# Portal Control Properties

Portal Controls have properties you can edit in the Property Editor. Control properties--also called annotations--provide a convenient way to pass parameters to the underlying API at run time without having to manually pass the properties in your own Java code. For example, the User Provider Control has an atnProvider property that lets you enter the authentication provider that should be used for any of the control's actions, as shown in the following illustration.

The following code in Source View shows how the Page Flow uses the antProvider property.

/**
* @common:control
* @jc:user-security-provider atnProvider="DefaultAuthenticator"
*/
private com.bea.p13n.controls.securityProvider.UserProviderControl myUserProvider;

To see which properties are available on a Portal Control, click in the control name in Source View and press F1 to see the control's Javadoc (the com.bea.p13n.controls.* packages).

## Related Topics

Adding Portal Controls to Java Page Flows

Control Security

Portal Control Declaration

Working with Java Controls

Building Custom Java Controls