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About uPortal

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Getting Started

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Background

Release

uPortal User Management

Creating new users

uPortal is configured initially such that user information is maintained in a table in the uPortal datastore. The UP_PERSON_DIR table contains fields for the username, an encrypted password, the users first and last name, and their email address.

It comes preconfigured with several usernames, each of which is associated with a group of the same name. Those users are:

Additional users can be added using the md5passwd tool. The md5passwd tool is invoked using the ant program. Go to the uPortal build directory and type:

where, SomeUserName is the user id you would like to add. md5passwd will prompt for a password and then insert an encrypted version into the UP_PERSON_DIR table. NOTE that it will not fill out the firstname, lastname, or email address fields.

The first time a user logs in uPortal will detect that the user does not yet have a default layout set up and will create one. uPortal determines which layout to use by reading the portal.properties file, and specifically looking at the follow property:

In other words, unless that property is changed, all new users will be assigned a layout based on the "demo" layout. Try changing the property value to "student", redeploy uPortal to the servlet contain and restart if necessary, then log in using the username previously created with md5passwd.

Deleting users

User accounts can be deleted using the DeleteUser tool.

Integration with LDAP

uPortal is very flexible in how users can be authenticated and authorized. Many institutions use a centralized directory service such as LDAP for user information. To configure uPortal to integrate with LDAP, see the following page:

Integrating LDAP into uPortal