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Personalizing your site

WebSphere Portal implements rule-based content delivery through a feature called personalization . By using personalization, you can customize the content that a Web site shows automatically for each user. Personalization can recognize a specific user based on a profile. It can also determine the characteristics of a user based on previous purchases, products, or pages viewed and then select content that is appropriate for that profile.

In this article, we discuss the following topics:

• Overview of the personalization feature
• Creating a personalization rule
• Configuring the Personalized List portal
• Creating the Personalization Component

In the case of River Bend, a simple personalization rule and example is implemented to better illustrate the concept. The personalization rule that is implemented is based on dates. If the dates for accessing the site are within a range of defined "summer dates", then the home page illustrates a summer-based image of a refreshing iced coffee drink as shown  in the following figure. If the dates for accessing the site are within a range of defined "winter dates", then the home page illustrates a winter-based image of a hot coffee drink.

Overview of the personalization feature

You can find complete information about the rich set of capabilities that the personalization feature provides in the WebSphere Portal information center at the following address:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpdoc/v6r1m0/topic/com.ibm.wp.ent.doc/p zn/pzn_intro.html

A portlet can have a designated spot for rule-based content. For each spot, a rule is selected. All rules are created based on the resource attribute definition. These attributes are defined in a resource collection . The resource collection is a set of Java classes that retrieve content that is requested by the rule from the defined repository source. This back-end source might be LDAP or SQL databases, the portal Java Content Repository (JCR), Virtual Member Manager (VMM), or any other custom collection that is coded for the personalization API. The JCR resource collection is provided with WebSphere Portal as well as VMM. Wizards are available in Rational Application Developer 7 that guide developers in creating classes for other LDAP and relational database resources. A guide of how to create these resources is described fully in the WebSphere Portal Information Center.

Three types of rules are used to target select content to a certain group of users:

• A select rule chooses content based on the attributes of the content. For example, the GoldOffers rule selects products whose retail price is greater than a certain amount. With IBM Workplace Web Content Management content, you can also select content with a specific category. For example, a NonManager rule gets content that is created with the HRNews template that has a category of non-manager.
• A profiler rule profiles based on user attributes, date, and any other information. This rule is used to decide which actions to take and which policies to use. It gives a name to a set of conditions. For example, a user is profiled as a premium user if the amount of the user's mortgage is over a certain amount. Another example is if a user's order amount is over a certain amount, then that user is profiled as a gold user . In addition, an employee can be profiled as non-management if the employee's isManager attribute is set to false.
• A binding rule ties the profile and select rules together. Premium users see PremiumOffers, gold customers see GoldOffers, and non-manager employees see NonManagement news. You do not have to coordinate the naming of the profile with the select rule name. However, this convention helps when creating the binding rule.

Any of these rules can be tied to a content spot. To enable your environment to construct these rules, you must install and configure personalization in Lotus Web Content Management.

Prior to Lotus Web Content Management version 6.0, content that existed on a separate database had to be shadowed in the JCR database in order to work with the personalization feature in WebSphere Portal. However, starting with Lotus Web Content Management version 6.0 and later, the content resides on a JCR database. Therefore, there is no need for shadowing. Moreover, the WCM resource collection is available in the Personalization UI, after Lotus Web Content Management is configured, starting from WebSphere Portal 6.0.

Creating a personalization rule

This section of the article discusses how to create a personalization rule within the context of the River Bend site.

To create a personalization rule, write a select rule that retrieves all the content from River Bend Site Area that is created using the General authoring template.

1. Log in to WebSphere Portal.
2. Navigate to the Personalization Workspace.
3. Select New → Rule .
4. Enter a name for the new rule (for example, Get WCM Content).
5. Select 'Web Content' as the Resource Collection.
6. Select River Bend as the Location ( Site Area ).
7. Select the Authoring Template “General” from the Personalization Picker and the resulting rule is shown in the figure below.


Figure  Select Rule to get WCM content based on Authoring template

8. Select 'Save'
9. To see that content is returned from this rule, select the Preview tab, as shown in Figure below.


Figure – Results of the Select Rule

This Personalization Rule can now be displayed in a Personalization List Portlet, referenced in an IBM Lotus Web Content Management component, or included within a Content Spot on a Portal page.

 

Configuring the Personalized List portal

The Personalized List Portlet is installed with WebSphere Portal and can be added to any Portal page. A portal page is configured within the Personalization page with this list Portlet already on it when WebSphere Portal is installed. It has many configuration options that enable you to use a rule to show content quickly.

There are two configuration modes:

• One that configures the Spot information
• One that configures the Display Options

In order for these options to be displayed, on the Personalized List Portlet Menu, select 'Configure' and the following screen is displayed.



