Portal Studio

This section addresses the concepts and functionalities of the Portal Studio, an environment that allows the assembly of solutions (portals). More specifically, this section will show the creation and alteration of the structure of a portal solution. “Solution” refers to the product created with the Lumis.

The Portal Studio allows the creation of multiple portal solutions, accessed via different URLs and can be managed by different profiles, defined in the access control, thus enabling simultaneous management of multiple portals in the same visual environment.

The administration of such solutions is native and does not require implementation, allowing changes such as: adding and removing channel hierarchy, pages, services; altering the appearance of channels and pages; and specifying access for each of them. Administrators can manage and share services among themselves based on permission assignments defined in the access control.

This environment can be accessed via the function key F2, or through the portal mode options, after users with administrator profiles log into the portal. Only users with this type of profile can access the administrative mode and manipulate the following areas located in the upper left corner:

Functional areas of LumisXP

Initially, using the function key "F2" the environment is toggled between the user profile (mode in which the designed solution is available to the end user) and the administrator profile (mode in which creating and altering the solution structure is permitted). However, there are other profiles and Modes, explained in the section Portal Profiles.

The figures below exemplify these two display modes:

The administrative mode of the portal presents a workspace for creating and altering the structure of the solution to be created:

• Navigator: located on the left side of the screen. It displays the navigation structure of the portal from the administrator's perspective, presenting the hierarchy of channels, pages, service instances, and channel and page templates that compose the solution. Through this graphical interface, it is possible to create, edit, and remove areas and other portal elements without the need for programming or coding.

  These are the meanings of each icon in the structure tree: - Channel, - Page, - Channel template, - Page template, - Website, - Page block. A blue dot next to the icon means that the item has HTML cache explicitly enabled. A orange dot means HTML cache explicitly disabled. If the cache configuration is inherited from a parent channel, no colored dot will be shown next to the icon.

  

• Page Designer: area on the right side of the screen, represents a page in editing mode. It allows you to layout the layout of a page. The designer can be viewed from the moment a page from the navigator is accessed. The page layout consists of assembling it with various functional components and determining the size for each of them.

  

• Quick Tasks Menu: menu accessible in the navigator via right-clicking on channels, pages, and templates, allowing access to their properties, access control, performing cache cleaning, creating projects and websites, and editing the structure.

  Clearing cache means clearing the memory cache of interfaces, xsl, portal objects; in addition to the removal of cache from HTML files of pages.

  For channel and channel template, through right-click selection, it is still possible to access create/remove/manage channels, pages, and templates of channel and page.

  For channel, it is possible to create a new project or website.

  The figure below displays such tasks available for a channel and a page.

  

• Manage Portal Access: option available in the "Quick Tasks Menu" only in the first channel of the entire channel tree - by default, the Portal channel. From this option, the initial groups and users along with their access permissions to the portal are defined. The immediately lower channels may or may not inherit the configurations defined for the Portal Access Manager. And successively, according to the channel hierarchy, it is possible for a channel to inherit the access control settings of its parent channel.

  The figure below displays the access control of the Portal Access Manager. The pre-defined groups and users allowed to access the portal structure are “LumisPageCacheUser”, “Portal Administrators”, and “Administrator”. New groups and users can be added to be passed to the channels that are inheriting the access control of the Portal Access Manager.

  

• Channel Administration: area that allows you to manage the following elements of a channel: Service, Page, Channels, Channel Template, and Page Template. And for each of these elements, it is possible to at least: Add, Edit, Delete, and define the Access Control.

  The figure below exemplifies the administration of the service instances of the channel “Documentation”. For each of its instances, Name and Description are displayed.

  

To reach the screen displayed in the previous figure, Manage Service Instances, simply select the desired channel and click on the service instances link that will be displayed next.

When selecting a service instance and triggering the Used by option, the pages or service instances that use it will be displayed. For example, in the figure below, the pages that have the interfaces of the Images service instance are displayed, as well as the News and Links service instances that use the image repository of that instance.

The administration of pages and sub-channels is similar to the administration of channel services.

The administration of the page templates of the channel “Documentation” is possible through the Manage Page Templates in the upper right corner with a selected channel option.

When selecting a page template and triggering the: Applied on pages option, the pages that use that template will be displayed.

The figure below displays the pages that have the “Template_PageInternal” applied, after selecting, respectively, this template and the Applied on pages action.

The administration of channel templates is similar to the administration of page templates of the channel.

The items in the menu represented in the image below correspond respectively to:

• Logout: executes the logoff from the administrative mode, redirecting to the product login page or to the solution login page (the one defined as the default login page).
• Online Documentation: displays the product manual;
• About LumisXP: contains information about the version, sub-version, and build of the product. It also includes product support contact;

There is also a menu that allows changing the display language of the portal for the current user.

While the function key "F2" allows accessing and exiting the administrative mode of the portal, the combination "Ctrl-F2" allows accessing the security mode of the same. In this last mode, all interfaces will be displayed in a fixed HTML with the title being the combination of the interface name and the service instance name, if the interface came from a template, and a complementary description:

• If the cache is enabled, the description will inform this, as well as if it is of level of page template;
• It will inform if it is rendered in client-side;
• Identifier of the interface.

In it, it will be possible to visualize and navigate the structure of channels and pages when an interface is broken. Refreshing each interface through the context menu, the Refresh option allows it to be rendered in structure mode, and the one that is broken will continue to be displayed with the fixed HTML.

This security mode is also useful when there is repetitive assembly and initially there is no concern with the final layout, as an example, creating several administration pages. In this case, the security mode can speed up the creation, especially when the assembly is remote.