Home
HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
HCL Digital Experience 8.5
Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
Administering
Use the administration tools that are provided with the portal to do various day-to-day administration tasks. There are two methods for editing portal setup: using the administration portlets or the XML configuration interface. The administration portlets are a convenient way to make real-time updates to the portal's configuration. While the XML configuration interface is suited to more advanced administration, including batch processing of updates.
Portal administration tools
Learn about the different tools that you can use to administer your portal.
Portal Scripting Interface
You can use the Portal Scripting Interface to configure your portal by running scripts from a command line.
Command reference for the Portal Scripting Interface
The HCL Portal Scripting Interface component provides a scripting interface for the administration functions.
Portlet repository
The portlet repository provides access to portlets, portlet applications, and web modules. To provide easy access to the relations between the repository objects, the repository is modeled as a tree. Unlike with the content and component hierarchies, the repository tree is not arbitrarily nested.

HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5 [Legacy Content]
- HCL Digital Experience 9.0
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 9.0 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
- HCL Digital Experience 8.5
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
  - Overview
    HCL Digital Experience (formerly IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager) empowers you to create, manage, and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to virtually all audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications, and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile. and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).
  - Roadmaps to deploy your system
    Review the roadmaps to understand the common deployment, configuration, migration, and integration patterns.
  - Roadmaps to create your website
    Review the roadmaps to understand how to create your website.
  - Online Help
    This Online Help is made available in the HCL Digital Experience Help Center for quick references on how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Digital Experience.
  - Installing
    HCL Digital Experience provides flexible deployment options that range from proof-of-concept where you can examine and test functionality to a highly available and scalable production environment. Review the planning information to learn more about hardware and software requirements, high availability, scalability, supported topologies, and much more. Select your operating system and then select the installation pattern that most reflects your business needs.
  - Configuring
    Run the following tasks after you install and deploy HCL Digital Experience. They address tasks that are typically run one time and have a global effect. Some configuration changes are made more frequently or do not have a global effect. These tasks are addressed in the Administering section.
  - Backup and restore
    Backup and recovery of data files and databases is an essential operation for any business system, particularly for data and applications that run in production environments. Create and follow a plan for backing up and recovering data on all tiers of your HCL Digital Experience deployment. IBM Installation Manager must also be included in backup and recovery planning. If you back up the HCL Portal file structure and then install a fix pack, your HCL Digital Experience and IBM Installation Manager become out of sync after you restore the HCL Portal file system. This condition is not recoverable.
  - Migrating
    Successful migration requires significant planning and preparation, understanding the tools that are involved, and careful execution of the appropriate steps in the order provided.
  - Integrating
    Integrate HCL Digital Experience with software such as HCL Sametime to enable your users to collaborate more easily. You can also use the unified task list portlet to integrate HCL with your backend business process software, such as IBM Process Server.
  - Administering
    Use the administration tools that are provided with the portal to do various day-to-day administration tasks. There are two methods for editing portal setup: using the administration portlets or the XML configuration interface. The administration portlets are a convenient way to make real-time updates to the portal's configuration. While the XML configuration interface is suited to more advanced administration, including batch processing of updates.
    - Portal administration tools
      Learn about the different tools that you can use to administer your portal.
      - Portal administration portlets
        Administration portlets are supplied with HCL Digital Experience. Use them to perform administration tasks and actions on portal resources, give other users limited access rights on selected resources, and deploy custom portlets, themes, or skins.
      - The XML configuration interface
        Use the XML configuration interface (XML Access) for exchanging portal configurations.
      - Portal Scripting Interface
        You can use the Portal Scripting Interface to configure your portal by running scripts from a command line.
        About the Portal Scripting Interface
        HCL Digital Experience provides a scripting interface that enhances the possibilities for automated solution deployment and administration of the portal. The Portal Scripting Interface allows you to create scripts that portal administrators can use to perform administrative tasks from a command line.
        Getting started with the Portal Scripting Interface
        With the Portal Scripting Interface, you can administer your portal installation by executing commands. You can do that either interactively by typing the commands into a console window with interactive scripting and pressing the Enter key, or you can write the commands into a file and run that file. Here are some hints and examples for using the Portal Scripting Interface.
        Work with the Portal Scripting Interface
        Learn more about the different modes that you can use with the Portal Scripting Interface.
        Command reference for the Portal Scripting Interface
        The HCL Portal Scripting Interface component provides a scripting interface for the administration functions.
        Script beans
        The portal scripting component adds Script beans to the wsadmin tool. These Script beans are objects with methods that work on the portal data.
        Portal objects
        Most portal objects are represented in the script by an object identifier string, which is based on the object ID in the portal. For example: _6_00KJL57F9D02H456_A .
