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Portal

Portal 3.0 Administrators Guide

Table of Contents

Creating the Administrative User

In order to create a caGrid Portal administrative account, we will need valid caGrid credentials. If you already have an account with the NCICB Dorian Identity Provider (IdP), or with the NCICB AuthenticationService IdP (i.e. you have an NIH account), then you do not need to create a new caGrid account. If you don't have either of these accounts, you can create a new caGrid account through the portal.

To create a new account, click on the "Register" link under the main navigation at the top of the page. The registration dialog will open where you can enter the required information. When you have successfully completed the registration, you will immediately have a caGrid account, but you need to login at least once in order to have a caGrid Portal account. Click on the "Log in" link under the main navigation at the top of the page. Enter your username and password and click the Login button. You'll see a greeting under the main navigation at the top of the page. Then click the Logout link.

Link to Register
Register Dialog
Greeting

Assign Liferay Role

At this point, we've created a caGrid Portal account. Now we need to give this account administrative privileges.

After the portal is installed, there will be a single default administrative user whose username is 'portaladmin'. The password of this user is determined at installation time. See the installation guide for details.

Go to the Control Panel in https://<host>:<secure_port>/group/control_panel and login as portaladmin.

Portal Administrator Login

NOTE: 'portaladmin' is the default username for the admin user. If you changed the username when installing the portal, then the URL will change accordingly.

NOTE: Make sure you go to the HTTPS version of this URL. Otherwise, the portaladmin password will be sent in clear text across the network, which is a security risk.

Once successfully logged in click on "Roles" under the "Portal" section of the left hand side navigation. You will see a page like the following.

Control Panel Roles

From the Control Panel, you can perform all Liferay administrative operations. The Liferay administrative guide, along with other relevant documentation, can be found here.

In the list of roles find the one with name "Administrator". Click on the "Actions" button on the right to reveal a context menu. Click on "Assign Members"

Role Context Menu

Now you should see a screen like this, with 3 levels of nested tabs:

Assign Members Landing View

Notice that the Current tab is selected. Select the Available tab next to it. In the Available tab, you should see the account that you just created. Select the checkbox next to this account and press the Update Associations button.

Available Members

Now, sign out by clicking on the "Back to Portal Admin" link at the top of the page and then on "Log Out". You'll be redirected to the caGrid Portal home page.

Deleting User Accounts

The portal requires that user accounts be associated with exactly one email address. However, caGrid users can have multiple sets of grid credentials that are all associated with the same email address. If a user tries to log in with more than one of these sets of credentials, the portal will complain that an account already exists with that email address, and indicate that the user should log in with those credentials instead, or contact the administrator to request that the account be deleted.

To delete a user account, you must go to the portaladmin's private pages. Follow the instructions given in the Creating the Admin User section to log in as portaladmin.

NOTE: If you see messages saying "You do not have the roles required to access this portlet", then you will need to close your browser, re-open it, and try again.

Go to the Users tab of the Enterprise Admin portlet and search for the desired user account. Select the checkbox next to the user's account row, then click the Deactivate button. Then search for the account again, this time selecting No from the Active drop-down list in the advanced search view. Select the checkbox next to the account and click the Delete button.

Banning and Unbanning Services

Services can be banned by the Portal administrator. When a service is banned, users cannot discover it in the Portal. There may be cases where banned services eventually come back on-line; in other words, become unbanned. In such cases, the Portal continues to ignore the service. It is then the responsibility of the service owner to recognize that the service is not being displayed in the Portal, and contact the Portal administrator to request that the service be unbanned.

Administrative User Interface

In caGrid Portal 3.0 there is an administrative UI for banning and unbanning services. You need to log in as an admin user, see here.

To ban or unban a service:

  1. Navigate to the caGrid Portal service discovery page For example: http://cagrid-portal.nci.nih.gov/web/guest/tools/service-discovery|http://cagrid-portal.nci.nih.gov/web/guest/tools/service-discovery]
  2. In the Discovery portlet, search for the service you want to ban or unban. As an admin user, you will be able to see ALL services, including those that are already banned.
  3. Click the More Details link to see the details of this service
  4. On the details page, click the Ban Service or Unban Service button as appropriate. The service is immediately banned or unbanned.

Note: A banned service can only be unbanned and vice versa. Once you ban a service, the service is immediately hidden in the caGrid Portal. Alternatively, once you unban a service, the service is immediately visible to all Portal users.

Ban Service

Command Line Utility

You can also use a command-line tool to ban or unban a service. To run the tool, you must have access to the cagrid-portal release and the configuration for the target instance.

To unban a service, run the following from the cagrid-portal directory:

ant aggr:ban-mgr -Dtarget.env=<env_name>

The tool prompts you to choose whether to ban or unban the service and then prompts you to enter the service's URL. You can manually ban services by specifying ban as the operation.

ant aggr:ban-mgr -Dtarget.env=<env_name>

Creating a Friendly URL

We will demonstrate this capability creating a friendly URL of the form: http://example.com/web/guest/register that will redirect unregistered visitors to the home of the portal http://example.com/web/guest where they can register.

