Portal Administrator Guide

A portal is a branded UI theme on top of the NetX platform that leverages your existing assets to promote your organization’s identity. As a brand manager, creative director, or marketer, you can create content pages to present brand guidelines and detail your vision around color, typography, patterns, logos, links, and more.

Creating a portal

1. Log on as an Administrator or Director-level user, navigate to the Systems area of your instance and click the Portals tab.
2. When prompted, name your new portal. This name can be changed later but your initial name will determine your portal's URL. As you type your portal's name, you will see a preview of the URL.
3. Click Save to create your new portal.

Settings

Once you have named and saved a portal, you will be taken to the portal Settings tab where you will set the foundations for your new portal. 

General

Name

Edit the name you gave your portal upon creation here. 

URL

The URL (internet address) of your portal, based on its initial Name. This may be edited and does not need to match your portal's name. 

Home page

Determines the home page of your portal, i.e. the page users will navigate to by default when visiting your portal's base URL. The default is home, a page generated upon portal creation that can be changed to any other page as more are created.

Contact message

Portals can offer a Contact feature, enabling users to communicate directly with administrators. To customize the contact form's message (e.g., providing instructions on what information users should include), modify the form text in this field.

To enable the contact feature, configure the recipient's email address using the designated property.

User access

Require login

Determines whether your portal can be viewed without a user account. When enabled, an account will be required for a user to view any portal content; when disabled, your portal will be accessible by anonymous users. This toggle is enabled by default and requires a public user configuration. Anonymous user access and permissions depend on the public user's user level and permissions.

User level

This setting determines the user level for self-registered users when new accounts do not require administrator approval. If self-registration does not require administrator approval, it is important to set the permission to the portal's top-level folder to all, or new users will not be able to view your portal's content. 

Enable SSO login

Adds the option for users to log in via SAML Single Sign-On.

SSO label

The label used for the SSO login button, e.g. SSO users log in here.

SSO URL

Enter the URL of your SAML server in this field.

Logout URL

If you provide a URL here, your portal will automatically redirect any user who performs a logout action. Without a value in this field, your users will be directed back to the main login page. 

Content

Folder

The folder displayed in the assets tab of your new portal, including any subfolders. This should be set to the topmost folder level containing the assets portal users will access — this does not need to be the same as your NetX instance's top-level folder. Creating a separate folder structure for any portal assets is highly recommended and will simplify permissions for your portal users.

Search folder

Searches in your Portal will be performed on this folder and its subfolders. This value is independent of the Folder value, and any permissions granted to this folder will still be respected.

Display folder descriptions

Allow your users to read any folder descriptions saved in NetX.

Search placeholder

With this enabled and a value saved, your search bar will update the default Search placeholder text in the input box.

Manage attributes

While your NetX instance may have many attributes, not all of those attributes may be necessary or desired in a portal. The attributes that appear under the Manage attributes dropdown will be the only attributes visible in the portal in any context, in the order in which they appear here. To narrow the list of NetX attributes to only those you wish to see in your portal, use the trash icon to the right; to reorder your attributes, use the drag handles. 

There are two columns to the right of each attribute: Asset detail and Sort. The Asset detail checkbox determines whether the attribute appears while viewing an asset's detail page in the portal. The Sort checkbox determines whether or not the attribute appears as a sort option in the gallery. The topmost attribute will be the attribute displayed under each thumbnail while viewing the folder gallery. Any attribute appearing under this dropdown will still show in the portal as an attribute option for actions such as exporting attributes or creating a PDF, even If neither box is checked.

Upon portal creation, all custom and system attributes will appear with their Sort option checked. Name, File size, File type, and Dimensions will additionally be added as asset detail attributes by default.

Analytics

Enable Google Analytics

Toggling this on will enable Google Analytics 4 tracking. 

Tag ID

Use this input line to enter your tag ID. To sign up for a Google Analytics 4 tag ID, see Google's documentation.

Brand

1. Logo: To choose a logo asset, begin typing into the input box. Once the asset you are searching for appears in the drop-down, select it and a preview will show in the Logo block. Your logo will appear on all pages of your Portal in the upper-left corner of your portal header.
   
   
2. Favicon:  Select a favicon in the same way you selected a logo asset. This image appears as an icon in your browser tab, along with your portal's title. Note that a pixel dimension of 16x16 or 32x32 is recommended and only PNG, GIF, or ICO files are supported.
   
