Services for End-User Portal Communities

Portal Server provides the following community services:

• Wiki - A wiki container and portlets enable a community to provide an interactive site for community-related content. Community members can edit existing pages and files, and community members can add new pages and files.

• Discussions - Community discussions allow members to create, read, rate, reply to, search, and subscribe to online exchanges by community members.

• Blogs - A blog portlet enables community members to publish weblogs. Community members can manage and post and manage blog entries. This portlet uses the Apache Roller blog server.

• Surveys and Polls - Community members can respond to surveys and view the results of surveys and polls. Question formats are multiple choice, yes or no, and open-ended.

• Searches - Community members can search for communities and content across all public communities and any private communities that they belong to.

• Events and Tasks - Community members can use a community calendar built on Sun^TM Calendar Server software to track and edit community projects, tasks, and events.

• File Sharing - Community members can share files, create folders, and upload and download documents.

• Subscriptions - Community members can subscribe to community discussion channels and save searches from community search channels.

The community services assign system resources and privileges to communities and their members by adding services as portlets. For example, if a community provides a calendar portlet, an account for the community is provisioned in the calendar server.

Portal Server provides a set of templates for community services. The templates:

• Control which services or channels a community provides

• Control how the services are arranged on the Desktop

• Control individual layouts and services available for the community roles of owner, member, and visitor

• Consist of a properties file, an image, and one or more display profile documents

For more information, see Chapter 5, Community Templates, in Sun Java System Portal Server 7.2 Enterprise Sample Guide.

The portal administrator uses the command-line interface to manage the templates. For information, see the Chapter 9, Managing a Portal Server Community, in Sun Java System Portal Server 7.2 Administration Guide.