Portal Filter ID Tips and Tricks

[hofmann]

This blog is a follow up to my Using Filter ID in SAP Portal. To conclude the blog I want to share some hints to remember when setting up filter IDs:

	When working with filter IDs to filter the navigation of the user, keep in mind that the filter ID only filters what the navigation will show and not to what the user has access. When the user knows how to find out the underlying PCD path (ROLES or navurl) he can still construct an URL to call link that were filtered out.
	A filter ID can be a number or a word: 10 or Internal or Internal10
	Portal rule: The portal alias has to be in the form portal/alias; as it is defined in web.xml. You cannot use /irj/portal/alias or /portal/alias in the rules collection.
	Filter ID only works for entry points. Not for roles and not for subfolders. When you have to following TLN for a role: You cannot assign a filterID to "Sub Internal" to make it appear in the desktop.
	How the portal is interpreting the filter ID property (parameter: FilterbyDesktopView) is configurable: SAP Help. In the default configuration you activate (true) or deactivate (false) the filter ID feature, but in fact you are not setting true or false values, but 0, 1 or 2. Whereas: 0: Filtering is disabled. 1: Activated. If not matching filter ID is found, all content is displayed. 2: Activated. If no matching filter ID is found, all content without a filter ID is displayed.     To demonstrate the difference in the configuration when setting the parameter to 1 or 2, consider the example of internal and external destop in the previous blog. The parameter is set to true (1). For the internal role you have configured the entry points: Internal -> FilterID for internal desktop Internal 2 -> no filter ID assigned As both internal and external desktops are configured to use a filter ID => Internal 2 won`t show up as an entry point in both desktops. That is true whether you activate Filter ID by setting it to 1 or 2. Example: External has filter ID "External" assigned and External 2 has no filter ID assigned. Both have filter ID "Internal" assigned Now you access the portal via the alias: portal/example and that desktop has the Filter ID "10" assigned.With the parameter FilterbyDesktopView set to 1, the result will be: As the desktop is using a filter ID that no entry point is assigned to, all content will be displayed. With the parameter FilterbyDesktopView set to 2, the result will be:                                                 The selected desktop is using again a filter ID that no entry point is assigned to, but this time only the entry points that have no filter ID will be shown. As the other 3 entry points have either Internal or External as filter ID, only External 2 will be shown.