We have many processes that run before any portlets are instantiated. The docs seem to elude that injecting services may be the answer to my question. An example would be a user logs in based on his credentials a call to a legacy app returns a list of patients that the user has a relationship to. This list would be in our proprietary Context(session) so no matter what portlet he was using that list would be there. It can't be in a portlet because we don't know which portlet he may have on his default page. Other processes include sharedsession(CCOW), our proprietary auditing, any thing required to set up the session for that user. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4032186#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...