Application Preference Editing: Configuring Communication Channel Edit Pages

You can configure the edit pages that end users see after they click the edit button in a communication channel’s tool bar for the Address Book, Calendar, and Mail channels. The Instant Messaging channel does not use application preference editing. For information about configuring the Instant Messaging Channel’s edit page, see Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Desktop Customization Guide.

For the three communication channels that allow application preference editing, you can change which options are available for end users to edit, what names and wording accompany those options, and how the options are formatted. Configuration of the communication channels edit pages can be performed in the display profile, various HTML templates, and an SSO Adapter template. You might also need to access an SSO Adapter configuration. These items together are involved in the configuration of the edit pages.

This section gives a brief explanation of application preference editing. Other chapters in this guide and the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Desktop Customization Guide provide a more complete explanation of the template files and the display profile, including how they interact with each other and how you can access and edit them.

Display Profile Attributes for the Edit Pages

The communication channels have two collections in their display profile for creating the edit pages. They are ssoEditAttributes and dpEditAttributes.

You can edit these collections by accessing the Sun Java System Portal Server administration console. Either download the display profile to edit the XML code before uploading it back to the directory server, or edit specific properties in these collections using only the administration console.

The ssoEditAttributes collection controls the editing of the attributes contained by the SSO Adapter service, such as user name and user password. dpEditAttributes controls the editing for the display profile attributes, such as sort order and sort by, which are options that by default end users can edit.

Therefore, these collections list the attributes that can be edited and also contain information on the type of input and the header for the input string to use. For example:

<String name="uid" value="string|User Name:"/>
<String name="password" value="password|User Password:"/>


            

The name in the collection must match the name of the corresponding display profile SSO Adapter attribute. The value portion of the item contains two pieces of information separated by the “|” character. The first part of the value string specifies the attribute’s display type. The second part of the attribute’s value string specifies the text that is displayed next to the item.

The list below specifies how the type relates to a corresponding HTML GUI item:

• string—Creates a text field where alphanumeric characters can be entered

• password— Creates a password field where the input is replaced with “*”

• check—Creates a checkbox

• select—Creates a select box. Every select item must have a corresponding collection with a list of values and display text

For every select display type, you must have a corresponding collection that lists the value to be returned and the display value for the option. The collection name must be made up of the name value for the attribute and the text SelectOptions . For example, for the sortOrder attribute in the MailProvider, the collection name is sortOrderSelectOptions:

<Collection name="sortOrderSelectOptions" advanced="false" merge="replace" 
lock="false" propagate="true"> 
		<String name="top" value="Most recent at top"/> 
		<String name="bottom" value="Most recent at bottom"/> 
</Collection>


            

HTML Templates for the Edit Pages

Nine HTML templates are used to create edit pages for the communication channel providers. The templates are generic, to correspond to specific browser GUI types, and they primarily relate to specific HTML inputs in the edit pages.

The edit-start.template and the edit-end.template are exceptions. They contain most of the HTML that is used for page layout. HTML Templates for the Edit Pages contains a description of each template name and how it relates to the GUI types. Some of the templates are used to start, end and separate the attributes. These templates are available for each of the communication channels at:

/etc/opt/SUNWportal/desktop/default/ChannelName_Provider /html

For example, the templates for the Calendar channel edit pages can be accessed at:

/etc/opt/SUNWportal/desktop/default/CalendarProvider/html

A Display Profile Example

This example demonstrates how certain SSO Adapter attributes work together with their corresponding display profile attributes to give end users the ability to change the entries for specific features in a communication channel’s edit page, thereby changing how the communication channels are configured and displayed on their Portal Desktops.

The SSO Adapter template in A Display Profile Example is for a sample mail channel. The SSO Adapter template contains two merged attributes:

• uid—User ID

• password—User password

A merged attribute is an attribute that end users can specify. Administrators decide which attributes are merged so that end users can edit them.

Example 9–2 Sample SSO Adapter Template

default|imap:///&configName=MAIL-SERVER-TEMPLATE
    &encoded=password
    &default=protocol
    &default=clientProtocol
    &default=type
    &default=subType
    &default=ssoClassName
    &default=smtpServer
    &default=clientPort
    &default=host
    &default=port
    &merge=username
    &merge=userpassword
    &clientProtocol=http
    &type=MAIL-TYPE
    &subType=sun-one
    &ssoClassName=com.sun.ssoadapter.impl.JavaMailSSOAdapter
    &smtpServer=example.sun.com
    &clientPort=80
    &host=company22.example.com
    &port=143


               

A Display Profile Example contains the channel’s display profile XML fragment for the channel’s ssoEditAttributes.

After you set an attribute to merge in an SSO Adapter template, you can edit that attribute in the display profile to reconfigure how the attribute is displayed to end users in an edit page and how end users can edit it.

Administrators edit the proper display profile collection to define how end users are queried for the necessary information. In this example, administrators could replace UserName with the question, What is your user name? The use of the string attribute display type before the “|” symbol is the most likely choice. However, an administrator can change this to the password type or to another type.

Example 9–3 Sample Mail Channel Display Profile XML Fragment

<Channel name="SampleMailChannel" provider="MailProvider">
<Properties>
<Collection name="ssoEditAttributes">
    <String name="username" value="string|User Name:"/>
    <String name="userpassword" value="password|User Password:"/>
</Collection>


               

For this example, in the Mail channel edit page, end users see text fields titled:

• User Name:

• User Password: