This chapter covers the following topics:
Oracle iSupport is an Internet-based customer support application that enables service organizations to provide self-service customer support online.
Oracle iSupport drives service profitability by decreasing the number of calls coming into the contact center. This secure self-service web portal gives customers and employees immediate customer service 24x7. Its sophisticated knowledge management system provides the information needed to solve problems, leading to increased customer satisfaction.
Key benefits:
Enables organizations to provide targeted support to their users by utilizing the multiple sites capabilities
Enables customers and employees to solve problems themselves through a searchable knowledge base
Reduces agent-assisted contacts with customers by giving them the ability to review and track orders, payments, shipments, contracts, returns, and repair orders
Saves costs by enabling customers to register their products, manage their product configurations, and create and track product returns
Provides complete customer care through integration with Oracle E-Business Suite applications
Oracle iSupport supports these types of users:
Primary User is a business customer user (B2B) and has privileges to manage users belonging to his organization.
Business User (business to business (B2B))
Individual User (business to consumer (B2C))
Oracle Applications System Administrator
Oracle iSupport Administrator
Employee User: Employee of the service organization
Oracle iSupport supports only those employee users who access Oracle iSupport to request service and to meet their support needs. Oracle iSupport is not intended for support agents.
Employee users access Oracle iSupport through a responsibility with a feature set that provides self service to workers in an enterprise.
Contingent Worker: Contingent worker in the service organization
All workers in an enterprise can be categorized either as employees or contingent workers. Employees are workers who are directly employed by the enterprise, paid by payroll, and eligible for benefits. By contrast, contingent workers, or contractors, by which they are more commonly known, are workers who do not have a direct employment relationship with the enterprise. They may perform work for the enterprise as part of a commercial relationship that exists between the enterprise and a supplier. Thus they are paid by accounts payable to either an agency that then employs them or directly to the contractors if they are self-employed. They also may perform work for the enterprise if they are interns or volunteer workers and thus have no relationship with a supplier.
Contingent workers access Oracle iSupport through a responsibility with a feature set that provides self service to workers in an enterprise.
Knowledge Management Administrator User
Users are classified into user types for self registration purposes. User types can be defined to meet the specific needs of an implementing organization. For details about the setup of user types, refer to User Management.
The Oracle iSupport home page provides links to other support areas and functions. Users can personalize the content and the layout of this page according to their preferences.
A user can view alerts and other system messages published by the merchant, links to service requests, knowledge base, and content from MES. The user also has the option of having the contents of his home page e-mailed to him; this is known as home page subscription.
A merchant can use the home page setup capabilities to provide access to different content (bins) to different sets of users. The merchant has the option of making some home page content mandatory.
For more information, see the Setting up iSupport Homepage topic area in this guide's Implementation Tasks chapter.
A typical business scenario is:
Customer logs in to Oracle iSupport and access the Homepage (the initial landing page).
Customer views Alerts, company news, or other content provided by the administrator.
Customer accesses Content hyperlink to personalize content.
Customer accesses Layout hyperlink to personalize the layout of content.
Customer selects Edit hyperlink on Service Request Quick Links, Service Request (saved views), and/or Quick Links bins to personalize the content of these bins.
Oracle iSupport enables users to manage their service request activity online. This functionality is available if the merchant sets up the service request functionality detailed in the chapter, Integrating Oracle iSupport with Service Request. Additional support features can be realized by implementing Oracle Knowledge Management and the products and returns features. See the chapters, Integrating Oracle iSupport with Oracle Knowledge Management and Integrating Oracle iSupport with Products and Returns for more information.
After the service request information has been entered, it is validated by Oracle TeleService and assigned a unique tracking number for future reference. Merchants can enforce product selection and/or knowledge base searching during the service request process. Merchants can configure the service request creation flows and the various service request interfaces based on context.
An administrator can configure the service request creation flow based on the context of application, responsibility, service request type, or a combination of responsibility and service request type, giving the service organization a very high level of flexibility. A global content also exists for use by the service organization and to ensure backward compatibility with previous releases.
