1.4.3 Portlets

It used to be quite easy using standard Plone to add more portlets to Bika Senaite pages not anymore and this functionality was discontinued

NB. Plone's CMS functionality discontinued in Senaite

A LIMS front-end is best achieved on another non-LIMS site on the same server

Table of Contents...

For earlier Bika versions only thus:

Plone Portlets

A number of standard Plone portlets are available to communicate information to clients, prospects and staff via the LIMS pages. Adding these is easy following standard Plone content management instructions, see the Plone Portlet Management manual pages, applying as is in Bika.

These can be positioned anywhere in the left or right hand areas of Bika pages.

Bika Portlets

Bika Senaite already employs customised versions of the Plone Login and Navigation portlets, others useful are for News and Events that can be surfaced in a Calendar.

Several others were added to Bika to carry alerts for pending tasks, e.g. Samples Due for Samples created remotely, Analyses To be Verified and for Late Analyses.

Bika portlets are easy to recognise in the portlet configuration, best not to touch them

Custom Portlets

Static Text portlets allows one to enter content just as one would on normal Plone Pages. This is useful for adding hyperlinks to different sites, address information, or any information that is relatively static. See example over-leaf.

If you are more adventurous, also have a look at the Collection and Classic portlets in the Plone pages.

Use Case

Portlet for quick Setup access

We find sticking links to the LIMS back-end in a static portlet on the front pages, speeds manual configuration tasks up considerably.

Linked to Dashboard, Control Panel and Setup

How To

Start on the LIMS front page

Create a Static Text portlet from any of the Manage Portlets at bottom left or right of the page. Do not ignore this warning,

click the go here link, else the portlet will be associated and shoen for the front page only.

Edit the portlet like a standard Plone page, using the platform browser based visual editor.

In this example we used existing Bika icons and scubbed the links from standard setup and configuration pages