1. Novell Portal Services v1.5: Advanced Concepts
Matt Brooks
Senior Software Engineer
Novell, Inc.
Guy Lunardi
NPS Evangelist

2. Vision…one Net Mission
A world where networks of all types—corporate and public, intranets, extranets, and the Internet—work together as one Net and securely connect employees, customers, suppliers, and partners across organizational boundaries
Mission
To solve complex business and technical challenges with Net business solutions that enable people, processes, and systems to work together and our customers to profit from the opportunities of a networked world

4. Agenda Agenda Administration Demonstration
Basics: Page Hierarchy, Page Sets, Page Overlays
Distributed Administration
Communities
Portal Groups / Dynamic Groups
Portal Object: Contextless Login, …
Advanced Properties on Objects
Language detection
Device detection
Services
NPSDump
Demonstration
All along—Walkthrough

5. Novell Products—Open Standards?
Novell Portal Services is THE Novell Product that illustrates the adoption of Open Standards
Application
100% Java based
Access
100% LDAP based
100% HTTP based
Files
100% Java based (CIFS or Local)
Look and Feel
100% XML and XSL based (XSLT using JAXP)

6. Pages and Themes Pages Themes Page Sets Supersedes Object Scheme
Can now be accessed as a service
Themes
Supersedes Branding Scheme
Page Sets
Simplifies Novell Portal Services (NPS) assignments
Pages and Themes can be assigned to a Page Set
Recommended way of assigning content

7. Legacy Scheme Migration
Why is it working that way?
After an NPS 1.0x upgrades, existing Object Schemes and Branding Schemes will remain untouched (and functional)
Create Page Object from Object Scheme
Create Theme Object from Branding Scheme

8. Hierarchy What is its role? Organizes the Pages navigation Rename
Simply manages Page names
Supports NPS macros
Location
Defines parents
Position
Manages Priorities
Manually or automatically

9. Hierarchy (cont.) How it works? Part of the XML stream
The hierarchy information is sent as part of the XML stream, it then used by the skin (Portal Look) to build the navigation
Can be HTML based (plain html)
Or can be DHTML (using JavaScript)
Each of the standards skins provided with NPS 1.5 include a different to deal with the hierarchy (Navigation)
The NPS 1.0 way of dealing with hierarchy will still work

10. Page Overlays What it does?
Allows Portal Administrators to combined general content (gadget assignments) with specialized content(gadget assignments)
Each Page can have multiple layers (Pages Overlays)
Page Overlays assignments are independent from parent page assignment
Administration interface will show integrated layout with parent page gadget assignments

11. Page Overlays (cont.)
Page Overlay
assigned Gadgets

12. Distributed Administration
What does it mean?
NPS 1.5 introduces delegated (distributed) administration
Owners of Pages and Themes
Can modify layout and content but not assignment
Rights assignments are automatically handled
Requires access to PageAdmin gadget
Can be assigned to any Pages
Another approach to Distributed Administration is to leverage Communities

13. Communities What they are?
Communities are central locations in NPS where users can exchange information
Self-Provisioned
Information Sharing focused
Administrator can modify and customize layout and gadgets
Membership is restricted to User objects only

14. Communities (cont.) Type Services Public—anyone can join
Restricted—owners approve membership
Private—owners invite members
Services
Calendar—Share common events
Chat—Chat with members of the community that are currently online
Discussion—Create / reply to message threads
File—Share files with community members
Links—Share common URLs with other members
News—Place for common information to the community

15. Communities (cont.) Centralized Administration
Portal Administrators can define if users are allowed to create Communities (by default, they can)
Community file share
Defines where community gadgets store persistent information (files)
Used by the Calendar, Discussions and File Share gadgets
Required in Multi-Server environment (CIFS share)
Container for community objects
Defines where the community objects and pages will be created

16. Communities (cont.) Communities include hierarchy by default
NPS System Macro (%*communitypagename%) defines the page name of the parent page of all communities
Owners / Members
Owners can modify the community configuration
Members can only contribute to the community
Communities ordering
Communities are sorted by names by default (because they all have the same priority)
Community priorities can be modified
Non-community gadgets can be added to the community page
Community page administration

17. NPS Portal Groups How great is this?
NPS specific implementation of LDAP Groups
Allows you to build associations based on LDAP attributes values
Rfc2254—The String Representation of LDAP Search Filters
The LDAP query string match defines the membership of the group
Example: Portal Group is (ou=*financ*)

18. NPS Portal Groups (cont.)
No back links?
Portal Groups do not maintain membership list, no security association
It’s a pure LDAP request
The logged in user DN is used as the LDAP BaseDN
Will test attributes only on that user object
Check for group membership at login time

19. NPS Portal Groups (cont.)
How to ensure the query will work?
Trustee Rights
The Admin Gadget will assign the proper rights on the attributes used in the Query filter string
The rights will be granted to the Portal Object
The rights will be assigned on each Portal container
Be aware of Inherited Rights Filters

20. NPS Portal Groups (cont.)
Need to query another directory?
Portal Groups allow you to specify the LDAP host to query against
Will use the combination of host/user/password specified by the Portal Administrator to login (user passwords don’t have to match)
Rights will have to be manually granted in that directory
User DNs will have to be identical in both directories
Not available in Novell eDirectory™ Dynamic Groups

21. eDirectory Dynamic Groups
Even better, why?
Same as Portal Groups, only better, here is why:
New feature in eDirectory 8.6.1
Unlike Portal Group, you can specify a container (LDAP baseDN of the search)
Based on the same LDAP Query filter string standards as Portal groups

