Touring the Portal Interface

The demo portal is provided to introduce you to the SAS Information Delivery Portal's user interface and some of the technology that supports it. You can customize many of the portal features, including its windows and navigation features. However, it is helpful first to understand the portal's fundamental components, which are introduced in this quick tour.

• The toolbar contains tools that apply to the entire portal:
  
  

  Log On

  The Log On tool allows a user to log on to the portal. Once you log on, you have access to your own personalized portal windows that contain content of specific interest to you. We will do a sample log-on later in the demo.

  
  Log Off

  Once you are logged on, the toolbar changes to display the Log Off tool. Logging off terminates your portal session. (This tool is available only to users who are logged on.)

  
  Search

  The Search tool allows you to search the metadata that are associated with any of the available information types (publication channels, content channels, documents, links, MDDBs, reports, subscriptions, tables, data warehouse views, applications, or webEIS documents). You can search for words or phrases that you type into the Containing field.

  
  Personalize (available only if you are logged on)

  Use the Personalize tool to create new windows, links, and lists and add them to (or remove them from) your portal. You can also use this tool to add new applications, widgets, and webEIS documents to the portal and to manage subscriptions to SAS publication channels and content channels. The Personalize tool appears on the toolbar only after you have logged on.

  
  Help

  The Help tool displays the User's Guide, which provides detailed documentation on how to use the features of the SAS Information Delivery Portal.
  
  

• The navigation column appears on the left-hand side of the browser window. Each button links to a window that can contain other windows, lists, links, and content. The portal allows you to define which buttons are to appear on this list.

• The active window is the window that is currently displayed in the right-hand section of the browser. A window can contain:

  • one or more other windows, called subwindows

  • one or more lists of content items

  • a widget, which is a graphical user interface (GUI) component that displays information or accepts user input, links, and content

  In the demo portal, the Public Kiosk is displayed as the active window. The Public Kiosk contains two subwindows: News and Links.

  Other available windows are listed in the navigation column of the portal. The demo portal highlights the active window button in the same color that is used for the active window background. You can change these colors by customizing the portal theme.

• A subwindow can contain one or more subwindows, one or more lists of content items, or a widget. However, subwindows do not appear in the navigation column. Subwindows have banners that use a different background color. Color and placement on the page are part of the interface design but do not affect the behavior of the window or its contents.

• A list contains a selection of items of a particular content type. For example, a list can contain a selection of publication channels, content channels, documents, links, MDDBs, reports, subscriptions, tables, data warehouse views, applications, or webEIS documents. In the demo portal, the Links subwindow within the Public Kiosk contains a list of links to the SAS Web site.

We will now log on to explore more of the portal features,