Chapter 3 Understanding Portal Server Community Features

This chapter describes online community features that Portal Server provides for the Desktop to enhance the productivity of enterprises and their employees.

This chapter provides the following sections:

• Portal Server Community Roles

• Services for End-User Portal Communities

• Portal Server Community Portlets

• Managing Portal Server Communities

Portal Server Community Roles

Portal Server enables end users to set up and participate in online communities, which are associations of members and services. Communities provide services and content on a long-term basis or a short-term basis. Three end-user roles are defined:

• Owner - The community member who starts and removes a community. A community owner can perform the following tasks:

  • Delete members

  • Transfer community ownership to another member

  • Delete the community

  • Use member privileges

• Member - An end user who belongs to a community and interacts with a community's services and content. A community member has the following privileges:

  • View general information about the community

  • View members who subscribe to the community

  • Participate in community activities

• Visitor - An end user (and nonmember) who views a community's services but who does not interact with the services.

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, replay, 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.

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 standard 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 4, “Understanding Community Templates”in the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Update 1 Community Guide.

The portal administrator uses the command-line interface to manage the templates. For information on psadmin community subcommands, see the Managing Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Communities technical note.

Portal Server Community Portlets

Portal Server provides portlets for communities and community members. This topic describes two of these portlets:

• Portal Server Wiki Portlet

• Portal Server Blog Portlet

Portal Server Wiki Portlet

Portal Server provides a wiki portlet that uses JSPWiki, built around standard Java^TM 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE^TM) technology. The portlet enables portal users to participate in communities and to create collaborative content.

The portlet provides a community with an initial set of default pages and allows communities to do the following:

• Create its own wiki

• Link between wikis

• Tie wiki permissions to community membership

Administrators can add channels for community content and services to a wiki community. The sample developer portal uses a default wiki. For more information, see the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Update 1 Community Guide.

Portal Server Blog Portlet

Portal Server provides a blog portlet that uses the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP), the standard protocol for managing weblog posts. The portlet enables portal users to publish weblogs from a portal page. End users can perform the following tasks:

• Create weblogs

• Create, edit, and delete blog entries

• Create blog server user accounts

The blog portlet provides a simplified user interface. For more information, see the Managing Sun Java Systems Portal Server 7.1 Blog Portlet.

Managing Portal Server Communities

Portal Server administrators can perform community management tasks using one of the following methods:

• Management console

  For more information, see Chapter 6, “Understanding the Portal Server Management Console.”

• Command-line interface

  For information about the command-line interface, see Command-Line Utilities for Managing Communities.

• An administration portlet on the standard Desktop, if a portlet has been set up

  For more information, see Portal Server Administration Tag Library and Portlets.