Configuring Unified Task List portlet at run time

You can customize the Unified Task List portlet at run time as a WebSphere® Portal Express® administrator. Customizing at run time involves accessing the deployed Unified Task List to configure the portlet settings.

Selecting page theme
The first step for configuring a page with the Unified Task List portlet is to change the default page theme.
Accessing the configuration view
Customize the Unified Task List portlet by accessing the configuration view. The configuration view contains several windows that let you perform tasks such as editing settings, configuring task provider instances and task handlers, or adding and removing filters.
Editing common settings
Edit common settings from the Unified Task List portlet.
Configuring task providers instances
Task provider instances are services that access back-end systems to retrieve tasks. You can add, delete, enable, or disable task provider instances in the Unified Task List portlet. You can also specify context variables for task provider instances, such as the host names and port numbers necessary to connect to back-end systems. At design time, developers create custom input forms for context variables in Web Experience Factory. These input forms determine which context variables you must specify for specific task provider instances.
Adding and removing filters
Filters provide specialized views for tasks. Filters let you separate tasks according to the back-end systems where the tasks originate or by a particular context. When you add filters, the Unified Task List portlet displays tasks separated according to the task provider instance. For example, you can add a filter for tasks that come from Process Server portlet so that these tasks are not displayed with all other tasks in the Unified Task List portlet.
Localizing the task list filters
When creating new filters, it is recommended that you know before hand which filters you need to create and then create filters all at once. Creating all filters at once minimizes the times you must restart the server. The restart is required to update the filter resource bundles on the file system with the new filters and include them on the class loader. A WebSphere Application Server variable must also be created to define the name of the resource bundle to use for the localized filters.
Adding and removing task handlers
Task handlers define the action that the Unified Task List portlet takes when users select a task. Configure task handlers to define three actions, open a portlet with the WebSphere Portal Express property broker, open a portlet with dynamic portal pages, or open an external URL to launch a web application.
Exposing the Business Processes to enable Task Handling Configuration
To enable task handling configuration data to be retrieved for the Unified Task List BPM 7.5 task provider you must first expose your Business Process and Human Service data to all users. This section is only applicable if you are working with the IBM Business Process Manager task provider in the Unified Task List.
Showing and hiding table columns
The Unified Task List portlet shows tasks in a table. The task information presented in this table includes priority, description, owner, among others. You can show or hide these table columns.
Editing shared settings
The Unified Task List portlet has shared settings that are common to all users, such as the filters that display in the user interface. You can edit these settings by accessing the portlet menu.
Changing the number of rows in the task list table
The task list table contains rows of tasks that users can select. You can edit the task list table to display a specific number of rows per page in the Unified Task List portlet. You can specify any number of rows per page, however, if there are fewer tasks than the number of rows available, the Unified Task List portlet displays only the rows that contain tasks. If there are more tasks than the number of rows available, the Unified Task List portlet displays a link to another page for those tasks.
Configuring dynamic user interface
Configuring a WebSphere Lombardi Edition task provider
This specific provider surfaces tasks for WebSphere Lombardi Edition in the Unified Task List portlet.
Configuring the Coach portlets
There are two Coach portlets already installed in WebSphere Portal Express: one for use on a dynamic portal page and the other on a portal page. Both Coach portlets offer the same functionality in both page contexts. When a WebSphere Lombardi Edition task and WebSphere Business Process Manager task is selected in the Unified Task List portlet it displays the corresponding coach in the Coach portlet.