Chapter 5 Understanding Portal Server Management

The chapter summarizes how administrators can perform administrative tasks required for managing the Portal Server. Administrators use Portal Server and Access Manager to manage tasks that affect how Portal Server services are delivered.

This chapter provides the following sections:

• About Portal Server Management Options

• About Access Manager Functions

• About End-User Provisioning

About Portal Server Management Options

Administrators can use a browser interface, a command-line interface, or the Desktop to manage Portal Server. This topic provides the following sections:

• Portal Server Management Console

• Portal Server Command-Line Interface

• Portal Server Administration Tag Library and Portlets

Portal Server Management Console

Portal Server provides a browser interface called the management console. The management console allows portal administrators to do the following:

• Manage multiple portals and their operations

• Set up and manage containers and channels

• Customize the Desktop for end users

• Enable end users to personalize the Desktop

• Manage multiple search servers

• Track both end-user and system activities

  • End-user clicks on the standard Desktop

  • Configuration settings, statistics about channel actions, and statistics about Desktop requests and responses

  • Runtime information about the Portal Server and the Secure Remote Access server

For more information about the management console, see Chapter 6, “Understanding the Management Console.”

Portal Server Command-Line Interface

Portal Server software provides a command-line interface (CLI). The CLI allows portal administrators to do the following:

• Perform administrative tasks by typing commands using the keyboard

• Automate regularly recurring management tasks by incorporating them into scripts

The CLI offers a number of psadmin subcommands for managing portal tasks. These include subcommands for:

• Managing multiple portals and portal instances

• Deploying portal and portlet WAR files

• Managing the search server

• Managing communities

• Managing Secure Remote Access server

• Managing monitoring

• Managing portal logging

Most management subcommands are written specifically to mimic functions in the browser interface. For management functions that have no special commands, administrators use standard commands for UNIX software.

For information about psadmin subcommands, see the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Command Line Reference.

Portal Server Administration Tag Library and Portlets

Portal Server provides an administration tag library for developing administration portlets that enable a portal to be managed from the Desktop instead of from the management console. The tag library allows administrators to do the following:

• Modify out-of-the-box administration portlets

• Develop portlets with new administration functionality

• Support user management, provider management, and portlet and WSRP management tasks

• Create and administer channels that are based on JSPProvider

• Write custom administration portlets with a custom user interface

• Write administrative portlets to manage any custom channel

Portal administrators can delegate the responsibility for managing various tasks in a particular organization to other individuals, called delegated administrators. In complex enterprises, granting delegated administration status to specified users can decentralize the administrative function to improve portal management.

To make delegated administration functions available to other users, portal administrators give them access to the Admin tab on the standard Desktop. The Admin tab includes the following portlets:

• User Administration portlets

  • Reset Password Admin

  • Role Admin

  • Create/Delete User Admin

• Tab administration portlets

  • Create Tab Admin

  • Delete Tab Admin

  • Tab Configuration Admin

• Channel administration portlets

  • Create Channel Admin

  • Delete Channel Admin

  • URLScraper Admin

  • Create WSRP Channel Admin

Portal Server provides a sample set of administration portlets that can be used to design a basic Desktop for delegated administrators.

For more information, see the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Developer Sample Guide.

About Access Manager Functions

Portal Server administrators use the Access Manager administrative console to manage tasks related to identity. These tasks related to identity are provided by Access Manager, not Portal Server. Administrators can perform the following tasks:

• Manage identity-based objects, including users, roles, and organizations to administer and assign appropriate access to users according to roles they have within organizations or suborganizations

• Delegate administrative functions to specific end users by authorizing the end users to administer organizations, suborganizations, users, policy, roles, and channels

• Reset administrator passwords, in the same way other passwords are changed

This section provides the following topics:

• Identity-Specific Content

• Login Accounts

Identity-Specific Content

Access Manager allows portal administrators to deliver portal content that is based on identities of specific end users. Administrators can define portal pages, attributes and access policies so that portal content is available only to the following identities:

• A specific organization

• A specific suborganization

• A role

• An individual

Individual end users who access the portal see a combined view of all portal pages.

Login Accounts

A default administrator's account for logging in to the management console is set up during Portal Server installation.

Administrators can set up additional login accounts for other portal administrators. Each new user must have the following:

• A valid user entry in the Access Manager console

• A Top-level Admin Role assignment

About End-User Provisioning

The Portal Server community subscription service allows community members to manage their own access to community data repositories. This service allows end users to do the following:

• Join or subscribe to communities

• Subscribe to discussions provided on community discussion channels

• Save searches from community search channels

An end user who is a community owner can invite other end users and deny membership to end users, if a community is private.