Sas Information Delivery Portal User Manual

SAS® Information Delivery Portal 4.3: Introduction

SAS® Documentation

The correct bibliographic citation for this manual is as follows: SAS Institute Inc. 2010. SAS® Information Delivery Portal 4.3: Introduction. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.

SAS® Information Delivery Portal 4.3: Introduction

1st printing, August 2010

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What's New in SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Chapter 1 • Overview of the SAS Information Delivery Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

What Is the SAS Information Delivery Portal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Information in the Context of Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Main Features of the Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Accessibility Features in the SAS Information Delivery Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Where to Find More Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Chapter 2 • How Content Is Organized in the Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The Portal's Graphical Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Overview of Content Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Types of Content That the Portal Can Contain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

About Portlets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Types of Portlets That Are Included with the Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Chapter 3 • Viewing and Managing Portal Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Overview of Viewing and Managing Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Viewing a SAS Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Viewing an Information Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Viewing Stored Process Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Searching for Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Using Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Viewing and Sharing Information That Is Published to Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Chapter 4 • Personalizing Your Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Overview of Personalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Options for Adding and Managing Personal Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Options for Managing Portal Organization and Appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Sample Personalized Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Chapter 5 • Portal Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Overview of Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Portal Development Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Administration and Deployment Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

iv Contents

What's New in SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3

Overview

The SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3 includes a number of general enhancements, a new report portlet, and SAS BI portlets. New promotion scripts are available to enable you to promote Portal content from previous releases.

General Enhancements

• A new Customize menu is available from the banner. Some options from the Options menu have been moved to the Customize menu to improve usability.

• The Options menu has been modified to improve usability. Some of the selections have been reordered, and others have been moved to the new Customize menu.

• Depending on the software that has been installed, the portal now uses SAS Web Report Studio or SAS Web Report Viewer to display SAS Information Maps.

• Data explorations are no longer available from the portal. Any data explorations from earlier versions of SAS have been converted to reports.

• The Information Map Viewer portlet is no longer available. You can use the new report portlet to display reports with data from information maps. Any Information Map Viewer portlets from previous versions of SAS have been converted to report portlets.

• Publishing SAS Information Maps is no longer supported.

Report Portlet

A new report portlet displays the output from SAS reports.

SAS BI Portlets

Depending on the features that you have installed, SAS BI portlets might be available within the SAS Information Delivery Portal. SAS BI portlets are portlets that conform to the JSR

vi What's New in SAS Information Delivery Portal 4.3

168 standard and can be deployed in both the SAS Information Delivery Portal and in thirdparty Web portals.

Promotion Scripts

A new set of promotion scripts enables you to promote Information Delivery Portal content from previous releases. You can promote content from SAS 9.1.3 and from previous releases of SAS 9.2.

Chapter 1

Overview of the SAS Information Delivery Portal

What Is the SAS Information Delivery Portal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Information in the Context of Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Main Features of the Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Accessibility Features in the SAS Information Delivery Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Where to Find More Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

What Is the SAS Information Delivery Portal?

The SAS Information Delivery Portal (or simply, the portal) is a Web application that provides a single, easy-to-use interface from which you can access a broad range of enterprise information. This information includes reports, charts, Web applications, documents, and links to internal or external Web pages. The portal gives you access to information that is produced through the analytical capabilities of SAS, and provides a single access point to SAS output.

Your organization can use the portal to deliver important and timely business intelligence efficiently to employees, customers, partners, and vendors. The portal provides a secure environment for your business intelligence so that users see only the information that they have security rights to access.

The portal's personalization features enable you to create and customize your own Web pages and content. You can organize your personal portal so that it contains only the information that you need, in the format that makes the most sense to you. From the portal, you can subscribe to publication channels that deliver continually updated information to your desktop. The portal also provides a secure environment for sharing information with other users.

Information in the Context of Roles

The power of the portal is its ability to deliver the right information to the right person at the right time.

Although the portal can provide access to enterprise-wide information, all users in your organization might not need or want to view the exact same information. With the portal,

2 Chapter 1 • Overview of the SAS Information Delivery Portal

information can be organized and presented to users according to their roles in the organization.

Consider the following sample roles and requirements:

• Executives must respond quickly to external market forces, manage internal organizational changes, and develop strategies that improve their business.

• Sales managers must understand the problems that prospective clients face in order to provide adequate solutions for those problems.

• Customer service representatives must monitor both their customers and their competitors to find the best combination of superior service and low cost.

• Engineers require a clear understanding of customer requirements. They must stay informed about technical advances in their field and be able to measure the relative value of one feature over another in the products that they design.

• To make cost-effective purchases, purchase managers and IT administrators require adequate information about suppliers. Managers also need a clear understanding of the infrastructure and tools that employees need to do their jobs.

• Managers in the Human Resources department must develop competitive compensation packages in order to attract and retain the best people, while serving the organization's cost-saving strategies.

The roles vary with each organization, but the premise remains the same: different people require different types of information to make good decisions or to do their jobs.

Main Features of the Portal

The portal provides the following main features:

• delivers customized information securely to users within and outside of your organization

• enables users to access a range of content, including SAS Information Maps, SAS Stored Processes, SAS publication channels and packages, SAS reports, documents, syndication channels, and links to Web addresses

• gives individual users control over the content and organization of information in their personal workspace

• provides multiple ways for users to access information, including subscriptions to publication channels, search capability, and the ability to add and customize Web pages

• allows sharing of information in a secure environment via e-mail messages, publication channels, and posting to a WebDAV repository

Note: WebDAV is an abbreviation for Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning.

WebDAV is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol that enables users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote Web servers.

• provides single sign-on, so users can launch applications, such as SAS Web Report Studio, from the portal without the need to re-enter their user name and password

• provides a portlet API for use in developing Web applications and custom portlets

Where to Find More Information 3

Accessibility Features in the SAS Information Delivery Portal

For information about accessibility for the SAS Information Delivery Portal, see the portal Help. If you have questions or concerns about the accessibility of SAS products, send email to accessibility@sas.com.

Where to Find More Information

This introduction provides an overview of the portal and describes portal usage at a high level. However, the introduction does not include instructions for related tasks.

You can find more information about the tasks and concepts described in this introduction in the following documents:

Document Topics

Help Describes the different types of content that the portal can

contain.

Provides step-by-step instructions that explain how to view, create, and edit pages, portlets, and other portal content.

Describes how to personalize the portal so that it contains only the information users need, in the format that makes the most sense to them.

Explains how to publish and subscribe to publication channels.

(To view the online Help, you must have access to the SAS Information Delivery Portal. Click the Help link in the banner of the portal.)

SAS Intelligence Platform: Web Application Administration Guide

Describes the portal environment and explains how to complete the following tasks:

• deploy portlets and Web applications

• customize and deploy themes

• manage portal users and groups, and control access to portal content

• add reports, information maps, stored processes, documents, and other content to the portal

• configure default values for user preferences

• promote portal content from previous releases

Developing Portlets for the SAS Information Delivery Portal

Explains how to develop custom portlets that can run in the portal.

4 Chapter 1 • Overview of the SAS Information Delivery Portal

Document Topics

Developing JSR-168-Compliant Portlets for the SAS Information Delivery Portal

Explains how to develop and deploy custom portlets that comply with the JSR 168 specification.

Chapter 2

How Content Is Organized in the Portal

The Portal's Graphical Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Overview of Content Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Types of Content That the Portal Can Contain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

About Portlets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Types of Portlets That Are Included with the Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Basic SAS Portlets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

SAS BI Portlets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Other Portlets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

The Portal's Graphical Interface

Before you attempt to understand how content is organized in the portal, it's helpful to explore the portal's graphical interface. Here is an example of a portal:

Note: Your organization might customize the portal so that it looks different from the

example shown here.

6 Chapter 2 • How Content Is Organized in the Portal

You can use the following elements to navigate between different areas of the portal:

Navigation bar The navigation bar contains links for your portal Web pages. You open a different page by clicking its name in the navigation bar. In the display, the portal's Home page is the active Web page. Notice that the Home link is highlighted on the navigation bar.

Portlets Portlets are the rectangular display components of a portal page that contain links, graphs, reports, and other information that is available in the portal. You can edit the contents of some portlets. To edit, remove, or minimize a portlet, use the icons in the portlet title bar. For more information about portlets, see “About Portlets” on page

Banner links To perform portal tasks, use the banner links as follows:

• Click Customize and Options in the banner to display menus that you can use to

personalize your portal. For example, you can add and remove pages, change the appearance of your pages, rearrange portal elements, create portal content, and

perform other tasks. For more information about personalization, see “Overview

of Personalization” on page 27.

• Click Search to find content that you are authorized to access.

• To log off the portal, click the Log Off link.

Portal links To view information or to launch applications that are available to you through the portal, click any active link that is displayed inside a portlet.

Overview of Content Organization

Before you can view reports, graphs, and other information, someone in your organization (typically a portal administrator or a group content administrator) must make that information available to the portal. When the content is available, you can add that content to your portal.

The portal uses pages and portlets to organize information. To add content to a portal, you first create one or more pages, then add portlets to those pages, and finally add the content that you want to the portlets.

Types of Content That the Portal Can Contain 7

Note: You can perform most of the tasks that are associated with adding content by using

the Customize and Options menus on the banner. For links to documents that explain how to perform these tasks, see “Where to Find More Information” on page 3.

Types of Content That the Portal Can Contain

The portal uses a broad definition of the word "content" to mean a wide range of information types that might be useful to people in your organization. In general, content falls into the following two main categories:

• SAS content, such as SAS Information Maps, SAS reports, SAS Stored Processes, and packages created by the SAS Publishing Framework. For more information about these content types, see “Overview of Viewing and Managing Content” on page 17.

• Other Web content, including Web applications, documents, links to internal or external Web pages, and syndication channels that provide syndicated, continually updated Web content.

8 Chapter 2 • How Content Is Organized in the Portal

About Portlets

Portlets are the display components of a portal and are used to organize a portal's contents on a page. Here is a sample portlet that contains links to Web sites that provide business or world news.

Each portlet has its own title bar that contains a label and some icons. You can use the icons in a portlet title bar as follows:

•

If the Edit Properties icon is displayed, then you can click this icon to modify the portlet's title, key words, or description. If you are authorized, then you can also share the portlet with a group of users.

• If the Edit Content icon is displayed, then you can click this icon to modify the

content that is displayed in the portlet.

•

If the Remove icon from your portal page.

• You can click the Minimize icon to resize the portlet so that only the title bar is

showing. You can then use the Maximize icon to restore the entire portlet to the page.

The minimized and maximized states are maintained only while you are logged on; they do not persist from one session to another. The default state is the maximized state.

• If the Help icon is displayed, then you can click this icon to display instructions for

using the portlet.

is displayed, then you can click this icon to remove the portlet

Types of Portlets That Are Included with the Portal

Basic SAS Portlets

The portal includes several types of portlets that you can add to pages. Each portlet has features that make the portlet suitable for particular types of content. The following list describes each type of portlet:

• A Bookmarks portlet enables you to view and work with content that you find by browsing or by using the search tool. When you find an item of interest, you can bookmark that item, and the item is added automatically to your Bookmarks portlet. Bookmarks enable you to maintain a list of content items that you can refer to later.

Each user has a personal Bookmarks portlet, which can be added to multiple pages. Here is a sample Bookmarks portlet:

Basic SAS Portlets 9

From a Bookmarks portlet, you can do the following tasks:

• add one or more items to a new collection portlet that you create from the

Bookmarks portlet

• publish one or more items to a publication channel

• e-mail the links for one or more items (up to nine) to other users

• remove one or more items from the Bookmarks portlet, or add new items

Note: A button is available only if the button's action can be performed on all selected

items. For example, the Publish button is available if all the selections can be published.

Generally, bookmarks are used to maintain a list of content items for short-term use. For long-term use of content items, you would typically add the items to a collection portlet, and then remove those items from the Bookmarks portlet.

• A Collection portlet contains a list of content items. You can create your own collection portlets for your portal pages. In these collection portlets, you can add an entry for any content item that you are authorized to access.

You can create any number of Collection portlets and add them to your portal pages. Here is a sample Collection portlet:

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