPTER 8

Working with Page Categories

This chapter explains how portal administrators can use page categories to filter access to portal pages. It covers the following topics:

Page categories and portal navigation

Portal administrators can use page categories in conjunction with the Page Navigation and Page Header portlets to filter access to individual container pages and shared pages within ACL groups. This level of control is useful when you need to override access permissions assigned to users or groups—for example, if a user is a member of two groups, but should not be allowed to view specific shared pages assigned to one of the groups.

The Page Navigation and Page Header portlets can facilitate navigation of a portal application from a single container page. When placed on a container page, these portlets can be configured to display navigation links to pages available to the current user based on categories.

A usage case

Consider this scenario: The Human Resources department in a corporation has an ACL group called HR and a portal that contains a mix of confidential and public pages. All employees in a corporation are assigned to the HR ACL group, but only a small subset of employees—authorized staff in the Human Resources department—can view the confidential pages.

When all Human Resources portal pages are uncategorized, they can be viewed by every employee, as shown:

pgPageCategoryExUncat

To restrict access to the confidential portal pages, the portal administrator creates two page categories: HumanResourcesPublic for the public HR pages and HumanResourcesPrivate for the private HR pages.

The administrator then configures the Page Navigation portlet on a container page to display links only to pages assigned to the category HumanResourcesPublic. By assigning this container page to the unauthorized employees in the HR group, the administrator allows them to view public HR pages, but restricts their access to the private ones, as shown:

pgPageCategoryExCat

Filtering page navigation by category

Here are the steps a portal administrator must follow to filter page navigation by category:

Create one or more page categories, as described in Creating page categories.
Assign categories to container pages and shared pages, as described in Assigning categories to pages.
Configure the Page Navigation or Page Header portlet on a container page to restrict access to pages by category, as described in Filtering navigation links by category.
Assign the container page or shared page to the appropriate users or groups.

Creating page categories

This procedure describes how to create page categories in exteNd Director.

Procedure To create a page category:

With your project open in the exteNd Director development environment, select File>New>File.

The New File dialog opens.
In the New File dialog, select the Portal tab.
Select Category and click OK.

An untitled portal category descriptor opens in graphical view in exteNd Director.

Enter the following information in the portal category descriptor fields:

Field	What to specify
Display name	Enter a meaningful display name for the category
Category type	From the drop-down menu, select the type of page you want to categorize: sharedpage for shared pages containerpage for container pages
Description	Enter a description of the category

Field

What to specify

Display name

Enter a meaningful display name for the category

Category type

From the drop-down menu, select the type of page you want to categorize:

sharedpage for shared pages
containerpage for container pages

Description

Enter a description of the category

For example, here are the values entered for a category that will be used to restrict access to shared pages designed only for Human Resources staff:

pgNewPortalCategoryEx

Select File>Save to save the category descriptor.

The Save As dialog opens. By default, the category will be saved as an XML descriptor file in the portal-category folder of the resource set. The file name will be the same as the category name.

Keep the defaults and click Save in the Save As dialog.

In the example above, the category descriptor is saved in a file called HumanResourcesPrivate.xml. Here is what the descriptor looks like:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <!DOCTYPE portal-category PUBLIC "-//SilverStream Software, LLC//DTD Portal Category 5.0//EN" "portal-category_5_0.dtd">
  <portal-category>
       <display-name>HumanResourcesPrivate</display-name>
       <description>Shared pages for HR staff</description>
       <category-type>sharedpage</category-type>
  </portal-category>

Now you are ready to assign the category to one or more pages, as described in Assigning categories to pages.

Assigning categories to pages

The following procedure describes how to assign categories to pages. You must assign the category to pages of the same type as the category. For example, if you created a category for shared pages, you can assign that category only to shared pages—and not to container pages.

Only portal administrators can assign pages to categories.

Procedure To assign categories to pages:

Start the Portal Administrator tool.

For instructions, see the section on starting the Portal Administration tool.

The Shared and Container Page Administration page opens in your browser:
Click Maintain Shared Pages or Maintain Container Pages, depending on the type of page you want to categorize.

The appropriate section of the Portal Administration tool opens in your browser. Here is an example of a shared page administration page:
If you need to search for the page of interest, enter search criteria and click Show Pages.

TIP: You can streamline your search by selecting a category of pages or by entering the initial letters of the page name in the Starts with field.
Select the page of interest from the list of pages returned, then check the categories you want to assign to the page, as in this example:
Click Update Page.

The page appears under its new category (or categories) in the list of pages.
Select Administration Home and leave the Portal Administration tool running for the next procedure, Filtering navigation links by category.

Filtering navigation links by category

This procedure shows you how to configure a Page Navigation portlet or Page Header portlet to filter navigation links by categories on a container page.

Your Portal Administration tool should be running in your browser, displaying its home page.

Procedure To display navigation links by category:

In the Portal Administration home page select Maintain Container Pages.

The container page administration page opens in your browser, as in this example:
If you need to search for the page of interest, enter search criteria and click Show Pages.

TIP: You can streamline your search by selecting a category of pages or by entering the initial letters of the page name in the Starts with field.
Select the desired container page from the list of pages returned and click Choose Content in the Page Tasks list:

The Portlet Selector portlet appears in your browser.
If the container page does not contain a Page Navigation or Page Header portlet, add one of these portlets by selecting it from the Available Portlets list and clicking Add.
Select the Page Navigation or Page Header portlet you just added in the Selected Portlets list, then click Portlet Preferences.

The Portlet Preferences portlet opens in a new browser window.
Scroll to the appropriate category filter preferences:

If you want to filter:

Scroll to:

Container pages

Container pages category filter

Shared pages

Shared pages category filter

For example, here is the Shared pages category filter preference:

If you want to filter:	Scroll to:
Container pages	Container pages category filter
Shared pages	Shared pages category filter

Enter the names of the categories to use for filtering, one per text field.

The categories you enter determine which pages can be accessed from the navigation links of the Page Navigation or Page Header portlet on this container page.

Follow these guidelines:

Pages to display:	What to specify:
All pages of the specified type	Leave the field blank. Enter no categories.
Uncategorized pages of the specified type	Enter uncategorized in one of the text fields
Pages of the specified type that belong to one or more categories	Enter the name of each category in a separate text field.

TIP: To add text fields, follow these steps:

To:	Do this:
Append a text field to the end of the list	Click Add.
Insert a text field at a specific location inside the list	Click Ins next to the field where you want to insert a field. The new field will be inserted above the selected field.

Click Save Preferences.

Assigning container pages to users and groups

See the section on assigning pages to users and groups in the Portal Guide.