How a site is personalized

Develop a personalized portlet or website

1. Define an area of a site that needs Personalization. For example...
   • Personalized list of new articles
   • Place on an intranet site for targeted employee bulletins such as changes to benefit plans
   • Product list on a commerce website

2. Define a set of Resource Collections and Application Objects by...
   • Pointing to an IBM Java Content Repository item type.
   • Generating using RAD Personalization wizards
   • Developing using public programming interfaces.

3. Create references to Resource Collection and Application Object...
   • Manually using the Personalization Browser.
   • Automatically by importing .hrf files

4. If we are not using using stock resource collections provided with IBM WebSphere Portal, such as the Portal User Resource Collection or the Java Content Repository Resource Collection, set classpath for both application being personalized, and for the Personalization browser web application.

   We can use a shared library placed either on the application server, or on the individual web applications.

5. Use the objects and terms defined through the Resource Collections and Application Objects to write rules.

6. Map those rules to content spots using campaigns.

7. To show the rule or content spot, either...
   • Configure a Personalization Rule Display portlet
   • Call into the Personalization programming interfaces to execute the rules or content spots.

The Content Spot provides a way for the site developers to develop personalized pages before the rules are authored as well as a way to more loosely tie a particular rule to a page. It is then up to a programmer to "map" the Content Spot to a Rule using a Rule Mapping within a Campaign in a Personalization browser.

Use Personalization Rules

1. A user navigates to the page containing Personalization rules or content spots.

2. The application invokes Personalization to find content or make decisions.

3. Personalization identifies the correct rules to execute. If a Content Spot with the name given to execute is not found, a rule is looked for directly with this name.

4. The Personalization server searches for all Rule Mappings for the Content Spot. The server looks for Rule Mappings which have started, but not yet ended.

5. The Rule Mappings are ordered based on the priority and split values. The rules associated with each mapping are executed in turn until a rule returns content.

   It is possible to configure Personalization so that only the first rule (higher priority) will get executed.

6. For each rule executed, Personalization retrieves the user's profile and evaluates the rule to select the content which meets the conditions of the rule. The rules engine will invoke the resource engine as necessary to retrieve content pieces.

7. The content is returned to the web page, and displays for the user.

Parent topic: Personalization

Next topic: Personalization terms

Related concepts:

Develop a personalized portlet