Archive for the ‘Integrations’ Category

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IOUG Webinar – SharePoint is NOT an ECM System – Reasons Why

Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

Microsoft SharePoint represents one of the fastest growing technology products of all time. Customers like SharePoint because it makes collaboration easy as sites can be created without IT’s involvement. However, with this ease-of-use comes the explosion of sites containing content that IT eventually has difficulty managing. Factor in limited records management functionality and organizations may be faced with 100s of unmanaged sites containing orphaned content.  Join us for this webcast as we discuss use cases for SharePoint and why those use cases do not include enterprise content management. You will also learn how SharePoint and Oracle WebCenter can be integrated so that the benefits of each system can be leveraged but WebCenter becomes the system of record for enterprise content. Come hear how organizations are utilizing this integration to improve governance, compliance and security.

Date: Tuesday, December 18
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM CST

Register

Posted in Content Management, Integrations, SharePoint, WebCenter | No Comments »

Fishbowl’s ShipIT Hackathon Event Produces Four, New, Value-Add Components for Oracle WebCenter Content

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

The weekend of November 10th was known as Innovation Weekend at Fishbowl Solutions. Fishbowl’s development, sales and marketing teams participated in a “ShipIT Hackathon” event to develop new Oracle WebCenter Content-based products. If you aren’t familiar with hackathons, just imagine a very intense software programming session where the end goal is to develop usable software within a set period of time – here is Wikipedia’s definition, and you may remember that Fishbowl participated in a similar hackathon at Oracle OpenWorld. Anyway, Fishbowl’s WebCenter UI and UX design extraordinaire, John Sim, was visiting from London and he was the catalyst for Fishbowl’s internal hackathon. Here were the rules that he helped establish:

  1. The new software/functionality should either support one of Fishbowl’s current products or provide new ways to interact, utilize, or provide an integration with Oracle WebCenter Content.
  2. The finished product should be deployable to Fishbowl’s internal WebCenter Content system and be usable by Fishbowl employees.
  3. Teams will have only 24 hours to complete their product.
  4. The winning team would be decided by votes from all participants, but participants could not vote for their own team.

At 3:00 PM on Friday, November 9th the hacking commenced. Fueled by Red Bull, pizza, coffee and sugar, four teams of Fishbowl employees developed the following WebCenter-based programs by 3:00 PM on Saturday, November 10th where they were presented and voted on. Here they are in order of finish:

  • 1st Place – WebCenter Content Multi-Checkin
    • Enables users to drag and drop content items directly into Oracle WebCenter Content from desktops or file shares and be tagged with keywords.
    • Checked in content bypasses the check in metadata screen and instead is grouped within a user’s “workspace”.  Users can return to their workspace at a later time to add metadata.
    • Integrates with Fishbowl’s Duplicate File Checker to ensure that duplicate content items do no enter the system.

    (The winning hackers – left to right: Paul Heupel, John Sim, Tom Jaede)

  • 2nd Place – Filtered Search Results and Grid View Metadata Updater
    • Update metadata on multiple items at once using a simple grid format.
    • Content Server query defines items to display in grid view with configurable sorting and result count.
    • Easily configure columns to view and update both standard and custom metadata values.
    • Uses Excel-like functionality within the browser such as copy, paste, drag, and fill-down.
  • 3rd Place – Duplicate File Checker Desktop Application
    • Lightweight desktop application can detect and remove duplicate content items from user desktops or network file shares.
    • Users simply browse to a folder or item and select the content they want to check against already existing in Oracle WebCenter Content. Any duplicate items are returned to the user in a grid view, and the user can select any duplicates for deletion.
  • 4th Place - WebCenter Content and Google Drive (Docs) Synchronization & Contribution
    • Provides ability to import content stored in Google Drive to Oracle Webcenter Content.
    • Google Drive files can be batch imported and their metadata can be mapped or the files can be published directly to WebCenter Content.
    • Includes ability to also link to Google Drive document directly from WebCenter Content.

Aside from some mild cases of indigestion, carpal tunnel, and weariness; the participants in Fishbowl’s ShipIT hackathon all agreed that it was a great event to be a part of. It was really exciting to see what could be developed in a limited amount of time when a group of people worked together and were driven by a deadline. The best part was ending up with four new WebCenter-based products that solve real-world problems and add immediate value. If any of these products interest you, feel free to contact us at 952-465-3400 or info@fishbowlsolutions.com.

You can see more pictures of Fishbowl’s ShipIT Hackathon here.

As always, your comments on this blog are appreciated.

