Skip to main content

Digital Transformation

Managed Pages in WebSphere Portal 8

Managed pages are one of the many new capabilities in WebSphere Portal 8.  A key goal of this capability is to provide a great user experience for business users managing pages and content.  I attended a session at the IBM Exceptional Web Experience on managed pages which was lead by Stefan Hepper, Portal / WCM Lead Architect and John Harris, User Experience Design Lead of IBM.  Some of the key notes that resonate with what I’ve seen in the industry include the following:

User Experience is a Key Driver

  • Managed pages capabilities were designed with users in mind based on personas.  This includes content authors, approvers, managers and end users
  •  Pages and content can all be included in single packages that can be created, edited, previewed published as one holistic unit
  • The ability to preview draft content as specific user is an included capability

 

What are Managed Page Concepts?

  • These are portal pages managed by WCM
  • Portal pages can be treated like any content
    • Can create drafts
    • Can preview
    • Workflow is possible
    • Syndication is possible
  • Existing APIs such as the navigation SPI will continue to work as in previous portal versions
  • Pages can now have workflow and it can be any valid WCM workflow
  • There are some limitations
    • In version 8, it is not 100% feature complete, e.g. can’t edit them after publishing
    • Only release domain data is supported meaning no private pages, community pages, tagging, rating or user customizations
    • No portlet configuration settings
    • No URL mappings
    • Only WCM personalization rules are applicable for content, no visibility rules
  • WCM and pages are related to each other via content mappings
  • Page versioning is maintained via an XML representation

Project concepts

  • Projects are encoded in the URL as context information
  • Project scope stays across page navigation
  • Inline editing automatically picks up a project and creates a draft in that project
  • The authoring portlet will honor the project context

Managed pages are one of the many great enhancements available in portal 8.  It simplifies release management and allows business users to have both finer and more flexible control over content and presentation in WebSphere Portal.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Glenn Kline

Area Vice President, Custom Development and Mobile Solutions

More from this Author

Follow Us
TwitterLinkedinFacebookYoutubeInstagram