Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Update 1 Community Guide

Chapter 7 Overview the Community Services

A community service is an application that runs in a community context to provide per-community collaborative functions to end-users. Community services are portlets or providers. This chapter contains a description of the community services available with the Portal Server software.

Community Services

The Portal Server includes the following community services:

File Sharing

The file sharing (JSF-based) application offer a hierarchical view of a file repository similar to File System browsing applications provided by the OS. Through this hierarchical view, the user can browse the repository, download files, upload files, create folders, delete and rename files and folders, copy and move files and folders. All these user interactions are done through a portlet.

This service can be customized by modifying the defaulttheme.jar file (see Chapter 5, Customizing Sun Java Web User Interface Theme) and default deployment values can be modified in the tokens.properties file (see Chapter 12, Configuring File Sharing Portlet).

Survey

The Survey (JSF-based) application allows users to create surveys for the community, answer the surveys , then review and search survey results in the portlet. There are two types of users for the Survey portlet application: end user and community administrator. All members of a community can create a survey.

Polls

The Poll (JSF-based) application allows users to create polls for the community, answer the polls, then review and search poll results in the portlet. There are two types of users for the Poll portlet application: end user and community administrator. All members of a community can create a poll.

Shared Events

The Shared Events application allows users to create, update, delete, search Calendar events for the community this portlet serves. The portlet allows users to create, retrieve, update, and delete Calendar events. Only users within the community have access to the shared calendar associated to the community.

Shared Tasks

The Shared Tasks (JSF-based) application allows users to create, update, delete, search Calendar tasks for the community this portlet serves. The portlet allow users to perform create, retrieve, update, and delete operations on Calendar tasks. Only users within the community have access to the shared calendar associated to the community.

Search

The Search service allows community users to search for content within a community. This channel is provider-based.

Discussions

This application allows discussions in the context of the community. It also supports HTML discussions with links. This channel is provider-based.

Subscriptions

This application allows community user's to subscribe to discussions out of the community discussion channel, and to save searches from the community search channel. It differs from the developer sample, in that it does not allow category subscriptions. This channel is provider-based.

Blog

This application allows users to manage weblog posts from a portal page. Users can post, edit, and delete weblog entries. This portlet includes a simplified user interface to create weblogs and weblog user accounts. For more information, see Technical Note: Managing Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Update 1 Blog Portlet.

Wiki

This application supports wiki-based communities and portlets. An entire community can be set up as a wiki (with portlets within it) and single portlets within a community can also be wikis. The wiki portlet supports both text and HTML modes. An HTML wiki uses the Xinha HTML editor and includes a portlet picker for easy selection of portlets to include within a wiki page. The Wiki can be configured to use either files or database at the back-end. The Developer Sample desktop also uses a wiki portlet in its wiki tab.

The Wiki portlet uses JSPWiki (http://jspwiki.org) and the HTML editor uses Xinha (http://xinha.python-hosting.com).

For more information on:

Deploying this portlet, see Deploying the Wiki Portlet.
Modifying this portlet tokens, see Configuring the Wiki Portlet.

Most of these services use Sun Java Web User Interface Components. These services allow for customizations through modifications to stylesheet. See Chapter 5, Customizing Sun Java Web User Interface Theme for more information.