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Posted in 11g, Collaboration, Content Management, Enterprise Search, Integrations, OpenWorld, UX, WebCenter | No Comments »

Fishbowl Solutions Oracle WebCenter Expertise takes it to South Africa: Q and A with Jerry Aber – Fishbowl’s enterprise architect

Friday, November 2nd, 2012

Fishbowl Solutions has been helping Oracle WebCenter (UCM, Stellent) customers throughout North America deploy, customize and optimize their WebCenter content management and portal systems for over 12 years now. During that time, Fishbowl has focused on delivering solutions that provide organizations the ability to solve their most challenging information management problems, while maximizing their WebCenter investments. Up until recently, almost all of Fishbowl’s 700+ WebCenter deployments have taken place in North America.

In 2011, Fishbowl announced its European expansion. This was fueled by the increased interest we were receiving from WebCenter customers throughout Europe. This was followed by our announcement regarding our partnership with John Sim. John has provided not only some feet on the street in the United Kingdom, but also expertise and thought leadership around mobile content management applications, responsive design, application development framework (ADF) and much more. John’s latest foray with Oracle technology was his “Avengers Assemble” application he built for the Oracle Social Network developer challenge at OpenWorld 2012.

Also in 2011, we met with some folks from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, at Collaborate in Orlando. I had the privilege of speaking with one of the gents, and he told me about how they had begun investing in Oracle WebCenter in 2009, but were having a lot of difficulty deploying it and building usable business applications. One such application they were looking to build was a Staff Portal – a one stop website where staff members at the university could come to find personalized, staff-related information. As I brought in more members of the Fishbowl team to chat and discuss how this business problem could be solved, the conversation ended with a passing comment from the South African gent that went something like “this all sounds great, but we are separated by the Atlantic Ocean”.

Fast forward some 18 months later, and my Fishbowl colleague, Jerry Aber, finds himself in South Africa for client meetings and to present at the South African Oracle Users Group. Jerry will also be making stops at the University of Pretoria, who Fishbowl has successfully completed several projects for including their staff portal (read the success story). How did this come to be? How did Fishbowl Solutions, who has traditionally done the vast majority of its WebCenter work in North America, win the University of Pretoria’s business and begin to help them lay out their WebCenter road map. Jerry Aber took a few moments out of his busy schedule to do a Question & Answer session to further detail Fishbowl’s relationship with the University of Pretoria.

Jerry Aber is the 2009 Oracle Content Management Architect of the Year and is currently working for Fishbowl Solutions in Consulting Services and Solutions Architecture. Prior to Fishbowl Solutions, Jerry spent 7 years working for MoneyGram International as a Software Development Manager in the areas of web/portal development, enterprise content management, business process management and enterprise reporting. He has been involved in strategic software development/integration, architecture, resource management, business process re-engineering and project/program management. Jerry can be reached at jaber@fishbowlsolutions.com.

Q: South Africa? How did Fishbowl Solutions get engaged with the University of Pretoria?

A: The University of Pretoria had heard about Fishbowl Solutions through other channels, but never thought a relationship would work given the extreme distance between the two parties. After chatting with them at Collaborate, conducting some web conferences, and exchanging numerous emails, Fishbowl Solutions and the University of Pretoria agreed to work together on some WebCenter projects.

This decision really came down to Fishbowl seeing an opportunity to help an organization start to leverage their WebCenter investment and solve their business problems. This factor alone outweighed the distance problem, and greatly motivated Fishbowl Solutions to begin the relationship.

Q: What were the business problems the University of Pretoria was looking to solve, and were they unique to Fishbowl Solutions’ capabilities?

A: The University was looking to build a staff portal that would provide a location where staff members could find information relevant to their roles, as well as collaborate and share information. A part of this was also getting the appropriate content into Oracle WebCenter Content, which would be the enterprise repository used to surface content to the portal. The University had an overly complex security model for WebCenter Content, and this had created a lot of frustration amongst the users who were having a hard time just getting started and adding documents, images, and other files to the Content Server.

Q: What were the various stages of the project that Fishbowl Solutions proposed?

A: The first thing that Fishbowl Solutions wanted to do was to level set on the University’s expectations with their WebCenter system. We had discussed their immediate need and project – simplify their security model and build a staff portal – but we also wanted to find out where else they wanted to utilize and leverage WebCenter. This is our Holistic Content Management consulting approach, where we help organizations put a plan together of how they can make WebCenter part of their information infrastructure instead of a disconnected, departmental solution.

What we learned from the University of Pretoria is that they were not unlike most organizations when it comes to content management. They wanted to utilize the information in their organization to help make decisions, streamline processes, and educate others. So WebCenter for them was a system they were planning to leverage more and more each year. Essentially, they wanted the staff portal to be their launch pad for a university-wide information system that integrated with other Oracle-based systems and applications, utilized standards-based technologies, and provided users with engaging and interactive experiences that kept them coming back.

Once we fully understood their long-term vision and plans with WebCenter, we could focus on their current staff portal project.

Q: What solution was implemented and why?

