Portal On Device in 10 minutes

Intro

In our modern world, era of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and other weird idioms, all SAP-running companies struggle to adjust to technology changes and developments. A couple of years ago IT support would have one answer to all users - "We support only Internet Explorer". Today, the world, where users choose their own way of working and their own device, IT have no choice - the have to support Chrome, Safari, Firefox - all those that were non-SAP browsers, running on top of Macs and mobile devices, and not only Microsoft operating systems.

Let's see how SAP portal supports all this heterogeneous environment, and allows us accessing it from a mobile device. In most cases, customers have a very similar requirement - to fit a small part of portal content to mobile devices, and hide all that heavy desktop-oriented content from mobile consumers.

The approach that we will use is Portal On Device with content filtering - let's start!

Preparation

First of all, you portal version should be at least 7.30.8, or 7.31.5.

In order to see the right content on your tablet / smartphone, perform following steps in NWA:

1. Under Java System Properties, find a service called "Portal Runtime Container Extension" and set "html5.compliant" property to "iViewDependent"
   
   
2. Under Application Modules, find a module called "com.sap.portal.navigation.helperservice", select it's web module "navigation_events_helper", and set property "FilterbyDesktopView" to 2. Set the property "FilterByExcludedFilterIDs" to be "com.sap.portal.doNotFilter".
   
   All content marked with this value will not be affected by filtering mechanism.
   You can find more information about filtering entry points here
   
   
   
   * Restart the portal instance
3. Go to System Administration -> System Configuration -> Portal Display -> Desktops & Display rules, and copy-paste the following SAP standard folder with tablet desktop to you custom location:
   
   
4. Open the copied portal desktop, and add a framework page to it (by default there is no page assigned)
5. In the same place, set the following filter ID to this desktop: "com.sap.portal.tablet". Later on, you will add this filter ID to content that you wish to expose to mobile devices.
6. Go to System Administration -> System Configuration -> Portal Display -> Desktop & Display Rules, open main rules collection and create a new rule:
   
   
   
   Now you are ready to prepare some mobile-oriented roles and expose them to end users!

Set the desired content

1. Open your current desktop in use, and add following filter ID, which will allow existing non-filtered content to remain in place: com.sap.portal.emptyFilterID
   
2. Copy-paste the standard tablet role from this location:
   
   
   The role will have standard filter ID maintained, so tablet content will not be shown to desktop users.
3. Assign the created role to relevant users through User Management
4. Please note that this role will be filtered by portal desktop settings made during our preparation. Although you assign yourself this role, you will be able to see it's content only on your mobile device. 
   
   In case you receive the following screen, please make sure that you are assigned with a mobile role, and filters you added to portal desktop are not blocking the content.

Once the configuration is done, you will be rewarded with this one:

Full POD guide can be found here.

Next time we will talk about launcher & content modifications and branding applications.

Good luck!