The master administrator | HCL Digital Experience

A key role for the administration of virtual portals is the master administrator. This user ID is created during the initial installation of HCL Digital Experience with the role administrator on the portal (admin@portal). This administrator is also the master administrator of the initial portal installation and all virtual portals that are created. This master administrator is created with all necessary access permissions for administering tasks that are related to the initial portal and the virtual portals.

The master administrator has the necessary privileges to run the tasks that are related to managing virtual portals. Use either the Virtual Portal Manager portlet or the provided configuration tasks to complete these tasks. For information about these tools, go to Administering virtual portals.

The Virtual Portal Manager portlet is installed as part of the initial portal installation. You can use this portlet to create, modify, and delete virtual portals.

The master administrator defines the user population of each virtual portal. To separate the user populations of the virtual portals, the master administrator can either use the User and Group Permissions portlet or they can define realms in the Virtual Member Manager configuration files.

Before you create a virtual portal, you define a group of sub-administrators. When you create the virtual portal, a default set of roles and access permissions is assigned to this group. As the master administrator, you can change these default assignments and delegate administration of individual virtual portals to sub-administrators. Use the Resource Permissions portlet that is part of the Portal Access Control.

When you create a virtual portal, it is filled with a default set of portal pages and resources. You can further enhance the content of a virtual portal by either of the following ways:

By the master administrator of the portal installation. For example, use the XML configuration interface.
By the sub-administrators or other users of the virtual portal. Use the Manage Pages portlet.

For information about the content of a virtual portal, go to Content of a virtual portal.

Typically, only the master administrator should have the access permissions for the following tasks:

Using the Virtual Portal Manager portlet
Using the XML configuration interface to run tasks that are related to one of the virtual portals
Installing portlets, themes, and skins.

Note: Do not grant the sub-administrators of virtual portals the access permissions to run any installation-related tasks, such as installation of portlets or themes. All virtual portals share a common Java virtual machine™ (JVM). Therefore, it is important to restrict the administration privileges of the virtual portal sub-administrators and prevent them from installing their own code artifacts, such as themes or portlets. Unstable or malicious code that is introduced on one virtual portal can destabilize the entire portal installation and all other virtual portals. A flexible way to introduce virtual portal-specific portlets without impacting any other virtual portal is to use web services for remote portlets (WSRP). By using WSRP, you can provide portlets on a remote server and then have the virtual portals consume those portlets so that users can access them remotely. For more information about using WSRP with your portal, go to Using WSRP services.

For more information about Portal Access Control, go to Controlling access. For more information about virtual portal security, go to Portal Access Control with virtual portals.