A: Fishbowl Solutions implemented its Intranet In A Box (IIAB) solution. This solution provides a framework that includes content profiles, JSR-286 portlets, and a user-defined menu navigation structure. IIAB was a good fit for the University because they wanted to have the content on the portal be contributed controlled by users and not IT. They also wanted to leverage what they already had purchased – WebCenter Content and Portal – and not spend additional money on 3rd-party licenses or for significant customization.

IIAB consists of a WebCenter Content bundle that includes profiles for adding images, a landing page and secondary page contribution, and personalization. It also consists of a WebCenter Portal Bundle that is essentially a WebCenter Space that becomes the container for the page template. The overall framework, consisting of the integrated Content and Portal elements, enables organizations to quickly realize a live site in less than 60 days.

Q: What are some of the results so far with the University of Pretoria and its Staff Portal?

A: The current University of Pretoria Staff Portal consists of 5 microsites and around 29 collaboration sites, including Academic, Staff, Senate and IT among others. They have seen an overall increase in collaboration and information sharing amongst staff members, and users are pleased with having a one-stop shop for role-based information. The portal has provided the necessary example of how the University wants to share information going forward.

Q: What does the University have planned for next iterations of the Portal?

A: They are looking at ways to make user access even easier, through single-sign on. They are also looking at ways to leverage enterprise search to improve the relevancy and accuracy of site search results.

Thanks for your time Jerry. Safe travels home!

Posted in 11g, Collaboration, Content Management, Integrations, Portal, WebCenter | No Comments »

WebCenter Suite Real Time Chat – Mobile (Android, RIM, iOS, Windows)

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

As our continued drive to improve the WebCenter Suite I’m happy to announce that Fishbowl Solutions WebCenter Mobile Real Time Chat integration is soon to be released supporting Android, RIM, iOS and Windows Mobile Devices.

No true tablet application support yet but this is on the roadmap (you can use the mobile app on the tablets today or if your site has been optimised for tablets access chat via the integrated browser solution).

If you’re not familiar with our WebCenter Messaging and Presence integration here is a quick rundown of it’s features.

Supports browser messaging integration with the WebCenter Suite – Portal, Sites & Content. There are no requirements to have a messaging XMPP server ie MS Lync setup; however if you do our solution can integrate with a number of messaging solutions ie – MS Lync, gTalk, etc.

For a preview of our browser integration check out these earlier posts

Addon:: WebCenter Portal Spaces Real Time Chat Instant Messaging and Presence Integration Video.

WebCenter Portal Spaces – Real Time Messaging & Presence Solution.

Posted in 11g, Collaboration, Content Management, Enterprise 2.0, Integrations, Labs, Mobile, Portal, SharePoint, Stellent, UCM, UX, WCM, Web 2.0, WebCenter | 1 Comment »

OpenWorld 2012 Recap – Fishbowl Solutions Aligned with Oracle’s WebCenter Strategy

Thursday, October 18th, 2012

Another year; another OpenWorld. It seems that Oracle’s big event comes faster and faster each year and then goes by in a flash. Amidst the glitz and glamor and the sheer spectacle that is OpenWorld, the event has much to offer customers, vendors, partners and general technology enthusiasts. This is the event where attendees get to hear directly from Oracle’s top brass on what’s new, what’s coming, and what’s faster/better. For WebCenter customers, here are a few takeaways from me and my Fishbowl colleagues on what we felt were some of the major stories from OpenWorld 2012.

New WebCenter Content User Interface

The WebCenter community has been abuzz for many months now regarding a new user interface for Oracle WebCenter Content. This new interface was shown at a few sessions and within the WebCenter demo areas at OpenWorld. The responses from people I chatted with were all positive and how could it not have been. After all, WebCenter customers have been waiting for years for a new user interface, and it looks like in 12c they will finally get one.

Can’t wait until then? Fishbowl has been providing user interface enhancements to the Content Server for many years. These enhancements have specifically aided business users in contributing content to WebCenter. One such product is Fishbowl’s Policies and Procedures Solution Suite, which provides an intuitive, visually-rich interface to specifically manage quality documents, governance manuals, and standard operating procedures. Through a combination of search, browsing, workflow and alerts, Policies and Procedures Solution Suite can help improve access to quality control documents while enforcing their follow through.

Stance on SharePoint

We have mentioned in many other blog posts (here & here) some reasons why Oracle WebCenter customers who may also be using SharePoint should reconsider their decision to use more SharePoint or go to SharePoint altogether for content management, or when building an intranet, portal or any other content-backed business system. Fishbowl Solutions was front and center with our stance on SharePoint at OpenWorld. We featured our SharePoint Connector Version 2.0 for Oracle WebCenter, which provides an integration that enables content resulting from collaboration in SharePoint to be transparently and seamlessly stored in Oracle WebCenter Content. The main value proposition with this connector is that enables organizations to continue to use both SharePoint and WebCenter and leverage the benefits of each.

