Sutro Software

Portal Spy  »  Datasheet

Realize the Full Value of your Open Text / Vignette Investment

Portal Spy will transform your Open Text Vignette Portal and Dynamic Portal Module network into a more powerful, flexible, productive, transparent, and enjoyable platform for hosting your company's web initiatives.

Sutro Software launched the first official release of Portal Spy in October 2008 at Vignette Village, then followed up a year later with Portal Spy 2.0 at Open Text Content World 2009. The result of years of iteration with Vignette's largest customers, in use at Global 500 IT departments around the world, singled out by CMS Watch's 2009 Enterprise Portals Report as "very handy for large Vignette Portal deployments," Portal Spy is an essential tool for any Vignette developer or administrator.

Manage

Portal Spy operates above the level of the Vignette Portal Server Console, providing one-console control over your entire portal and content delivery stage topology. Federate all of your portal instances, Dynamic Portal Module (DPM) override assets, and component archive (CAR) bundles into a single management console, then drag portal components from one to the other as if working with files on a filesystem. Quickly browse and search through all of your portal assets no matter where they are hosted – richly visualizing any and all portal-related images, code, and configuration. You can even compare and graphically synchronize entire portal environments with one another.

Develop

Portal Spy includes a powerful portal-aware Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Any change to user interface layer source files – JSP, XSL, HTML, Javascript, CSS, etc. – can be made inline with Portal Spy's syntax-highlighted source editor. Changes are saved back to your portal instances via Vignette's deployment API, so your clusters remain correctly synchronized. Changes to DPM assets update the appropriate web application. Changes to CAR file contents are rebundled into their parent archives. Synchronize code changes with your source control system by simply dragging changed files back into your local working copy – Portal Spy's desktop filesystem integration makes it easy. Graphically compare source changes across any portal instance or CAR file, then merge differences from one to the other with a click of the mouse.

Deploy

After using Portal Spy's drag-and-drop deployment features once, you will never go back to the tedious, error-prone, ad-hoc alternative. Move your sites from staging to your production by simply dragging them from portal to portal. Transfer incremental changes rather than whole sites for safer, more granular updates – navigation items, portlets, grids, styles, even individual source files and images are all available for both drag-and-drop transfer and high-level comparison and synchronization. This increased ability to interconnect your Vignette Portal instances, content delivery stages, component archives, and desktop filesystem opens up new possibilities, making it easier to experiment and iterate, and allowing you to consider projects that were previously freighted with too many manual steps and restrictive processes. Portal Spy's powerful deployment features will save you time, money, and frustration.

Analyze

Portal Spy taps into Vignette Portal's native metrics API*, which by default collects valuable portal usage metrics that often lie dormant within your portal's database, unexposed through any user interface. Portal Spy exposes this data in rich, interactive charts, graphs, and spreadsheets that are easily exported to your favorite graphics and spreadsheet applications. Unlike alternative analytics solutions, Portal Spy's analysis and reporting tool:

*Note that if you have disabled your Vignette Portal metrics subsystem due to performance concerns, Portal Spy will help you re-enable it in a way that has no performance impact whatsoever. See the Portal Spy user guide for details.

Configure

You will marvel at the cimplicity of Portal Spy's centralized configuration management. All configuration files across your network can be graphically modified in Portal Spy's syntax-highlighted property editor. Portal configuration files, PortalBean definition files, web and JSR portlet application XML and TLD files, DPM configuration, even database-hosted Portal 8.x configuration settings are all available for graphical editing and cross-instance comparison. You can synchronize configuration settings between different nodes of the same portal cluster, or across entire clusters – Portal Spy's high-level graphical comparison and merge utility makes it easy.

Monitor

Portal Spy monitors all of your portal instance log output from a central, searchable, color-coded log viewer. Exceptions jump out in bright red, giving you a graphical way of quickly scroll-scanning for problems. Each portal instance you connect to gets a new tab in the log console, allowing you to browse through the log output of your entire portal network as easily as surfing the web.

Integrate

As a rich client desktop application, Portal Spy integrates seamlessly with your overall software environment. Portal Spy interoperates with your browser and with the Vignette Portal user interface, linking you directly into whichever specific parts of the Server Console or Site Console you need to complete your tasks. Portal Spy integrates with your filesystem, allowing you to drag-and-drop portal components, source files, and configuration files to and from your desktop and local source control directories. Portal Spy analytics exports your usage report data to your favorite reporting tools. Portal Spy even allows you to manage your application server restarts via scriptable restart controls that work with whatever restart management system you already have in place. Portal Spy fits into your company's authentication system by integrating with industry-leading single sign-on products. Java desktop technology ensures that Portal Spy behaves the same way on Mac, Linux, Windows, or Solaris. Portal Spy's use of Java Web Start gives you the option of automatically keeping the product up-to-date with the latest fixes and updates. Finally, Portal Spy's help menu integrates with Sutro Software's issue tracking system, allowing you to report issues and make product suggestions at the click of a button.

Unify

Tie together the loose ends of your Vignette Portal and Dynamic Portal Module instances and assets. Regain control of your portal website change management process. Answer questions about your company's portal and portlet usage. Centralize the configuration, development, management, and monitoring of all your Vignette Portal installations. Unify your Vignette Portal network with Portal Spy.

Try the Best

Portal Spy and Vignette Portal are a powerful combination. Together they provide capabilities not available from any other enterprise portal platform. Together Portal Spy and Open Text Vignette Portal represent the world's best enterprise portal technology. Try Portal Spy today!