Deploying a Product Portlet

From OpenQuote

Once you have finished building and testing a product, the next thing you're likely to want to do is to make it available outside of the product development enviroment. This process is described here.

Products can be made available outside of the development environment very easily. A default installation of OpenQuote includes a few examples of this: Here, for example, the Motor Plus Quotation page running on the OpenQuote demo server shows the MotorPlus product running on its own web page. A few things you might notice compared to the sandpit:

• You didn't have to login to see the page. MotorPlus is intended to be available to anyone on the web. You can restrict access if you want to.
• The tools and windows associated with product development are not present.
• The theme - or look & feel - of the page is different. In this case the difference is simply a "Demo" banner (to make it clear that we're not really quoting motor insurance here!) but themes can be radically different (see the Themes and Styles page for some examples).

We'll take the LifePlus product as a basis for the rest of this tutorial. The aim is to take that product from the sandpit into production. Like MotorPlus, we will make access to the quote screens open to anyone.

If you're not familiar with the LifePlus product, it is worth taking a quick look at it in the sandpit. It is a very simple product with just 3 screens. Login to OpenQuote as a product developer (on the demo server, login as "davy"; p/w "davy"). Go to the Sandpit tab, and select LifePlus from the drop down. This will give you a feel for the product.

Contents 1 Steps from sandpit to production 1.1 Creating a portlet instance 1.2 Creating a quotation page 1.3 Creating a window on the page 1.4 Trying it out

Steps from sandpit to production

All of the steps involved can be performed from the OpenQuote web pages. But you will need to be logged in as a user with administration rights. On the demo server login as "admin" with the p/w "admin".

Creating a portlet instance

1. When logged in as an administrator, go to the Admin portal (Click the Admin link on the top right of the screen).
2. Open the "Portlet Definitions" tab.
3. Under "Portlet Name" look for the "Quotation" portlet, and click the "Create instance" link on that line.
4. You will be prompted for an instance name; use "MyLifePlusInstance". then click "Create Instance". Note: You can give an instance any name you like, you'll need the name when we come to create a window shortly.
5. The bar at the top of the portlet now says "Portlet Instances > MyLifePlusInstance details". Click the "Portlet Instance" link in this bar.
6. Search under "Instance id" for "MyLifePlusInstance", and click the "Preferences" link on the same line.
7. The instance only has one preference "product"; click the "product" link in the key column.
8. Replace "Undefined" with "AIL.Demo.LifePlus"; and click "Update" then click "Save"

Creating a quotation page

1. Open the "Portal Objects" tab.
2. In the "Portal" column you'll see a link called "quote". Click on this link.
3. In the quote portal we have one page for each product, so we need to create a new page. Give the page the name "MyLifePlusPage" and click the "Create Page" button. You'll see your new page appear in the list.
4. Click "Theme" on the line next to the new page.
5. Select "quotation" in the "Layout" drop down list and click "Update".

Creating a window on the page

1. Under "Manage MyLifePlusPage page" click the "Page layout" link next to your new page.
2. Next to "Window Name" type "MyLifePlusWindow".
3. Search for "MyLifePlusInstance" in the portlet instance list, and select it.
4. Under "Center Region", click the "Add" button.
5. The bar at the top of the portlet will say "Portals > quote portal > MyLifePlusPage Layout"; click on the "MyLifePlusPage" link in this bar.
6. At the bottom of the portlet; you'll see the new window ("MyLifePlusWindow"), click the "Theme" link next to it.
7. Select "emptyRenderer" for both "Window Renderer" and "Decoration Renderer" and click "Update".

Trying it out

That's it. You will now be able to browse directly to the product at a URL in the form: http://<host>:<port>/portal/portal/quote/MyLifePlusPage. For example, on the demo server the URL for the product we've just setup would be: http://ail-ltd.co.uk:8080/portal/portal/quote/MyLifePlusPage