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HCL Digital Experience 9.5 [Legacy content]
Administering
Use the administration tools that are provided with the HCL Digital Experience to do various day-to-day administration tasks.
Portal administration tools
Learn about the different tools that you can use to administer your portal.
The XML configuration interface
Use the XML configuration interface (XML Access) for exchanging portal configurations.
XML configuration reference
Learn more about XML input structure, XML tags for portal resources, attributes for special purposes such as locale data, object IDs, and more. Also find information about action attributes that determine the type of processing that the XML configuration reference applies to the portal resource. There are syntax restrictions that you need to consider as well as information about how to determine the object IDs for portal resources.
Replacement variables in XML configuration interface script files
XML script files that were created by an XML configuration interface export or that can be imported by the XML configuration interface can contain URLs to portal files. These URLs reference files that are in HCL Portal server directories. Depending on the installation directory of your HCL Digital Experience installation, these file locations can differ. You can avoid the dependency on the file location by using variables.

HCL Digital Experience 9.5 [Legacy content]
- Overview
  HCL Digital Experience provides a single access point to web content and applications, while it delivers differentiated, personalized experiences for each user across multiple touchpoints, such as web, mobile, hybrid mobile/web applications, and more.
- Supported migration paths
  Migration is supported between equivalent HCL Digital Experience offerings.
- Supported installation and upgrade paths
  Installation and upgrade is supported between equivalent HCL Digital Experience offerings.
- Getting the software
  New and existing users need to register at the HCL Software License Portal and download their entitled HCL Digital Experience package(s).
- Creating your website
  Review the following topics to understand how to create your website using the latest HCL Digital Experience.
- Installing HCL Digital Experience
  Review the planning information on HCL Digital Experience, then select your operating system and 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 HCL Digital Experience to do various day-to-day administration tasks.
  - Roadmap: Syndication
    Syndication is the tool that is used to replicate data from a web content library on one server to a web content library on another server. The relationship between a syndicator and a subscriber can be either a one-way or two-way relationship.
  - 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.
      - About the XML configuration interface
        The XML configuration interface provides a batch processing interface for portal configuration updates. It allows you to export an entire portal configuration or parts of a configuration, for example specific pages, to an XML file. You can then re-create the exported configuration from such a file on another portal.
      - Changes to the XML configuration interface
        Learn about the changes that were made to the XML configuration interface from earlier versions to current versions of HCL Digital Experience. This information can be useful to you if you migrate your HCL Portal from one version to a later version.
      - Working with the XML configuration interface
        You can use the XML configuration interface to export and import HCL Digital Experience configurations. This way you can configure selected features or areas of your portal. You can also transfer a complete configuration from one portal to another.
      - XML configuration reference
        Learn more about XML input structure, XML tags for portal resources, attributes for special purposes such as locale data, object IDs, and more. Also find information about action attributes that determine the type of processing that the XML configuration reference applies to the portal resource. There are syntax restrictions that you need to consider as well as information about how to determine the object IDs for portal resources.
        XML input script file structure
        When you use the XML configuration interface command line client, the XML script you use specifies the root element, the XML schema, the portal resources, and actions to be performed.
        Types of portal resources
        The portal resources are represented by the following XML tags.
        Syntactic restrictions on the input syntax
        There are certain restrictions on the allowed values for the action attribute.
        Object IDs in XML scripts
        All resources in HCL Portal, except for the resources portal and the settings, have an object ID that uniquely identifies them in the portal. That ID is generated by the portal when the resource is created. These object IDs are represented by the objectid attributes in an XML export.
        Replacement variables in XML configuration interface script files
        XML script files that were created by an XML configuration interface export or that can be imported by the XML configuration interface can contain URLs to portal files. These URLs reference files that are in HCL Portal server directories. Depending on the installation directory of your HCL Digital Experience installation, these file locations can differ. You can avoid the dependency on the file location by using variables.
        Exporting sets of resources
        You can specify more than one resource with an export action in the same request and thus generate an export response file that contains a selected group of resources, for example several portlets and pages.
        Mandatory and optional attributes
        Depending on the action that you perform by using the XML configuration interface, some attributes can be mandatory or optional.
        Page layout modifications
        When you use an XML script to update an existing page with a new layout, you create or update child elements of type component for the content-node element of the page. Normally you use the XML script to define a complete new layout of the page rather than combine the existing layout with your new definitions. In such cases the XML configuration interface applies special processing.
        Marking pages as hidden under the content root
        By default, pages that you create under the content root display in the main menu. If you do not want a page that you create to appear in the main menu, you can hide the page.
        Importing WAR files
        To create new portlet applications, you need additional resources, the WAR files.
        Importing static page content from archive or compressed files
        You can import the content of static pages from an external archive or compressed file by using the XML configuration interface.
        Viewing updates and changes made with the XML configuration interface
        For your users to be able to view updates that you made by using the XML configuration interface, they might have to log out and log back in again, or you might have to restart the portal. This depends on the type of update that you made.
        Transactionality
        When you use XML scripts to create, update or delete resources, the changes in the portal database are grouped into transactions. All changes that are part of one transaction are either executed completely or not at all. The XML configuration has two different levels of grouping database updates into transactions.
        Error recovery
        If errors occur during the processing of an XML script, the XML result file contains an error message. After fixing the cause of the error, you have two options to continue.
        Hints and tips for using the portal XML configuration interface
        In an example configuration, you might have two HCL Digital Experience environments that are both configured for security with an LDAP server. However, the two LDAP servers have different directory structures.
        Sample XML configuration files
        Sample files are provided for your reference to help illustrate how to use XML configuration for different portal configuration purposes.
    - Portal Scripting Interface
      You can use the Portal Scripting Interface to configure your portal by running scripts from a command line.
  - 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. 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.
  - 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 Web sites. In this context the portal can concurrently serve portal views to large numbers of users, each in the user's preferred language.
  - WSRP services
    By using the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) standard. HCL Digital Experience can provide portlets, applications, and content as WSRP services.
  - 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.
- Docker and Containerization
  Find topic information about Docker and Containerization for HCL Digital Experience.
- Practitioner Studio
  Practitioner Studio is a newly designed user experience for HCL Digital Experience. Please see the following pages to understand how the new navigation is organized.
- HCL Experience API
  This shows developers how to provision, configure, and use the HCL Experience API with the HCL Digital Experience 9.5 platform.
- HCL Content Composer
  The HCL Content Composer delivers simplified processes for creating and managing Digital Experience site content.
- HCL Digital Asset Management
  HCL Digital Asset Management (DAM) adds a central platform to store and include rich media assets in Digital Experience site content to present engaging, consistently branded experiences across digital channels.
- The Woodburn Studio demo site
  The Woodburn Studio is a website that demonstrates the use of some of the popular HCL Digital Experience features.
- Reference
  View information that can help you use our product documentation including terms of use, trademarks, and more.