   
3. Watermark: If you select a watermark to use in your portal, it will be superimposed over all assets included in your portal library, for all users — including any banners or Adbuilder templates. Choosing a watermark follows the same process as selecting a favicon or logo. Note that you cannot change the opacity of your watermark once it is uploaded into NetX, so any adjustments to your image must be made before upload. Below the image selection field, you can determine where the watermark is placed on assets, including bottom left, bottom right, center (overlay), top left, and top right. 
   
   

4. Colors: Here you can assign a primary color for your portal. To choose a color, either type your hex-code color selection or use the primary color field to automatically fills in the appropriate color code. White is not a supported primary color.

   

    

5. Text: To choose a custom font for your Portal, upload your font file to NetX and type the asset name into the input box. Secondly, you can include a Copyright for your Portal with a custom message and date that will appear in all page footers. The Disable Web Fonts checkbox, if selected, will disable any fonts used by the Portal and render pages using only the fonts locally installed on your computer.
   
   
6. Logout URL: Apply a logout URL to redirect users to that URL when they perform a logout action. Prefacing the URL with https:// is required. 
   
   
7. Copyright: The copyright message that displays on all page footers.

Pages

The Pages tab contains a list of existing pages, the option to create new pages, as well the ability to delete or edit a page. To create a new page:

1. Open the action menu, and click Add page.
2. Name your new page. Note that the name of your page will automatically populate the page's slug, but the slug may be edited independently from the page title.
3. Choose whether your title will be displayed by using the Show page title checkbox. If checked, the title of the page will display in both the portal editor and the portal page itself. This option will not affect the page title's display as a link in the header or footer menu and can be changed later.
4. Click Create. 
5. Select a template layout; you will have the opportunity to edit this choice later. If you do not select a template while creating the page, Template 1 will be used as the default.
6. After you have chosen a template, you will be taken to your new page where you will see a screen with the title of your page, an empty content block that conforms to your template type, and an action menu.
   
   

Each content block will be labeled with its type, display a content preview, and provide options to delete or edit the block. Upon creation, blocks will default to an HTML type; this can be changed from the drop-down menu to the left of each block's Cancel and Save buttons. Choices include Asset, Carousel, Collection, Folder, Folder Assets, HTML, and Divider, described in more detail below.

Action menu

The action menu along the upper-left corner of the page editor offers the following actions:

• Add block: Adds a new block that will conform to your chosen template selection.
• Page options: Allows you to change both the title and the slug of the page. Additionally, you can choose whether or not the title will be visible on the page.
• Choose template: Changes the template format of the current page.
• Preview: Shows the live portal page.

Asset

Asset blocks show exactly one asset at a time, presented according to your chosen template block and the following criteria: 

Asset: Type the name of an asset you wish to place in your block and select the asset from the subsequent drop-down menu.

Target: The availability of the Target field will depend upon your asset type. For example, image assets can display in Thumbnail, Preview, or Original size. Note that your image will conform to the chosen template block sizing — if you choose an Original size for a smaller block, the full size of the asset may not be reflected on your portal's page. You will be able to preview its size on your page's preview/setup window. Other asset types such as audio or video will not have a target drop-down and will only be available as asset Originals, again conforming in size to the template block of your choice.

Display asset name: The asset name can appear above or below your image, or not at all.

Download/collection buttons: If you want this asset to be downloadable/collectible by your users, you can toggle these actions here. This will enable hover actions over your asset, though the available actions will be limited to this configuration. If the Collection button is enabled, users will be able to add the asset to a collection. If Download is enabled, users will be able to download and share the asset in question. The option to view an asset's detail page will always be presented as a hover action if either action is enabled.

Link URL/link title: Including a URL with your asset provides an accompanying link beneath the asset content. Applying a link title will change the clickable text that appears in the portal.  

This is how the completed asset block from above will look and function on your actual portal page once settings have been saved:

Carousel

Carousel content will pull all assets from a selected folder and present each one across a single template block in five-second intervals. Users can manually cycle through these images with navigational arrows. To set up a carousel:

1. Type the desired folder name into the input block.
2. Content will automatically appear according to the template block sizing it is inserted into. Once your folder has been selected, the page's preview will be updated and the carousel will appear in your portal. 
3. Click Save when finished.
   
   

Collection

Collection blocks present a gallery of assets from a chosen collection. To create a collection block:

1. Type the name of the desired collection and select it from the drop-down list.
2. Once you have selected your collection, the page's preview will update to display the collection as a series of thumbnails according to your chosen block's sizing.
3. Click Save when finished.
   
