05 Focus a channel

Channel self-focusing

You can focus the channel via a request parameter: uP_root=me

When you want to "unfocus", use uP_root=root

Examples:

<a href="{$baseActionURL}?uP_root=me">Focus me</a>

<form name="Focus me" action="{$baseActionURL}">
  <input type="hidden" name="uP_root" value="root"/> 
   ... 
</form>

Thanks to Ken Weiner for providing this information on the JASIG-PORTAL list.

External links

Motivation

You might want to have links outside your portal link into your uPortal, through login, to a channel in focus mode.
This is how Yale University delivers its Network Registration channel.

Examples

YaleInfo daily business cartoon channel
YaleInfo Network Registration – you won't be able to get through CAS, but this link demonstrates using this feature with CAS.

NOTE in order to successfully validate your service ticket, you should either use the CAS support bundled with uP 2.5.2, YaleCasFilteredContext or modify the portal authentication framework to pass in the request URI to ensure that additional parameters are passed through to CAS as part of the service URL. Jason Shao

Documentation

YaleInfo documentation on uPortal Login Focus

Implementation

This was accomplished via a modification to LoginServlet (uPortal > 2.4) to collect the parameters and preserve them during the login process, reapplying them after the user has authenticated.