Replacement variables in XML configuration interface script files

XML script files that were created by an XML configuration interface export or that can be imported by the XML configuration interface can contain URLs to portal files. These URLs reference files that are in HCL Portal server directories. Depending on the installation directory of your HCL Digital Experience installation, these file locations can differ. You can avoid the dependency on the file location by using variables.

For example, the web application of the portal login module contains the following XML element:

<url>file://localhost/$archive_root$/login.war.webmod/login.war</url>

On a Linux installation of HCL Portal, this URL might be interpreted as follows:

<url>file://localhost//opt/WebSphere/PortalServer/login.war.webmod/login.war</url>

On other HCL Portal installations, the login.war file can be in a different directory.

As the XML configuration interface uses different values for the variable replacement, the XML input file is independent of the specific HCL Portal installation directories.

The following table shows the available variables and provides examples of the replacement values they might have on a Linux installation of HCL Portal:

Table 1. Replacement variables in XML configuration interface script files
Variables that represent HCL Portal installation directories in XML script files, and their example replacements.
Variable for HCL Portal installation directory	Example replacement value
$app_install_root$	/opt/WebSphere/wp_profile/installedApps
$archive_root$	/opt/WebSphere/wp_profile/PortalServer/deployed/archive
$predeployed_root$	/opt/WebSphere/wp_profile/installedApps/wpsbvt
$profile_install_root$	/opt/WebSphere/wp_profile/installedApps
$server_root$	/opt/WebSphere/PortalServer
$user_install_root$	/opt/WebSphere/wp_profile
$wp_profile_root$	/opt/WebSphere/wp_profile