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HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
HCL Digital Experience 8.5
Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
Overview
HCL Digital Experience (formerly IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager) empowers you to create, manage, and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to virtually all audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications, and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile. and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).
Product capabilities
HCL Digital Experience capabilities let you quickly implement web experiences that are engaging, flexible, and high performing. It delivers differentiated, personalized experiences for each user across multiple touchpoints (web, mobile, and hybrid mobile/web applications, and more). The HCL Digital Experience platforms, including foundation components such as HCL Portal, Web Content Manager, and Digital Asset Management services, support requirements for modern and adaptable digital experience platforms. Its capabilities and digital site delivery platform services enable designers, developers, marketers, and business professionals to collaborate and deliver digital experiences that are engaging, targeted, relevant and productive.
Integration
HCL Portal integrates with many products.
Application integration
A portal provides access to content, data, and services that are located throughout the enterprise. These services include predefined connectors and portlets, and tools for creating additional connectors and portlets.

HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5 [Legacy Content]
- HCL Digital Experience 9.0
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 9.0 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
- HCL Digital Experience 8.5
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
  - Overview
    HCL Digital Experience (formerly IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager) empowers you to create, manage, and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to virtually all audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications, and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile. and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).
    - What's new
      HCL Digital Experience provides new features for administrators, developers, and content authors. Start with the last supported release to leverage these new features on your site and then continue to get fixes, improvements, and new features with the latest cumulative fix. Use this section to get the quick highlights on these features and improvements.
    - Product capabilities
      HCL Digital Experience capabilities let you quickly implement web experiences that are engaging, flexible, and high performing. It delivers differentiated, personalized experiences for each user across multiple touchpoints (web, mobile, and hybrid mobile/web applications, and more). The HCL Digital Experience platforms, including foundation components such as HCL Portal, Web Content Manager, and Digital Asset Management services, support requirements for modern and adaptable digital experience platforms. Its capabilities and digital site delivery platform services enable designers, developers, marketers, and business professionals to collaborate and deliver digital experiences that are engaging, targeted, relevant and productive.
      - Streamlined site creation
        You can use the Site Builder to generate your own portal site.
      - Web analytics
        HCL Digital Experience (DX) includes a number of solutions to help you understand how visitors use your site, including server-side analytics and client-side analytics. Client-side analytics is also called active site analytics.
      - Web content
        HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager help you manage content, share information, and communicate your message.
      - Social business
        HCL Portal offers wikis, blogs, and tagging and rating capabilities. In addition, you can integrate existing collaboration applications with your portal site, such as HCL Connections.
      - Integration
        HCL Portal integrates with many products.
        Web Application Bridge integration
        Use the Web Application Bridge to integrate with web applications, such as Sharepoint.
        Process integration
        Use the Unified Task List portlet to integrate with business process solutions such as IBM Process Server, WebSphere Lombardi Edition, and other enterprise resource planning software.
        Industry templates
        Industry Toolboxes for HCL Portal provide a resource forum for customers and partners. They pair technology expertise with industry thought leadership to offer best-practice guidance optimized for the particular business you are in.
        Application integration
        A portal provides access to content, data, and services that are located throughout the enterprise. These services include predefined connectors and portlets, and tools for creating additional connectors and portlets.
      - Mobile
        The HCL Digital Experience platform presents mobile-enabled services support that enables you to deliver consistent, personalized cross-channel experiences quickly.
      - Versatile framework
        HCL Digital Experience provides users a consistent view of portal applications and allows users to define specific sets of applications that are presented in a single context. Depending on the requesting device, the rendering of this application set must vary to fulfill the requirements of the device.
    - Types of websites
      Different types of websites require different solutions and use different applications and features. These examples describe details of different websites and the types of applications and features that are required to deliver them.
  - Roadmaps to deploy your system
    Review the roadmaps to understand the common deployment, configuration, migration, and integration patterns.
  - Roadmaps to create your website
    Review the roadmaps to understand how to create your website.
  - Online Help
    This Online Help is made available in the HCL Digital Experience Help Center for quick references on how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Digital Experience.
  - Installing
    HCL Digital Experience provides flexible deployment options that range from proof-of-concept where you can examine and test functionality to a highly available and scalable production environment. Review the planning information to learn more about hardware and software requirements, high availability, scalability, supported topologies, and much more. Select your operating system and then select the installation pattern that most reflects your business needs.
  - Configuring
    Run the following tasks after you install and deploy HCL Digital Experience. They address tasks that are typically run one time and have a global effect. Some configuration changes are made more frequently or do not have a global effect. These tasks are addressed in the Administering section.
  - Backup and restore
    Backup and recovery of data files and databases is an essential operation for any business system, particularly for data and applications that run in production environments. Create and follow a plan for backing up and recovering data on all tiers of your HCL Digital Experience deployment. IBM Installation Manager must also be included in backup and recovery planning. If you back up the HCL Portal file structure and then install a fix pack, your HCL Digital Experience and IBM Installation Manager become out of sync after you restore the HCL Portal file system. This condition is not recoverable.
  - Migrating
    Successful migration requires significant planning and preparation, understanding the tools that are involved, and careful execution of the appropriate steps in the order provided.
  - Integrating
    Integrate HCL Digital Experience with software such as HCL Sametime to enable your users to collaborate more easily. You can also use the unified task list portlet to integrate HCL with your backend business process software, such as IBM Process Server.
  - Administering
    Use the administration tools that are provided with the portal to do various day-to-day administration tasks. There are two methods for editing portal setup: using the administration portlets or the XML configuration interface. The administration portlets are a convenient way to make real-time updates to the portal's configuration. While the XML configuration interface is suited to more advanced administration, including batch processing of updates.
  - Securing
    Security tasks include setting up property extension databases and custom user repositories, configuring and activating SSL, and configuring authentication. In addition, tasks such as activating Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and NIST SP800-131a security modules and configuring external security managers such as Security Access Manager might be required to secure your portal environment.
  - Monitoring
    HCL Portal includes tools and features to help you monitor the portal site.
  - Setting up a website
    Setting up a website includes, creating pages, adding navigation, setting up search, and adding content to the site. Themes are used to customize the portal's look-and-feel. Out-of-the-box templates and the site wizard can help you set up your portal site faster. You can add wikis and blogs to your site and let users tag and rate content on your site.
  - Staging to production
    During portal solution development, the solution is initially developed, tested, and refined on one server or a limited number of servers. The solution is deployed later on live systems, referred to as the production environment. The process of moving the solution from the development environment to the production environment is called staging.
  - Developing
    This section includes developer documentation on extending applications and development assets for HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager.
  - Troubleshooting
    This section helps you resolve problems, use diagnostic tools and tracing to capture HCL Digital Experience system errors.
  - Reference
    View information that can help you use the Digital Experience Help Center including directory conventions, terms of use, trademarks, a glossary, and more.
  - Glossary
    This glossary includes terms and definitions for HCL Digital Experience.
  - Content Template Catalog 4.4
    The Content Template (CTC) is a set of templates that accelerate the process of building a website.