The key point that we want to have resonate with customers is that WebCenter should be the final system of record for content. This includes content not only existing in SharePoint, but also in other ECM systems, file shares, and even desktops. My colleague George Sokol participated in a session at OpenWorld titled “Living with SharePoint”. This session provided attendees some data and examples on what living with SharePoint would represent, namely high services cost, 3rd-party license costs for additional functionality, and potential governance dilemmas (I documented more of these issues in this white paper). All these things can be reduced with WebCenter, but the reality is most organizations want to continue to use SharePoint for work-in-progress collaboration and pair that with robust enterprise content management. Fishbowl’s SharePoint Connector for WebCenter enables organizations to do just that.

Integrations in the WebCenter Stack

Oracle has done a great job providing integrations between products across their various product/technology stacks. One popular example is the WebCenter integrations provided for E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications. Basically, these integrations enable content management to be invoked in context of business processes, so, for example, when users are processing invoices they can quickly reference the image of that invoice which was processed with Oracle WebCenter Imaging.

At OpenWorld 2012, Oracle also spoke about integrating components of WebCenter with each other. One popular topic was the integration of WebCenter Sites (Fatwire) with Oracle WebCenter Content. Another popular topic was integrating WebCenter Portal with WebCenter Content. Oracle has made this integration possible with the Content Presenter task flow. Although this integration does provide the ability to surface content from WebCenter Content to WebCenter Portal, Fishbowl has found that most organizations are looking for integrations that provide greater scalability while leveraging standards-based technologies (JAVA, JSP) over proprietary (iDoc).

Fishbowl provides an integration framework called Intranet In A Box (IIAB) that integrates WebCenter Content with WebCenter Portal by leveraging WebCenter Spaces as the container to which content will be surfaced to. This framework eases contribution through profiles defined in WebCenter Content, including categories, sub-categories, topic pages, articles, contacts, images and landing page assets. IIAB also includes JSR-286 portlets for interfacing with WebCenter Content. The value of IIAB is it removes some of the complexity around integrating Content with Portal while easing content contribution. Organizations using IIAB have been able to build WebCenter Content and Portal-based corporate intranets in less than 60 days, including the University of Pretoria. Fishbowl’s best demos at OpenWorld were of Intranet In A Box, and organizations that have made the investments in WebCenter Content and Portal but have struggled to build out next-generation intranets and portals were very interested.

Another Go at Social

There was a lot of buzz at OpenWorld regarding the Oracle Social Network (OSN). Oracle announced OSN at OpenWorld 2011, and we are starting to see more and more examples of how OSN can be applied. I had the privilege of participating in the OSN team’s Developer Challenge as I got to present John Sim’s “Avengers Assemble” application. The OSN Developer Challenge was open to any Oracle or Java technologist (hack) that wanted to build an application that leveraged OSN’s REST API and another service or application. The entries must help solve a business problem, and John focused his efforts on helping to keep teams on the go in touch. John specifically used Google Maps and PhoneGap to build an application he described as a Mobile GeoTagging Solution. John provides much more detail on this solution in this C4 blog post.

Mobile ECM  

Oracle provided further details at OpenWorld 2012 on their mobile application – Oracle ADF Mobile. According to this blog post, Oracle ADF Mobile uses a metadata-based development framework enabling developers to develop one application for multiple platforms (iOS and Android, for starters). It can also easily incorporate HTML5, Java, and the devices native container. As business processes become more and more mobilized, Oracle will be in great position to help facilitate the various business process steps that occur between the user and back-end systems like Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle has the enabling technologies like SOA and BPM to provide a tightly integrated system for mobile processes.

Fishbowl Solutions has been developing Oracle WebCenter-based mobile applications for over two years now, and we were fortunate once again to be joined at OpenWorld with a customer that has succeeded deploying the mobile applications we have available for the iPad and Android devices. Banner Engineering was kind enough to speak during the WebCenter Content Strategy and Vision session at OpenWorld and also during a social business panel. Banner has rolled out a Mobile Library application that has enabled their sales force and distributors to reference sales collateral stored in Oracle WebCenter from their iPad and Android devices. This application has improved the overall sales process, making customer meetings much more interactive and engaging, and also provided a competitive advantage for Banner – their competitors are still bound to paper catalogs and the like to share product information.  Banner created a lot of excitement with their story, and this excitement carried over to the Fishbowl booth. Fortunately, we had enough iPads to circulate to show off the application and its features.

As a WebCenter partner, it was definitely reassuring to see that alignment existed between Fishbowl’s current software and services offerings and Oracle’s stated direction and positioning with the product that was discussed at OpenWorld . We are excited to see where the next year takes us.

Posted in 11g, Collaboration, Content Management, Integrations, Mobile, OpenWorld, Portal, SharePoint, Uncategorized, UX, WebCenter | 1 Comment »

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