With the configurable service request interface feature, an administrator can control the display of regions and attributes, based on the context values mentioned above, on a service request page during creation or update. For example, a merchant can show or hide regions and attributes, make fields required or not, and move selected sections among pages. This functionality utilizes the AK regions repository for storing the metadata.
A typical business scenario is:
Customer logs in to Oracle iSupport.
Customer queries the knowledge base directly for troubleshooting help prior to creating a new request.
Customer selects the type of the problem (service request type) being experienced.
Customer accesses the Create Service Request page and enters contact and service request detail information. Customer may also attach any type of file(s) to the service request.
After the service request is submitted, the system returns a tracking number to the customer. At the end of the service request submission process, customers have the option of adding the service request link to the Homepage, and/or having the service request details sent to the e-mail address that is set up in their Personal Profile.
After service request submission, customers can view, close, update, attach additional files, and/or conditionally re-open their closed service requests. The user can escalate the service request if the progress of service request resolution does not meet expectations.
The user can also save the information entered by him in creating this service request as a service request template. The user can use the saved data to create future service requests.
Oracle Knowledge Management implementation allows access to the known problems/solutions database, and permits users to locate technical documents, including white papers, user guides, and FAQs. The merchant benefits by increased knowledge among customers and reduced call center activity. The Oracle Knowledge Management user interface is easy to use and features flexible search and browse capabilities. For additional information, see the Oracle Knowledge Management Implementation and Administration Guide and Integrating Oracle iSupport with Oracle Knowledge Management chapter of this guide.
A typical business scenario is:
Customer logs in to Oracle iSupport. Customer views Alerts and Company News on the Homepage.
Customer accesses the knowledge base from the Homepage or by using the Support page.
Customer user browses the knowledge.
Customer uses either basic or advanced search functions to locate answers.
Customer views solution detail, and can add a link to the Homepage if desired.
The service organization can provide access to different knowledge to different sets of users by utilizing the knowledge security feature.
With the Oracle Marketing Encyclopedia system (MES), an organization can manage content of different types. This content may include, for example, white papers, user guides, and frequently asked questions. Oracle iSupport leverages this repository to provide access of this content to users. For example, guest users can view documents listed under the MES category tied to the guest user responsibility on the Technical Library page.
The Technical Library provides integrated searching and browsing of MES content capabilities to users. Users can only browse and search the content made accessible by the merchant to them based on setup. This functionality is available to all types of users including the guest users.
Oracle iSupport's optional account management functionality allows customer users to view detailed transaction history and status, and to create returns. Integration with Oracle Order Management, Oracle Shipping, Oracle Payables, Oracle Receivables, Oracle Install Base, Oracle Depot Repair, and Oracle iStore applications allows a user to view orders, invoices, payments, and shipping information, as well as to create return material authorizations (RMAs). Integration with Oracle Service Contracts, if these optional modules are implemented, provides a view of contracts, entitlements, service programs, and warranties.
If all required applications are implemented, this functionality allows customers to service their own account needs. For more information, see the chapter Integrating Oracle iSupport with Products and Returns. For setting up Contracts functionality, refer to Oracle Contracts Implementation and Administration Guide, and Oracle Service Contracts Implementation Guide.
A typical business scenario is:
Customer user logs in to Oracle iSupport.
Using the Accounts tab, the customer user has online, real-time access to information regarding account data, including:
Orders
Shipments
Invoices
Payments
Contracts
Returns
Products that the user owns
Repair Orders
Oracle Install Base is a repository of products owned by a customer, including purchase date, product attributes, and applicable service agreements. Oracle Install Base maintains information about purchased products in a tree structure showing all of the parent and child assemblies. It allows users to drill down to view detailed product information. Oracle Install Base tracks, updates, and maintains product configurations whenever a new part or component is installed or replaced. Oracle Install Base also allows users to register their products online. It also allows the grouping of customer products into systems for ease of service. Oracle Install Base tracks serialized and non-serialized products, and provides powerful search capabilities. Support organizations benefit from having customers who are informed about their transaction and product histories and applicable contracts.
