In many Portal-BI projects, I have noticed clients requesting to have the My Portfolio iView, a standard IView that is provided by SAP on the home page of the Portal Reporting page. This iView is user specific as they allow users to store their own documents in a convenient location. "The My Portfolio iView is a KM navigation iView with the special Broadcasting layout_._ It displays your Personal BEx Documents KM folder (/alias/BIuserhome/<user.id>/Personal BEx Documents)". To read more about My Portfolio iView click here
One of the challenges in this requirement is that the KM iView provides some additional features such as KM Repository Services along with the report or Link. These reports occupy the entire page which makes it difficult for users to scroll the entire page to check their reports as shown below. Our objective was to make the page user friendly by using the concepts of Knowledge Management Flexible User Interfaces.
Before:
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm1.jpg
After:
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm2.jpg
As you notice above there is no scroll bar at the bottom as end users felt it was painful to search for their personal documents in the corner of the page.
So lets see how to achieve the above objective
Identify the layout of the iView My Portfolio in the business Explorer role found in this location:Portal content > content provided by SAP > Platform add-ons > business intelligence > roles > business explorer
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm3.jpg
My Portfolio is a KM Navigation iView, a standard iView provided by SAP. Every KM iView has a layout set defined and this iView has a layout set called "Broadcasting_Prog"
Find this layout set by checking the properties of the iView as shown below
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm4.jpg
To configure the KM User Interface follow the below steps:
Go to system administration > system configuration > Knowledge management> content management >
User interface > settings > layout set > Select all in objects per page
Select Broadcasting as the layout and choose advanced copy at the bottom..
To avoid changing the original items, you should create copies of sets of renderer settings and command groups that you want to change. Use the function Advanced Copy of a layout set to create copies of all required items in a single step
Add a prefix in the add column and choose append counter in the naming conflicts. Execute the copy and search for the new layout which has been copied.
The advanced copy in this example is BI_Broadcasting_Prog as the prefix was BI.
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm5.jpg
For beginners read the below document to understand the concept of User Interfaces in Knowledge Management.
Knowledge Management UI by Joy Hirayama
Flexible User Interfaces
Knowledge Management - Customizing the User Interface and KM Repositories
And...... for you geeks and experts waiting to challenge me with a comment, below is the solution....
The idea was to take away the properties of the report that was displayed below the link and remove the Icon.
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm6.jpg
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm7.jpg
To remove the icon I modified the properties on the resource renderer with the Icon settings as Off
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm9.jpg
Result:
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm8.jpg
With my basic understanding of KM User Interfaces all the properties mentioned below the link covers the resource renderer settings. Hence turning it off helped me to get rid of all the properties that were displayed.
Click on BI_Broadcasting_Resource_Renderer_prog in the layout set and set the resource renderer as Not Set. This will take away all the properties of the report or link. However If you need to change a particular settings such as removing rating from the options you need to consider changing the command groups. There are several articles written on SDN on command groups. However this article is a good one....
KM User Interfaces Commands
Set resource renderer to not set...
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm10.jpg
Now that I managed to vanish the links I had another issue with respect to the links that were manually created using My Portfolio. The links were created horizontally and hence this would make the users scroll through the page which would indeed make it cumbersome.
Hence to achieve a vertical alignment of the links apply the right values in the properties of the Resource Renderers
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm11.jpg
https://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/download/attachments/33860/flexkm12.jpg
As a collection of Flexible user Interfaces in KM, below are the ones which are interesting to read...
Search for the below blogs in SDN to learn more...
A Real World Example of Flexible User Interface - Part 1
A Real World Example of Flexible User Interface - Part 2
Flexible UI component development demystified
KM Customization Change the layout, context menus as per your choice!