Knowledge of the following Mobile Access software features and how they extend the functions of Portal Server software are useful:
Your portal site provides a mobile Portal Desktop and a voice Portal Desktop as well as a standard Portal Desktop. A wireless desktop dispatcher, which is a component of the Mobile Access software, controls them. The Portal Server desktop servlet forwards requests to the wireless desktop dispatcher.
The wireless desktop dispatcher uses display profile configuration data to determine which Portal Desktop—standard, mobile, or voice—is the appropriate one to route user requests to.
Regardless of how the user accesses a portal site, the Portal Desktop is the user’s interface for the portal site. When a portal site user accesses a portal site with a mobile device, the mobile Portal Desktop appears. When a portal site user accesses a portal site with a telephone, the voice Portal Desktop responds.
These channels are available and visible by default on the mobile Portal Desktop:
User Information
Bookmark
Personal Notes
Sample XML
For more details on the mobile Portal Desktop, see Chapter 4, Managing the Mobile Portal Desktop
Mobile Access software supports virtually every mobile device available. It uses a client profile to identify each mobile device, or client. It assigns each client a unique identifier called client type, based on the device markup language the device’s browser uses.
These markup languages include:
HDML (Handheld Device Markup Language)
cHTML (compact Hypertext Markup Language)
iHTML (i-mode Hypertext Markup Language)
JHTML (J-Sky Hypertext Markup Language)
XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language)
VoiceXML (Voice Extensible Markup Language)
WML (Wireless Markup Language)
Mobile Access software certifies WML support for the Nokia 6310i client and cHTML support for the Handspring Treo 180 client, although users can access portal content with any mobile device that uses one of these markup languages.
The Client Manager, which is part of the administration console of Access Manager, is used for managing client profiles. For details about mobile client type and device detection, see Chapter 2, Managing Mobile Devices
Mobile Access software supports the authentication modules that Portal Server software provides, but it also allows you to:
Enable users to bypass the password prompt when logging into the mobile Portal Desktop.
Enable users to log on as anonymous users.
For details on using these authentication modules, see Chapter 3, Configuring Mobile Authentication
Mobile Access software provides the framework for VoiceXML applications. To access voice functionality, you must configure a voice server to provide speech recognition, text-to-speech, and a VoiceXML browser.
For details about voice access, see Chapter 6, Configuring Voice Access
Mobile Access software uses providers, channels, and containers to present content to the mobile Portal Desktop.
This topic provides information on:
Channels display content in the mobile Portal Desktop. A channel consists of the provider object, configuration settings, and data files (such as templates) required to support the channel.
A container, or container channel, is a channel that displays content in the mobile Portal Desktop by aggregating the content of other channels. Mobile Access software adds the following default container channels to those included with Portal Server software:
JSPNativeContainer
JSPRenderingContainer
TemplateNativeContainer
VoiceJSPDesktopContainer
WirelessDesktopDispatcher
Providers are the underlying implementation that present channel content to users on the mobile Portal Desktop. They adapt the interfaces of generic resources.
Provider content sources can include:
Content in a file
Output from an application
Output from a service
Providers, which are Java class files, deliver content in the proper format for each type of mobile device. As a mobile Portal Desktop is created, each provider is queried for the content of its associated channel.
The default providers include:
JSPRenderingProvider
RenderingWrappingProvider
The following new providers are added to the default containers:
JSPRenderingContainerProvider
JSPSingleRenderingContainerProvider
WirelessDesktopDispatcherProvider
WirelessJSPDesktopProvider
WirelessTemplateClientConfigProvider
WirelessTemplateContentProvider
WirelessTemplateDesktopProvider
WirelessTemplateLayoutProvider
For details on using channels, containers, and providers to configure the mobile Portal Desktop, see Chapter 4, Managing the Mobile Portal Desktop
Using a mobile device, portal site users can access the same content that they would access using any HTML browser. The process that enables this is a translation process called rendering. Rendering allows you to create content once and display it appropriately on a variety of unique mobile devices.
The mobile rendering component detects devices and formats output for display on mobile devices. It consists of four subcomponents:
Client detection determines the capabilities and characteristics of each mobile device that is used to access the portal. To do this, it uses the composite capability and preference profiles (CC/PP) specification, UAProf, or preconfigured data.
A rendering filter passes content to the rendering engine and passes translated device-specific content back to the client, using the content type value set in the JavaServer Pages™ (JSPTM) software template. It is a servlet filter that is applied to all authentication and application JSP software templates.
The rendering engine converts AML, a device-independent markup language, to whatever device-specific markup language is appropriate for the client.
When rendered content exceeds the page size of the target device, the rendering engine paginates it and stores the pages in the response buffer.
The response buffer stores large output streams as separate, smaller responses so that they fit limited device buffers. The authentication, desktop, and mobile application components use the response buffer.
When a client device makes a request for another page, it responds with the next page.
Mobile Access software supports both native and rendering channels and containers. Native channels are based onJSP technology and templates that are specific to Nokia WML clients. Clients that support HTML, VoiceXML, and WML use templates for a native Portal Desktop.
Rendering channels also use JSP technology. They enable a user to view a Portal Desktop that displays rendered content that is unique to a specific mobile device. This feature is made possible with the use of Abstract Markup Language (AML) templates that are passed through Mobile Access software’s rendering process. Clients that support cHTML, iHTML, JHTML, XHTML, and HDML require AML templates for a rendered Portal Desktop.
The Mobile Access software provides four default applications that users can access in the mobile Portal Desktop. These are:
Address Book
Calendar
Fax
These applications run on a back-end server with the mobile Portal Desktop acting as the user interface. Once the link to an application is established, the application runs outside the control of Portal Server software. When the user is finished using the application, the user can return to the mobile Portal Desktop to work with other providers.