This chapter includes the following sections:
Permissions
To perform the tasks in this chapter, you need the permissions granted to the Application Specialist
role (or the Portal Templates-Manage All
permission). Note that the Portal Creator
role does not have this permission by default. Users with the permission Manage Portal Templates
can view and manage all portal templates, including private portal templates created by other users, and import or export portal templates and publish portal template for others to use.
Users with the permission Portal Templates-Create Portal Templates
can create and work with portal templates from the Home portal that they have created and have permissions to work with. For more information about creating a new portal template from the Home portal, rename, see Working with Portal Templates.
For more information about permissions, see About Roles and Permissions for a Portal.
When creating a portal, users can base it on one of the out-of-the-box portal templates, their own custom portal template, or a published portal template created by others. Portal templates provide a consistent look and feel and an efficient way to get started creating a portal that is configured exactly as required by an organization. For more information, see About Portal Templates.
Application specialists (or any user with the Portal Templates-Manage All
permission) can manage each portal template from the application-level Portal Templates page (Figure 58-1). You can see which portal templates are currently available and delete portal templates when they are no longer required. You can also publish templates—making them available to everyone—or restrict them to private use only.
It is important to keep the portal template list up to date and valid. Anyone who creates a portal will see public templates as well as their own private templates.
The Portal Templates page also provides import and export options. For more information, see Importing and Exporting Portal Templates.
On the application-level Portal Templates page, you can quickly see who created each portal template, and the date on which it was created. The Actions menu offers additional options for deleting portal templates, and you can publish and hide templates from here, too.
To see a list of every portal template in WebCenter Portal, together with their description, creator, and other useful information:
This section describes how to import and export portal templates:
System administrators can also import and export portals and portal templates using WLST commands. To find out more about these WLST commands and how to migrate the back-end data associated with portals, see Deploying Portals, Templates, Assets, and Extensions in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Application specialists (and other users with Portal Templates-Manage All
permission) can import portal templates from a portal archive (.par
file) into WebCenter Portal.
On import, all portal templates included in the archive are re-created. If a portal template exists, then it is deleted and replaced. If a portal template does not exist, then it is created.
Newly imported portal templates are not immediately available for general use. You must publish the imported templates to make them available to everyone. See Publishing and Hiding Portal Templates.
Portal templates that use document services (files, folders, wikis, blogs) automatically own a content folder on WebCenter Portal's back-end content repository. The content folder is included in the portal template archive in a .zip
file located at: transport.mar\oracle\webcenter\lifecycle\importexport\data\oracle-webcenter-doclib\docsexport.zip
Note:
Portal template archives do not include web content/pages referenced by the portal template that is stored outside the template's content folder, for example, information displayed through Content Presenter that is not stored in the template's content folder. Similarly, template archives do not include shared assets. You must migrate all dependent content to the target so it is accessible to the imported template. If you do not move all dependent content to the target server it will be missing when you import the portal template.
An option to exclude the content folder is available using the importWebCenterPortals
WLST command, described in Importing Portal Templates from an Archive Using WLST in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
To import one or more portal templates from a .par
file:
Initially, newly imported portal templates are available only to you. To make them public, see Publishing and Hiding Portal Templates.
Application specialists (and other users with the Portal Templates-Manage All
permission) can export portal templates from WebCenter Portal to a portal archive (.par
file) and deploy them on another portal server. Out-of-the-box templates cannot be exported.
While export and import utilities are primarily used to move information between WebCenter Portal instances, the portal template export feature is also useful as a backup service, and for sharing and exchanging templates with others.
Portal templates can contain pages, documents, discussions, lists, and security information such as custom roles and member details.
When you export a portal template, all this information is packaged in a portal data file (.pdr
). The PDR file contains a metadata archive (.mar
file) and a single XML file containing security policy information for the template. The export process packages up one or more template .pdr
files to an archive that you can save to your local file system or to a remote server file system.
As template data is included in the portal template archive, you do not need to manually migrate any template data to the target server.
Templates that use document tools (files, folders, wikis, blogs) automatically own a content folder on WebCenter Portal's back-end content repository. When you use WebCenter Portal to export portal templates, the content stored in this folder is automatically included in the portal template archive (.pdr
) for easy deployment to another target server. The folder is added to a .zip file located at: transport.mar\oracle\webcenter\lifecycle\importexport\data\oracle-webcenter-doclib\docsexport.zip
Note:
Portal template archives do not include web content or pages referenced by the portal template that is stored at any other location, for example, information displayed through Content Presenter that is not stored in the portal template's content folder. Only the folder assigned to the portal template on WebCenter Portal's back-end content repository is included with the portal template archive.
You can save export archives to your local file system or to a remote server file system.
Note:
You cannot export portals and portal templates into a single archive. Exporting portals is a separate process that can be performed only by a system administrator, as described in Importing One or More Portals from an Archive in Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.
To export one or more portals templates from WebCenter Portal:
The export archive (.par
) is saved to the specified location.
You cannot modify the out-of-the-box portal templates described in About Portal Templates, but any user with Portal Templates-Create
permission can create new portal templates for use by all users to create portals. This permission is granted to the Application Specialist
role by default.
To create a new portal template, you start by creating a portal based on an existing template (see Creating and Building a New Portal), and customize it according to your requirements. Then, you can create a new portal template based on the customized portal that you have developed. During the creation of a portal template, you can select to inherit the discussions, documents, lists, member information, roles, or pages from the source portal. The security settings, including Advanced Permissions (if applicable), for the source portal are also copied by the template.
Note:
When creating a new portal template, the template does not inherit announcements from the source portal.
As an application specialist (or any user with Portal Templates-Manage All
permission), you can publish any portal template for others to use; otherwise, it remains private and hidden from others.
Note:
The Portal Creator
role does not have default permissions to create or manage portal templates.
Users with the permissions of the default Application Specialist
role (or the application-level Portal Templates-Manage All
permission) can create portal templates to be made available at the application level, and import and export custom portal templates, including seeded data. For more information, see Managing All Portal Templates.
To create a portal template:
Global search does not search portal assets, such as portal templates, page templates, resource catalogs, and so on. The Filter field on the Portal Templates page is useful for searching for portal template names or descriptions when your application includes a large number of portal templates.
Note:
The Portal Creator
role does not have default permissions to view or search for portal templates.
To search for a portal template by a string in the Name or Description:
To rename a portal template:
You can grant specific users and groups read-only or manage access to a portal template.
To set up access to a portal template:
While WebCenter Portal can accommodate any number of templates, a limited number of templates is sometimes more effective. On the application-level Portal Templates page, you can maintain the template list that is available to all users.
Note:
To publish a portal template, you need the application-level permission Portal Templates-Manage All
. The Portal Creator
role does not have default permissions to work with portal templates. Users with the Portal Templates-Create
permission can create, rename, hide, or delete a portal template, but cannot publish a template without the Portal Templates-Manage All
permission.
For more information about permissions, see About Roles and Permissions for a Portal.
To publish or hide portal templates (including the out-of-the-box templates):
Note:
Out-of-the-box portal templates cannot be deleted. However, you can hide the out-of-the-box templates from everyone's view by making them private, as described in Publishing and Hiding Portal Templates.
Deleting a portal template does not affect the portals that were created using the portal template.
To delete one or more portal templates that are no longer required: