Set Portal Tabs for all users or group of users

[Sreeni P]

Hi all,
Can any body let me know how to Set Portal Tabs for all users or group of users?

[MFGF]

If you are using the Cognos 8 UI, as an administrator you can set portal tabs a user at a time.  To set them for all/groups of users would probably require a small app via the SDK.

Regards,

MF.

[Sreeni P]

HI MFGF,
Thx for ur reply....how would we re return the Cognos SDK? can u have any idea to do this in efiicient way...i need this ASAP

[MFGF]

Not my area of expertise, unfortunately.  I can spell SDK, but that's about as far as I go! :) Hopefully someone with experience of this may reply.

Regards,

MF.

[larsonr]

Several Examples exist on the support site.  I will admit that the better examples are in Java, but you should be able to translate them to C# if you need to.  Unfortunately, I can't post full code to assist in your problem due to rights and restrictions at work but a basic idea you can implement --

Let's assume you're wanting to set all of the portal tabs for a group of users so they look the same.

Probably the easiest solution is to create a template user with the right tabs in the right order with a home page set
Then the easiest way to prep the user accounts will be to nuke their current portal tab assignments (a great first step to initially get rid of the infamous Public Folders tab) and assign those of the template user.

baseClass in the SDK will be heavily used along with the proper propenums.  My suggestion would be to leverage defaultName, searchPath, portalPages, username, and options to get the information you'll need to set up the portal pages. These propEnums are quite helpful from both their functionality but also logging if you get stumped.

Query the content store and acquire the portal pages of the template user.

Now query the content store for all of the users in a certain group or role.  Remove their portal tabs by assigning their current portalPages to a baseClassArrayProp that is equal to your baseClass array of portal pages of the template user.  Call the content manager service update method (make sure you null out certain uneditable propEnums like username and defaultname so it doesn't try and update those values blowing an exception) and the new portal tabs will be added.

Notes to be careful, My Folders can be tricky if you're trying to preserve it in their default view and using the nuke option, detecting current home page assignments to either reset or preserve them can be tricky as well. 

Let us know if you have success.

[rocket]

Not to sound salesy, but BSP Software's MetaManager does exactly what you're looking for with the Pagelet Blaster.  You can read more here:  http://www.bspsoftware.com/Products/ImplementationBasedSoftware/MetaManagerPowerToolsforIBMCognos/tabid/64/Default.aspx

From the documentation...

Once an IBM Cognos environment has been established, the goal is to ease the user experience and drive adoption. This can be facilitated through the creation of custom pagelets ("portal tabs") within IBM Cognos Connection. Creating, distributing and maintaining custom portal tabs aids in the ease of use of IBM Cognos Connection. Pagelet Blasters allows users to distribute custom portal tabs to any and all named users, groups and roles. Pagelet Blasters also allows the user to set the default home page and reorder the pagelets for users, as well as remove pagelets.

[sir_jeroen]

And don't forget the Impact Suite!!! .. That does the trick also.. (http://www.jeroendegraaff.nl)

[Heba_elfaid]

if you want the same tabs configuration to be applied for all users,you can make a very simple workaround.
you can delete all existing user profiles (if any). then set the user default setting to have your portal tabs, and now once any user begin to use your portal he will get this default setting as his personal one.


all of this steps are done from inside Cognos.

Hope this help you.

Regards,
Heba