Release 3.0.8
Part Number A87570-01
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| Oracle Portal Building Portals Release 3.0.8 Part Number A87570-01 |
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This chapter explains the planning steps you should take before you start using Oracle Portal. In particular, it covers a set of techniques you can use to define the overall structure of your Web content. Defining this structure greatly simplifies the process of actually creating content areas and pages.
Note: A section that addresses the planning considerations for applications will be added in a future release.
This chapter contains the following sections:
This section briefly discusses some of the issues you should consider during each phase of the planning process. Of course, planning and creating pages successfully is largely a matter of experience: the more you create pages and use them, or receive feedback from others who use them, the better you'll be able to determine what works and what doesn't.
You'll find this section particularly helpful if you've never created Oracle Portal pages before.
The first thing you need to think about is who will use the page(s) you are about to create. Are you creating a single page that only you will see, or are you responsible for creating separate home pages for several different groups or individuals? If you're creating your own page, of course, you have considerably more freedom, as you can experiment with Oracle Portal to see what you like and don't like. If you're creating several different pages, however, you should spend some time thinking about what kind of information each user or group requires.
Ask yourself the following:
Hint: Take a sheet of paper, write the name of each group or user across the top, and list the required information/applications for each.
After you've listed the information required by each user or group, your next step is to determine how to make that information available as portlets so you can plug them into the appropriate pages.
Note: A lot of what you can do here depends upon how familiar you are with the content areas and applications established for your enterprise. You may need to enlist the aid of the individual or a group member for whom you are creating the page to find out the names of content areas, content area objects, applications, and/or components.
Order the repository by Provider and see if any of the content areas or applications you need are listed as providers. If you see a portlet that corresponds to a need you identified in step 1, place a check mark next to it on your worksheet. Keep in mind that content areas and applications appear as providers only when an object belonging to that content area (like a navigation bar or folder) or application (like a form or menu) has been published as a portlet. If you don't see a content area or application listed, but you know the object you're looking for exists, use the Navigator to edit that object and make sure the Publish As Portlet check box has been selected.
After you've reviewed the portlet repository by Provider, you might want to change the View By criteria to Category to see if you've overlooked any information that might be useful for a particular user or group. Of course, this functionality is useful only if your portal administrator has already classified your portlets by category.
If the data or application you need does not exist, but should, you'll probably have to contact the appropriate person to either add the necessary content to a content area or create the required application or component.
Once you've obtained the data you need, it's time to start thinking about the look and feel of your page. The appearance of your page is primarily controlled by the page style, although the page banner has a big impact as well. When you're creating your page style, you should scroll through the list of Available Style Elements and make a conscious decision about each.
You may want to work with a graphic designer when doing so, and when considering these issues:
Organizing the page means determining how to arrange the portlets you want to include so that they are both visually appealing and useful. You may want to sketch out some alternatives on a piece of paper before you start working in the product itself.
To organize your page, you'll need to know the following:
The last step in the planning phase is to think about who will need access to this page, and to what extent.
In a classic Web site, the smallest component is a page. On the page are an assortment of links, images, and text. In Oracle Portal content areas, the smallest component is an item, displayed within a container called a folder. Folders are very much like folders in a file system, with multiple items existing within a folder. The term page in Oracle Portal is reserved for an entity on which information is displayed in the form of portlets, which may or may not include data from your content area. For more information on planning pages, see Section 2.1, "Planning Pages".
Each Oracle Portal item has a set of attributes. These attributes include information such as title, description, and author. Each item must also be assigned to a category: for example, General or Presentation. Users can display category pages to access all of the items in the specified category quickly. Perspectives provide another dimension of classification. Each item may be assigned to many different perspectives. Users may also display perspective pages to quickly access all of the items in the specified perspective.
For convenience, the same sample content area, based on an entertainment concept, is used throughout this chapter. The content area's folder, category, and perspective structure is described below.
Notice that one of the categories is called General. This category is created by Oracle Portal and, because it is the default, cannot be deleted. You must always have at least one category in your content area. Notice also that the 20th Century and Family Friendly perspectives have several child perspectives each. Both categories and perspectives may have child categories and perspectives
The key to planning your content area is understanding the kind of information that will be stored in it and how users will most often use the information. To make this process easier, we recommend that you use the worksheets provided in this chapter to help you gather the necessary facts to design a successful content area.
