Configuring Portals

Present curated content and reinforce your brand via the simplified Portal interface.

5 things to know about NetX portals

Best practices

Simplify portal permissions.
Create a separate folder structure for each portal to easily identify which assets are visible in portals and make it easy to set permissions for portal-only user groups. Assets can live in more than one folder at the same time, so you can add assets from your main folder tree into the portal folder structure without duplicating files.

Make a mini-site.
Portals aren't just for assets — custom content pages provide information and enrich your users' experience. Create pages for things like: asset use and brand guidelines, company mission statement, photo submissions page, promotion of seasonal collections or exhibitions, Help & FAQs, and so much more!

Be creative with content curation.
Use saved collections and saved searches to present tailored groups of assets to your portal users. Display a collection of assets on a content page, link to a saved search from the navigation menu, or embed links in text or graphics on a static page.

Get graphic.
Use folder thumbnails to represent each folder of assets with a customized image or graphic that looks great and enforces your brand. Optional rollover folder descriptions tell users what each folder is all about.

Track user engagement.
Gain valuable insight into how users interact with your portal content by enabling your organization's Google Analytics ID. 

How-to articles

Tips and tricks

Folder thumbnails and rollover descriptions are configured in NetX's Edit folder window, not in the portal settings area.

Resize your portal content images to avoid random cropping or perspective skewing:

• Folder thumbnails: 370x215 pixels
• Carousel images: 1100x290 pixels

The values of any attribute field can be displayed underneath thumbnails in the gallery. When configuring portal-specific attributes, the first attribute in the list is the one displayed with the thumbnail. So instead of the default "File" values, using "Title" or "Description" attribute values may be more relevant for your portal users.

Carousel images need to be placed together in a separate subfolder for each carousel. Images rotate in order according to the filename, so you may need to rename carousel images in numerical or alphabetical order if you want images to display in a certain order. If any of your portal users are Browser user level, you'll need to Allow Browsers Access to Carousel Content. 

Take note of asset filenames prior to building content pages. Setting up pages requires you to start typing to select the desired asset, so knowing your filenames ahead of time makes building pages fast and easy.

Create a separate folder structure for portal assets to simplify permissions and asset organization:

1. Create a folder at the top-level named Portals.
2. Under this top-level folder, add a subfolder named for each portal (e.g. Demo Portal and Second Portal)
3. Under each portal subfolder add an Assets folder containing subfolders of assets that will be available in the portal for search and download. 
   • use recursive folder permissions at the Assets folder level for all portal user groups, or
   • if different access is required for different user groups, separate subfolder permissions can be configured as needed.
4. Under each portal subfolder add a Portal Elements folder that contains assets that are used in the portal design, but that are not available for search or download. 
   • in order for design elements to be visible to users, you must configure permissions on this folder for ALL user groups that access the portal.
   • Portal Elements should include: folder thumbnails; carousel images (each carousel requires its own subfolder); images, videos, or other graphics displayed on content pages.
5. Your portal logo, favicon, watermark, and custom font assets do not require user permissions to be visible in the portal (unlike the Portal Elements content). While these assets don't have to be contained in the Portal Elements folder, you may still want to keep them there for ease of reference.

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