Java Specification Request 168 and 286 (JSR 168 and JSR 286) describes a Java Application Programming Interface (API) for portlets, the user interface components for display in web portal servers. The Pega Platform supports the development and deployment of JSR-compliant portlets through the Rule-Service-Portlet rule type.
The portlet service provides access to portlets that you create. Your portlet application gathers and processes content from the Pega Platform and displays the content and the processing results in a portlet window on a portal page in a Web browser. The service package represents the portlet application, and the portlet service rule represents a portlet in the application. The service activity for a portlet service provides the home page — the first Web page that appears in the portlet on startup. Although it is typical to have one portlet service rule in a Pega Platform portlet application, you can develop portlet applications with more than one portlet.
The external portlet can operate as a guest, or use the Pega Platform single sign-on feature provided through Data-Admin-AuthService data objects. A standard authentication service object named PRPortletService is available to support portlets.
Unless your organization has implemented portlets, consider the Pega Web Mashup as an implementation alternative. In many situations, Pega Web Mashup may be simpler to implement, and bypasses some limitations of portlets.
Use the Application Explorer to see Service Portlet rules in your application. Use the Records Explorer to list all Service Portlet rules that are available to you.
Service Portlet rules belong to the Integration-Services category. A Service Portlet rule is an instance of the Rule-Service-Portlet rule type.