        Tree navigation
        The Content, Layout, and Portlet beans each represent a tree hierarchy. The basic navigation methods are the same for all three. A tree bean provides methods to access the root node to look up the parent and children of a node, and to maintain a cursor that points to a selected node in the tree.
        Search
        All beans with tree navigation support identical commands for searching, but the available search criteria are different for each bean.
        Attributes
        All beans use similar commands to query and modify attributes. Attributes are identified by a name, such as uniquename, title, or markup.
        Organization
        For some beans, in particular the Content and Layout beans, the order of nodes is significant. In tree beans, the parent relationship of the nodes defines the hierarchy. Only nodes with the same parent node are in a particular order in trees.
        Content hierarchy accessed through Content bean
        The content hierarchy is a tree of content nodes. Content nodes can be labels, compositions, and links. Compositions are also called pages. Links can be internal or external. In the GUI, links represent the nodes in the Favorites list. Internal links point to a portal page, external links can point to any URL.
        Component hierarchy
        The component hierarchy is a tree of components on a page. Components can be containers and controls. A container holds other components, a control displays a portlet. The component hierarchy is accessed and modified by using the Layout bean, referenced as $Layout in Jacl.
        Portlet repository
        The portlet repository provides access to portlets, portlet applications, and web modules. To provide easy access to the relations between the repository objects, the repository is modeled as a tree. Unlike with the content and component hierarchies, the repository tree is not arbitrarily nested.
        Navigation
        The Portlet bean is a tree bean. The navigation is documented in Tree navigation. For more information, see Tree navigation.
        Search
        The generic search syntax is documented in Search. The Portlet bean supports the following keywords for node types in searches. Alternative, shorter keywords are documented in the bean help.
        Plain attributes
        In addition to the default attributes, repository objects have some of the following attributes. Alternative, shorter names are documented in the bean help.
        List valued attributes
        The portlet nodes have two list valued attributes, locales and parameters. See the bean help for alternative, shorter names for these lists. Only the list command is supported, you cannot modify the lists. The locales list is available for portlets and portlet applications. It holds the locales for which locale-specific attributes are defined in locale-specific attributes. The parameters list holds the setting names for the init parameter that are associated with the specified portlet.
        Locale-specific attributes in portlet bean
        Portlets and portlet applications have the following locale-specific attributes. All attributes are optional. You can query the list of locales for which attributes are defined by using the list command (List valued attributes).
        Portlet metadata
        Portlet nodes can own metadata, which are name-value pairs of data that is associated with the content node. Metadata are used by the portal, for example, to set display attributes, or by the user. The Portal bean allows read-only access on portlet metadata. Metadata can be assigned only with portlet-type or application-type repository objects.
        Portlet preferences in portlet bean
        It is possible to get and set preferences to portlet instances. Because Portlet beans specify a static portlet only, and not a portlet instance that is found on a page, portlet instances are identified by two ID values: The ID of the portlet that specifies the portlet, and the ID of the portlet entity piid that anchors an instance of the portlet in a page.
        Themes and Skins
        Themes and skins are two distinct sets of objects with a matrix relation, where each skin can be tied to any number of themes. The sets of themes and skins are accessible through the Look bean, which is referenced as $Look in Jacl.
        Portal Access Control
        The scripting operations for access control differ fundamentally from content, layout, or the portlet repository. The reason is that access control data is not transparently cached on the client. To avoid many requests and slow response times for every simple lookup operation, a different programming model is adopted for access control data.
        Portal authentication
        The Portal bean handles functions that are outside of the responsibility of the other beans. This responsibility includes global data and technical aspects of scripting, such as the scripting session with the portal. The Portal bean is referenced as $Portal in Jacl.
        Examples
        The following are examples for deleting portlets and adding portlets.
        Troubleshooting the Portal Scripting Interface
        The following solutions help solve the troubleshooting issues.
        Property file format
        You can provide locale-specific attributes for a set of locales in a Java property file. The generic format of Java property files is described in the Java API documentation for method load in class java.util.Properties. The description here covers the particular properties that are interpreted when locale-specific attributes are loaded from a portal script.
        Index paths
        Index paths are used to refer to components in the component hierarchy. They are based on the index or position of a component in the surrounding container. An index path is a multi-dimensional index of a component, where the number of dimensions is equal to the depth of the component in the tree. Index paths are absolute or relative, depending on whether there is a leading slash. Absolute paths start with a leading slash and are resolved from the root component. Relative paths start with a number and are resolved from the selected component. Trailing slashes are irrelevant.
    - Web content administration tools
      HCL Web Content Manager includes tasks and tools to help maintain your content management system. For example, use the member fixer task to resolve renamed or deleted users and user groups. Use the workflow checker and updater tools to modify workflow security settings, reschedule pending actions, and add workflow to items. HCL Web Content Manager also includes tools to assist with library and item management, and item and version history management.
    - Starting and stopping servers
      Various installation and configuration tasks require you to start and stop IBM WebSphere Application Server and the HCL Digital Experience application servers, deployment managers, and node agents.