Required integration with Oracle Inventory, as well as optional integration with Oracle Bills of Material, further facilitate access to product information. With Products functionality, users can manage and track products themselves online, thus decreasing calls to customer service centers and increasing customer control over management of product information. For more information, see the chapter Integrating Oracle iSupport with Products and Returns.
A typical business scenario is:
Customer logs in to Oracle iSupport.
Customer accesses the information about the products that he owns from the Products tab.
Customer reviews product details and/or adds products to Oracle Install Base.
The Web call-back (Call Me) feature allows customer users to submit call-back requests through the Internet with the Oracle iSupport user interface. The Surveys feature allows service organizations to gather relevant customer feedback.
A service organization can run real-time, dynamic, and targeted campaigns on Oracle iSupport to up sell, cross sell, and dramatically increase revenues and build customer loyalty. Integration of Oracle iSupport with Oracle Marketing (eMerchandizing) delivers personalized content to the Oracle iSupport user interface based on pre-defined campaigns. The right campaign is shown to a customer user based on defined campaigns and their audience, rule set, and postings. An audience segment is a group of users. For example, users who live in New York belong to the New York segment tied to campaigns. The campaign message defined in Oracle eMerchandizing can be displayed by the merchant on various Oracle iSupport pages using the sections provided on these pages.
If a merchant has implemented the multiple sites capabilities in Oracle iSupport, these messages can also be displayed in bins on the site dashboard, through the use of the Oracle iStore template manager functionality.
The out-of-the-box display templates that are candidates for marketing postings include:
Section page bins
Item page bins
Shopping cart page bins
This section contains end-user business flows to provide an overview for implementers and administrators.
The business flow called Click to Inquiry: Service Requests and Their History has the following general scenario:
Log in with your user name and password.
View your service requests.
Optionally, review service request history.
The business flow called Click to Inquiry: Dispatch Status has the following general scenario:
Log in with your user name and password.
View your service requests.
Optionally, review service request history.
Optionally, confirm your address.
Review the status of resolution actions (field service tasks).
Optionally, add a note.
Optionally, request an escalation.
The business flow called Click to Inquiry: Returns Status has the following general scenario:
Log in with your user name and password.
View your service requests.
Optionally, review service request history.
Review the status of returns.
Optionally, add a note.
Optionally, request an escalation.
The business flow called Click to Inquiry: Repair Status has the following general scenario:
Log in with your user name and password.
View your service requests.
Optionally, review service request history.
Review the status of repairs.
Optionally, add a note.
Optionally, request an escalation.
The business flow called Click to Inquiry: Confirm Charges has the following general scenario:
Log in with your user name and password.
View your service requests.
Optionally, review service request history.
Review the status of repairs.
Confirm charges.
Close the service request.
The business flow called Click to Issue for Field Service has the following general scenario:
Log in with your user name and password.
Optionally, describe the problem and the product.
Optionally, view the knowledge base.
Optionally, view potential solutions.
Optionally, indicate if solutions are useful.
Identify the product or instance.
Identify the request type and urgency.
Optionally, answer questions regarding the problem.
Optionally, upload attachments.
Optionally, confirm contact information.
Confirm incident, billing, and shipping addresses.
Review the service request.
Optionally, create a service request.
Review confirmation information.
Optionally, e-mail the service request details to yourself.
Optionally, bookmark the request search.
The business flow called Click to Non-Resolution has the following general scenario:
Log in with your user name and password.
View your service requests.
Optionally, review service request history.
Add a note.
The business flow called Click to Resolution: Issue Resolved has the following general scenario:
Log in with your user name and password.
View your service requests.
Optionally, review service request history.
Optionally, view potential solutions.
Optionally, indicate if the solutions are useful.
Optionally, review attachments.
Close the service request.
Provide a closure reason.
