Understanding Portal Display Rules
A portal display rule is a set of conditions defined by a portal administrator determining which portal desktops are assigned to portal users at runtime in SAP NetWeaver Portal (see Understanding Portal Desktops ). This allows organizations to allocate portal desktops with varying designs, branding, or layouts to different departments or platform-specific scenarios.
Display rule definitions are transparent to portal users. At logon, users are seamlessly presented with the appropriate portal desktop assigned to their role, group, user, or scenario.
The following examples describe some scenarios that could require the need for alternative portal desktops:
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Internal employees versus external customers and partners
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Users accessing the portal through a dial-up connection (requiring a thin client desktop) versus broadband connections
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Subcompanies belonging to the same organization (requiring different company branding in the portal header)
Display rules can be a combination of platform configuration and user-specific rules, by specifying the following:
|
Type |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Names of users, roles, and groups |
This type of portal desktop assignment to users is direct. You state exactly which users receive each desktop. |
|
Connection bandwidth, URL alias, browser type, browser version, device group, and device type |
This type of portal desktop assignment to users is indirect. You do not specify a particular user directly, but instead you state a configuration that can correspond to any user. |
Any display rules with conditions that are based on device groups or device types will only take effect at runtime if the device group mechanism is enabled. For more information, see Using Device Groups .
Portal display rules are defined as portal objects known as rule collections . A rule collection comprises a set of conditions, constructed by IF and THEN expressions, which together provide a means for assigning portal desktops to users at runtime.
A rule collection comprises the following components:
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An IF or THEN statement on its own is referred to as an expression .
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The segments that make up an IF or THEN expression are referred to as parameter , operator , and value .
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A combination of one or more nested IF expressions with a single THEN expression is collectively referred to as an IF-THEN condition or just condition .
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A combination of one or more conditions is collectively referred to as a rule collection .
The possible parameters that you can assign to each IF and THEN expression, per expression, are as follows:
|
IF parameters |
THEN parameters |
|---|---|
|
|
The portal runtime determines the appropriate desktop assignment for each user logging on to the portal. The assignment is based on conditions defined in the default rule collection object, named Master Rule Collection ( main_rules ). For more information, see Master Rule Collection .
You can create additional rule collection objects and delegate them to different administrators in your organization. Each administrator is responsible for defining the display rules for their specified rule collection object by assigning portal desktops to users and use cases in their suborganization.
The portal runtime starts with the Master Rule Collection object. Additional rule collection objects must be added as nested conditions in the Master Rule Collection object for them to take effect.
If at runtime, the portal is unable to resolve a portal desktop for a given user based on the defined display rules, the default portal desktop is automatically provided. For more information, see Default Portal Desktop .
Display rules do not determine which portal content (iViews and pages) is assigned to portal roles, nor does it determine the roles and groups to which users are assigned. For more information, see Creating and Editing Freestyle Roles and Worksets and Assigning Portal Roles to Users and Groups .
You can include predefined portal URL aliases as part of your display rules. For more information, see Defining URL Aliases .
The following diagram illustrates how portal display rules are resolved at runtime:
