Creating a Self-Service Portal

What is Self-Service Portal?

Self-Service Portal, or SSP, allows end-users to easily collaborate with supporting divisions (helpdesk, service desk, and others). With SSP, you can easily deliver your service and knowledge and gather feedback at any time.

The screenshot below illustrates the SSP main area typical view.

Portal structure

Self-Service Portal has a hierarchical structure containing various types of elements linked with each other. This allows building a flexible and configurable portal and binding it with the platform via provided tools (such as notification rules, API, ACL, and others).

The diagram below illustrates a typical portal structure.

For more clarity, the table below contains a brief glossary.

Also, you can find a brief example explaining rows and columns concept below.

How to create and configure a portal

After completing this guide, you will be able to create and configure your first Self-Service Portal. To perform this, you need to complete a step-by-step procedure:

1. Create Portal record.
2. Create Pages.
   1. Create Portal Nodes.
   2. Create Page Containers.
   3. Create Page Rows.
   4. Create Page Columns.
3. Add system interaction elements:
   1. Create Widgets
   2. Create Widget Instances
   3. Create WIdget Options

Create portal records

Create a portal record, so you will be able to bind lower-level objects to it going through further steps.

To create a single portal, please complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to Portal Structure → Portals.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.
3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

Create portal pages

The portal page is a template for other pages, so it is very important to configure it carefully.

To create a page template, please complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to Portal Structure → Pages.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.
3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

Create portal nodes

Within the portal node, there are two various essence types are used to configure portal structure:

• Portal nodes, also known as portal maps, are massive structural components defining layouts of portals, categories, and pages through the Portal Page field.
• Categories and items are the pages that bind together child objects basing on some features. Categories are any structures based upon parent/child relationships, e.g., Knowledge Base with categorized Articles in it. Portal Nodes help us to implement ready-to-use structures into the structure of a portal.

To create a portal node, please complete the steps below:

1. Navigate to Portal Structure → Portal Nodes.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.
3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

Configure portal structure

To configure a portal structure, you need to complete the procedure below:

1. Bind the portal record you have created and portal node (or nodes).

   1. If you have created nodes within the portal record, then it will be done automatically at the creation point.
      To bind the portal record and portal node, follow the steps below

      Nodes and records

      1. Open the portal record you need to work with.
      2. Scroll down to the Related Lists area and open the Portal Node tab.
      3. Click Edit.
      4. Move desired portal node records from Available to Selected areas.

      5. Click Save.

      To know the portal node record ID, please complete the steps below:

      1. Navigate to Portal Structure → Portal Nodes.
      2. Open the desired portal record.
      3. The node record ID is displayed in the URL.

      

2. Bind this node to a previously created portal page you want to display on the portal. Specify reference to this page in the Page field of the node record form.
   To bind the portal node and a portal page, please complete the steps below:
   1. Open a portal node you need to work with.
   2. Specify a page in the Page field.
3. Fill in pages with content:
   1. Create page containers within pages.
   2. Create page rows within page containers.
   3. Create page columns within page rows.
   4. Configure Widgets within page rows.

Create page containers

Page container is a main structural page unit. After creating, split a container with columns and rows.

To create a page container, please complete the steps below:

1. Open the page created earlier for which you need to create a container.
2. Scroll down to the Related Lists area and click on the Page Container tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

Create page rows

A page container can be divided into rows, which, in turn, can be divided into columns.

To create a page row, please complete the steps below:

1. Open the page container for which you need to create a row.
2. Scroll down to the Related Lists area and click on the Page Row tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

Create page columns

A page row can be divided into maximum 12 columns.

To create page columns, please complete the steps below:

1. Open the page row for which you need to create a column.
2. Scroll down to the Related Lists area and click on the Page Column tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

Widgets

To make a portal page more interactive, use Widgets. It is a small interactive application containing the server and client logics. It sends, receives and processes events through the client and server controllers. SimpleOne widgets can be added to forms as well as to portal pages.

In the out-of-the-box platform delivery, you can find a number of preconfigured widgets available in the Widgets dictionary. To obtain them, please navigate to Portal Structure → Widgets.

As an example, we can consider one of the widgets delivered - Main Announcement Widget. This widget is based on the <previewList> portal tag and implements announcements list on the Service portal main page.

Creating portal widgets

To configure a widget structure on your portal, you need to create a widget first, an application implementing some logic, server and/or client.

To create a widget, please follow the steps described in the Create a New Widget article.

Creating portal widget instance

To place a widget on a portal page, use Widget Instances. These elements help to define a specific location for the widget according to the portal column specified and to customize the widget options with the option schema.

To create a widget instance, please complete the steps below:

1. Open the page column for which you need to create a widget instance.
2. Scroll down to the Related Lists area and click on the Widget Instance tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.

Creating a portal widget option

A portal widget option allows to define, for example, logic differences for similar widgets, also it allows to narrow down the selection criteria and solve other related tasks.

To create a widget option, please complete the steps below:

1. Open the widget instance for which you need to create a widget instance.
2. Scroll down to the Related Lists area and click on the Portal Widget Option tab.
3. Click New and fill in the fields.
4. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply changes.