Administering the Preload Notice portlet

The Preload Notice portlet can be used to display informational, advertisement, or warning data in the form of a portlet to users before their target page, URL, or portlet is displayed.

Overview

Preload Notices are JSP fragments that can be optionally displayed before a target XDIME page, XDIME portlet, or URL that is accessed from an XDIME page. You can use the Preload Notice portlet to create or modify the attributes of a Preload Notice for a page, URL, or portlet. Preload Notices are configured though Manage Mobile Pages.

The common types of Preload Notices are:

Informational - Contains informational messages that must be viewed by a user before viewing the target content.
Advertisement - Contains promotional material to persuade an end user to purchase a product or to subscribe to a service.
Warning - Warns the user about the target content before deciding to view it.
Custom - Allows the developer to create a custom Preload Notice.

You can define rules that determine when and how often a Preload Notice is to be shown to the requesting device and end user. The rule criteria includes:

Time based - Date range, days of week, and delay time
Total count - Total number of preload notices shown
User group membership - A matching user group membership

Note: In a "config split" environment, in which database domains are shared between separate portal instances on a single server or on a WebSphere® Portal cluster, preload notice data is stored in a centrally located Customization database. For more information, refer to the WebSphere Portal product documentation.

Functional capabilities

From the Preload Notices portlet, you can perform the following tasks:

Create a Preload Notice
Edit a Preload Notice
Enable a Preload Notice
Add Group Membership
Remove Group Membership
Set the frequency of a Preload Notice alert

When you use the Preload Notice portlet to change a portlet's preload notice in a clustered setup, changes made at one node (the primary node) might not be visible at the other node (the secondary node). In order for the changes to take effect, you might need to restart the secondary node.

As an alternative to restarting the secondary node, follow these steps:

On the secondary node, open the WebSphere Portal Administration console.
Navigate to the page that contains the portlets for which you changed the preload notice at the primary node.
Select the portlet whose preload notice you changed.
Click the portlet's Edit Preload Notice icon.
In the display, you will see that the preload notice you selected at the primary node is reflected at the secondary node, but it is not rendered. Click Next.
Click Done.

This action will cause the changes to be visible at the secondary node when the portlet is rendered.

Note: Preload notices are disabled for portlets set to "normal" mode through the Extended Properties portlet. Enabling a preload notice for a page or portlet sets the cache for that node to always expire. Modifying the cache for a node with a preload notice may prevent the preload notice from displaying consistently. JSR168 portlets can dynamically change the remote cache settings, which can also disrupt the accurate display of a preload notice defined for the portlet.

For additional details about performing these tasks, see the online help for the Preload Notice portlet.

Configuration

For information on configuring a Preload Notice, see the Manage Mobile Pages portlet documentation in this information center and the online help for the Manage Mobile Pages portlet.

Preload Notice attributes field descriptions

Field name	Description
Enable Preload Notice	Indicates whether the Preload Notice is enabled or disabled.
Fragment Name	Specifies the relative URL (URI) to the directory containing the preload notice fragment. The fragment directory should be located at the context root and must include a "child" directory called `xdime` which must contain the `default.jsp` file to be loaded as the Preload Notice.
Type	Contains a drop-down list of the Preload Notices types. Valid Preload Notice types are Informational, Advertisement, Warning, or Custom.
Content URL	Specifies the URL used by a Preload Notice button to send the user to some external content. For Advertisement type Preload Notices, this mandatory URL is used to configure the Yes button. For Custom type Preload Notices, this URL is optional depending on whether the custom Preload Notice JSP will use the URL for one of its buttons. This field is not selectable for Informational and Warning type Preload Notices.
Title	Contains the title of the Preload Notice. Note: The fragment JSP must be coded to include the title.
Description	Contains a description of the Preload Notice.
Allow user to suppress notice	Allows user to suppress the Preload Notice. Valid choices are Yes or No. Note: This field may not be applicable to Custom types.
Timeout (seconds)	Allows user to specify the timeout period in seconds before the Preload Notice automatically closes. Note: This field applies only to devices that support the `meta http-equiv="Refresh"` tag. It is not selectable for Warning types.

Preload Notice rules field descriptions

Field name	Description
Group membership	Allows you to enter a group assignment for a Preload Notice. Note: A user must be logged in for this function to work properly.
Selected group membership Values	Contains a list of group assignments for Preload Notices.
Date range	Allows you to enter a start and end date for Preload Notice activation. Note: The configured dates are compared against the system date and not that of the requesting device.
Limit when to display the preload notice	Allows you to enter the number of times to show each user the Preload Notice, or to select the specific days for displaying the Preload Notice, or to assign an interval between days for displaying the Preload Notice.