In order to have a role-based psml, I defined the following in my.properties file: services.Profiler.newuser.template= while in jetspeedresource.properties I left the default values: services.Profiler.newuser.template=turbine services.Profiler.rolefallback=true The problem is that jetspeed still uses the default template value (turbine) instead of that specified in my.properties (null). To work properly, I have to modified the original configuration file. PS: my.properties is perfectly configured in web.xml.