Tivoli Integrated Portal (TIP) portlet authorization

If you ever created custom pages in TIP, you may have encountered authorization issues. This is because you have to set the user authorization on different levels. The official documentation guides you on creating roles, groups, users and setting their relationships, but doesn't mention about portlet authorization.

Each page you create can include a portlet. The most common is the Web Widget, necessary to open a web page. By default, only the "administrator" role has access to it. So, if you create a page, add the web widget, and give access to non admin users to the page, when they try to access it, they will have a blank (grey) page and no error message displayed.

When that happens, go to the server log "SystemOut.log" and look for the following error:

"doStartTag() user does not have permissions for view mode"

Usually this is related to the portlet authorization. You will have to configure it as well.

To configure the portlet authorization, go to "Settings -> portlets" and click on the portlet. This will open the portlet configuration page. Click "Next" until you find the Security tab:

You can now add the correct roles to the authorization containers. Select "User" and add the role for you final user. Click "Next" and "Finish".

Now you can login again with the final user, open the page and the portlet will work fine.