    - Users and groups
      HCL Digital Experience offers you centralized administration of users and user groups, allowing you to better define users and manage user access rights. Users can register and manage their own account information, or an administrator can provision and manage users. Group memberships can be used to give the required permissions to access an object or perform a request.
    - Managing portlets, portlet applications, and iWidgets
      You must do some preparatory tasks before you make your portlets, portlet applications, or iWidgets available to your users by putting them on portal pages. This preparatory task includes installing, deploying, and configuring portlets, applications, and iWidgets.
    - Administering managed pages
      You can run advanced administration tasks for managed pages, such as generating URLs for projects or working with projects by using scripts, or working with vanity URLs.
    - Manage pages portlets
      Use Manage Pages to create, edit, activate, order, and delete pages and external web pages and labels. Available tasks depend on which item is selected. Each page can contain multiple pages. All pages on which you have the User or greater role are displayed in a navigation menu. You must expand pages to access nested pages. The options that you see are dependent upon your access level.
    - Managing theme capabilities
      You can administer the theme module framework. This includes deploying resources that can be cached, configuring capability filters, and disabling the automatic prerequisite loading feature.
    - Managing community pages
      Community associations associate a portal page with a community in HCL Connections.
    - Managing your cluster
      After installing and configuring your clustered environment, you will need to manage the different parts of your cluster to ensure a highly available production environment.
    - Managing your site
      Earlier versions of HCL Digital Experience provided the Resource Manager portlet for performing site management. With Version 8.0 of HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager, this site management functionality has been replaced by the new functionality for managing pages.
    - Tagging and rating
      Get an overview of the administrative tasks related to tagging and rating.
    - Using WebDAV with HCL Portal
      HCL Digital Experience provides a Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) implementation that individual services can use by plugging into. WebDAV is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol that allows you to collaborate on editing and managing files on remote Web servers.
    - Virtual portals
      View information on how you can scope your HCL Portal to have multiple virtual portals.
    - Language support
      To reach as many users as possible, HCL Digital Experience supports different languages for different locations. For instance, a large, international corporation might address users in different countries or regions through multilingual websites. In this context the portal can concurrently serve portal views to large numbers of users, each in the user's preferred language.
    - WSRP services
      HCL Digital Experience supports the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) standard. By using this standard, portals can provide portlets, applications, and content as WSRP services. Other portals can then integrate the WSRP services as remote portlets for their users.
    - Browser behavior and scenarios
      Browser behavior for the back button, bookmarks and history affect user interaction and cause unexpected results.
  - Securing
    Security tasks include setting up property extension databases and custom user repositories, configuring and activating SSL, and configuring authentication. In addition, tasks such as activating Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and NIST SP800-131a security modules and configuring external security managers such as Security Access Manager might be required to secure your portal environment.
  - Monitoring
    HCL Portal includes tools and features to help you monitor the portal site.
  - Setting up a website
    Setting up a website includes, creating pages, adding navigation, setting up search, and adding content to the site. Themes are used to customize the portal's look-and-feel. Out-of-the-box templates and the site wizard can help you set up your portal site faster. You can add wikis and blogs to your site and let users tag and rate content on your site.
  - Staging to production
    During portal solution development, the solution is initially developed, tested, and refined on one server or a limited number of servers. The solution is deployed later on live systems, referred to as the production environment. The process of moving the solution from the development environment to the production environment is called staging.
  - Developing
    This section includes developer documentation on extending applications and development assets for HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager.
  - Troubleshooting
    This section helps you resolve problems, use diagnostic tools and tracing to capture HCL Digital Experience system errors.
  - Reference
    View information that can help you use the Digital Experience Help Center including directory conventions, terms of use, trademarks, a glossary, and more.
  - Glossary
    This glossary includes terms and definitions for HCL Digital Experience.
  - Content Template Catalog 4.4
    The Content Template (CTC) is a set of templates that accelerate the process of building a website.

Portlet repository | HCL Digital Experience

The portlet repository provides access to portlets, portlet applications, and web modules. To provide easy access to the relations between the repository objects, the repository is modeled as a tree. Unlike with the content and component hierarchies, the repository tree is not arbitrarily nested.

At the root of the repository is a dummy node. Children of the root are the web modules. web modules are the deployment units of the portal. They correspond to WAR files. The children of a web module are portlet applications.

The portlet repository is accessed by using the Portlet bean, referenced as $Portlet in Jacl. Modification of the portlet repository from a script is not supported.

The Portlet bean provides the following functions:

Methods to browse in the portlet repository tree. For more information, see Navigation .
Methods to locate a portlet, application, or web module, or to search for particular repository objects. For more information, see Search .
Methods for getting attributes, metadata, or portlet preferences. The following attribute types are supported by the Layout bean:
- Plain attributes
- List valued attributes
- Locale-specific attributes
- Portlet metadata
- Portlet preferences