How can I specify the Home Portal Account using Notes preferences?

To use IBM® Lotus Notes® features that require an IBM WebSphere® Portal server, such as composite applications that contain portlets, you need a home portal account.

About this task

Your administrator will typically create a home portal account for you. However, you can create and modify some aspects of your home portal account using the Home Portal Account preference.

The following considerations are helpful as you work with home portal account options.

The IBM Lotus® Domino® administrator uses a security policy document to control the following three account fields:
- Home portal server -- Specifies the name of the Portal Server that host Notes® user accounts.
- Authentication URL -- Specifies the URL that Notes users need to access in order to authenticate with the Portal Server.
- Authentication type -- Specifies the Web-based authentication type.
  Note: Policy will update the Home Portal Account with whatever the administrator specified, as long as the updated information passes validation. See the Domino Administrator help at www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/domino.
Policy settings override preference settings and create the account if one does not already exist. The home portal account is used by composite applications that contain portlets and can be used by any other client applications to access applications on the portal server.
Home portal account information is stored in the Contacts database.
Administrators should note that there is a similar preference page available in the Lotus Expeditor client user interface; see the Lotus Expeditor help at the following Web address. Look for release updates as they become available at www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/expeditor.
publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ledoc/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.pvc.runtime.doc.user/tasks/user_specifyingahomeportalpage.html
If the home portal server specified is not available, an error message will appear when a server update check occurs.
The standard portal context is /wps and the standard Portal Personalized Home is /myportal.
User details about Notes accounts and security are available in the Notes help system. The IBM Lotus Domino Administrator help at www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/domino also describes accounts and security in detail, including the Portal Server Basics security page.

Procedure

Click File > Preferences > Home Portal Account > .
In the Name field, note the preset Home Portal Account value or type a new one.
In the Description field, type a descriptor such as Home Portal Account.
In the Type field, note the preset value or enter a server type.
In the Server field, type the Web address of your WebSphere Portal server, for example abx8.ibm.com/wps.
Note: Include the Portal context, for example /wps, when specifying the server URL, as shown below:

-- abx8.lotus.com:10038/wps is a valid server URL.

-- abx8.lotus.com:10038/ is not a valid server URL.
In the User Name and Password fields, type your WebSphere Portal user name and password.
In the Home Portal URL field, type the URL of the WebSphere Portal server, for example abx8.lotus.com:10038/wps/myportal.
Note: By default, this field is based on the value specified in the Server field above. For example, if you specify a Server value of abx:10038/wps, the Home Portal URL field would automatically be set to abx8.lotus.com:10038/wps/myportal. If your Websphere Portal server is installed with a context other than the default "MyPortal", you need to override the default value in the Home Portal URL field, for example abx8.lotus.com:10038/wps/myPortalSrv1.
In the Authentication URL field, type the authenticating server URL, for example abx8.ibm.com/wps/j_security_check.
Note: The format for the authentication value is protocol://host/WpsContextRoot /j_security_check.

Note: The default authentication URL is abx8.ibm.com/wps/portal/cxml/04_SD9ePMtCP1I800I_KydQvyHFUBADPmuQy. If the default home of your port is not "portal," modify the authentication URL accordingly, for example, for default home "bos," the authentication URL would be abx8.ibm.com/red/bos/cxml/04_SD9ePMtCP1I800I_KydQvyHFUBADPmuQy.
In the Authentication Type field, choose a type such as J2EE-Form or HTTP.
Optional: Click Show Synchronization in the Open list and in preferences to enable display of the Synchronization option in the Notes Open list and in the preferences list. These synchronization options pertain to synchronizing portal applications you might be using with Lotus Notes.
Note: Synchronizing portal applications is documented in the Portal applications catalog section of Notes help.
Click OK.