Currently, the web designers design the portal's look and feel via a web based UI -  which they may not be entirely comfortable with.

Wouldn't it be nice if portals provide a method by which the designer is able to use professional web design tools that he is already familiar with to create a beautiful looking portal.

Well, now its possible. For more details on how, click here.
For screencasts on how it can be done, click here.

This feature is available as part of Portal Server 7.2.

Documentum portlets are now available for Sun Java System Portal Server. These portlets from Documentum provide Documentum Content Management functionality, including tasks like creating, locating, viewing and managing all types of content. Documentum eRoom, Web Publisher and ECI Services portlets can now be integrated and deployed in Sun Java System Portal Server.

The following screencast demonstrates integration and deployment of these portlets in Sun Java System Portal Server -- Documentum Portlets Screencast .

Here is a new voice-over screencast that demonstrates the IPC StoryBoard feature for NetBeans 5.5/5.5.1 IDE. In this screencast, I have explained the IPC StoryBoard feature with the help of a fund transfer portlet application created in NetBeans 5.5.1 IDE, following the procedure in Uma's tutorial.

Thanks to Satya, Vihang, and Deepak for providing feedback. I would also like to thank Anjana Rudra for graciously lending her voice and Manu Samuel from the IEC Media design team for the production support.

Watch the screencast and look out for more in the future.

There are 4 portal samples available with Portal Server 7.  Here's a quick overview of each sample and pointers to the screencasts available for the samples.

•  The  Community Sample showcases community and collaboration features that allow users to interact with colleagues, customers, business partners and suppliers.  Here's a few screencasts you'll want to checkout: an overview of the Community Sample screencast, Private Communities screencast, and a screencast that demonstrates the usage of Communities

• The Enterprise Sample is a business portal based on a fictitious company named Adventure Sports Café and showcases key features of the Sun Java™ System Portal Server.  Checkout the screencast

• The Developer Sample highlights content that would be helpful to a developer trying to understand the inner workings of the Sun Java™ System Portal Server. Checkout the screencast
  

The fourth sample is the Welcome Sample which is a welcome page that provides a single point of access to the portal samples and pointers to the product documentation and support.

Coordination remains one of the most talked about topics with respect to portlets. And one of the popular means of enabling portlet coordination is via the event model.

The Eventing (also referred to as Inter-Portlet Communication) feature in the Sun Java System Portal Server as well as the decoupled Portlet Container component built out of the OpenPortal community now has tools support in the form of an IPC Story Board feature in the NetBeans Portal Pack.

Check out Satya's blog entry introducing this feature, and especially the screencast that illustrates usage via a sample Shopping Cart application.  

Also note that the upcoming new versions of the Portal Standards, Portlet 2.0 (JSR286) and WSRP 2.0, will provide support for  portlet coordination through more than one mechanism including events. Support for those will also similarly make it's way into the Portal Pack.

Delegated Administration is another one of the new features in the upcoming Sun Java System Portal Server 7.2 release.

The Delegated Administration feature allows ordinary users other than the super administrator to administer/manage Portal Server resources.

I have recorded a screencast to give a preview of this new feature. It shows how a super administrator can assign delegation of existing portal resources to other portal delegated administrators.

Check out the screencast here -- Portal Delegated Administration Screencast

As indicated in an earlier posting, one of the main features of the future Portal Server 7.2 release will be the Desktop Design Tool. 

The Desktop Design Tool will be an easy to use tool for portal administrators to design and customize a portal page's layout and theme.

To give a preview of this upcoming feature, I have recorded a screencast that shows how this tool can be used for adding new content, changing the layout of the page by rearranging  tabs and channels, and finally, changing the theme of the page.

Check out the screencast here -- Portal Desktop Design Tool Screencast

A previous posting (also this) had introduced the Communities/Collaboration feature set which was one of the big themes behind Sun Java System Portal Server 7.

To show where that whole area is logically evolving into next, Maneesha has recorded another screencast that highlights the notion of Private Communities, Community Management and more..

So check out the screencast here -- Private Communities in Sun Java System Portal Server 7

The OpenPortal Portlet Container provides a custom way to perform eventing between portlets. I have created a NetBeans plugin  demonstrated in the EventingDemo which depicts how easy it is to write portlets which generate and consume events.

The NetBeans plugin with the upcoming Netbeans 6 release, makes it easy to drag and drop the Java code for the portlet to generate/receive events. It also introduces appropriate XML entries in the custom xml file required by the Portlet Container.

The OpenPortal Project  will soon have a Content Management System (CMS)  infrastructure and an open CMS out of the box . This CMS, currently implemented as a Document Management System  is JSR170 (JCR standards) compliant and uses Apache's Jackrabbit and Object Content Mapping (OCM) .

  The interesting part is that Document Management  functionality is exposed via tag libraries where the tags can be dragged and dropped in the portlet page and developer can have his/her own  CMS presentation . For this we have the NetBeans plugin . Check this out in the CMSDemo . This CMS solution is in progress and we plan to enhance it further for Article Management, Jobs Management and Ad Management.

Portlet Container 1.0 FCS is now available as part of the Java Application Platform SDK Update 3 Preview release. You can download the same from here.  Here are some links to related resources

• Release Notes
• Installation Instructions
• Screencast: Learn how to deploy and test portlets using the Portlet Container
• Article: Understanding the Portlet Container 1.0 Software and Deploying Portlets

The Netbeans Portlet Plug-ins help developers to develop, deploy and test portlets on to the Portlet Container 1.0.  There are new versions of the Portlet Plug-ins that are now available that work with the above Portlet Container version. The Netbeans Portlet Plug-ins are available as the part of  Java EE 5 Tools Bundle Update 3 Preview.

Checkout Deepak's  and Satya's blog for more details.

This Portlet Container open source project milestone 1 beta is now available as the part of Java Application Platform SDK Update 2 release. You can download the same from here.  Here are some of the links to the documentation.

• Portlet Container Release Notes
• Portlet Container Installation Instructions
• Portlet Container Screencasts
• Article: Understanding the Portlet Container 1.0 Beta Software and Deploying Portlets

The Netbeans Portlet Plugin is also available which works with NetBeans IDE 5.5 or above, current release of NetBeans Portlet Plugin helps developers to develop, deploy and test portlets on the Portlet Container 1.0,  You can download the same from here .  Here are some links to the plugins documentation

• NetBeans Portlet Plugin 1.0 Release Notes
  
• NetBeans Portlet Plugin 1.0 Installation Instructions
  
• Article on Developing Portlets using NetBeans Portlet Plugin
  
• Other Articles and User guides available on netbeans.org

For more details refer to Deepak's and Satya's blogs.