this first demo site of mine shows an action portlet acting
as I would expect. It is the site actions portlet and displays
what I would expect. https://www.docentims.com/
the second site has control panel action portlet. (see screen shot at end of post)
Nothing shows http://mckennariley.webfactional.com/DocentIMS
===============
I can't find anything in docs.plone.org explaining what each portlet should do, I don't know
what to expect.
Control panel: - nothing is shown in the portlet
Folder: - nothing is shown in the portlet
Global: - nothing is shown in the portlet
Object: - displays same content as in the user panel when log in.
Object_buttons: - nothing is shown in the portlet
Portal tabs: - displays top level tabs in the portlet
Site_actions: - displays site actions (e.g. site map, accessibility)
User: - shows same options as shown when logged in and looking at your button
Workflow: - nothing is shown in the portlet
Collection: - the collection shows, but why does the collection folder itself display in the portlet?
As far as I understand it, the action portlet is meant to show categories of actions as defined by the portal_actions tool. All of those actions have permissions set on them which determine if they are visible or not.
I think the vocabulary that feeds the set of categories may be suspect, as it lists 'workflow' actions as an available set, but I don't think there are actually any workflow actions described either by the workflow tool, or by the portal_actions tool.
I agree, some documentation of what each of these action categories is and what you should expect to see would be good. I suspect that no-one has yet had the time to write this documentation. Perhaps you could do some investigation and begin adding this documentation to docs.plone.org? It would be a most welcome contribution!
Cris, I would be happy to do this, that is what the little table in above post was the start.
So, How can I contact the people who put in this action portlet (it is new to P5) so I can understand what they were trying to achieve?
Is there a place for me to post a note explaining I would like to add/improve documentation on these portlets but would like to hear from the person who added these portlets. Then I can create good documentation.
The way I would track down those responsible would be to go through the github.com repo and see who made the first commit for the relevant lines of code.
Here's the history of the actions portlet file in the plone.app.portlets package:
It shows the original author and the committers that have helped since. I would reach out to them directly to offer end-user documentation of the portlet. I'm sure they'd be happy to help you understand the purpose, the intended use-cases, and the proper expectations for the portlet in exchange for writing that information up and contributing it to docs.plone.org. As for contributing the documentation you write, I would reach out to @svx who is leading the charge on improving Plone documentation. He should be able to help you find out what to do with what you write.
Thanks Cris, I posted a commit in github referencing back here. I said I would like to help the Plone community by documenting these portlets and asked if they would help me understand the expected functionality of the portlet