OK, it's time to reveal what's new in the latest versions of the portal, and even reveal some behind the scenes stuff. The features described here relate to SAP NetWeaver 2004 SP Stack 20 (out to customers as of late April), as well as SAP NetWeaver 7.0 SP Stack 12 (out to customers as of late May). By the way, SAP NetWeaver 7.0 is the new name for SAP NetWeaver 2004s.
The Feature List
Drumroll please ... the list of new features for 2004 SP20, which also were added to 7.0 in SP12 or earlier (I will dedicate upcoming blogs to providing more details about the first two features):- Portal Localization: Anonymous users can now set the portal language with a dropdown list in the portal masthead. Administrators can enable/disable this feature with a property in the masthead. And developers can write applications that set the language by modifying the sessionLocale session property. More on this in an upcoming blog.
- Dynamic (Forced) URLs for URL iViews: You can now define the URL of a URL iView at runtime. More on this in an upcoming blog.
- Navigation Cache: A new implementation of the navigation cache has been intorduced, improving performance even more, especially in cases where there are great number of role combinations. The new implementation also provides greater control of caching, providing configuration per connector and better adminitration tools. The new navigation cache mechanism was described in my blog Changes in the Navigation Cache.
- Keeping the Navigation Panel Closed: A new property value has been added to the Initial State of Navigation Panel property of the detailed navigation iView (DTN) so that pages/iViews are always displayed with the panel closed, even if there is content in the panel and even if the user has opened it previously.
- Related Links Wrapping: A new property called Enable Text Wrapping in Related Linksenables text wrapping in the related links iView, so you do not get a scrollbar that would otherwise be needed to view long navigation node names. This property already exists for the DTN.
- Link in Page Title to Let Users Report Problem: You can use a new property in the Page Title Bar to display a link that enables users to create error messages that appear in the SAP Solution Manager. For more information about setting up reporting by end users, see Creating a Service Message
- Desktop Editor: Now you can quickly locate the framework pages and themes that are part of a desktop. In the desktop editor, select the item and click on Locate in Portal Catalog. The item is then selected within the Portal Catalog.
SAP NetWeaver 7.0 (SP12) Only
The following features were added to 7.0 only:- Floating Aliases: Sounds spooky, but its actually quite simple: each system defined in the PCD can have one or more aliases. When a system is deleted, its aliases are deleted. But if a system is in an improper way, the system may be deleted but the aliases remain. And the aliases can no longer be used, or deleted. This can happen, for example, when deleting a system with the PCD Inspector tool.
- The floating alias editor -- located at System Administrattion --> System Configuration --> Floating Aliases -- enables you see any floating aliases, and to remove them.
- Federated Portal Network (FPN): A whole mess of stuff was updated for implementing a federated portal network, to much to detail here. In the next several months we hope to dedicate an entire month of articles to the important topic of FPN, so keep a look out. When SP12 is released, later this month, you can check the portal release notes for more details about the FPN changes.
- XML Content and Actions: One small change was that many of the FPN objects and tasks can be accomplished with the XML Content and Actions tool -- creating a consumer, registering to a producer, setting proxy settings. The current documentation on the XML Content and Actions tool is located Portal How-to Guides for SAP NetWeaver 2004. Look out for the new version of How To Automate Content Creation when SP12 is released.
53 Comments
