You must perform some preparatory tasks before you make your portlets and portlet applications available to your users by putting them on portal pages. This includes installing, deploying, and configuring portlets and applications.
A portlet is initially
displayed in the View mode. A user
can apply customizations to individual, selected, or all instances
of the portlet by leaving the View mode and entering into the Personalize,
Edit Shared Settings, or Configure mode as appropriate. To access
these other modes, hover over the portlet title bar, click 
to
display the portlet menu, and select the appropriate mode. Refer
to the following descriptions for more information about the Personalize,
Edit Shared Settings, and Configure modes.
- Personalize: Updates change the look of the portlet only for the user who makes the updates. In order for a user to have access to personalize settings, they must be granted at least Privileged User role on the page and Privileged User role on the corresponding Portlet Definition. This is available for standard portlets and IBM portlets.
- Edit Shared Settings: Updates change the default look of the portlet on a specific page. All users see the change when they access that page. In other words, all (the particular) portlet instances on a page are modified, but not all instances of that portlet on every page. If you want the changes to appear on every page that portlet appears, you must modify the settings on each page. In order for a user to have access to edit shared settings they must be granted at least Editor role on the page and Editor role on the corresponding Portlet definition. This is available for standard portlets and IBM portlets.
- Configure: Updates change the default look of a portlet for all portlet instances. All users see the portlet changes on all pages that portlet is available. A user needs to have at least Manager role on portlet definition to have access to configure a portlet.
It depends on the portlet which selection options are available in the portlet menu.