Monday, March 21

SAP EP-Developing portal content and assigning permissions

In this post I shall explain content admin feature of sap enterprise portals. Main topics to be covered in this post are
Developing content and assigning permissions
Developing iviews and pages
Developing roles and worksets
Immediately after the portal is installed, content developer may be needed to develop content like iviews, pages, roles and worksets.  Once the content objects are in place,  few content admin roles can be created in portal and permission to maintain portal content objects can be given to various administrators. There is something called the access control list (ACL). ACL is a list of users and user groups mapped and a list of actions which are possible for those users or group of users. ACL is used to assign permissions to content objects in portal.
Portal can have three type of content after installation :
Content provided by SAP
Custom developed content
Business packages
SAP provides some portal content objects be default. These content objects can be modified while installation. Portal content can be seen in the portal content catalogue present in a tree structure in content admin tab.  Default administrator roles are content admin, system admin, user admin and super admin.  Super admin has the access to all the content to which content, system and user administrators have. The Super Administrator role has portal permissions for all initial portal content.
Default user roles provided by SAP areControl Center User role, Every User Core role, and Standard User role. Control centre user role has a workset called home workset. It contains iviews and pages which display things like top news, inbox, daily calendar, discussions, team rooms etc. These are daily business activities. Control Center User role requires KM components to be installed. Every user core role personalization iviews and and empty workset. Why does it have an empty home workset ? Contents from other home worksets can be merged in this empty home workset of the every user core role using merge IDs.

Using the personalization option, user can change the look and feel of portal for himself. Various personalization iviews are present in the personalization workset like portal theme,  user profile etc. The Personalization link will not appear in the portal desktop unless the user is assigned to the standard user role.

Page: Container for Iviews
A page can contain a iview or a page inside  it. The way ivies and pages are arranged in a page is called its layout. There are various types of layout provided by SAP EP. Three column layout, T layout, wide-narrow-wide layout etc. At runtime, while doing personalization, end user can chose from the layouts assigned to a page. Also end user can move containers of iviews within a page from one place to another.

Workset:  A Container for Day-to-Day Activities
Workset contains related iviews and pages. It should be designed keeping in mind the day to day activities of a user or group of users. For example, in a IT Company, the workset assigned to a project manager role should contain iviiews and pages which help him to track the attendance and performance of a project team members, it should contain iview which gives him clear picture of the growth of the project and its deadlines etc.

Role:  Enables Navigation and Personalization
Role is same as workset with the only difference that a role can be assigned to a user or a group of users. Role also allows a user or a group of users to navigate within portal. Depending upon the roles assigned to the user’s profile, he will be able to see tabs on the first level and second level menus. Also items in the detailed level menu depend upon role provided to him.
Depending on the role, pages and iviews will be visible to the user. The location of pages and iviews is also decided by the role. So if important things are there, they can be displayed in the top level menu of that role otherwise things can be moved down to navigation menu or second level menu.

Folders are used for structuring content in the portal. This type of structure is useful in delegated administration. Later on , when administrator wants to assign permissions to other administrators (ie delegate administration) , he can do so by assigning permission for few folders or  subfolders and content within that folder or subfolder.

Related Articles :


SAP EP - Standard Portal Services
Portal Eventing and Navigation
Portal Look and Feel - Branding the Portal
How to Develop Portal Applications
SAP EP-Role maintenance
SAP EP-How to make Enterprise Portal highly available
SAP Material Management Introduction
SAP EP-J2EE architechture

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