[Problem]Registering "External Applications" in Oracle Portal

Question

We want to register an external application (simple HTML based login application) with Oracle Portal 10.1.4. We followed the steps documented and registered the external application. We did provide the necessary credentials and checked the remember credentials check box.
We added the External Application Portlet which provides a link to the added application. However, everytime we click the link , instead of automatically logging into external application , we are shown the external application login screen.
Our environment: Oracle 10.1.4 Portal ; Oracle 10.1.2 Appserver
Appreciate any help to solve the problem.
Thanks

Answer 1

Hey 619948:
These can be tricky to track down. Typically, there are 1 or more form fields missing from the external application that the actual application needs to log you in. Here's the flow I use to setup external apps.
1) Go to login page of the external app and view the page source
2) Find the URL in the action address of the <FORM tag or in the JavaScript used for submitting the form
3) Find every form input including <INPUT, <SELECT, etc and note their names and their values (if any). This includes hidden ones
4) The tricky part -- try to make an educated guess as to which fields are required and which ones are optional. This is not always obvious
5) Setup your external application with the Action URL as the URL, the username and password fields where indicated and adding in any extra fields identified in step 4
If that still doesn't do the trick, I use the Web Developer plugin for Firefox to change the POST (if that is what is used for logging in) to a GET so I can see the exact fields being submitted on the application's login page. Sometimes, it may be an obscure button like submit=submit.
Finally, some applications just don't play well with externally logging in. This is one of the cases where it really isn't Oracle Portal's doing. Some apps just have so much coding and scripts etc. on their login page that you just can't login except through thier page.
Rgds/Mark M.