Summary
Micro-site Manager is an app that allows portal administrators to delegate site administration functions to other users. With these app portal users can request sites creation, and the Site Request Manager designated by the portal administrator can see and process those requests accordingly.
Installation
Micro-site Manager plugin installation is fairly simple. The installation steps are as follows:
- Obtain the Micro-site Manager app from the Liferay Marketplace.
- Deploy the app in your existing out of the box Liferay installation. If you haven't installed Liferay, please download and follow the instructions to do so.
- Go to site page where you intend to add Micro-site Manager app.
- Add the "Micro-site Manager" application to the page.
Assign the Site Request Manager role (automatically created by this app) to a user and update the permissions.
- Go to Control Panel.
- Click Roles option.
Find the role "Site Request Manager"
Click "Actions" and select "Define Permissions", then add the following permissions:
Finally you will need to assign this role to the users that you want.- Go to Control Panel.
- Click Roles option.
In Roles list click "Actions" in Site Request Manager role and click "Assign Members"
After adding the "Micro-site Manager" application to a page, click on the small gear icon and select "Configuration", then modify the permissions as the following image shows and save the changes.
- Only Owner and Site Request Manager (this is the role you have just created) roles should have the View permission.
Then the admin or web master user has to select which site templates can be used by the Micro-site Manager app, so once a Site Template is created, user will find a checkbox in Site Template Settings to define that.
When the application is deployed, every user can access a new section in the "My Sites" portlet, here they will be able to see any request that they have made and send new site requests:
When sending a new site requests, users only have to provide a name and a short description that will be processed by a Site Request Manager user.
Site Request Managers users will be able to receive the site request and update the status so others are aware of the work being done.
- All request start as pending.
- If the status is updated to processing, it means a Site Request Manager user is already working on creating the new site.
- If the status is updated to rejected, it means a Site Request Manager user declined the request and no site will be created.
- When the status is in processing but a Site Request Manager chooses the cancel option, the request will return to pending.
- When the status changes to completed, it means the site is available to use an can be found in the "My Sites" portlet.
When the status is processing, the Site Request Manager can choose whether to make the requesting user a Site Administrator of the site or not. The Site Request Manager can check and select the site using the drop down menu. The drop down menu contains all the previously created micro sites. It's important to mark the option Allow Manual Membership Management in order to be able to add Administrators directly using the Micro Sites Requests view.
Once the Site Request Manager selected the Site from the drop down menu and updated the status as Complete, there will be a log in the User Settings cell if the requesting user was set as an Administrator of the site. As can be seen in the above image.
When a Site Request Manager user chooses to reject a request, he/she can include a message indicating the reason why the request is being rejected.
Now the users with the role just created ("Site Request Manager") will be able to create new sites using the following form that is in the app:
Form Fields:
Name: Site name that will be shown to the users.
Description: Short description of the site (if desired).
Friendly URL: URL to be shown in the address bar, it generates itself while typing the name, but user can change it if desired.
Membership Type: Here user can select the type of membership that will be used on the site. (It can be changed later in the site configuration section in control panel). The types of memberships include:
Open: Users can join at their will. Restricted: Only administrators of the site or organization can add users but users are able to see the site. Private: Users can no see the site and can only be added by an administrator.
Allow Manual Membership Management: This allows for the manual assignment of users on the site, if not selected organization administrators will be the only ones available to add users.
Site Template: List of available templates for site creation.
Enable Propagation of Changes: If the site template used is modified its changes will be reflected on sites which have this field enabled.
Notifications
The application automatically sends user notifications for the following events:
- New Site Request, all users with the Micro Site Manager role assigned will get these. The notification can be clicked to access directly the Site Request list.
- Site Request Completed / Rejected for the user that submitted the request. The notification can be clicked to open the new micro site if the request was completed, in case the request was rejected the user will go to the request list to see the response from the manager.
Known Issues
To use custom Site Templates to create micro sites at least Liferay 6.2 EE SP1 is needed.
Code repository
The latest source code is located at the following location:
https://github.com/rivetlogic/liferay-microsite-manager
Contact Us
We welcome feature/bug reports concerning Micro-site Manager app. Discussion helps to clarify the ways the app can be used and also helps define directions for future development. Please post your concerns at http://issues.rivetlogic.com/browse/LRA