Plugoo - Let your website visitors chat with you

I just checked this new service called Plugoo.

Plugoo is a neat widget that allows visitors to chat directly from your website to your Instant Messenger. With other embeddable chat services, such as Geesee, you and your visitors chat through the widget on your site. But with Plugoo, your visitors send and receive messages using the widget while you respond with your MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, or Jabber Instant Messenger (no AIM support yet).

Check it out in action below....

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Yet another way to customize the Logon Screen in SAP Enterprise Portal

Hey Folks,

Here's another way of customizing the SAP Enterprise's Portal's Logon Page. This method seems to be very simple and straight forward, but I wasn't able to implement the steps as I run one of the latest versions of EP NW2004s Portal.

This process of customization works on all SPs of EP6 though ;)

So here are the steps:

1. Place your new image files here:
\J2E\JC00\j2ee\cluster\server0\apps\sap.com\com.sap.security.core.admin\servlet_jsp\logon\root\layout

2) Log on to the Portal as administrator and go here:
System Administration -> System Configuration -> UM Configuration.

3) Click on the "Direct Editing" tab.

4) Change the parameter:
ume.logon.branding_image=/logon/layout/YOUR_BRANDING_IMAGE_FILE.gif

5) Change the parameter:
ume.logon.branding_text=/logon/layout/YOUR_TEXT_IMAGE_FILE.gif

6) Click "Save all changes"

7) Restart the Portal

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Enabling portal branding for specific user in SAP Enterprise Portal

If you want to enable portal branding for specific user in SAP Enterprise Portal the steps to follow are:

1. Copy the standard SAP theme and save as new theme
   
2. Create a Portal Desktop
3. Changing the Main Rules

Let us look at step by step procedure

1. Copy the standard SAP theme and save as new theme
• Create the required Theme by following the path
  System Administration --> Portal Display --> Theme Editor.
• Select any one of the already existing themes and save as your new theme.
• Add your own logo and other settings for the saved theme.
  
  
2. Create a Portal Desktop
• Create a portal Desktop by following the path
  System Administration --> Portal Display --> Desktops and Display rules.
  
• Expand the Portal content. Create your own folder.
• Then go to Portal content --> Portal users --> Standard portal users -->Default framework page.
• Copy this Default framework page and place in the folder you created.
• Right click on the created folder and create new desktop.
• Now Right click on the copied default framework page and Select Add Frameworkpage to Portal Desktop.
• Now go to the place where you created the Theme and right click the theme and select Add theme to portal Desktop.
• Now in the creation of the new portal desktop select the entries and select the button "Set Default" for both the options and then save



3. Changing the Main Rules
   
• Go to Portal content --> Portal Administrators -->Super administrators -->Main rules.
  
• Right click and select edit object.
  
• Click "Add IF Expression". Another IF statement is added. Already existing IF statement is necessarry.
• Here you select If user = some user
  
• Click the "Then" Statement.
  Now go to the Portal desktop you created and right click the portal desktop and select "Add portal desktop to expression".
• Now save the rule collection.


You are done for the user.
Now close the browser and loggin with the specific user. After some time you will see the new portal branding for the specified user.

--> Continue Reading 'Enabling portal branding for specific user in SAP Enterprise Portal'

SAP NetWeaver clears Java EE 5 compatibility hurdle

SAP's NetWeaver has achieved compatibility with Java Enterprise Edition 5, enabling users to execute Java applications on the NetWeaver Application Server.

The compatibility allows the Netweaver platform to execute Java applications.

SAP has been offering Java compatibility since 2003, although it previously only supported the older version 1.3 when most competing vendors had support for version 1.4. SAP is the third to announce Java EE 5 compatibility, after Sun Microsystems and Tmax Soft.

Sun Microsystems unveiled Java EE 5 earlier this year. The platform is designed for server-based enterprise applications and was formerly known as J2EE.

The compatibility feature offers SAP a way to counter Oracle's criticism that its platform is lacking in openness.

Over 30 organisations have a licence for the Java EE technology, allowing them to develop their own application servers.

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How to customize the Login Screen in SAP Enterprise Portal

Here are some simple steps to follow to customize your very own SAP Enterprise Portal Login Page.

The login page is part of the par file with the name com.sap.portal.runtime.logon.par

1) Copy the file with the above name from the following location (EP6 SP9 and higher). It has the additional ending ".bak", which you should remove on you local copy :

\\\j2ee\cluster\server<#>\apps\sap.com\irj\servlet_jsp\irj\root\WEB-INF\deployment\pcd\

2) Import the PAR file into Netweaver Developer Studio:
- Select File>Import .
- Choose the option PAR file. Select Next and a popup window appears.
- In the window you have 3 text fields: The location of the par file, a project name (which will also be the new par file name) and the location where the project should be saved. The project name should differ from the original SAP file to avoid overwriting of the original. It also works as a security blanket, in case you have an exception in your custom logon code or want to start from scratch again.



3) Check, that you have the following 2 JAR files under the subfolder /lib :
1. com.sap.portal.runtime.logon_api.jar
2. umelogonbase.jar

If you don't have these file, you will see a portal exception on the Logon page and the log file will have the entry:

Caused by: com.sapportals.portal.prt.core.broker.PortalComponentInstantiationException: Could not instantiate implementation class com.sapportals.portal.ume.component.logon.SAPMLogonCertComponent of Portal Component my.new.logon.certlogon because: Could not find implementation class

at com.sapportals.portal.prt.core.broker.PortalComponentItemFacade.getInstanceInternal...

The files you need are located in the original PAR file. Just open it with a Unzip Program and copy the files in your project.

Now you have your project prepared and you are ready for making changes.
The most important files for a customization are:
- images, which are stored under dist\layout
- JSP files, which are stored under dist\PORTAL-INF

All JSP pages include 3 additional files: The header (umLogonTopArea.txt), the bottom (umBotArea.txt) files, as well as the logon_proxy.txt .





The different pages in the Logon Par file are

Logon page : umLogonPage.jsp
Problem page : umLogonProblemPage.jsp
Help page (PW reset) : umHelpPage.jsp
Reset Password : umResetPasswordPage.jsp
Change Password Page: changePasswordPage.jsp
Certificate Logon : umLogonCertPage.jsp


Now enough about what elements we have. Let's customize ! But first make sure that you upload the new par-file, customize the authschemes.xml and restart the portal.


Changing Text

The text seen on the logon page is not in the JSP page, but in properties files which are called by tags like the Welcome text : <%=logonLocale.get("xtit_WELCOME")%>

In order to change "Welcome" to "Welcome to MyHR" you have to :
- Unzip the file umelogonbase.jar which you can find under dist\PORTAL-INF\lib
- Find the file "logonLabels_" which contains your language;
e.g. for german logonLabels_de.properties,
for russian logonLabels_ru.properties or
for English logonLabels_en.properties

The default is in the file logonLabels.properties .

- Find the key which is used in the tag (here it is xtit_WELCOME) and change the text after the equal sign.
- Save the changed file and create a updated JAR file using a zip program. The file needs to be named umelogonbase.jar, not umelogonbase.zip or umelogonbase.jar.zip.
- Put the JAR file back to dist\PORTAL-INF\lib.


Remove Support and Register links

The links are controlled with the UM settings
ume.logon.logon_help
ume.logon.selfreg

You could also just comment out the lines...

Change/add images

To exchange the two images, which are by default on the logon page, do the following steps:

• Copy the image(s) you want to use in your project in the the folder dist/layout.
  
• Find the < img src="" > you want to work on in the umBotArea.txt
  
• Change the src attribute in the img tag to src="<%=webpath + "layout/myPic.gif" %>". The webpath is already defined in the file logon_proxy.txt and ready to use.

In the Netweaver portal 6.0 SP9 and higher you have 2 images on the right side.

Add a Document (e.g. Intro or FAQ)

You can add a document link to the logon page, which points to a KM document. Updating the Logon Document would then involve no transports,and if wanted an approval process. Less paperwork to worry....

1. Setup a folder Logon, e.g. under Public Documents and put in there the document you want to point to.
2. Setup the folder with Read access for the Anonymous Users group.
3. Create a KM Document iview and choose Anonymous as access, but don¡¦t change the path to the document yet.
4. Preview the document and note down the URL of this page (In most browsers Right-click outside the image and select Properties to get the URL).
5. In the iview add now the KM path an d preview it again to make sure that the path is correct.
6. In the logon page, create a link. The href value is the URL you noted down but starting with /irj and without the portal server name and port (otherwise you have to change it after every transport).

To spin this idea further you could show an XML form by putting that into an IFrame.

Dynamic Images and Links

I want to archive a Logon page that looks different for different user. The final PAR file should also work through the DEV, QUA (and sometimes Staging STG ) and PRD without changes in the code. The user will access the portal in all cases via different URLs. Hence we have to check the Request URL which can be accessed in a Java Servlet [getRequestURL()]. In the code below we look in which system we are:

<% String url = componentRequest.getServletRequest().getRequestURL().toString(); if (url.indexOf("portal-e.")!= -1){... } else if (url.indexOf("portal-d.")!= -1){... } else if (url.indexOf("portal-q.")!= -1){...} else if (url.indexOf("portal.")!= -1) {...} else{...} %>

Another idea is to have different views depending from which URL you are coming.
Using that URL, you could have your Multi-Tenant portal without waiting to NW 2004s.

Accepting a Policy with the first Logon

A problem somebody had in the forum was, that a brandnew user should be redirected the first time to a Policy iview, where the user has to accept the policy.

After the acceptance the iview should not appear anymore. The solution was to add an new attribute field in the User Profile

See : http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/a3/d2ffd64602c149949ca3cf379dc295/content.htm

Authschemes.xml

I have now the new par file, but to have the portal reference on this PAR file, we need to customize and upload the customized authschemes.xml file through the Config-Tool of SAP WebAS.

When you edit the file, you should download the file to a local directory, edit it, and when uploading the edited file, create a new node in the configuration tree for it. In this way you do not loose the original version of the file.

