The main area of a portal consists of a container that defines where new documents open on the screen. When you generate a portal through App Studio, Pega Platform creates the container automatically, based on the portal template. When the application starts, the container displays the start page, which is the top page in the navigation menu.

For example, if you choose Dashboard as the start page, the container initially points to the Dashboard harness. At run time, whenever the user opens a new document, the container is reloaded to display that content, but the portal is not. This architecture improves performance and reduces context switching.

If you design your portal in Dev Studio, you must manually create your containers.

Containers embed sections or harnesses in a portal. Depending on your needs, you can use the following types of containers:

Dynamic container

You can use dynamic containers only in the main pane of the portal, and a portal can have only one dynamic container.

AJAX container

You can use AJAX containers anywhere in a portal, and a harness can have up to three AJAX containers. This type of container also supports conditional logic, such as when rules, and can be configured for different roles. For example, an AJAX container can be an expandable pane that offers supplementary case information and is only visible when the user requests that data.