Chapter 5. Categories, Portlets and Gadgets Administration

To manage categories, portlets and gadgets in a portal, you first need to go to the Manage Applications page by hovering your cursor over on the Administration bar, and select Applications. The Manage Applications page will appear.

Details:

Portlets and gadgets are organized into different categories. Each category contains one or several portlets or gadgets. You can also mix portlets and gadgets into one category. By default, all gadgets are placed in the Gadgets category.

Here, you can do the following actions:

  1. Click on the Action bar to open the form to add a new category.

    Details:

    In the Category Setting tab:

    Category name

    The category's name that you want to add. This field is required and its length must be between 3 and 30 characters.

    Display name

    The display name of the category and its length must be between 3 and 30 characters.

    Description

    A brief description of the category. Any length from 0 to 255 characters is allowed.

  2. Enter values in the Category Setting tab.

  3. Set the Access permission for your category. Accordingly, another users can only view and use portlets in your category to which they have access.

    For more details about how to set the Access permission, refer to ???.

  4. Click Save to accept adding a new category to the categories list. Your newly created category will be added to the list in the left pane.

  1. Click located next to the title bar.

  2. Update the category information.

  3. Click the Save button to apply changes.

  1. Click located next to the title bar.

  2. Click OK to accept deleting in the confirmation message.

This function helps you add portlets to a specific category easily as follows:

  1. Click located next to the category name to which you want to add portlets/gadgets.

    Display name

    The display name of a portlet/gadget.

    Application Type

    Either Portlet or Gadget.

  2. Enter the display name and select an application type.

  3. Select a portlet/gadget by checking the radio button.

  4. Click Save to add the selected portlet/gadget to the category.

The selected portlet/gadget will be added to the category in the left pane.

This section shows you how to add a portlet/gadget to the Application list on the left pane of the Manage Application page.

  1. Click Portlets/Gadgets on the Tab bar to open a list of portlets/gadgets respectively.

  2. Click the portlet/gadget which you want to add to the Application list.

    The information of the portlet/gadget is displayed.

  3. Click the Click here to add this portlet to a category link to open a form which allows you to select a category for the portlet.

  4. Click Save to accept adding the portlet/gadget to the Application list.

Note

In case, the portlet/gadget was already added to the Application list, there will be no the Click here to add this portlet to a category link.

Note

You can perform this action only when you are a member of the /platform/administrators group.

By default, the Import Applications function is hidden. To activate it, you can do as follows:

  1. Go to the Manage Applications page → Edit → Page → Layout on the Administration bar.

  2. Hover your cursor over the Application Registry portlet, then click at the upper left corner of that portlet.

    The Edit form will be displayed.

  3. Tick the Change Show Import checkbox, then click Save to accept the changes.

  4. Click Close to close the Edit form, then click to quit the Page Editor page.

    The Import Applications button is displayed on the Manage Applications page.

This feature enables you to import default portlets and gadgets into different categories as follows:

  1. Click at the right corner on the Action bar.

  2. Click OK in the confirmation message to accept importing portlets and gadgets automatically.

    All portlets and gadgets of all categories will be imported and listed on the left pane.

Note

You can see only when the Import Applications function is activated.

To view details of a portlet/gadget, simply select one portlet/gadget in the left pane. The details of that portlet will be shown on the right pane.

Left pane

All portlets and gadgets grouped by categories.

Right pane

Details of a portlet: Name, Display Name, Description.

Edit a portlet

  1. Click on the top corner of right pane.

    The Edit Application Information form will appear.

  2. Make changes on these fields, except Application Name.

This section tells you how to access the edit mode of a portlet and edit it.

  1. Define your desired portlet to check if this portlet has been existing in the portal or page. If not, drag and drop it from Edit Inline Composer to the main portal body while editing the portal's layout, or from Page Editor to the main page body in the Step 3 while creating a page and/or while editing a page.

  2. Hover your cursor over your desired portlet, then click at the upper left corner of that portlet.

    The Edit form will be displayed.

    Normally, a portlet has four tabs: Window Settings, Select Icon, Decoration Themes and Access Permission. However, some portlets may also have Edit Mode and Preferences tabs. For example, IFrame and Dashboard portlets have the Edit Mode tab where administrators can define the interface details.

  3. Make changes on fields in the various tabs.

  4. Click Save And Close to accept your changes.

To add a gadget, you first need to turn into the Gadget page by selecting Gadget on the tab bar of the Manage Applications page.

You can add a remote gadget using its URL or create a new gadget into the list.

Add a remote gadget

  1. Click the Add a Remote Gadget link.

  2. Enter the link of your desired gadget which is in the .xml format in the Gadget URL field.

  3. Click Add to accept your inputted URL.

    The selected gadget will be added to the gadgets list in the left pane with its details in the right pane.

Create a new gadget

  1. Click the Create a New Gadget link.

  2. Enter values in the form.

    For example:

  3. Click Save to accept creating your new gadget.

Note

To add the newly added remote gadget to a specific category, simply click the "Click here to add into categories" link at the bottom of the right pane. The table listing all categories will appear that allows you to select your desired category.

To update information of the added gadget, simply click to refresh information.

See the Add more external gadgets from Dashboard section for instructions on how to add new gadgets from the dashboard.

Click located at the header of the Gadget Details page to display the following window.

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