Can a user be part of two Experience Definitions?

Question

Hi, I have two questions:
1. Is experience defintion the only way of defining a different look & feel including navigation for a set of users?
2. Can a user be part of two experience definitions? If yes, which experience definition he will see? Can the user have option to switch between two experience definitions that he is part of?
thanks
sampath

Answer 1

Hello Sampath,
1. No
You can use, for example, the same Exp Def but different communities, so look and feel will be still different.
Exp Def is a kind of TOP LEVEL portal object where you can define differences for look and feel. For example, this is the place where you can define different NAVIGATION or STYLES.
But it doesn't mean that Exp Def is the only place to do this. You still may want to have the same style but different portlets on default community page for different group of user. Even for navigation you can not say that Exp Def is the only place to have different navigations. For example, you can use the same Exp definition and turn off portal navigation, then you can use canvas portlet as navigation for different communities. So you may have 2 different navigations for the same Exp Def. At the same time you can still choose different way and create 2 Exp Def and use 2 different navigation. What I want to say is that you can reach the same results applying different ways.
2. Can a user be part of two experience definitions?.
Yes.
If yes, which experience definition he will see?Depends of the Exp Def rules. The first rule that validate to "true" will be applied. For example, let's say you have user that belong to group "A" and you have 2 Exp Def rules both setup as rule condition for group A:
1) Rule 1 ( user belong to group A ) --> Exp Def 1
2) Rule 2 ( user belong to group A ) --> Exp Def 2
So if this is the only condition for both rules then Rule 1 will be validate to true first, so user will be redirected to Exp Def 1 that is associated with Rule 1. Now if you change sequence of these rules to:
1) Rule 2 ( user belong to group A ) --> Exp Def 2
2) Rule 1 ( user belong to group A ) --> Exp Def 1
user will be redirected to Exp Def 2.
Of course, in real life you are going to have more conditions for rules, this is just simple example.
Dmitry
Edited by Bryazgin at 02/05/2008 7:01 AM