The Vaadin 7 Control Panel centralizes management of the shared Vaadin 7 environment.

The Vaadin 7 Control Panel features:

* Overview page summarizes all details of the shared Vaadin environment including the version of Vaadin, the add ons included in the widgetset compile and the date/time when the widget set was compiled.

* An "About Vaadin" page defines common Vaadin terminology to help those new to the Vaadin ecosystem.

* Easy upgrade to a new version of Vaadin (including the 7.3 line), even when server is blocked from general internet access (via manual upload).

* During the upgrade, all Vaadin portlets are updated (if setting is used) to the same version of Vaadin being deployed. This will allow for a Vaadin upgrade but not redeploy all Vaadin portlets to benefit from the upgrade.

* Easy upload and integration of Vaadin Add-Ons (no more EXT plugin deployment or manual jar dropping).

* Create and edit custom Vaadin themes in the control panel, including import and export capability. This allows for a theme to be created in one environment and migrated to other environments (such as code promotion from dev->test->qa->prod or deploying to all nodes in a cluster).

* Settings to control how the control panel works, including settings to increase memory allocation for compiling widget sets and themes (necessary when there are a lot of add ons included in the widget set builds).

* Detailed output for the upgrade process, the theme compilation process, and the widget set compilation process.

* When deployed, if Vaadin 6 is present in Liferay it will be purged and replaced with Vaadin 7.2.7 from the control panel.

* The Vaadin 7 Control Panel supports I18N, although currently the only supplied language bundle is English (please contact support@vaadinonliferay.com to submit a language bundle).

There is a service tier provided by vaadin7-control-panel-portlet-service-1.0.0.0.jar. This service tier allows Vaadin 7 portlets the ability to check the installed version of Vaadin 7, determine if the Valo theme is available, list all installed add ons and themes, etc.

Additionally Vaadin 7 plugins can take advantage of the service tier to support hot deploy of Vaadin add ons and themes. This will allow, for example, MarketPlace Vaadin 7 plugins that ship with necessary dependent add ons and/or themes, will allow a Vaadin 7 plugin deployment to the nodes of a cluster with all dependent add ons/themes without having to manually deploy via the control panel, and it will allow for Vaadin 7 plugin promotion (dev->test->qa->prod) to include dependent add ons/themes without requiring manual deployments before hand.

NOTE:

When deployed, the Vaadin 7 Control Panel will purge Vaadin 6 from Liferay if it is still there (because Vaadin 6 and Vaadin 7 cannot coexist in the shared environment), but sometimes this can cause problems for the application container. You should restart the Liferay environment after deploying the Vaadin 7 Control Panel.