Hiding Portlets from Users :: SAS(R) 9.3 Intelligence Platform: Web Application Administration Guide, Third Edition

Overview of Hiding Portlets from Users

After you have created and deployed a portlet, you can make that portlet unavailable to users temporarily while you continue development or make changes to the portlet. You can make a portlet unavailable in order to ensure that users do not access the portlet while you are working on it.

The simplest way to make a portlet unavailable to users is to apply metadata authorization controls in order to hide the portlet. To hide a portlet, use SAS Management Console to deny users ReadMetadata permission on the portlet's template. This method effectively hides all instances of the portlet that might have been added to users' portal views. This method is useful for hiding two types of portlets:

your organization's custom portlets
portlets that are created from the portal's built-in portlet templates

For information about portlet templates, see Understanding Portlets .

Associating the Portlet with a Group

It is recommended that you associate the portlet with a group before denying access to the portlet. It is much easier to set permissions for a group than it is to set permissions for a large number of individual users.

Here are some key points related to working with groups:

In the portlet's XML file, associate the portlet with a group. The group can be PUBLIC or any user-defined group. For example, you might associate the portlet with a group called Sales. For more information about the XML file, see “Creating a Deployment Descriptor” in Developing Portlets for the SAS Information Delivery Portal.

After you make changes to the portlet's XML file, you must redeploy the portlet before those changes can take effect. See Understanding Portlet Deployment .
Make sure that the group exists in SAS metadata. Create the group if necessary, and add users to the group.
For routine maintenance, such as adding content to the portlet, create a group content administrator for the group. For instructions, see Group Content Administrator.

Hide a Portlet

To deny ReadMetadata permissions for a portlet template, follow these steps:

Log on to SAS Management Console as the SAS Administrator.
Navigate to the portlet template in the following location in metadata: Environment ManagementAuthorization ManagerResource Management By TypePrototype
Select the template for the portlet that you want to hide.
From the main menu, select FileProperties.
In the Properties dialog box, select the Authorization tab.
In the Names list box, select the group or users who should be denied access. If a particular user or group is not listed, click Add and add the user or group. When you return to the Authorization tab, make sure that the appropriate user or group is selected in the Users and Groups list box.
To modify the permissions for the selected user or group, in the permissions list row for the ReadMetadata permission, select the Deny check box.
When you are finished, click OK.

When members of the group log on to the portal, they will not see any portlet that was generated from the portlet template. All instances of the portlet are hidden from any user or group that is denied ReadMetadata permission on the portlet's template.

To enable the portlet again when you are finished with development, repeat these steps, but grant ReadMetadata permission to the group or users.

The following display of the Authorization tab shows the users and groups who have permissions for a portlet template.