   

Folders

Folder blocks display a clickable folder object that reveals the assets contained within.

1. Choose the parent folder your folder block will point to; a drop-down of relevant folders will appear as you begin to type.
2. After selecting the desired folder, its subfolders will appear as clickable objects according to your chosen template block's sizing. These objects will either appear as placeholder folders or show the folder image if there is one configured for the folder in question, or if your site is set up to automatically assign image thumbnails to folders. Any folder descriptions will appear to users as they hover over the images. Note that these descriptions will only appear if you have enabled them for your portal. Clicking on a folder will load its assets into the portal gallery.
3. Click Save when finished.
   
   

Folder assets

Folder asset blocks display the assets contained in the chosen folder as a gallery, contained in the selected folder block according to your page's template type.

To create a folder asset block:

1. Begin typing a folder name into the input box, and choose from the drop-down that will appear as you type.
2. Choose the size of your assets (thumbnail, preview, or original sizing), whether hover actions will be available, and whether or not to give your folder gallery a title. You can also choose whether or not the asset's name will appear beneath each asset. Note that subfolders will not be displayed, and if your chosen folder is empty, you will not see any content in your block.
3. Click Save when finished.
   
   

HTML

Unlike the prior content box options which rely on NetX data to populate content, HTML content is built by administrators during portal construction to add custom text to your portal. This content displays according to your template type and chosen block's sizing. HTML text will use your portal's custom font (if configured).

To create an HTML block, type and format your text in the HTML editor and click Save when finished.

Divider

This last style of content box is very straightforward. Selecting this will place a grey horizontal bar, dividing your content on the page. This option has no configuration options and you can click Save to implement your content divider.

Assets page

The assets page is shown by default in a new portal's header menu; its contents (including subfolders) are determined by the top-level visibility settings found in the settings tab. This special page differs from a folder asset or collection block in that it allows navigation between any existing subfolders, displays search facets, and offers gallery customization tools such as sorting and a slider to expand each thumbnail's size. Hover actions are available for all assets. The assets page is not editable via the Pages tab in your portal settings but can be removed in the Links tab.

Links

Using the Links tab in portal settings, you can create links to add to your portal's header menu. External links or direct links to assets and folders in NetX are supported.

To add a link:

1. In the Links tab, click on the action menu and select Add link.
2. Select the link type, then configure a target and a label (the link text that appears in the header menu). See below for a list of link types.
3. Click Save to create the link.

You can use the link's menu to edit or delete the link. Note that Action type links will not be deletable. Any new links will appear as options in the Menu tab where you can add them to your portal's header navigation.

Link types

Action: actions are specialized links to internal portal functions, such as AdBuilder templates, the contact form, or the Assets page. Available options include

• adBuilder:templates:route : Adds a link to the AdBuilder product.
• app:contact : Sets up a link to a contact form for communication with a portal manager.
• cms:route:category:roots : Creates a link to the Assets page.

Asset: Asset link types create a direct link to a specific asset. To create an asset link, type the name of the asset into the Asset field, then select the relevant asset from the drop-down menu. You can customize the link's label, which is the text visible in the portal's header.  

Folder: Folder links navigate to specific folders, which are displayed similarly to the Assets page. To create a folder link, type the name of the desired folder into the Folder field and select the correct folder from the drop-down menu. You can customize the link's label, which is the text visible in the portal's header.

URL: You can link to other sites directly from your portal header using a URL type link. To add an external link, type the address of the desired site and then give it a label to display in the portal header. Make sure to include http:// or https:// as the link's prefix or your link will not work.

Menus

The menus tab consists of two sections: on the right, all of the created links; on the left, the links which are shown in your portal header.

• To create or edit your header navigation: drag any item from the list on the right to the list on the left. A submenu allows you to include child links under a single header link, and you can also customize the name of your submenu item.
• To create a new submenu drag a Submenu item from the right to the left area, then place any number of links underneath your submenu item. These items should be tabbed to the right so you can see they are part of the submenu. You cannot create a Submenu within a Submenu.
• The order you place your links will be reflected in your navigational bars, with the topmost items occupying the leftmost position.
• To rearrange your menu items, use the drag icon and drag your menu items. To remove menu items, use the Delete button.
  
  

AdBuilder

For those who have purchased Ad Builder, Templates will be available as a standard menu option. See the AdBuilder Administrator Guide for more information.

Advanced settings

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