1. Start the Config Tool by executing \j2ee\configtool\configtool.bat.
2. Navigate to cluster_data>server>persistent>com.sap.security.core.ume.service.
3. Switch to edit mode by clicking on the pencil which is at the upper right area.
4. In the tree, select authschemes.xml and choose Download. Save the file to your local directory
5. Edit the local file: To select the new PAR file as the Logon page change the occurrence of all substrings com.sap.portal.runtime.logon to your

project/PAR file name. All com.sap.portal.runtime.logon should be substituted with something like com.company.portal.runtime.logon (or whatever you project name is). Don’t remove the part behind it.
(These are the profiles in the portalapp.xml and have the names default, certlogon, basicauthentication, header, and anonymous).

6. Create a new node in the configuration tree in the Config-Tool for the edited file as follows:
a.Select the node com.sap.security.core.ume.service.
b. Choose the symbol for Creating a node below the selected node.
c. Select the type File-entry.
d. Choose Upload and select the custom file from your local directory.
e. Enter a name for the entry, for example, authschemes_myHR.xml. By default, the name of the uploaded file is used.
f. Choose Create.
g. Choose “Close window”.
h. The new node appears in the configuration tree.
i. Go to Global server configuration>services> com.sap.security.core.ume.service and edit the property login.authschemes.definition.file.
The value needs to be changed from authschemes.xml to authschemes_myHR.xml
j. Restart the Portal.

Your done :)

--> Continue Reading 'How to customize the Login Screen in SAP Enterprise Portal'

Which SAP Enterprise Portal server node am I running on?

It is often useful to be able to work out which server node of your SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal cluster you are connected to. For example, if you have an SAP NetWeaver Portal with a SID of ABC, consisting of two dispatchers (central instance 12 and dialog instance 13) each with two server nodes, you could be connected to instance 12 server0 or instance 12 server1 or instance 13 server0 or instance server1. If you are having some problems, the support people in your organization will need to know which server node to start looking at.

This blog entry will describe a code fragment that can be used in a portal component to present details of the current server node that you are connected to.

The good news is that most of the values we need to display are available as System properties, and so can be accessed via:

String SID = System.getProperty("SAPSYSTEMNAME").toString();
String num = System.getProperty("SAPSYSTEM").toString();
String dir = System.getProperty("user.dir").toString();
String sep = System.getProperty("file.separator").toString();
dir = dir.substring(1+dir.lastIndexOf(sep));
String me = System.getProperty("SAPMYNAME").toString();
me = me.substring(0,me.indexOf("_"));

We use the file.system property to work out if we are on a Windows or Unix type system, and then use that to skip to the last part of the user.dir property, whcih shows us if we are on server0, server1 etc...

To get our node number is a bit more complicated, and requires we find a property created as part of the use of DSR (Distributed Statistics Records). The property name contains the node ID, so we get a list of all the properties and run through the list finding a name that matches that node name...

Here's the code...

String node = "";
Enumeration props = System.getProperties().keys();
while (props.hasMoreElements())
{
String thisProp = props.nextElement().toString();
if (thisProp.startsWith("dsr."+me+"_") && thisProp.endsWith(".buffersize"))
node = thisProp.substring(5+thisProp.indexOf("_"+SID+"_"),thisProp.lastIndexOf("_"));
}

Now we need to present the details - I'll use some HTMLB structures, so remember to include an appropriate ServicesReference definition in portalapp.xml...

IPageContext myContext;
myContext = PageContextFactory.createPageContext(request, response);
Form myForm =myContext.createFormDocument("Where am I running?");

Group mySID = new Group();
mySID.setTitle("SID: "+SID);
mySID.setWidth("300");

Group host = new Group();
host.setTitle("Host: "+me);
host.setWidth("300");

mySID.addComponent(host);
Group myGroup = new Group();
host.addComponent(myGroup);
myGroup.setWidth("350");
myGroup.setTitle("Instance number: "+num);
myGroup.setDesign(GroupDesign.SAPCOLOR);

myForm.addComponent(mySID);

GridLayout gl = new GridLayout();
myGroup.addComponent(gl);
int row = 1;

InputField ifHere = new InputField("here");
ifHere.setString("You are here");
ifHere.setTooltip("standort");
ifHere.setEnabled(false);
InputField ifServer = new InputField("server");
ifServer.setString(dir);

ifServer.setEnabled(false);
Label label = new Label("Server number");
ifServer.setLabel(label);
gl.addComponent(row, 1, label);
gl.addComponent(row, 2, ifServer);
gl.addComponent(row, 3, ifHere);

row++;
InputField ifNode = new InputField("node");
ifNode.setString(node);
ifNode.setEnabled(false);
label = new Label("Node number");
ifNode.setLabel(label);
gl.addComponent(row, 1, label);
gl.addComponent(row, 2, ifNode);
gl.addComponent(row, 3, ifHere);

myContext.render();

When run, it should look similar to:

--> Continue Reading 'Which SAP Enterprise Portal server node am I running on?'