User Manual Oromiya Portal System

How the Interface looks like

When you see Oromia Portal you will find something like the picture above. On the top of the screen, you will fine Home, Sign in, Site Map, Contact us and Help just like figure 1.2. Here is the functionality of each links:

Home: takes you to the home page you are in.

Sign in: shows the singing in form which will let you in to the system based on your privilege.

Site map: displays the whole links or the architecture of the site.

Contact us: takes you to the office contact us page.

Help: takes you to the help page where you can get information on problems you encounter.




Figure 1.2. Header links.

4. Login

C
lick on the Sign in on the header link and the signing in form, just like figure 1.3 will appear.

Figure 1.3. Login Form

Enter your user name in the Email Address and password on the Password. Go ahead and sign into your new portal using these credentials. As you can see, Oromia portal by default uses one's email address as the user name. This can be changed later if you don't like this functionality, but it is generally a good practice to keep it this way. Users' email addresses are not normally things they will forget, and they are unique to each user, so they make good candidates for user IDs.

5. Dock

Once you log in as the administrative user, you will see that little has changed. The Sign In portlet now displays the name of the user who is logged in, and the Dock now displays the text “Welcome, xxx!” If you hover your mouse over the dock now, however, you will see that there are many more links in it:

Home: takes you to the home page.

Control Panel: takes you to the administrative functions of Oromia portal.

My Account: lets you edit your user information.

Sign Out: logs you out of the portal.

Add Application: opens the Add Application window which allows you to add portlets to the page.

Layout Template: displays the Layout Template window which allows you to choose different layouts for the page.

Manage Pages: takes you to the page administration screen (which is the same as figure 1.5), where you can add and delete pages, change the order of the pages, and configure several other things about pages. The manage pages will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

Toggle Edit Controls: This will let you turn on and off the edit controls in the top of the portlet windows. This is helpful for administrators who want to look at a page they're working on and see it the way a regular user would.

My Places: shows you the community and organization pages in the portal to which you can navigate.

If you roll your mouse over My Places, the Dock will expand, showing all of the places in the portal to which you have access. Initially, the place you are on will be highlighted. You will see that you are in the Guest community, on the public pages.

Oromia portal allows for various configurations of pages for end users. The administrator account by default has its own pages. Because you are logged in with an account that has Administrator privileges, you can see everything in the portal.



Figure 1.4. Dock

6. Managing Pages

When you click the Manage Pages from the control panel, a form just like figure 1.5 will appear. There are three tabs called Pages, Look and Feel and Export/Import. On the bottom left of the screen there is a place to display pages that has been created.

Pages: if you click this tab, you will find two tabs called New Page and Display Order on the middle of the form. New Page is used to create a page. Display Order is used to order the pages created by your preference.

Look and Feel: is used to change the theme of the page.

Export/Import: if you like to take a back up of your page use this tab and export the page. But if you want to use the backup you exported use this tab and click the import tab.

1. Add a Child Page

Suppose you need to add a child page, Education under Information About. You can add this page as follows:





Fig 1.5. Manage Pages Form.

1. Click the Manage Pages from your current page.

2. Click on the root Information About.

3. Select the tab, New Page, after the tab, Children, is selected.

4. Input child page name, such as Education.

5. Select a type, such as Portlet.

6. Check the Hidden box, if you want to hide the page.

7. Press the Add Page button when you are ready.

Of course, you may add more child pages if you wish. The root page and all children pages form a hierarchy tree, as shown in the following figure:

2. Change Display Order

You can change the display order of the child pages under Managing Page, as follows:

1. 
   Select the Pages tab on the top left of the Manage Pages Form.
   
2. 
   Select the tab, Display Order.
   
3. 
   Click on a child page, such as Health; then click the Move Up button to move up the selected page; or click the Move Down button to move down the selected page; or click the Remove button to delete the selected page.
   
4. 
   Press the Update Display Order button when you are ready.
   

3. Edit a Page

You can edit the pages such as Education under Information About. For example, if you want to replace the page title Education with "Our Education":

1. Find the page you want to edit in the left-hand tree structure.

2. Click on the Education page.

3. Click on the Page tab.

4. Input the HTML Title of the page with the value "Our Education".

5. Click on the Save button when you are ready.

You also have the option to rename the current page, change the display language of the current page, again change the HTML title, change the type of the current page, and change the option whether the current page should be hidden or not.

You can also provide a Friendly URL for this page. For example, you can create a URL for the page "Education" as "http://localhost:8080/user/admin/awards".

If many parameters are passed in, through the URL, the portal URL becomes very long and difficult to read. However, you can give your page a Friendly URL to make it easier to read and access.
You already have the Education page in your Organization (Bureau), and further, you could set up another page, Others exactly like the Education page. For this, you can use the Copy Page function. Just select the Education page that you want to copy from the drop-down next to the Copy Page and click the Save button while editing the Others page. Your current page, Others, will be an exact copy of the Education page you have selected except for the page's name.

4. Delete a page

If you do not want the page Education for some reason, you can delete it. You can delete the pages under Manage Pages:

1. Locate the page you want to delete in the left-hand tree structure.

2. Click the Education page.

3. Click the Page tab.

4. Click the Delete button.

5. A screen will appear asking if you want to delete the selected page. Click the OK button to confirm.

Figure 1.6. Theme

5. Changing Themes

Themes are hot deployable plugins which can completely transform the look and feel of the portal. Themes customize the overall look and feel of your site. The themes in Oromia portal are divided into two categories: regular browsers and mobile devices; for the time being only the regular browsers are being used. By using themes, you can easily switch among different presentational layers.

To change the theme in your portal:

1. 
   Click on the Manage Pages from the dock.
   
2. 
   From the Manage Pages Form select the Look and Feel tab, a form which looks like Figure 1.6 will appear.
   
3. 
   At the bottom of this form select one of the themes which are inside Available Themes.
   
4. 
   Select the Return to Full page, and then you will see the change on the themes.
   

2.