The business flow called Click to Resolution: Issue Not Resolved has the following general scenario:
Log in with your user name and password.
View your service requests.
Optionally, review service request history.
Optionally, view potential solutions.
Optionally, indicate if the solutions are useful.
Optionally, review attachments.
Add a note to change the status to Unresolved.
Optionally, request an escalation.
The Oracle iSupport System Administrator or Primary User can administer a wide range of user profile data, including:
Changing/Resetting Password
Adding/Changing Contact Points (Phone/Email/Fax)
Adding/Changing Address Information
Setting General Preferences
Changing Default Responsibility
Changing Default Customer Account
Setting up Home Page E-mail Subscription
Setting User Signature for Forums
Adding/Changing Company Information
Viewing Administrator Information
While using the multiple sites framework in Oracle iSupport, a system administrator or a primary user cannot perform some of these functions for other users. The functions that they cannot perform are as follows:
Changing a user's contact points and addresses
Setting general preferences
Changing default responsibility
Setting up a user's signature for forums
User management is the process of approving the self service registration requests of users or creating user accounts for existing party contacts to enable them to access applications. Thereafter, user management maintains the user in the system by granting or revoking privileges, accounts, customer profile information, and party relationships based on a set of business requirements. User management involves registering new users, modifying existing users, approving or rejecting user registration requests, setting up enrollments and registration templates, assigning users to business accounts, and more. Oracle CRM Technology Foundation (JTT) supplies the technology stack for performing most of the background setups and processes for user management.
Oracle iSupport uses the user management pages of the Oracle iStore application. Oracle iStore provides a comprehensive set of user management capabilities, including the ability to register users, configure registration pages, approve users, and manage user profile information. This functionality leverages the JTT user management framework as a foundation for the setup, which includes the user types, enrollments, and approval processes. Thus, the primary user has access to the Oracle iStore user management pages including:
Contact and User Management
Pending User Approvals
Role Management
Site Assignment
Enrollment Management
For details of user management with sites, refer to the Oracle iStore Implementation and Administration Guide.
Note: The information in this section is meant to give you an overview of the concepts of the JTT user management framework. You can find specific and comprehensive information in the Oracle Applications CRM System Administrator's Guide.
The JTT user management framework has four main components:
Users are classified into user types for registration purposes. User types are defined to meet the specific needs of an organization, and they reflect a broad category of users. User types allow flexible, extendible ways to define, categorize, and implement the behavior of users. User types can be tied to enrollments (subscription services), default responsibilities, and default roles.
The following sections discuss seeded user types that pertain to Oracle iSupport, including:
Refer to Appendix B for the technical names of these seeded user types together with their associated roles, responsibilities, and enrollments. See Other Users for a discussion of Oracle iSupport users who are not registered or approved with the user management framework.
Seeded as a user type in the JTT user management framework framework, the primary user is also known as the customer administrator. This user typically:
Approves other users within his party/organization
Assigns accounts to users (Party Accounts), that is, controls access to accounts
Adds/modifies responsibilities to users within his party/organization
Adds/modifies roles to users within his party/organization
The JTT user management framework supports any number of primary users for an organization.
The Oracle iSupport administrator for a merchant typically approves the initial primary user.
A primary user can approve the registration request submitted by another user as a primary user. This depends on the approval hierarchy defined for the user type/ enrollment.
Seeded as a user type in the JTT user management framework, this user is a typical business-to-business user, associated with an organization other than the merchant utilizing Oracle iSupport.
Seeded as a user type in the JTT user management framework, this user type is an individual person with no relationship to an organization. Individual users generally self-register over the Internet. They are approved automatically by the application (unless this setting is changed by the administrator in the framework) and assigned the default role and responsibility that the administrator specifies for this user type during application setup configuration.
A partial user is one who is an existing logged-in user who registers for access to applications without the need to create a new user account. This partial registration applies to both individual and business users.
Partner User is for users who have already registered to be a partner. Through partial registration, they can request the iSupport roles and privileges so they can use the iSupport application.
