Within this site, a series of pages may be known collectively as a context. For example, a course section may have its own context, your athletic department may have a context, and so on. Depending on your responsibilities at your institution, you may have permission to use many different contexts. You may also have permission to manage one or more contexts.
A context is made up of pages, which host portlets. Each portlet is associated with a specific type of content or activity. For example, the Announcements portlet lets you view announcements, the Handouts portlet lets you browse and download handouts, and so on. Each occurrence of a portlet is a portlet instance. For example, there might be several instances of the Handouts portlet used throughout your site, each containing different handouts.
Your ability to view pages and use portlets will vary depending on the roles to which you're assigned. Each role is associated with different privileges.
The portal comes with several portlets, which are the primary focus of these help pages, as described in Base portlets. Your portal may also have other portlets that were developed by your institution, or which are available through other modules that integrate with this one.