Working With Portal Pages

How to:

Portal pages are a vital part of the BI Portal architecture. Basic and collaborative portals allow different levels of versatility in the way you organize and interact with portal pages. In a basic portal, pages are a part of the portal structure and can only be used inside a specific portal. In a collaborative portal, pages become part of the content structure, and you can share, reuse, link, copy and move them between different portals, workspaces, or folders.

There are two types of pages in a portal. These include:

In a collaborative portal, you have additional ways of accessing portal pages. These include:

Note: To avoid unwanted behaviors, you should not edit portal pages in the Portal Designer or Page Designer, or move or unlink portal pages in the repository, while users are running the affected portals.

Procedure: How to Add a Base Page to a Portal

  1. Create a new portal.

    If you create a new collaborative portal, you must select a page template in the Add Page dialog box.

  2. In the Portal Designer, add content to the page.

    If left blank, panels behave like Easy Selector containers at run time. To learn more about the Easy Selector, see Using the Easy Selector.

  3. Optionally, lock the page to prevent run time edits. Select the Lock Page check box in the Properties panel.
  4. Save and close the Portal Designer.

    A new portal and base portal page are created.

    To add a new base portal page to an existing portal, edit the portal, and add a new portal page.

Procedure: How to Add a Personal Page to a Portal

  1. Run an existing portal.
    • From the Legacy Home Page, in the Resources tree, right-click an existing portal, and then click Run.
    • From the WebFOCUS Home Page, in the Explorer, right-click an existing portal and then click Run.

    The portal opens in a new tab or browser window depending on your browser configuration.

  2. Click the New Page icon, which is the last item in the navigation bar.

    In a basic portal, a new portal page and the WebFOCUS Resources tree open, so you can start adding content to the new portal page.

    In a collaborative portal, the Add Page dialog box opens, allowing you to choose a template for your new portal page. Once you select a template and click OK, the new portal page opens.

    You can rearrange your personal portal pages using drag-and-drop operations. Your personal portal pages always come after any base portal pages that were created using the Portal Designer. You can also rename, rearrange, refresh a portal page, or delete a portal page using the shortcut menu options.

Procedure: How to Link a Portal Page to a Collaborative Portal

  1. Run a collaborative portal.
  2. Link to an existing portal page in one of the following ways:
    • From the Add Page dialog box.
      1. Click the New Page icon.

        The Add Page dialog box opens.

      2. Click Link To Existing Page, as shown in the following image.

        The Open dialog box opens.

      3. Select a portal page to which you want to link and click Open.

        The new linked portal page displays in the portal.

    • From the WebFOCUS Resources tree.
      1. On the Menu bar, click Resources.

        The WebFOCUS Resources tree opens.

      2. Select a portal page and drag it onto the Navigation bar, as shown in the following image.

        The new linked portal page displays in the portal.

  3. Optionally, customize the portal page to fit your needs.

    Your customizations are visible to you and will not affect the original portal page in the repository. You can remove the linked portal page from the portal by clicking Remove in the shortcut menu. If the original portal page in the repository is edited or deleted, these changes affect the linked portal page in your portal.

    If you add a linked portal page at design time, it becomes a base portal page.

Procedure: How to Add a Copy of a Portal Page to a Collaborative Portal

  1. Run a collaborative portal.
  2. Click the New Page icon.

    The Add Page dialog box opens.

  3. Click Copy Existing Page, as shown in the following image.

    The Open dialog box opens.

  4. Select a portal page and click Open.

    A copy of the portal page, and the associated Title opens in the Add Page dialog box.

  5. Click Create.

    The copy of a portal page displays in the portal.

  6. Optionally, customize the portal page to fit your needs.

    Your customizations are visible to you and will not affect the original portal page in the repository. You can delete the copied portal page from the portal by clicking Delete in the shortcut menu. If the original portal page in the repository is edited or deleted, these changes will not affect the copy of that portal page in your portal.

    If you add a copy of a portal page at design time, it becomes a base portal page.

Procedure: How to Create a Stand-alone Portal Page

  1. Create a new page in one of the following ways:
    • From the Legacy Home Page, in the Resources tree, right-click a workspace or folder, point to New, and then click Portal Page.
    • From the WebFOCUS Home Page, select a workspace or folder. On the Action Bar, click Portal Page.

    The Page Designer and the Add Page dialog box open.

  2. Select a page template and, optionally, edit the Title and Name fields.
  3. Click Create.

    The portal page displays in the Page Designer.

  4. Optionally, add content to the portal page.

    If left blank, panels behave like Easy Selector containers at run time. To learn more about the Easy Selector, see Using the Easy Selector.

  5. Save and close the Page Designer.

    The new stand-alone portal page displays repository. You can now copy, move, and link this portal page to portals.

Reference: Page Designer

The Page Designer is a subset of a Portal Designer. It allows you to create stand-alone portal pages inside domains and folders of your choice. The Page Designer interface is shown in the following image.

Page Designer default view

The Page Designer contains three primary elements:

  • Page Templates. Preset layouts that you can use to quickly create portal pages. This feature is identical to the one in the Portal Designer, when you create collaborative portals. To learn more about page templates, see Page Templates.
  • Ribbon. The ribbon is the abridged version of the ribbon in the Portal Designer that contains the following tabs:
    • Layout. Allows you to select a theme and choose a layout for your portal page.

      Note: Custom themes do not get saved in the Page Designer, because portal pages cannot be run on their own and do not have their own CSS files. In Page Designer, the Custom Theme CSS and CSS Editor features act as tools to create a preview of what the portal page looks like, using a selected CSS theme. You can only apply and save this theme when the portal page is inside a portal.

    • Insert. Provides choices of containers and content that you can add to a portal page.
    • Style. Applies styles to common properties, such as background, border, and font.
  • Properties Panel. The Properties panel appears near the bottom of the window, below the canvas. It shows properties that apply specifically to the currently selected item.

To learn more about these options, see Portal Designer Overview.

When you add Insight-enabled content to a portal page, it will run as a standard HTML5 chart. An Explore with Insight icon displays, as highlighted in the following image.

You can view the content in Insight mode by clicking the Explore with Insight icon. Content opens in a new browser tab.