Sharing a portlet across multiple pages

Related topics

When a portlet is added to a page, a portlet instance is created that stores information about that particular instance of the portlet, including information about customizations made to the portlet. You can share a portlet instance so that the exact same portlet (including all its customizations) can be used on another page. This means that when a user customizes the portlet instance on a page, those customizations are reflected on all other pages that include the shared portlet instance. This means that users do not have to make the same customizations to multiple instances of the same portlet.

For example, say you have two versions of the same page, a standard page for use on desktop machines, and a mobile page for use on mobile devices. You could share the portlets on the standard page and then add those shared portlet instances to the mobile page. That way, the user just needs to customize the portlets on the standard page, and those same customizations will automatically apply to the portlets on the mobile page.

To share a portlet, you must have at least one of the following privileges:

Portal administrator
Manage All privileges on the page group to which the page containing the portlet belongs
Manage privileges on the page that contains the portlet
Manage global privileges on All Pages

You can only share portlets; you cannot share items or tabs.

To share a single portlet:

Go to the page that contains the portlet you want to share.
Switch to Edit mode.
Next to the portlet that you want to share, click .
Select the Share Instance radio button, and click OK.
In the confirmation page, click Yes.

In Edit mode, the text Shared appears next to the portlet.

To share more than one portlet:

Go to the page that contains the portlets you want to share.
Switch to Edit mode.
In the control panel at the top of the page, click Layout.
Select the check box next to all the portlets that you want to share.
Click Share.

To add a shared portlet instance to a page:

Go to the page on which you want to work.
Switch to Edit mode.
In the region where you want to add the shared portlet instance, click .
Drill down through the Portlet Repository to the page that contains shared portlet instance.

Tip: By default, shared portlet instances are located in the Shared Instances page of the Portlet Repository.
Click the portlet name.

Tip: To see a preview of the shared portlet instance before adding it to your page, click next to the portlet name.
Click OK to return to the page.

Notes

When you create a mobile page, if you base the page on an existing page, any portlets on the existing page are automatically shared with the mobile page. However, new portlets are not implicitly shared between a mobile page and the page on which it was based. If you add a portlet to a page that was used as the starting point for a mobile page, that portlet will not appear on the mobile page. If you want the portlet to also appear on the mobile page, you must add it to the mobile page. Additionally, if you want to share any customizations made to the portlet between the two pages, you must explicitly share the portlet on one page, and then add that shared portlet instance to the other page.
If you want users to add a shared portlet instance to a page rather than the portlet itself, make sure access privileges in the Portlet Repository are set up appropriately.