Installing the Reflection for the Web or Reflection Security Gateway Portlet on a WebSphere Portal Server

  • 7022210
  • 30-May-2008
  • 18-Mar-2018

Environment

Reflection for the Web 2014 (All Editions)
Reflection for the Web 2011 (All Editions)
Reflection for the Web 2008 (All Editions)
Reflection Security Gateway 2014
IBM WebSphere Portal version 5.x or higher

Situation

This technical note provides installation instructions for installing Reflection for the Web or Reflection Security Gateway portlet on a WebSphere Portal Server.

Resolution

Before You Begin

Before installing the Reflection for the Web or Reflection Security Gateway (hereinafter called Reflection) portlet, you must have the following installed and configured.

  • WebSphere Portal Server 5.x or higher
  • Reflection must be running on an application server with sessions configured for your users. The following technical notes provide examples of installing Reflection on an application server: KB 7022220 and Technical Note 2332.

Obtaining the RWebPA.war File

Prior to installing the portlet, you must obtain the RWebPA.war file, which you will use to install the Reflection portlet.

  • If you have WebSphere Application Server installed, the RWebPA.war file is located in %WASHOME%\installedApps\RWebWASAS6Node01Cell\rweb_war.ear\rweb.war\WEB-INF\misc.
  • If you do not have WebSphere Application Server installed, you can extract the RWebPA.war file from the rweb.war file located in the nonautomated directory of the downloaded product files (or on the Reflection CD). Use an archiving utility, such as WinZip, to extract the .war file.

Installing Reflection Portlet on the WebSphere Portal Server

With Reflection installed and configured on your application server, you are ready to install the Reflection portlet to the WebSphere Portal Server.

  1. Copy the RWebPA.war file to a temporary directory on the WebSphere Portal Server.
  2. Open a browser and log in to the portal with an account that has administrative rights.
  3. Click the Administration option in the upper-right corner of the screen.
  4. Click Portlet Management on the left pane to open the Manage Web Modules page.
  5. Click Install and enter the path, including the filename RWebPA.war, or browse to the RWebPA.war file (for example, C:\temp\RWebPA.war or /u/local/RWebPA.war).
  6. Click Next, and then click Finish.
  7. Under Portlet Management, click Portlets. From the list of portlets, select “RWeb portlet.”

There are multiple pages listing the portlets. You can use the Search tool to locate the RWeb portlet; select "Title starts with" or "Title contains" from the Searchby drop-down list, and enter rweb in the Search field. If RWeb portlet is not listed, you may have to logout and log back into the portal server for the portlet to be listed.

  1. On the right side of the Portlet row, click the Configure icon to setup the portlet.
2348_0.gif
  1. Two parameters are listed for the RWeb portlet. Make a note of the parameters and values listed; they will be used later.
  2. To provide the correct URL for the portlet, you must delete the parameter RWebURL, and then add it back:
    1. Delete RWebURL.
    2. Under New parameter, enter RWebURL. (This parameter is case sensitive).
  3. Under New value, enter the URL exactly as it was displayed in the example (for example, http://myserver:9080/rweb/LoginPage.do?appletOnly=true), but update the localhost name and port with the DNS name (or IP address) and port of the Reflection for the Web server.

To launch a session automatically when the user opens the portal page, enter that specific session's URL (which can be copied from the Session Manager on the Administrative WebStation) as the RWebURL value.

  1. Click Add, and then click OK.

You can now add the Reflection portlet to any of the WebSphere portal pages.

Configuring the Shared Secret between the Portlet and the Reflection Server

The RWebPA.properties file contains the shared secret that the portlet uses to authenticate to the Reflection server. The shared secret needs to match what is configured on the Reflection server.

  1. Create a text file named RWebPA.properties at the location defined in the value of AC.RWebSSOSharedKeyPropsFile; see step 9 in Installing Reflection Portlet on the WebSphere Portal Server.
  2. In the RWebPA.properties file add the following line:
AC.RWebSSOSharedKey=sharedsecret

Replace sharedsecret (case sensitive) with the value you want to use to authenticate the portlet to the Reflection for the Web server.

  1. Save the file.
  2. Launch the Reflection Administrative WebStation.
  3. Under Tools, click Access Control Setup > Configure.
  4. Under “Choose authentication method,” click Portal, and then click Next.
  5. Enter the shared secret (case sensitive) that was added to the RwebPA.properties in step 2, and then click Next.
  6. Select the authorization method that best meets your needs and click Next.
  7. Click Save Settings.
  8. Click Access Mapper and assign the sessions you would like users to see.

Configuring the WebSphere Application Server

If you run Reflection on a WebSphere Application Server (WAS), then you must enable “URL rewriting” on the WAS server.

If you run Reflection on another application server (not WAS), skip this section and proceed to Adding the Portlet to the WebSphere Portal (An Example).

Note: At this time, you can enable "URL rewriting" on the WAS at the server level only, not at the application level.

  1. Open and log in to the WAS Administration Console.
  2. Click Servers > Application servers.
  3. Click the server on which Reflection is installed.
  4. Click Session management.
  5. Select the "URL rewriting" check box to enable it.
  6. Click OK.
  7. Click Save to save the change to the master configuration.
  8. Stop and restart the WAS server.

Adding the Portlet to the WebSphere Portal (An Example)

The following steps describe one way to add the Reflection portlet to a WebSphere portal page.

  1. Open and log in to the portal with an account that has administrative rights.
  2. Click the Administration option in the upper-right corner of the screen.
  3. Under the left pane, click Portal User Interface > Manage Pages.
  4. Click My Portal under the Title column.
  5. Click the Edit Page Layout icon on the right of the Welcome page row.
2348_1.gif
  1. In one of the three columns, click Add portlets.
  2. Scan the list of portlets and select the “RWeb portlet” check box.
  3. Click OK. The portlet should be added to the configuration of the Welcome page.
  4. Click Done.

Test the Portlet

Follow these steps to ensure that the portlet works.

  1. Log in to the WebSphere Portal server.
  2. Select the web page to which the portlet was added.
  3. Verify that Reflection sessions are listed in the portlet.

Additional Information

Legacy KB ID

This article was originally published as Attachmate Technical Note 2348.