22. eDirectory Dynamic Groups (cont.)
What’s coming next?
Will include “exceptions” support
Will support static include memberships
Will support static exclusions
Multiple filter strings per Dynamic group object

23. Portal Object What it does?
Portal Object is the ‘heart’ of a Portal Configuration
Portal Locations
Critical configuration setting
Portal events
Portal refreshes
com.novell.nps.directHttpPort
Portal version
Portal Administrators are invited to use the Portal Version configuration setting to keep track of changes
There is a hard coded Portal version stored in the NPS.JAR (for support purposes)
Display on the front page of the Administration gadgets

24. Portal Directory Objects
bhObjectClasses
PortalObject
Pages
Themes
Gadgets
PortalGroups
PageSets
Communities …
Auxiliary classes to objects
All thru Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
Directory address configured specifically for each NPS server in PortalServlet.properties

25. PortalServlet.Properties
Why is it critical?
This file contains server specific information
Which directory server to talk to
Which Portal Object to use
Can contain server specific settings
Examples:
Custom refresh time for a staging server
Disable client side rendering for a production server
Etc…

26. PortalServlet.properties
/nps/WEB-INF/PortalServlet.Properties
Comments in a properties file: line ignored is starting with anything else but uppercase letter.
System.DirectoryAddress= :389
System.PortalConfigurationObjectDN=cn=PO-Server1,ou=nps15,o=novell
System.GUID={AEE1507E EC-72D D}
System.Password=novell
System.Logging=false change to: ‘true’ to enable logging
System.Logging.Priority=high change to: ‘medium’ or ‘low’ to enable logging
System.Logging.Output=err add: ‘,file’ to write to screen and Debug.XML
System.DirectorySSL=false
!System.SessionManager.Render=true
!System.SessionManager.RenderOverride=true
Custom_Backend_Renderer_Portal_Location=
Logging configurable from admin interface

27. NPS Macros What are they?
Gives you access to directory (or system) based information
Two kinds: System Macros or Directory Macros
System Macros are listed in the documentation
Directory Macros could be any directory attribute
%o=Novell;ou% (syntax is: %ObjectDN;Attribute%
%surname% (if the ObjectDN is not set, the user DN will be used)
If a value isn’t found for the queried attribute, the query will be left unchanged

28. Custom Session Data What it does?
Allows you to easily access directory information
Custom Session Data gets included in the XML stream
Any LDAP attributes could be used here (just like in NPS Macros)
Useful to print out the user full name (or address) in the Branding

29. Custom Session Data (cont.)
How to set it?
In the PCO configuration setting
<Fullname>%fullname%</Fullname>
< >%mail%</ >
In the PortalServlet.properties file
Custom_Session_Data= Fullname,% fullname %, ,%mail%

30. Contextless Login How it works?
Contextless Login Attribute configuration setting
Indexing used attributes
Limit the amount of attributes used
Trustees Rights
Portal Container configuration setting
Sub-container LDAP requests
Limit the amount of containers used
Public user Role

31. Advanced Properties What can be done? Directory Flags Reports
Controls inheritance for the object
Exists on: Users/containers (tree walking)
Public User (flagged by default)
Reports
Inheritance report (available on user)
Shows inheritances (from where and how)
Customization report (available on container/user) (new feature)
Portal Administrators can delete user customizations
Can’t view the actual data
Compact Settings (available on container) (new feature)
Remove orphaned data

32. Locale (Language) Detection
How it works?
Locale detection ensures that the Portal will be replying with the right language (NPS is leveraging a technology standard, XLIFF)
Directory based strategy (Directory Locale)
Uses the ‘language’ LDAP attribute
Values are NetWare® heritage (ENGLISH, ESPANOL, FRANCAIS,…)
Browser based strategy (Browser Locale)
Uses the Browser defined language
Values are ISO defined (en, es, es-mx, fr,…)
Portal Administrators can specify which strategies to use and the order (Locale lookup order)
Also, they can define the default portal Locale (using an ISO language value)

33. Device (User-Agent) Detection
How it works?
Device detection ensures that the Portal will be replying with the right look. NPS is leveraging the user-agent string.
Identify device real estate

34. Device (User-Agent) Detection (cont.)
Configuration Settings required
Names of all web devices (PDAs) accessing the portal
Portal Administrators defined names for devices (default being implicit)
The devices don’t have to be PDAs (you could test for Microsoft InternetExplorer or Mozilla browsers for example)
Example: PDAtype1
Web devices (PDAs) that should only show one gadget at a time
For real-estate purposes, NPS will only send one gadget back at a time

35. Device (User-Agent) Detection (cont.)
Configuration Settings required
Web devices (PDAs) that should use the special devices stylesheet
Will specify if the device type has its own style sheets
<web device name>DetectionStrings
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; Q312461)
Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Windows CE; 240x320)

36. Services What it does? Direct URL access to resources
Authenticated Services
Can become Human Readable
“Name to access via a service URL”
Object GUID
Public Services
No authentication required (uses the Public User)
Configurable

37. Services (cont.) What services are? Need some more? portal service
xmlservice
portalservice
xmlportalservice
xmldataservice
fullpageservice
xmlfullpageservice
customcontentservice
normalfullpageservice
xmlnormalfullpageservice
Need some more?

38. NPSDump What’s this Where to get it Standalone application
100% LDAP and Java based
Backup and Restore your NPS configuration
Move setup from pilot directory to production directory
Extends the schema
Any many more things…
Where to get it