In addition to the seeded JTF User Types (Primary, Business, Individual), the merchant implementing Oracle iSupport receives a system administrator login/password and creates a user called the Oracle iSupport Administrator. In addition, he can choose to set up employee users, Oracle Knowledge Management administrator-users, survey administrators, and guest users. These users are discussed below.
The System Administrator (SA) role is common to all Oracle Applications and comes seeded with the applications. This is the highest-level user. This user comes with a sysadmin login and password (sysadmin/sysadmin). Oracle recommends that you change the password for this user at earliest convenience. For more information, see:
Oracle Applications System Administrator's Guide
Oracle Applications Concepts
Oracle Applications CRM System Administrator's Guide
The merchant implementing Oracle iSupport uses the sysadmin login to set up the Oracle iSupport Administrator. This is a required user. The Oracle iSupport Administrator is a user chosen by the merchant to perform routine but high-level administrative tasks, such as:
Setting up users and assigning appropriate roles and responsibilities
Setting up the application home page
Setting up Service Request
Setting up the Products tab/Install Base
Setting up Knowledge Management
Setting up Accounts Management functionality
Setting up Forums
Setting up Web Call-Back
Setting up Surveys
Instructions for setting up this user are in this guide.
The Employee User is not seeded as a User Type in the JTT user management framework, but is supported by Oracle iSupport. The employee user is not seeded because the self registration functionality does not support the registration of employees belonging to the support organization. This type of user is an employee of the merchant using Oracle iSupport. This user is set up through the Forms interface by the Oracle iSupport Administrator. For information on setting up this type of user, see the Setting up iSupport Users topic in the Implementation Tasks chapter of this guide.
This is a user who performs Knowledge Management setup and management. This user type is not seeded in the JTT user management framework. This user is required only if the merchant will use the Knowledge Management functionality. For more information, see the Integrating Oracle iSupport with Oracle Knowledge Management chapter of this guide.
This is a user who performs Surveys setup and management. This user type is not seeded in the JTT user management framework. This user is required only if the merchant will use Surveys. For more information, see the Configuring Surveys topic of this guide.
A guest user is a user who comes to the Oracle iSupport site and does not already have an approved registration with iSupport. With the guest user facility, unregistered users can access certain features in Oracle iSupport. For example, a guest can access the self-service support web site and review solutions to problems in Oracle iSupport. The Oracle iSupport and Oracle iStore applications use the same guest user account to enable the guest user functionality.
Based on the roles and responsibility assigned to a guest user, the guest user can access the following features:
View the home page for a guest user
View technical library content accessible to a guest user
Search, browse, and view solutions accessible to a guest user
Consistent with the single sign-on procedures for all Oracle applications, users log in, are checked for necessary privileges, and, as appropriate, may be invited to request partial registration through the Guest User page to gain access to protected pages of iSupport.
The application also supports the concept of an authenticated guest user. An authenticated guest user is essentially a user that has logged into the system but lacks iSupport permissions to view any iSupport protected page. If authenticated users without the proper iSupport permissions want to see the iSupport public or guest pages, they can do so as if they are a guest. The content of the pages are the same as those of a guest user. Only the menu is slightly different because such users are already logged in.
Enrollments are application-specific services at the user-type level. These services include the registration templates, roles, responsibilities, and approval definitions at the enrollment level. Oracle User Management provides four types of enrollment available for a User Type:
Automatic
Self-service
Delegation only
Self-service and delegation
One enrollment corresponds to one or zero responsibility, one or zero template (see Templates), one or zero workflow, and zero or more roles.
For more information on enrollments, see the Oracle Applications CRM System Administrator's Guide.
Oracle Application Foundation Responsibilities define application privileges. They control menu hierarchy available to a particular user. During the registration process, users are granted access to one or more responsibilities, depending upon the services/enrollments to which they subscribe and the merchant policy. Typically, individual consumers are given access to only one responsibility. With one responsibility, users do not need to know about the existence of responsibilities.
