Portal Administration Guide

This guide describes some basic administration capabilities that you can use after you have deployed your portal.

Logging in as Administrator

When you install your portal, an administrator account is automatically created for you.  To log in, use the username/password combination admin/admin.  You should change the admin password for publicly available portals.

 

After logging in, you should see a page similar to the one below in Figure 1.  You are now ready to play.

 

Figure 1 The administrator's portal view.  Shown is the user management interface.

 

Managing Users

By clicking “Users” button on the left-hand side, you can get a list of the portal users in the central portlet area.  Click the link for any user to change

• A user’s first and last name
• His/her email address
• His/her password

You can also add and delete users to your portal. While you are here make sure that you change the password for user turbine, especially for publicly available portals.

Creating and Managing Groups

Several of the portal services (schedules, announcements, resources, discussion and chat services) require group membership.  All members of a group share the same portlets and can participate in real-time services like chats.  Here we describe how to create and manage groups. Using these services is described in the User Guide.  

 

After logging in as admin, click the “Groups” button on the left-hand menu.  You should see a screen similar to the following:

 

Figure 2 The group manager main page.  No groups are available yet.

To create a new group, select the “New Group” link.  You should see a screen similar to Figure 3. 

Figure 3 Creating a new group.

Fill out the form.  The group ID is only required field.  Next, add users to the group by selecting the “Add Members” button.  You must add members to the group by their portal ID name.  See the “ID” column of Figure 1 for an example.  The portal administrator is automatically a member of the newly created group.

 

After adding members, save the portal.  Note the “Test” tab across the top of the portal, next to “My Workspace”.  Click this tab and you will see Figure 4.

 

Figure 4 The Test group tab display.

Note the vertical portlet navigation buttons along the left of the portal have changed.  These are the portlets available to the Test group.  The owner of the group (the admin user in this case) has the privilege to customize the portlets available to the group.  See the User Guide for more information.

 

 

Changing the MOTD

In the default installation configuration, the Message of the Day portlet is available for all users and is included in the default (pre-logged in) display.  See for example Figure 5.

Figure 5 The portal's main entry and login page.  The empty MOTD portlet is at the top.

To change or update the MOTD, login to the admin account and click the “Announcements” button along the left hand navigation panel.  You should see a page similar to Figure 6.

 

Figure 6 The Announcements administration interface.

To add a new announcement, click the “New” button in the Announcements interface.  Fill out the form and publish the new announcement.  You should now see this on all MOTD portlets, such as shown in Figure 7.  You can later revise or delete MOTDs and also include attachments.

 

Figure 7 The revised MOTD portlet.

Administrating Newsgroups

The portal administrator is automatically assigned super-administrator privileges to the portal’s Newsgroup system.  This allows the admin user to assign (or revoke) topic administration privileges to various users and to create new topics.  To use any of the features below, first log in as the portal admin and then click the “Newsgroups (Super-Admin)” button.  You should see a screen similar to Figure 8.  You should see two tabs in a row under “My Workspace” with labels “Topic Manager” and “Admin Manager”.

Topic Management

If you wish to see a list of topics and their administrators, click the leftmost tab across the top row.  Click the “Newsgroup (Super-Admin)” button and then the “Topic Manager” tab across the top—it is the default value.  Under “Topic List” click any of the available topics to see the list of administrators.  To create a new topic, fill out the “Topic Management” form and assign at least one admin for that topic.

 

Figure 8 The super administrator's topic management interface.

Figure 9 The super-admin's interface for managing topic administrators.

Admin Management

To assign newsgroup administrator privileges for a particular user to a particular newsgroup, log in as the portal admin and click the “Newsgroup (Super-Admin)” button.  Click also the “Super-Admin Admin Manager” tab, rightmost across the top. 

 

The “Administrator List” gives all current administrators and their super-admin “parents”.  To see the topics administered by a given admin, click the radio button next to his/her user name and then click “Select Admin”.

 

To give a portal user administration privileges to a new group, first click the drop-down menu next to “Login Name” and select the user from the list.  Then click the drop-down next to “Topic Name” and select the topic the user can administer.  Finally, click “Add Admin”. 

 

Newsgroup administration and usage is discussed in the accompanying file, UserGuide.html.

Figure 10 Give users privilege to administer newsgroups.

Installing Your Own Newsgroup Services

The NMI newsgroup portlets use default newsgroups hosted by the Community Grids Lab.  If you want to host your own newsgroup servers, these will be provided in a separate NMI portal download (coming soon).

Installing GPIR Services

[To be completed]

The GPIR portlets included with the basic portal release are Web service clients that (by default) point to TACC computing resources.  You can set up your own GPIR information providers in a separate download.  More information provided soon.