In order to use a portlet in a different webapp I had to create the instance in the webapp that owns that code. Jboss could load the webapps in any order, so trying to create an instance from a portlet thats not loaded wouldn't work. So i ended up just putting the portlet-instances.xml entry in the owner webapp - and then referenced that instance id in my *-object.xml. Hope that helps. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4091709#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...