Responsibilities originally contained some security elements at the function level. Those turned out not to be sufficient for the CRM HTML applications, and now these security elements are included as roles/permissions infrastructure.
For more information, see the Oracle Applications CRM System Administrator's Guide.
A role is a collection of page- and function-level permissions. A permission is the smallest unit making up a role, and one or more permissions make up each role. Permissions dictate exactly which actions a user can perform. Users registering are assigned a default role or roles based on user type and enrollments. Additional roles can be assigned according to business needs.
For more information, see the Oracle Applications CRM System Administrator's Guide.
The seeded enrollments can be modified, and you can also create new enrollments. For more information, refer to the Oracle Applications CRM System Administrator's Guide.
Applications require different pieces of information to register various user types. Registration of a sales representative might require the sales territory, while a consumer registration would need to include the credit card number. Registration data is being stored in different tables - some is common data and is stored (mostly) in the Trading Community Architecture (TCA); the rest is stored into application-specific tables.
Registration templates, which can be one JSP or multiple pages, accommodate these information-gathering requirements. The registration pages rendered to a user depend on the user type and the services/enrollments the user is subscribing to. Registration templates refer to JSP files that are used to capture the registration information that is particular to a user type.
Characteristics of registration templates include:
JSPs associated to a template handler to execute the logic on data captured through JSP pages
Can be tied to enrollments
Are set up by the application administrator during implementation
Can consist of one page or many pages
New registration templates can be created using the System Administrator Console. For more information, refer to the Oracle Applications CRM System Administrator's Guide .
Approval is a step in the registration process whereby users and/or their enrollments are confirmed by an approving authority. After the approval process is completed, the system automatically grants the appropriate default role(s) and responsibility (based on User Type and/or Enrollments) that allow access to the application.
The approval process uses Oracle Workflow to track and route the request to each approver set up in the approval definition. The process informs the approvers of the request type (user type or enrollment) and what action is required.
Foundation approvers are application users who have one of the following permissions:
JTF_REG_APPROVAL or JTF_SECURITY_ASSIGN_ROLE (System Administrator) permission.
JTF_APPROVER (Request Owner) permission
JTF_PRIMARY_USER_SUMMARY (Primary user) permission
The Primary User must also have the JTF_PRIMARY_USER responsibility to access the approval page.
Oracle iSupport user approvers are the Oracle iSupport Administrator and the Primary User(s). See the Seed Data appendix for their appropriate roles and permissions.
New approval processes can be defined on the System Administrator Console. For more information, refer to the Oracle Applications CRM System Administrator's Guide .
With the multi-party access feature, an iSupport B2B user can view and perform transactions for multiple parties using a single login id. The user can log in to the application and view or perform transactions for his default party, and then use the switch party mechanism to perform transactions for another party. The user must have access to the parties to be able to do the transactions.
Oracle iSupport Administrator and/or Primary User can grant access to multiple parties and the associated accounts to the business users. They can typically:
Enable multi-party access
Add, remove, enable, or disable access to a party
Change the default party
Add or remove party account access
Enable service request search across multiple parties
Related Topics
Merchants (Service organizations) have an option to leverage the multi site capabilities to provide targeted support to their users by defining and organizing their online support into multiple sites. This functionality in Oracle iSupport is provided by Oracle iStore multiple sites (Speciality Store/ Sites). It allows a seamless inter-navigation between Oracle iStore, Oracle iSupport, and Oracle Partners Online. The main features provided by Site Management Framework include:
Multiple support sites using a single instance
Improved navigation between iStore, iSupport, and Partners Online while maintaining context of the user, account, language, and site
iSupport, iStore, and Partners Online functions in a single site
Different branding for each site
Single Sign On
Improved self service registration, user profile, and user management
Common, unified, and central site administration capabilities
Merchants (Service Organizations) who do not wish to use the multiple sites capabilities can implement Oracle iSupport in the conventional manner.
