Using Filter ID in SAP Portal

[hofmann]

The SAP Portal has the capability to assigned a portal desktop to a user based on the several aspects like group, user ID or the URL used to access the portal. To give the end-user not only a different desktop but also a different navigation based on the assigned desktop you can use the filter ID feature. This gives the content administrator control over what the user can see. For instance, he can use this feature to enable / disable certain navigation points. An employee accessing the portal from outside the company won`t be able to see the same links as when being inside the company. These way users can get an adjusted navigation based on their location or the device used. In this blog I will show how to configure your portal so that a user will have a navigation based on the URL alias.

Assume your portal users are accessing the portal via the portal URL /irj/portal. You now want to differentiate between internal users and external users. To do so, the users will access the SAP Portal by 2 different URLs*:

URL: /irj/portal/internal
URL: /irj/portal/external

(*The task for assigning the user to the correct URL should be of the proxy, firewall or VPN)

To achieve this behavior you need to carry out some configuration on the portal:

1. Activate the filtering feature
2. Configure the portal URLs
3. Create the desktops
4. Assign URL to desktop
5. Assign entry points to desktops

1. Activate the filtering feature
The filter URL feature allows you to assign an entry point an ID and associate this ID to a desktop. The desktop will only show the roles with that ID (therefore: Filter ID). SAP Help. The parameter that has to be enabled is: FilterbyDesktopView.

This service offers more interesting configuration properties like:

• ContentArea
• InnerPage
• SortTypeOfInitialNodes

2. Configure the portal URLs
Create the URL aliases for internal and external access. This is done on the filesystem for your portal. You have to modify the web.xml of the portal (IRJ). The web.xml can be found at:
/netweaver/sap/SID/INST/j2ee/cluster/serverN/apps/sap.com/irj/servlet_jsp/irj/root/web-inf/web.xml
Insert the following configuration:

For the internal URL	portal/internal anonymous=0,proxy=0,low_bandwidth=0,include_in_url=1,include_application_name_in_url=1
For the external URL	portal/external anonymous=0,proxy=0,low_bandwidth=1,include_in_url=1,include_application_name_in_url=1

Restart you portal. Afterwards you have two more URL aliases that users can use to connect to your portal.

3. Create the desktops
As the desktop is responsible for filtering the entry points, you need to create a desktop for each Filter ID. For the external users, create a desktop and assign the filter ID “External”. You need to create a desktop for the internal URL also (Filter ID: Internal)

4. Assign URL to desktop
The new portal aliases (created in step 3) can be used in the portal rules to assign a destop.

5. Assign entry points to desktops
For external and internal users there are different roles:

Filter IDs work on entry points. To assign an entry point to a desktop it is necessary to configure the property Filter ID.

This filter ID assignes the entry point (folder) to the internal desktop. The user in this example works normally in the office and occasionally is a road warrior. Therefore, he has both roles assigned:

When the user now accesses the portal using http://server:port/irj/portal/external he will get presented with the entry points for external users: