Check out the Content Explorer page for up-to-date information about the former Portal Explorer (now Content Explorer).
This page is obsolate and will no longer be updated.
Portal Explorer
From Sense/Net 6.0 Wiki
|
Important:
In Sense/Net 6.0 Beta 3 we have changed the naming and assembly structure of the product. Most notably Portal File System (PFS) became Sense/Net Content Repository (SNCR) and SenseNet Portal Engine and the SenseNet.PortalEngine .NET namespace has been deprecated as being the central part of the product. For more information, consult Beta 3 Changes.
|
Contents |
[edit] What is Portal Explorer?
The most important thing about the Portal Explorer is that Portal Explorer does not exsist anymore. :)
The Portal Explorer was renamed to Content Explorer in the Beta 3 release. This page is obosolete and will no longer be updated. Check out the Content Explorer page for up-to-date information about the former Portal Explorer (now Content Explorer).
Have you ever tried to reach a document or a folder deeply buried beneath countless layers of incoherent mess of data on a system you were not familiar with? Now this is what you will never experience while working with Sense/Net 6.0 thanks to our Portal Explorer which works and looks almost exactly the same way as Microsoft’s Windows Explorer.
Take a look at this figure below, does it look familiar?
This how our Portal Explorer looks like. The whole concept behind it is „what you see is what you get”, so every button, every icon works as you expect it to work.
Basically, Portal Explorer is the system in which you will manage every sort of tasks that turn up. It’s graphical user interface is designed to be the most efficient tool for working with various types of contents organized in Folders in a tree-structure.
|
Tips & Tricks:
Important note: Note that every kind of data used in your portal (documents, users, forum entries, texts, pictures, etc.) are all referred to as „content”.
|
With Portal Explorer you can list and view all types of contents, organized in a clear and articulate tree-structure. And not only you can view them but you can easily modify any settings of these contents as well. This is the interface where you will upload your new content materials, set the permission settings of users and admins, etc.
As you can see the interface is divided into three segments. On the left you can see the folders of the portal in a clear tree-structure. This works exactly as you might got used to in several other applications: it is hierarchically structured and alphabetically ordered. Next to every folder there is a small „+” button, pressing it it will open the selected path with all contents along it.
Clicking on one of the folders will display its content in the middle section of the interface. All kinds of content and all types files are shown here with their details.
In the right section of the user interface you can find the Data Sheet. Clicking on any content (folders or files) will display its detailed information on versioning and security.
The toolbar is situated above these three sections:
We will discuss all the available options offered by Portal Explorer later in this document, now let’s see some basic applications first just to make you familiar with it.
[edit] Getting started with Portal Explorer
In this chapter we will show you how to create, delete and move and copy folders and files (or any type of content), and how to upload files to the portal system.
- How to upload content using Portal Explorer?
- How to create a folder using Portal Explorer?
- How to copy and move folders using Portal Explorer?
- How to delete content using Portal Explorer?
- What's new in Portal Explorer 2?
[edit] How Portal Explorer works
In this chapter we are trying to introduce the parts of Portal Explorer to you.
As you can see on this picture below, Portal Explorer's graphical interface is divided to three distinct sections. On the left and in the middle section, you can see the files and folders containing every kind of data (content) in an articulate tree-structure. This is the Portal File System (PFS).
Portal Explorer works in a WYSIWYG way, that means exerything works, in a way you expect it to work, in other words: works as you got used to.
- double click: PE can manage double clicks just like in Windows, it opens files and folders.
- multiple file selection: hold down "shift" or "ctrl" button and you can multiselect files, no need to select them individually, one by one. This will unburden the work of designers and portal builders.
|
Information:
Portal Explorer organizes the content of all folders to in a way that only 25 elements of the given folder is displayed on the screen at once. In order to view other files in the folder you have to use the next/previous page buttons at the bottom of Portal Explorer's middle section. This feature makes Portal Explorer significantly faster and more reliable, but comes with slight disadvantage: if you upload a file to a folder that has more than 25 elements in it, the file might not be visible on the first page - for example the elements of the folder are organized in alphabetical order, and your file's name is XYZ.doc, it will most likely be displayed on the last page of the folder's content.
The other thing worth a mention is that you can organize contents in a folder by their names, date of modification and by the names of the modifiers. However, you can only organize the elements on the page that is displayed (the 25 elements of the folder) by these attributes. This will be corrected soon.
|
[edit] Portal File System
Portal File System is an essential repository where all kinds of entities –documents, contents, custom objects, system files, images, style sheets etc. – are stored. Basically the Portal File System is the underlying structure of the Portal Explorer, PFS is the footing on wich a portal can be built by using Sense/net 6.0.
The PFS provides services for all contents, such as
- storing Content in a tree structure (Taxonomy)
- storing and indexing metadata for fast search and filtering
- check in and check out
- versioning and version history
- managing permissions in a hierarchical way
- delegation of permission settings
- friendly URL
- event model and workflow interface
With the help of the Portal Explorer these objects can easily be administered. Editing, adding, deleting and moving these entities is incredibly simple and straightforward. At the same time for the developer the PFS is the tool that makes the definition and handling objects a real ease.
Objects within the PFS are stored in a tree which makes the backend of the portal both structured and easily administrable. It also forces developers to organize the data stored within – the PFS was not designed to store a large amount of unstructured information but instead to efficiently manage structured entities and connections between.
When using the PFS either as an administrator or a developer maintaining a clean structure is vital for all applications. Building the tree with a logical hierarchy and assigning proper names for entities (nodes) is the way to do so.
On this screenshot above you can see the middle section of Portal Explorer's graphical user interface. Whenever you select a file or folder in the tree-structure of the PFS the contents of the respective folders will be displayed here. In this section you can check when a particular file was modified, who modified it, whether it is being checked out or not. You can view and download the individual files by clicking the 
icon in line with the file's name.