Login as an administrative user and go to the control panel.

Control Panel Home

Click on "Communities" in the "Portal" section of the left hand side navigation.

Communities List

Look for the "Guest" community in the list and click on the "Actions" button. A menu will appear, click on the "Manage Pages" option.

Community Actions Menu

Click on the "Home" page on the left, select the "Children" tab, then the "New Page" tab. In the "Name" field enter "Register". In the "Type" field select "URL". Leave "Hidden" and "Copy Parent" unchecked. Click on the "Add Page" button.

Community Add Page

At the top of the page you will see confirmation that the page was added successfully and the new page now appears in the hierarchy on the left of the main panel.

Community Add Page

Click on the new created page named "Register" and select the "Page" tab. Here you can edit various fields. In the URL field enter a url of the form: http://example.com/web/guest. Click on the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.

Community Add Page

At the top of the page you will see confirmation that the page was edited successfully.

Community Add Page

After this steps when a visitor navigates to http://example.com/web/guest/register she will be redirected automatically to http://example.com/web/guest .

Giving a User "Catalog Admin" Permissions.

Navigate to the control panel as a Portal Admin user.

Control Panel Home

Select the "Roles" option in the left hand navigation. Search for the "Catalog Admin" role in the list that will appear on the right side panel.

Control Panel Roles

Click on the "Actions" button. A context menu will appear.

Role Actions Menu

Select "Assign Members". The following screen will appear.

Role Assign Members

Select the "Assign Members" tab, then the "Users" tab, then the "Available" tab, as shown in the following image. Search for and select the desired user account and click on the "Update Associations" button.

Update Associations

A confirmation message will appear at the top of the page.

Confirmation Message

Refreshing the Grid Statistics.

It is possible to recalculate the Grid Statistics shown on the front page. This is a function restricted to administrators.

Go to the Control Panel in https://<host>:<secure_port>/group/control_panel and login as portaladmin.

Portal Administrator Login

NOTE: 'portaladmin' is the default username for the admin user. If you changed the username when installing the portal, then the URL will change accordingly.

NOTE: Make sure you go to the HTTPS version of this URL. Otherwise, the portaladmin password will be sent in clear text across the network, which is a security risk.

Once logged in navigate to the home page. Under the map you will see a new "Refresh Stats" link.

Refresh Stats Link

By clicking on it the recalculation background process will be triggered.

Deploying Portlets

caGrid Portal also hosts portlets developed by external teams. Admin can use the Liferay Administration interface to deploy these portlets. Following are the steps to deploy the caBIO Portlet to the Portal (These instructions will change for other portlets and will be specified in the individual deployment request)

Phase 1: Deploy a Portlet WAR

  1. Login as Liferay Portal Admin by going to https://<host>:<secure_port>/user/portaladmin
  2. Navigate to the page you want to add the Portlet to.
    1. The caBIO Portlet is usually placed on https://<host>:<secure_port>/web/guest/community
  3. At the far, right hand side of the page, you will find a Welcome Portal Admin! button
    1. Hover over the button and select the Add Application link.
  4. The Add Application menu opens
  5. Click the Install More Applications link
    1. You will be taken to the Liferay Server's Plugin Installer page
  6. Click the Upload File tab
    1. Click the Browse button and navigate the the Portlet WAR that you want to deploy (ex: cabioportlets.war)
    2. Optionally provide a context for the War (ex: caBIO)
    3. Click the Install button.
  7. After a few seconds you will see green checkboxes that indicate that the portlet has been installed

Phase 2: Configure Portlet User Access

  1. On the left hand menu, click the Plugins Configuration link
  2. on the "Plugins Configuration", click the Last link (your new portlet is added to the end of the portlet list.)
  3. Click on the name of your newly installed Portlet
    1. In the provided text box, add Guest to allow guests to access the portlet.
    2. Click the Save button

Phase 3: Add Portlet to Portal

  1. Navigate to the page you want to add the Portlet to (you must be logged in as Portal Admin)
  2. At the far, right hand side of the page, you will find a Welcome Portal Admin! button
    1. Hover over the button and select the Add Application link.
  3. The Add Application menu opens
  4. If your Portlet is not listed, search for it using the name (ex. search for "bio" to find caBIO)
    1. Click the Add link
  5. If you are unable to find your portlet, you may need to restart the Portal and then retry Phase 3.
    1. Shutdown the Portal server (JBOSS/Tomcat) (Optional Step)
    2. Startup the Portal server. The Portlet will deploy once the server has started up completely (Give it a few minutes and check the log to see when the Portlet has deployed)
  6. Logout of the Portal
  7. Now when you open the Portal in a web browser (http://<host>:<port>/web/guest/community), you can see the caBIO Portlet on the page.
Last edited by
William Stephens (629 days ago) , ...
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