Application integration | HCL Digital Experience

A portal provides access to content, data, and services that are located throughout the enterprise. These services include predefined connectors and portlets, and tools for creating additional connectors and portlets.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems are excellent candidates for portlets because efficient, personalized access to these functions provides measurable return on your portal investment. HCL provides connectors to enterprise applications by using the Java Connector Architecture (JCA).

Standard Java connectors

JCA is a standard architecture for integrating Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications with enterprise information systems that are not relational databases. Each of these systems provides native APIs for identifying a function to call, specifying its input data, and processing its output data. The goal of the JCA is to provide an independent API for coding these functions.

JCA also defines a standard Service Provider Interface (SPI) for integrating the transaction, security, and connection management facilities of an application server with those of a transactional resource manager. Thus, JCA is a standards-based approach to managing connections, transactions, and secure access to enterprise application systems. IBM JCA connectors provide access to systems such as SAP, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, Oracle Enterprise Edition, CICS, IMS, and Host-on-Demand. Leveraging its CrossWorlds acquisition, HCL plans to develop and integrate JCA connectors to many other systems.

Rational® Application Developer provides a complete development and unit test environment for applications that use JCA connectors, Web services, and microflows. Rational® Application Developer tools include support for Web Service Definition Language (WSDL), developer versions of the connectors, the Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF), and the microflow engine.