Archive for the ‘11g’ Category

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WebCenter Content (Oracle UCM) Multi-Upload and Batch Metadata Editor

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

Today I would like to share something Fishbowl Solutions has been working on internally for a little while now and started to implement at customer sites – Fishbowl Multi-Upload and Batch Metadata Editor.

This component was initially developed as part of Fishbowl’s Innovation Event. The combination of the first place and second place idea meshed very well together in delivering a seamless method for bulk contributing and editing metadata. This is now within production at a customer site with several modifications made to satisfy their requirements.

The main use case for this component is the mass uploading of content to get it into the system for categorization now, or at a later time.  Providing a staging ground for content to get it in the system and off the user’s desktop is crucial for an enterprise solution. In addition, the mass tagging and editing of metadata all at once is a feature that has been missing within content server from its inception.  As many of you know, Bex Huff of Bezzotech has a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet (Remote Metadata Updater) that uses SOAP calls to communicate with content server to perform edits to content’s metadata after a search query is performed.  My goal was extend this functionality within Oracle WebCenter Content using modern-day advancements in JavaScript and browser capabilities.

This was done using a combination of several API’s, PlupLoad (Oracle uses an older version of this for their Drag & Drop upload feature within WebCenter Spaces Document Explorer Taskflow), Handsontable, JQuery, (in addition to extensively utilizing my WebCenter Content and Jquery Framework for calling WebCenter Content services) and Fishbowl’s overall knowledge of WebCenter and web development techniques.

The most compelling feature that was added for this deployment is “Profile Awareness”.  By this I mean all aspects of the profile and rules set up within content server are taken into consideration.  This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Metadata field state (hidden, edit, info only, required, excluded)
  • Custom field labels
  • Standard list and profile restricted lists for drop down lists
  • Date selection
  • Default values for profiles
  • Metadata field ordering if rule is set as a group

Here are several screenshots of the features and use case it provides (click on any of them to see actual sizes):

  • A user had several images to upload and know they will go within a certain profile.  Navigate to the upload page and drag and drop the files into the drop area:

  • All of the items are now checked into the content server into a private workspace for that user.  Within the workspace you can filter by keywords uploaded and categorize content by profile. (Note: You can also tag content without profiles as well).
  • As there are bound to be erroneous uploads of duplicates, or extra files, supporting a delete function was crucial.
  • The user is now ready to check the boxes for the items they want to categories and tag with final metadata.  Here we present the user with a spreadsheet within the browser.  This is built using the Handsontable JQuery plugin which supports common Excel like features; copy / paste, undo, and cell dragging.  UCM is integrated to provide a high level of context while editing this data; Dropdowns, date fields, required fields, and info only fields aid in user tagging.
  • With column support for dropdowns and dates.
  • Once the user is done editing, they can execute an update.  The table will provide feedback in real time as each item is updated.  The result of the update will be relayed to the user via row highlighting and an error / exception table informing them of the failure.

This expands upon the use case of updating content already in the system with the spreadsheet (Note: That use case is still supported, however, locked down to administrators only).

I hope you find this post compelling about the power that Fishbowl can provide by combining ideas from an innovation event with the years of experience Fishbowl has within the WebCenter Content (UCM) world to provide ease of contribution and bulk editing of content. For more information, feel free to reach out to us at 952-465-3400 or info@fishbowlsolutions.com.

Thanks,

AJ LaVenture
Senior Software Consultant

 

Posted in 10g, 11g, UCM, Uncategorized, UX, WebCenter | 1 Comment »

Reach the Oracle WebCenter Summit with Fishbowl Solutions at Collaborate 13

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

I have been using the analogy that sometimes getting WebCenter projects started, progressed or completed is like climbing a mountain. Customers aren’t always sure where to begin, how to stay on path, or what obstacles may lie ahead. Most customers seem to want to evolve their WebCenter use cases, say from standard content management to an enterprise portal, but not knowing such things as the amount of effort required, technical complexities, and deployment options tends to keep such projects at the base of the proverbial WebCenter mountain.

What better place to start your trek up that mountain than Denver, Colorado – site of Collaborate 13. Fishbowl Solutions will be there, and we would enjoy discussing your WebCenter projects and how we might assist in helping those projects get started, progressed and completed – avoiding the cliffs and jagged rocks along the way. We would also like to share with you some new and exciting ways that your trek can be made easier through our value-add WebCenter solutions. Here is a quick description of the solutions we will highlight at Collaborate 13:

These solutions will be demonstrated in our booth – #1277 – and will be discussed across our six presentations. Be sure to check out our Collaborate 13 page for all the details on our Collaborate activities. We look forward to helping you start your WebCenter ascent at Collaborate 13.

Posted in 10g, 11g, Collaborate, Collaboration, Enterprise Search, Mobile, Portal, SharePoint, WebCenter | No Comments »

Oracle WebCenter PS6 released!

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

Last year back in Feb we had PS5 and now with PS6 the WebCenter Suite released yesterday I can say its all just getting better and better!..

A rundown of the new Jdev 11.1.1.7.0 Enhancements can be seen here

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/jdev/index-088099.html

Here are some of the items that catch my eye and you may have seen it on the twitter stream with a couple early tweets before the official release.

Firstly the new Skyros Skin (I’m presuming after the Greek Island)
Very clean and great looking skin; uses a lot of CSS3 properties instead of hundred of images to structure components – tabs degrades nicely for older browsers IE8 and below ie rounded corners become square.

Also a few new skin selector properties that tidy up the structure for better skinning development – I’ll try to post some updates later on to give you a rundown of some of the new enhancements with skinning.

You can see it in action in the new PS6ADF Faces Rich Client here

http://jdevadf.oracle.com/faces11117/

There are a few DVT extras like Sunburst; although I’m sorry to say I’ve never been too impressed with DVTs you get out of the box.

PanelGridLayout makes it across from R2 into R1PS6 looks promising
Follows the CSS3 specs for grid layout so it can be optimized for layout performance and is also the recommended UI layout component for most pages.

Runtime code editor Finally colour coded goodness!

I believe it’s using codeMirror great job.

File Uploader also looks interesting haven’t tried it out yet – drag drop support is interesting with java support for older browsers looking forward to seeing it in action.

 


Posted in 11g, Labs, Portal, WebCenter | No Comments »

Fishbowl Webinar – A Path, Package, and Promise for WebCenter Content 11g Upgrades

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

Oracle Universal Content Management 10gR3 was released in May 2007. Since that time, Oracle WebCenter Content 11g has been released, and Oracle WebCenter 12c is on the horizon. For 10gR3 customers, the next step down the WebCenter path is to upgrade to 11g. However, some customers don’t know where to begin in terms of an upgrade – not when their current version is supporting numerous business processes, contains thousand of high-value content items, and has been customized numerous time to meet business requirements.

Join Jason Lamon, Senior Marketing Associate, and Alan Mackenthun, Technical Program Manager at Fishbowl Solutions as they discuss Fishbowl’s path, package and promise for WebCenter Content 11g upgrades. They are also privileged to be joined by Mike Kohorst – IT Application Manager at Ryan Companies, who will discuss their recent 11g upgrade success, as well as their future plans for the system. We hope you will be able to join us!

Date: Thursday, March 21st
Time: 1 pm EST, Noon CST
Register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/684506914

 

Posted in 10g, 11g, Content Management, UCM, WebCenter | No Comments »

How to Assign a Group of People to a Disposition Action using Oracle WebCenter

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

The following blog post comes from Fishbowl Senior Software Consultant Alan Mackenthun. Alan is Fishbowl’s resident records management expert and has been architecting such systems for over nine years. In working with a WebCenter customer, Alan was able to propose a solution that will enable the customer to configure WebCenter so that a group of users can be dynamically assigned to review dispositions. This isn’t a well-documented feature so we wanted to share it with the rest of the WebCenter community.

At its core records management is the management of the destruction of content when it’s no longer needed.  Usually, business processes dictate that someone review the content and approve destruction before the content is permanently deleted. Out of the box, you can either assign a specific user as a reviewer on a retention step or you could allow the default system reviewer alias to review dispositions, but there was no way to assign a group of users or to dynamically assign users.

Assigning a specific user may work in smaller organizations but even then, if a specific user is assigned and then they go on vacation or leave the company, all related disposition rules would have to be found and updated.  It was very difficult to make this work in a larger organization where document owners could be spread among separate business units or departments.

With the enhancement documented in the TKB referenced below, you can easily reference an alias in disposition rules.  To do so simply enter:

alias:<myAlias>

as the reviewer where “<my alias>” is the name of the alias you’d like to reference.  The real benefit here is that if you have Departmental Record Coordinators (DRCs) who review content in certain categories scheduled for destruction (disposition), you can assign the alias rather than named users.  Then if the DRC changes, the client only needs to update the alias, rather than all categories where that DRC was referenced.

Additionally, leveraging the ability to reference a script function gives you much more power.  Some categories of content, such as correspondence or memos, span all business units and departments.  On the other hand, there isn’t one person or group in an organization who should be approving the destruction of this content.  Instead, this feature allows you to reference a script function that can take the value of a business unit and/or department metadata field and map the value of this organizational unit to a user or alias who would be assigned as the reviewer. To do so simply enter:

script:<myScript>

as the reviewer where “<myscript>” is the name of the custom IdocScript function you’d like to reference (of course we at Fishbowl would be happy to help implement such a function if needed).

Oracle Support Document 1470906.1 (How to Request Approval Notification for a Group of People for a Disposition Action) can be found at: https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=1470906.1

Posted in 11g, Content Management, Records Management, WebCenter | No Comments »

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