Click the drop down that says 'Nothing Selected' and you are provided with the following option, as shown in the figure below




Pick the Select content rule that you had created earlier and the following screen is displayed, as shown in the figure below.


Figure  Select Rule is chosen as the resource


To configure the display settings for Personalized List Portlet, do the following:

1. Click Display Options .
2. Choose the Fixed Title attribute for the Title Attribute and choose the Fixed Description attribute for the Detail  Attribute.
3. Select 'Locations' for the Categorization Attribute. This groups the content under the site area structure.
4. Click OK .

The following result is displayed, as shown in the figure below.


Figure  Personalized List content

When you select a title, you get the detail attribute displayed for that title. Note that this list does not use the site area and presentation template to render the content. Instead, it uses just the attribute that you defined in the Portlet configuration.

Only Select rule, Binding rule, content spots and custom JSP that has a content spot can be verified using Personalized List portlet. Profiler rules cannot be tested  using this portlet.

 

Creating the Personalization Component

For the River Bend web site example, we will personalize an image in the homepage. This image will be changed automatically based on the season we are currently in. There will be two images, a winter image and a summer image. In the example used, we show the Summer Drink image.

Using personalization rules, the content of the beverage of the current season will be selected and the image will be displayed.

In order for us to create the Personalization component, we need to do the following steps:

• Create select action rules
• Create profiler rule
• Create binding rule
• Create Personalization Component

Creating a selection personalization rule

To create a personalization rule, write a select rule that retrieves all the content that has the category as Summer.

1. Navigate to the Personalization Tab next to Web Content Management tab and then to Business Rules. Refer to the Figure below:
   
   
   Figure - Personalization tab
   
   
2. Select New and choose Rule.
3. Enter SummerDrinkRule in the Rule name
4. Choose Select Action if it wasn't already selected
5. Click on content* and change it to be Web Content
6. Click on Attribute and change it to be Category
7. Choose is exactly instead of is associated with
8. Click on value*, choose Select category
9. Navigate to the category Summer under SeasonDrink under Beverages under Products
10. Click Ok
    
    The rule should look like the rule in the figure below:
    
    
    Figure - Summer Selection Action Rule
    
    
11. Click Save
12. Repeat steps 2 through 11 to create the Winter Selection Rule. Its name would be WinterDrinkRule and Category is Winter
    

Creating a profiler personalization rule

Now, we will create the profiler rule that would set the present season according to the current month.

1. Select New and choose Rule .
2. Enter SeasonsProfilerRule in the Rule name
3. Choose Profiler
4. Click on Profile* and type Winter
5. Click Submit
6. Click on attribute* and change it to be Date à Month
7. Click on is and make it is between
8. Add January in the first value and March the second value
9. Click on add Condition and repeat steps 6-8 with the values October and December
10. Click on add Profile and type Summer
11. Repeat steps 6-8 with values April and September
12. Click Save
    

Creating a profiler personalization rule

Now, we will create the binding rule that binds together the action rules with the profiler rule. The binding rule runs first the profiler rule, and according to the profile selected, it will fire the action selector rule.

1. Select New and choose Rule .
2. Enter SeasonsBindingRule in the Rule name
3. Choose Binding
4. Click on Profiler*
5. Click on Select Profiler and choose SeasonsProfilerRule
6. Click Ok
7. Click on Profile and choose Winter
8. Click on DoAction and choose SummerDrinkRule
9. Click on Profile and choose Summer
10. Click on DoAction and choose WinterDrinkRule
11. Click Save
    

Refer to the Figure below for the Binding Rule


Figure - Binding Rule

If we had already created the content with the matching categories, we can view the content as shown in the Figure below by clicking on Preview

Figure - Binding Rule Viewer

A no content screen will be shown until we create content with those categories.

Creating the Personalization Component

To display the result that was filtered based on the season, we create a personalization component. The personalization component is very similar to the menu component. We choose the starting point of our rules, in our case it is the SeasonsBindingRule and we decide upon the display of the result.
For out example, we will be showing the image of the content in the home page.

Follow those steps, to create the personalization component :

1. Navigate back to Web Content Management tab
2. Click New and choose Component à Personalization .
3. In the name field enter Pers-Seasons
4. In the Personalization Element section, click on Search
5. Choose SeasonsBindingRule
6. Click OK
   
   Note: You can create a new rule by clicking on the New* button if it is just one simple rule.
   
7. Add the following html in the design for each search result :
   
   <a href="<Placeholder tag="href"/>">
   <Element context="autoFill" type="content" key="Image"/></a>
   
   
8. Click Save and then click Save and Close .
   
   We will be adding a reference to the personalization component from inside the presentation template of the home page.

The end result

Once complete - the end result looks like this - notice the Personalization "Summer Drink" image on the home page.