The IFS Personal Portal is the portal interface to IFS Applications. The idea behind the IFS Personal Portal is to be an easy-to-grasp information trigger. All important information is collected in the same place, not in full detail but enough so that any important changes are quickly highlighted. It is then very easy to drill down and keep exploring the information.
Another important feature is the personalization possibilities. You can decide what information is needed in order to perform your work and then have only this information presented. When tasks change, it is easy to add or remove information flows. Further, the personalization possibilities allow you to adjust the way the information is presented on the screen to fit your work style. You are of course only allowed to see information which you have been granted access to.
The Portal consists of two parts, the framework and the content. The framework is the set of tools to configure and update the Portal. The Content is the information and the functions. The different information bricks, the content, denote Portlets.
The Framework is used to set up your Portal desktop. This is the task to add, remove and move Portlets. All of these are reached from the Header. The Header looks like this:
From here you can reach:
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Drop down menu to list all available portal views and saved links. | |
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Use this to Navigate your way to other parts of IFS Applications. For more details see the Navigation section of the General Help Section. | |
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When in the Portal view, this is the link to the IFS Personal Portal configuration facilities. For more details see the Portal Configuration section. This link can also be used when rearranging of portal views are needed. For more details see the Rearrange Portal Views section. Other times it contains options to view page layouts and properties as well as the "Save Link" option. | |
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Link to general Help like this page. For more details see the General Help section. |
It is possible to have more than one portal page. When there are many portal pages, tabs will appear at the top of the page. Different portal pages could be accessed easily using these tabs. If the number of portal tabs become too high, then a More views tab will appear where all remaining tabs can be seen in a popup menu.
The IFS Personal Portal is based on a component web-based approach using Portlets, i.e., a large number of smaller well-defined components that can be combined in any way to make up the user's Personal Portal. The number of portlet columns can be changed from one to maximum four. Even multi-column portlets, which span the length of all other portlet columns can be added.
All of the Portlets contain a certain information or functionality. This content
might be from IFS Applications but it can also be any other piece of information
or functionality; examples include mail, news from the web, and specialized tools.
The setup of the Portal is the task of configuring the Portal workspace, - select
and arrange Portlets, then configure / fine-tune each Portlet to show the desired
information. For more information see the Portal configuration section and the Portlet
configuration section. The Portal Configuration section describes how to select
Portlets and how to arrange them on the Portal desktop. All of this is done by pressing
the clicking Manage this view. menu.
When Manage this view is clicked a popup menu opens, in which you'll see
the following options:
In order to directly access the configuration page, start your web browser and enter the following path:
(If you don't know the location of your web-server/application you should ask your system administrator for advise).
The configuration here consists of adding new Portlets, moving Portlets and removing Portlets.
To add a portlet first select the column in which you want to add the portlet.
Then select the desired portlet from the portlet library and press
to add the portlet. Multi-column portlets can be added in a similar manner.
To move a Portlet, select it by highlighting it and then press the move buttons.
and
to change column.
to
change position within a column.
A Portlet is removed by highlighting it and pressing the
button.
When done, click Save & Return . To cancel any configuration click Cancel. To get the Default set up, click Clear profile.
The width of the portlet columns can have three settings Narrow, Wide and Dynamic. Once set to dynamic, width will be set according to what the portlets need.
Each portlet in IFS Applications contains specification of minimum width required to display it properly. In most cases the widths are 288 or 144 pixels. If portal column's width is less than minimum width of the portlet, it will not be possible to place the portlet in this column ( unless you change the width of the column ). Therefore sometimes on configuration page when you try to Move Right ( or Move Left ) the portlet, the portlet will not be moved to the very next column but to the next one that has enough width to fit it.
The number of portlet columns as well as whether multi-column portlets are required can be specified in the top of the configuration page.
The field Auto-refresh time sets the interval at which the whole portal will be refreshed.
The name of the Portal page can be changed in the Portal layout for view text box.
A portal page consists of one or many portal views. When you have more than
one portal view configured on your portal page these views are shown as menu
items under the Home menu..
If at any point you wish to re-arrange the portal views in any order, you can do so by following a few simple steps. These steps are as followed:
Each Portlet has some functionality connected directly to it.
- Press
in the Portlet header to get a description of the specific Portlet function.
- Used to minimize the Portlet. Useful to condense the information on the Portal.
- Used to restore the Portlet to its original state.
- If the Portlet has configuration parameters connected to it, a button is shown. This links to a Portlet Configuration page. The functions of
such a page are described below.
- To delete the porlet from the portal page use the remove icon available in the portlet header.
- Some portlets will have a zoom in icon
displayed
in their title bar. By clicking this icon you can go to a new page related to
that portlet.It is possible to drag and drop a portlet to different colums of the portal. Use the portlet header as the drag
handle and simply drop the portlet where you would like to place it.
A Portlet Configuration page might look like:
Description of the configuration parameters can be found in the Portlet help.
This is reached from here by pressing
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Mandatory Fields are marked with an asterisk *.
Click OK, when finished with the configuration parameters. To abort the configuration click Cancel. The Default button restores the default values.
The following fields/options will typically be displayed, along with a set of portlet specific items:
Portlet name: Allows you to change the name that appears at the top of this portlet. If you have given your own customized names for your portlets in their respective configuration pages, the portlet will then have that name when displayed. These portlets will appear under this customized name in the portal configuration page as well.
Max rows to display: Maximum number of rows displayed in the portlet. When you minimize the portlet, the number of matched records appears next to the portlet name.
Display search criteria: Displays your search criteria on the portlet.
Search automatically: Automatically refreshes the portlet when returning from another screen. If not selected, click Refresh Portlet to manually refresh the portlet.
Default: Restores all search criteria and layout options to the default settings, searches on the default settings, and closes the screen.
Click Here to get a description of portlets available from IFS Web-Client Framework.
