<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  General Functions > Configuring the MIE (Programmer's Guide) > Portal Design > Request Portal Design (Programmer's Guide) > Template Construction

The Request Portal is designed as a multi-step wizard, however (to preserve backward compatibility with the existing MIE infrastructure) all steps are laid out in a single HTML template.  The template is divided into specific zones using various delimiters and tags.

Generally, a Request Portal tag opens with the {% delimiter, and closes with the %} delimiter.  

NOTE: Only Request Portal-recognized tags may start and end with the {% %} delimiter pairs as defined above.  The MIE generally uses {% and %} as delimiters for tags in other areas.  Any tags that are to be interpreted as merge or general tags must substitute [% as the start delimiter and %] as the end.

Request Portal tags are as follows (all other tags are either merge or general tags and must use the [% as  the start delimiter and %] as the end delimiter):

STEPSTOTAL
MAXORDERENTRIES
MAXSTEPMOVERIGHTNOORDER
STYLE
VALIDATE
PAGEHEADER<n>
STEP<n>-AREA<m>
STEP<n>-LOOKUP<m>
ORDERAREA<n>

A template is created by populating the various zones as defined by the various recognized tags.  The zones and how they should be populated are defined in each of the tag's topics.

A template is comprised of one or more steps, with each step being a separate screen of the wizard.  A step is comprised of up to four different areas (Area 1 through 4).  Each area can have up to four look-up zones.  Each step can have its own Shopping Cart area as well as its own Question and Answer (Q&A) area.