Portal Modules & Module Types Heather Natour Senior Software Engineer, Blackboard Community System

Road Map What are Portals? Module Types Creating Modules API

Audience B2 Developers that want to create Portal Modules Java/JSP Programmers Some knowledge of B2 Programming …Or Just Interested to see what’s possible with Portal Modules

What are Portals? Provides an Entry Point Provides a Customized User Experience Unites several sources of information and present them in one central place Sites can customize Portal for a specific type of user or market –Student, Faculty, East, West “Sticky”

Example of a “sticky” Portal

Blackboard Portal Components Tab Module Module Edit Minimize Delete ContentsLayout

Module Types Code for the Module Every Module has an associated Type – A Type could have more than one instance One or more JSP pages

Pre Built Module Types Include HTML Include URL RSS Channel

Module Type JSP Pages View –What gets displayed when the module is rendered Admin –Edit Global properties Edit –User customizable properties

View Rendered Inline No HTML Header or Body Tags

Edit Calls the edit page

Edit

Admin Admin Page for Global Configuration Manage Modules Page

Admin

Creating Module Types JSP is easiest Tags Provided for Edit and Admin Pages (more info in Dev Guide) –modulePersonalizationPage –modulePersonalizationReceipt –moduleAdminPage –moduleAdminReceipt

Portal API Java Class: CustomData In package blackboard.portal.external Javadoc available in SDK

Portal API CustomData data = CustomData.getModuleData(pageContext); String text = data.getValue(“body.lunchMenu”); String text = data.getValue(“body.type”); To get the Global CustomData for a module, use getModuleData(context)

Portal API Can also save Global properties for a module using this same object CustomData data = CustomData.getModuleData(pageContext); String text = data.setValue(“body.lunchMenu”, “Roast Turkey”); String text = data.setValue(“body.type”,”Entrée”); data.save();

Portal API Similar Methods exist to set user specific data CustomData data = CustomData.getModulePersonalizationData(pageContext ); String text = data.setValue(“userpref.display”, “ALL”); data.save();

Packaging the Module Type module view.jsp edit.jsp admin.jsp Put it in a System Extension Package JSPs in /module directory

Creating a Module Can specify a module type already in the system or in the same installation package Many modules can be created using the Bb supplied types Could leverage types that become available in the community

Creating a Module Module is packaged as a standard Building Blocks Package bb-manifest.xml –module –channel

Specifying a Module Manifest Entry (Module Def): Sample channel module. This module accesses the RSS channel installed with this plug-in. macnews

Specifying a Module Channel Manifest Entry (Channel Def):

Specifying a Module Can also optionally specify Portal Roles (Primary and Secondary)

Demonstration!