Creating Portal Engine templates

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Portal Engine templates can be used to build the content and design of the administration interface. Each template may be assigned to any number of UI elements.

Use the following process to create UI templates:

  1. Open the Administration interface application and switch to the Page templates tab.
  2. Select a category for the template under the UI templates section of the tree.
  3. Click New template.
  4. Type a name for the re-usable template into the Template display name field.
  5. Click Save.
  6. On the General tab, set the Template type to: UI page
  7. Click Save.
  8. Build the structure and content of the template:
    1. Edit the page layout on the Layout tab.
    2. Add web parts on the Design tab.

Developers can now select the new template when adding or editing UI elements:

  1. Open the Modules application.
  2. Edit your custom module.
  3. Switch to the User interface tab and select the appropriate UI element in the tree.
  4. On the General tab, make sure the element’s Type is: Page template
  5. Select your new Page template.
  6. Click Save.

The content of the administration interface page represented by the given UI element is now based on the template.

Managing page templates

To access the main management interface for all page templates in the system, navigate to Administration interface -> Page templates. The system organizes templates into categories. You can edit individual templates by selecting them in the category tree.

When editing templates, you can set the following page template properties on the General tab:

Page template property

Description

Template display name

The name of the template displayed to users in the administration interface.

Template code name

A unique identifier of the template.

Category

Sets the category where the template is stored in the page template catalog.

Template description

Here you can enter a description for the template. Displayed when selecting templates for UI elements.

Thumbnail

Allows you to set the image that represents the template in the page template selection catalog.

You can choose between two types of images:

  • Image – upload a standard image file (for example a png).
  • Font icon class – select a CSS class that defines a font icon.

Template type

The following types of page templates are available:

  • Dashboard page – provides a template for widget dashboard sections of the administration interface.
  • UI page – functions as a template for pages of the administration interface. Can be assigned to UI elements.

Editing the XML source of a template’s web parts

The system stores the content and configuration of web parts placed on page templates as XML data. If you cannot use the Design tab due to an error caused by an incorrectly configured web part, you can fix the issue on the Web parts tab of the given page template’s editing interface. The tab allows you to edit the XML source directly.

  • You can modify the values of properties for all web parts on the template.
  • You can remove web parts from the template by deleting entire <web part> elements.