To prepare for the information gathering phase of designing your Oracle Portal content area, make copies of the following worksheets.
Item Description:
Who should be allowed to add this content?
Who should be allowed to view this content?
Who should control who can add/view this content?
Possible Classifications:
Mark the core content for this item:
File______ Text Item______ URL______ Folder Link______
PL/SQL Call______ App. Component______ Image Map______ Other:________
Standard Attributes for Items:
Name, Title, Description, Category, Perspectives (multiple), Author, Expiration Date, Image, Rollover Image, Keywords
Additional Attributes (may be displayed with item and used for searching):
| Owners | Content Providers | Viewers | Folders | Sample Items |
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Complete a copy of the item worksheet for an item that you believe belongs in your content area. Try to come up with as many different example items as you can--don't bother to create multiple examples of the same kind of item. At this point, you should not worry about folders, categories, and perspectives. You will consider them in a later step.
Here is a sample of a completed item worksheet for the Entertainment content area:
Item Description: Movie review of new release, 13th Warrior. Would include image and a text review. Who should be allowed to add this content? Member of the movie team Who should be allowed to view this content? Everyone Who should control who can add/view this content? The head of the movie department Possible Classifications: movie, review, adult content, movie rating, kind of movie: action/adventure Mark the core content for this item: File______ Text Item ___X__ URL______ Folder Link______ PL/SQL Call______ App. Component______ Image Map______ Other:___________ Standard Attributes for Items: Name, Title, Description, Category, Perspectives (multiple), Author, Expiration Date, Image, Rollover Image, Keywords Additional Attributes (may be displayed with item and used for searching): Review date, movie release date, date available on video When you find yourself unable to come up with any more items that need different classifications or attributes, you're ready for the next step.
Use the user community worksheet to organize the information on the item worksheets.
It is quite likely that you will have multiple values in each of the cells of the user community worksheet. For example, you could have two or three different groups of content providers and five or six different groups of viewers for any one folder owner. In the sample item worksheet, the content provider was the movie team, the owner was the movie department head, and the viewers were everyone. It is possible that the movie team could be further divided in a manner to match the sub-folders in the Movies folder, or that these sub-folders would simply represent a more detailed level of classification that is best implemented via folders.
You are now ready to start planning your folder structure. The key choice you must make is what to implement as a folder, a category, and a perspective. The best way to tell the difference between a folder and a category is that folders are used by only part of your user community, while the categories make sense for most (if not all) of the user community. Folders and categories should both be specific in nature. It should be easy to tell to which folder branch and category each item belongs. Perspectives are those classifications that are harder to separate. Review the perspectives for the sample Entertainment content area in Table 2-2, "Entertainment Content Area Categories and Perspectives" again. A movie review for a movie might be in the Family Friendly, Full Color, and 1980s perspectives, but will only make sense in one category, the Review category.
Keeping all of the above information in mind, review your user community worksheet again. When a single entry in the Owners column corresponds to multiple entries in the Content Providers column, it typically signifies a branch in your folder hierarchy. Review your item worksheets again, paying particular attention to the possible classifications. Note any classifications that you feel correspond to the owners and content providers you have listed on the user community worksheet. If a classification corresponds to an owner or content provider, it is probably a good candidate to become a folder or subfolder.
In the Entertainment content area example, our sample item listed both Reviews and Movies as possible classifications. Looking at our user community, we see that while all the information managed by the head of the movie department has to do with movies, only some of it is classified as reviews. By looking at the rest of our Entertainment content area structure, you can see how the Review category would be listed as a possible classification for many sample items and in many different parts of the content area, while a movie classification would only be used in the movie folder and its subfolders. Therefore, it makes sense to make Review a category and Movies a folder.
Once you have gathered information about the kinds of items that will make up your content area and the users who will build and view the content, it is time to carefully consider the specific attributes of your content area.
The first step in creating a content area is to think about which members of your user community need privileges to modify the content and appearance of the content area. You have already started this process by gathering content area organizational information in the user community worksheet.
The basic building block of a content area is the folder. Folders in Oracle Portal are very similar to folders in a file system, but they also form the basis for content area pages. For example, when you click on a link to a folder, a page listing the contents of the folder is displayed. Like file system folders, Oracle Portal folders are hierarchical. Each folder has its own security and visual style properties, which may or may not be inherited from their parent folder. As discussed in Section 2.2.1, "Gathering Information", the user community worksheet can give you a good start in designing the folder structure of your content area.