Oracle iSupport uses the Oracle iStore multiple site functionality, which includes the site definition, the site selection page, the dashboard, and the template manager for configuring the template pages.
Site functionality can be used only for guests and customers' users (users who are tied to a party) including customers' primary users when an organization is implementing sites.
Employee users use the Applications login to login into the application and use the mechanism of switching responsibility to access application under different responsibilities.
In the context of Oracle iStore, a site is any site that the site administrator (manager) creates using the Oracle iStore Site Administration UI. When you create a site in the Oracle iStore Site Administration UI, it is uniquely identified by a Site ID (also called Minisite ID).
With the Oracle iStore section hierarchy, you can organize your sites into logical sections connected in parent-child relationships, and re-use these sections, their product associations, and their content in multiple sites.
The majority of section creation and maintenance tasks are performed using the Sections and Products pages, which are accessible as a user logs in with an Oracle iStore administrator responsibility.
In combination with the Display Templates, your site sections, connected in a hierarchal fashion, help determine the browsing path for the customer in your sites. All driven from the main Root section, together the sections, subsections, and products in your sites form a tree-like structure. After you create a section, you can use it in any number of sites. You also can choose to exclude certain sections from sites.
Using the site administration pages, you can:
Create sections
Duplicate existing sections, including all products and content
Assign Display Templates to sections to determine the layout of the sections
Assign products to sections -- either automatically or manually
Assign or exclude sections to/from site(s)
Preview sections in the context of the specialty site(s) in which they will appear
Delete sections
Rename sections
Use the search utility to search for sections
Sections and their associated products appear in the Customer page in the context of the display templates in which they appear. In addition to the display templates, section appearance is affected by the structure of your section hierarchy, any section-product associations, and any content that you have associated with a section or product.
If you implement Oracle iStore with Oracle iSupport, then you can use the Oracle iStore template manager to configure Oracle iStore pages. With the template manager, you can link your own JSP files to seeded templates to present content that is not provided by the Oracle-supplied files. For example, the template manager enables you to create brandable registration pages and an overall common look and feel throughout your site. For details, refer to the Oracle iStore Implementation and Administration Guide.
A dashboard appears when a user selects a site - responsibility combination from the site selection page.This Site Dashboard allows service organizations to:
Configure the layout of the dashboard and publish targeted content for users utilizing the template manager
Publish bins that provide links to other applications based on a user's responsibilities and sites definition. For example, by using the Oracle iSupport related Bins on the site dashboard, users can navigate to Oracle iSupport to manage and create service requests.
Publish application specific bins, for example, a bin to search the knowledge base and a bin to allow partner to enroll in targeted programs
Support multi-language and globalization capabilities
Because the dashboard is integrated with Oracle Content Manager, it enables an administrator to show content from Oracle Content Manager on the dashboard.
The dashboard is a template page. It provides customers an ability to put their own content in their own style and present it to their customers. Several seeded bins are available on this page that an organization can use or it can define its own custom content. The content on the dashboard can be configured using the template manager mapping between a template page, site, and language. This page is also integrated with content manager and can pull in content from the content manager.
Oracle iSupport provides several ways to configure your site's appearance:
Style sheet
You can design and use different style sheets to control the display of HTML pages.
Custom menu
You can write a new menu renderer by implementing a JTT custom menu class and associating it with different Oracle iSupport responsibilities.
Regions on a page and page flows
For service requests, you can configure the content of page regions, the regions that pages display, and the pages that appear in the create-service-request flow.
Page-level configurability
You can configure the look and feel of Oracle iSupport JavaServer Pages (JSPs) for different users without customizing these pages directly. This is accomplished by putting customized material in the top, left, right, and bottom sections of the original content pages that Oracle supplies. Pages include those from the following areas:
Service request
Orders
Invoices
Payments
Shipments
Returns
Language
If you simply want to display the same information in a different language, then you can use JSP and AK regions or FND messages for translation. You can find steps to use AK regions and FND messages in documentation for Oracle self-service Web applications.