Developing Custom My Preferences Personalization Items

This topic discusses developing custom My Preference personalization items.

You can create custom personalization options to add to the General Settings preference item category using the pages in the Personalization component. You can also create other custom preference items by creating Fluid components and defining content references in the My Preferences folder in the portal registry.

As you add custom preference items, they appear in a navigation panel on the left side of the My Preferences page. As with custom preference items, the General Setting preference item is registered in the portal registry. As a result, you can control the order in which preference items appear in the navigation panel by folder and content reference sequence number.

Use the pages in the Personalization component to create custom personalization options to add to the General Settings preferences.

You may want to perform some or all of these steps:

  • Use the Personalization Options page to define new preferences and define them a category.

  • Create new category groups to group personalizations for applying to permission lists.

This section provides an overview of developing custom My Preference personalization items, defining content references for those items, and specifying content reference attributes.

Development Overview

This section lists the general steps for creating custom My Preference items.

  1. Create a Fluid user interface component.

    • Use the PSL_USER_PREF layout page. Do not delete any items on the layout page, with the exception of restore defaults.

    • Load the PTGP_USER_PERS_FL stylesheet in either the page Activate event or in a component post build event.

    As a general guideline the component should be:

    • Self-contained with a Save button.

    • Possess functionality that enables users to restore default preference values, for example through a Restore Defaults control.

    The component should not feature:

    • A left panel.

    • An application header.

    • Custom items in the Action list in the banner.

  2. Add the preference item to the portal registry, including:

    • Add and define a content reference.

    • Define optional content reference attributes.

    Additional information for adding and defining content references and content reference attributes is provided in the next sections.

Content References for Custom My Preferences Personalization Items

To define a content reference for custom My Preferences personalization items, you must add and define a content reference in the Fluid Structure and Content > My Preferences folder. To navigate to the folder:

  1. Select PeopleTools > Portal > Structure and Content

    The Structure and Content page appears.

  2. In the Folders grid, click the Fluid Structure Content link.

    The Structure and Content page for Fluid Structure Content appears.

  3. In the Folders grid, click the My Preferences link.

    The Structure and Content page for My Preferences appears.

  4. Below the Content References grid, click the Add Content Reference link.

    The Content Ref Administration page for My Preferences appears.

  5. Define the content reference.

    See the following section for information about optional content reference attributes to define in the content reference definition.

Content Reference Attributes for Custom My Preferences Personalization Items

Depending on your business requirements there are several attributes to consider setting when defining content references for custom My Preferences items.

Field or Control

Definition
CLUSTER_AWARE

When a preference item is defined on multiple systems in a clustered environment, use the CLUSTER_AWARE attribute so that only the preference item defined on the local system appears on the end-user My Preference page.

If you define this attribute, set the attribute value equal to true.
PTPP_IMAGE

Use this attribute to add an image to the preference item label.

Images are typically added only to root-level folder items.

If you define this attribute, specify the image object name in the attribute value field.
CONTEXT_KEYS

Use this attribute to associate the preference item with a comma separated list of components.

Add the comma-separated list of components to the attribute value field.