Since most security is applied at the folder level, your folder structure will usually mirror the organization of the people who will maintain and access your content area. While you can implement item-level security with Oracle Portal, it typically requires less work to administer security at the folder level than at the item level--that is, to give users privileges on folders rather than individual items.
In our Entertainment content area, the folder structure has been designed for a group of content providers who are specialists in a particular area of entertainment. For instance, the owner of the Dance folder has complete control over the subfolders of the Dance folder. The owner of the Music folder, therefore, should not be able to add information to the Dance folder because Dance is not his or her specialty.
Imagine for a moment that the folder structure was organized differently. Imagine that the folders and categories were reversed, and all of the categories were folders and vice versa. The Dance specialist and the Music specialist would both need to have some control over the Review folder. As a result, access privileges would probably have to be maintained for each item. If the Review folder contained hundreds of reviews, this would quickly become a cumbersome administrative task. It is far better, then, to have folders that correspond to the different groups of content providers. In the case of our Entertainment example, this reversed folder-category structure would make sense only if the content providers were divided by the kind of information they knew about (reviews, venues), rather than the type of entertainment (movies, dance).
The most important thing to remember about folder organization is that folders are the most efficient means for assigning access privileges. Regardless of the folder structure, the viewer of the Entertainment content area can easily access a page of music, dance, and theater reviews.
Oracle Portal content areas are especially good for classifying the items and other content that you add to them. The two main mechanisms for classifying your items are categories and perspectives. The key difference between these two mechanisms is that an item must belong to only one category, but can belong to zero or more perspectives.
Categories are best thought of as answering the question, "What is this item?" Since each item must belong to one and only one category, categories should be very basic classifications. Refer back to your item worksheets and consider the kinds of information that your content providers will be adding to your content area. Since content providers must assign every item to one category, the best categories are very distinctive and make it easy for your content providers to know which one to choose. If you find that your categories overlap, you should rethink the structure.
You can also create categories in a hierarchy. That is, you can create a parent category and group similar categories under it as subcategories. This hierarchical organization can be useful when you have a large number of categories and perspectives--but be careful not to create too many of them to avoid confusion. If you have more than ten categories, users may be overwhelmed by the options and choose the first category that roughly fits rather than the most apt category. In the Entertainment content area, you can see how the Review category is a very distinct classification that is useful across many of the folders. The harder it is for your content provider to choose a category for their content, the more likely it is that they will incorrectly classify their content, thus making it difficult to find.
Perspectives are best thought of as answering the questions, "Who will be interested in this item?" or "What is the role of the person to whom this item is the most important?" Perspectives can highlight special attributes of an item. In the Entertainment content area, we used the Outdoors perspective to identify items that describe something outdoors. A user scanning the contents of one of the Music folders will be able to see right away which items are about outdoor performances or outdoor venues.
Review your item worksheets again. Then, fill out the category and perspective worksheets below to sort through the remaining classifications for items that are not folders. It may be helpful to circle the folder for each item as it is listed in the possible classification portion of your worksheet. Your best categories are often those classifications that first seemed like they would be folders but were not used for the folder structure. Remember: both categories and perspectives are most powerful when they are usable across many different folders in the content area.
| Category Name | Category Description | Child Categories | Example Items |
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| Perspective Name | Description | Child Perspectives | Example Items |
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As you design your content area, it is important to keep in mind how it will be used. Users who are looking for the information in your content area have no idea that the content is organized in folders, categories, and perspectives. They simply click on the name of a category (that is, a category link), and it instantly takes them to a list of items assigned to the selected category (excluding any items to which they do not have viewing privileges). Likewise, clicking on the name or image of a perspective (that is, a perspective link) takes the user to a list of items in the content area assigned to that perspective.
Think about where you want to place your category and perspective links. A category link may be displayed:
Perspective links can appear in the same places as category links. In addition, you can optionally expose a perspective link next to each item assigned to the perspective by selecting the Display Icon With Items property in the Perspective Manager.
Folders, categories, and perspectives enable you to organize and cross reference your items in such a way that it is easy for your end users to find information in the content area.
Examine the top two levels of your folder structure. These are the folders that will be initially displayed on the default main content area page. Verify that the folder names are distinct from one another. Your top level branches in the folder structure should not have names that are easily confused with one another.
