Portal features are ready-made pages, such as a membership renewal flow, that another Rhythm application can add to a site in one step. Use them when you want to start from those pages instead of building the full flow in the page designer.
For example, applicants can see exam registrations, scores, and pass/fail status on My Exams only when both the My Exams and View Exam Registrations features are installed. Without those features, the site has no page where that information can appear.
What It Controls
Installing a feature adds its pages to the site you are working on, places each page in the page template you choose, and adds entries to the menu you choose. Rhythm publishes the new pages as soon as installation finishes, so visitors can see them right away.
You cannot uninstall a feature after you install it. Its pages become regular site pages, and you remove them by deleting those pages yourself.
Pages and menu items your staff build directly are not part of this installer’s catalogue, even when they look like pages a feature would create. If you reinstall a feature later, the feature will not recreate those staff-built pages or menu items. Reinstalling a feature that is already installed is generally safe on a live account because it republishes only that feature’s own pages and menu, without changing unrelated live content.
Where to Find It
Open Features for the site you are working on to see which features are already installed. Then choose Install a Portal Feature to open the installation wizard.
Prerequisites
- Your site needs at least one menu and one page template before you install a feature because the wizard needs both choices to continue.
- You need permission to work with portal features to see the installed-features list, and you need a separate permission to run the wizard.
Seeing What Is Installed
If the installation wizard reports an error right as it finishes, check this list and the site’s pages before you assume nothing happened. The pages and menu entries may still have been created successfully, even when the wizard reports a problem.
Installing a Feature
- Open Features, then select Install a Portal Feature.
- Choose one or more features from the catalogue. The catalogue shows only features that match your site’s purpose, so a feature built for another kind of site does not appear.
- Choose the page template for the new pages, then choose the menu where their entries should be added.
- Preview the pages the installation will create. There is no separate published list of exactly which pages each feature creates, so use this preview to confirm what you will get before you install it.
- Confirm the installation.
If a feature-created page is deleted later, run that feature’s installation again to add it back. Installation creates only pages that do not already exist on the site, so it does not duplicate a page you still have.
Result
Features Other Workflows Depend On
Several member-facing workflows work only after the related feature is installed, and a few need more setup after installation:
Warning
A portal feature can depend on a related feature being turned on elsewhere in your account, even when the installation screen does not say so. For example, the Presenter Center feature has been observed to install without error but not work after Abstracts is disabled because Presenter Center relies on it. If an installed feature’s pages look right but do not behave as expected, check whether a related feature it depends on is still enabled.
If pages from an installed feature are missing components they should have, such as after a sandbox refresh or another disruption, you have two ways to recover. You can add the missing components to those pages by hand, or you can delete the feature’s pages and reinstall the feature so it rebuilds them from scratch.
How Installed Pages Look
- Reviews. A member portal’s review center and award submission reviewing both depend on the Reviews feature being installed on that specific site. For the review center, Reviews is installed together with Submissions. Installing Reviews creates a page named Review Center at the fixed route
/reviews/viewSpace. If your site already has another page named Review Center, you can end up with two pages that share a name but use different routes, so check each page’s address instead of relying on the name alone. The Submission Reviews menu item also needs to link to the Reviews Overview page itself, or selecting it may not show the expected review screen. - Integrated Portal Events. The Integrated Portal Events feature must be installed before a Portal Integrated event is reachable at all. If you turn on group registration for an already-integrated event, you may also need to reinstall that event’s own portal components because enabling group registration in the event setup does not necessarily update the portal by itself.
- Public Invoice Payments. Invoice links and member public payment links open the Pay an Invoice screen only when the Public Invoice Payments feature is installed on the portal. Without it, the link can lead to a blank page instead. When you turn it on, choose whether it accepts credit cards, ACH, or both, and confirm your payment processor supports ACH before you enable that option.
- Third-party chatbots. You can add a chat widget to the portal through a custom component if the vendor supports embedding it with HTML embed code or a script snippet.
- Add Existing Licenses. This component requires Issuing Board, License Number, Initial Licensure Date, and Expiration Date before it accepts a license record.
- View Order. Installing the feature does not guarantee the View Order page is fully wired up. Its page component and payment route sometimes still need to be added by hand, so do not assume they are already in place. The portal’s Order Summary display is fixed and cannot be configured to show the same level of line-item detail, such as quantities, shipping, taxes, or discounts, that the console’s order screens show.
- Accreditation. Installing the Accreditation feature automatically includes the Accreditation components on the pages it generates. Those components include Accreditation Profile, View Reports, Submit Report, Update Profile, View Visit, My Visiting Team Assignments, Submit Evaluation, Team Candidates, and View Report.
- Auto-renewal. Text on the auto-renewal page has limited customization. Some text on that page, including link text such as “Set Up Auto Renewal,” can only be changed through broader portal page content that is shared with other pages, such as the membership overview page. A change there can affect both pages.
- Group Applications. Processing group applications in the portal requires the Group Applications feature to be installed on the member portal. After you install it, you may still need to add the Group Applications component to the right page yourself, or expose it as a menu item, instead of assuming it is ready to use immediately.
- Training & Courses. Installing a portal feature is separate from whether linked course offerings appear in a Schedule of Events component. If offerings are missing from that component, check the component’s own settings and the page’s visibility, not just whether the feature is installed.
If Installation Does Not Complete as Expected
| What you see | What it means and what to do |
|---|---|
| The wizard reports an error, including "Unable to install packages," but the pages or menu items appear anyway | Check the Pages list, the Features screen, and the portal itself before you assume the installation failed. The feature’s pages may still have been created even when the wizard reports a problem. |
| Installation fails with a page route validation error | One of the feature’s own packaged page routes does not start with a slash. Contact Support because this is a defect in how that feature was packaged, not something you can fix from the wizard. |
| Installation reports success, but a feature’s pages do not populate | A broken image reference inside the page template you chose can cause this false success. Try installing with a different template, or contact Support. |
| Installation fails partway through rebuilding the site map | This can happen when the automatic rebuild that installation triggers is too large. You may see a success message before this failure appears, so check the Features screen and Pages list to confirm what was actually created. |
| Not every page you expected from a feature was created | This has happened with some installations, including missing accreditation pages and a missing membership join or renew payment page. Compare what was created against the preview, and contact Support if a page you need is still missing. |
| A reviews feature installation on an event microsite does not leave the Reviews Overview or review-administration pages in place | This has happened intermittently. Reinstalling the feature, or contacting Support, can help. |
| Changing a template’s navigation or menu visibility after features are already installed | Correcting the template alone may not be enough. You may need to delete the affected pages and reinstall the features after the template is fixed. |
| A submission form works in Console, but its portal page is blank | Deleting the affected pages and reinstalling the portal feature has resolved this in some cases. |
| Reinstalling a feature after customizing the pages it created | Reinstalling replaces those pages with the feature’s current version and removes any page-level customizations you made directly on them. If you need to keep those changes, update customized pages individually instead of reinstalling. |
| An integrated event shows a setup warning asking you to reinstall its portal components | This is a normal part of resolving some event setup issues. Reinstalling is safe and does not remove anything you have already published. |
Permissions
You need permission to work with portal features to see the installed-features list, and you need a separate permission to run the installation wizard.