Filling out the Folder Tree worksheet below will give you an idea of what your top two levels of folders will look like to a user.Foot 1 Watch out for folders that are too similar. If the folders are not distinct, users will struggle to distinguish between them, making it difficult to know where to put and look for information.
After you have built your content area, examine the content area page as a whole (e.g., the navigation bar and folder listing). Sometimes users are looking for something very specific and at other times they are browsing to determine what information is available. Some users like to jump directly to an item, while others prefer to navigate to items sequentially. Your content area page should serve all of these scenarios. It is common to include a search box on the navigation bar for those users who would rather search than browse folders. Users who want to browse can make use of the folder structure, categories, and perspectives.
You should also consider issues such as whether you want the navigation bar to be a persistent part of the content area's interface. Oracle Portal enables you to use the same navigation bar throughout the content area, use different navigation bars depending on the context, or remove the navigation bar altogether. If you choose to have navigation bars, consider where to place them on the page (e.g., left, right, top, or bottom) and what to include in them. Navigation bars can contain a wide variety of elements (e.g., basic search, hyperlinks, and pull down lists). If you choose not to have a navigation bar, then you should include other mechanisms for simplifying navigation within the content area.
When users add to your content area, they must identify the type of item (e.g., file or URL). Oracle Portal content areas come with an assortment of default item types. You can add to these default types as necessary. The default item types are:
Once users identify the item type, they are given a list of attributes to define for that item. This table helps you understand the attributes for each of the default item types:
You cannot alter or add to the attributes defined for the base item types. If you wish to append additional attributes to a default item type, you can create a custom item type. Custom item types based on a default item type inherit the default's attributes, plus any custom attributes you create. In this way, you can use custom item types to collect additional structured information about items via their attributes.
You can also create custom item types from scratch, without basing them on a default type. In this case, the item type begins with only the most basic attributes, such as Display Name, Category, and Perspectives. You must add any other desired attributes to the item type yourself.
Review your item worksheets again, focusing on what you entered in the Additional Attributes column. If you don't have any additional attributes, then the default attributes will provide all the information necessary to track your items. If you listed additional attributes, use the item type worksheet below to figure out how many additional item types you need for your content area. Keep in mind that you can reuse attributes that you create across item types. For example, if you add a Due Date attribute and use it in two different item types, a search for items with a specific due date will examine the Due Date attribute for items in both item types.
List all of the additional attributes in the column below Attribute Name. List a data type for each additional attribute (such as number, date, character, file, URL, etc.). In the cell beneath each Item Type Name label, enter a name for your new collection of attributes. In the cell beneath each Based On label, enter the name of a default item type to indicate the item type to which you want to add your attributes. Mark with Xs those attributes used in each item type.
| Item Type Name | Item Type Name | Item Type Name | Item Type Name | Item Type Name | ||
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Attributes |
Based On: |
Based On: |
Based On: |
Based On: |
Based On: |
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When you want to associate additional attributes with the folder instead of the item, you can create a custom folder type.
Even the most diligent planners cannot always foresee every contingency. Hence, you will undoubtedly run into issues after you have created your content area that will cause you to revisit its organization. These sections describe some common problems that arise after you have implemented your content area.
Oracle Portal provides a Shared Objects content area where you can store categories, perspectives, styles, navigation bars, attributes, and item and folder types that apply to all of your content areas. If you find that you are constantly recreating the same things for every content area, you should consider building them in the Shared Objects content area so that you can build them once and reuse them in multiple content areas. Shared Objects can increase the integration and consistency between content areas.
You may be required to use item level security for your content area, but this is often a sign that you could have set up your content area differently. The main thing to keep in mind is that folders should be the main level at which security is applied. Look at your categories. Would your site work better if your categories were folders and your folders were categories?
You may need to change your settings to ensure that you have links to your perspectives.
Consider creating a folder based upon a saved search. You can add a folder to your hierarchy and define it as a search for all items belonging to a specific category. If you name that folder the same as your category, it will seem to users that there is a folder on the content area map holding all of the items in that particular category.
One advantage of this type of folder is that it is completely dynamic. As new content is assigned to the category, the search picks up the new items without any intervention from you. This method works just as well for any type of search that you want to save and make available to your users.
1
Keep in mind that not every use will have privileges to see every folder. Given that, you may want to make copies of the folder tree worksheet for different groups of users.
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