Oracle Marketing Encyclopedia System (MES) is a content repository management component of the CRM suite of applications that allows you to create, publish, and manage content. It also allows you to organize content in different hierarchies.
Hierarchy of categories and channels are the means to store, organize, and distribute different types of content items in the MES repository.
A hierarchy can have unlimited levels of categories. Channels are the lowest level in the hierarchy of categories that contain published items.
Access to the MES repository is controlled through the Access Manager. The MES administrator can set up access privileges for users. MES also has a concept of groups to which access privileges can be setup. An administrator can define different groups and associate users to these groups.
Depending on your access privileges, you can create categories or channels, publish items, and approve publishing items to a particular channel.
Before publishing content items and viewing these items in the MES repository, an administrator has to understand and complete the following steps:
MES is embedded as a part of other CRM applications. MES is not a stand alone application. See the documentation of the particular application that MES is embedded in for more information about accessing MES from that application.
Note: The user logging into MES has to be associated with a resource.
At the center of the MES application is the Access Manager. It is used to:
Create and maintain groups (Group Manager)
Assign user and group privileges (Privilege Manager)
Give channel access privileges (Channel Manager) for every user that needs to access MES
The MES administrator can assign privileges to users or groups of users depending on the operations that the users or groups would be performing.
Use this procedure to set up privileges for an MES user. When users log on, they will be able to perform only those operations specified by the administrator.
Steps
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to MES > Administration > Privilege. The Privilege Manager screen appears.
Query the user or the group that you want to give access to. Give the user or group the desired privilege(s). The privileges that the administrator can assign are:
Administrative privileges
Publishing content
Approving content
Setting up a Channel (Create, Update, Delete, View Channel)
Setting up a Category (Create, Update, Delete, View Category)
Publishing to a Territory.
A group comprises of one or more users. A published document or a message may be distributed to many users. Additionally, groups may contain different types of users, that is, users who have different levels of security or privileges.
Use this procedure to create a group for a MES user.
Steps
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to MES > Administration > Group.
Add a group by entering a group name
Click Update.
Click View Member List
The Edit Group Members for <Group Name> screen appears.
You can either query the users that are a part of this group or add new group members.
The MES administrator can setup common privileges for all the users in a particular group.
Steps
Log on to a specific application
Navigate to MES > Administration > Group.
Query the group that you want to assign the privilege to.
Give the group the desired privilege. The privileges that an administrator can assign are:.
Administrative
Publishing Content
Approving Content
Setting up a Channel (Create, Update, Delete, Channel)
Setting up a Category (Create, Update, Delete, Category)
Publishing to a Territory
Note: When a group is created through the MES user interface, a group channel is implicitly created for it with the same group name. Users can publish to a group, by publishing to a group channel. Since multiple users can be associated to a group, this is a means of distributing documents to more than one user. If a group is created externally, for example, through a Resource Manager, no group channel is automatically created.
The MES administrator may create channels and control the access over these channels. Channels have View, Update, and Delete privileges. An administrator can assign these privileges to either a channel, a user, or a group.
Use this procedure to set up access for a channel.
Steps
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to MES > Administration > Channel Access. The Channel Access Manager screen appears.
If you know the channel name, enter it and click Setup Access for This Channel button or leave it blank and click Setup Access for This Channel button. A list of all the channels in the system appears.
Select a channel name from the list and click Setup Access for Channel button.
Query the user or the group to whom you want to give privilege for this channel.
Give the group or user the desired privilege. The privileges that an administrator can assign are:
Delete: delete this channel
Update: update contents of this channel
View: view the channel
Approve content: approve content for this channel
Use this procedure to set up channel access for the user.
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to MES > Administration > Channel Access.
If you know the user name, enter it and click Setup Access for this User button or leave it blank and click Setup Access for this User button. A list of users appears.
Select the user name from the list and click Setup Access for User button.
Query the channel to which you want to give privilege for this user.
Give the channel the desired privilege. The privileges that the administrator can assign are:
Delete: delete this channel
Update: update contents of this channel
View: view the Channel
Approve Content: approve content for this channel
Use this procedure to set up channel access for a group.
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to MES > Administration > Channel Access.
If you know the group name, enter it and click Setup Access for this Group button or leave it blank and click Setup Access for this Group button. A list of group names appears.
Select the group name from the list and click Setup Access for Group button.
Query the channel to which you want to give privilege for this group.
Give the channel the desired privilege. The privileges that the administrator can assign are:
Delete: delete this channel
Update: update contents of this channel
View: view the Channel
Approve Content: approve content for this channel
Categories in Oracle Marketing Encyclopedia System are a means to store, organize, and distribute different types of content items in the MES repository e.g., Company News, Marketing, Sales etc.
You can view the different categories that are available from this screen. The MES administrator has to create categories and setup category hierarchies based on how it will be used by MES users. Administrator will have permissions to setup categories and category hierarchies.
Use this procedure to create categories.
Steps
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to Administration > MES > Categories.
Add or update the category information.
Use this procedure to set up a category hierarchy.
Steps
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to Administration > MES > CategoriesManager.
This page allows an administrator to define the parent categories of each category. If the parent category is set to None, then this category becomes the root of a hierarchy.
Content type is an attribute assigned to all content. Content types allow you to refine the definition of content, thereby creating attributes which channels can receive. There are some seeded content types which will be provided. An administrator will have permissions to create new content types or modify/delete the existing content types.
Steps
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to MES >Administration > Content Type.
Add or update the content type information.
Perspectives are attributes which can be assigned to all content. Perspectives allow you to refine the definition of content and create attributes that the channels can receive. Administrators will have permissions to create and maintain perspectives.
Steps
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to MES >Administration > Content Perspective.
Add or update the perspectives information.
Channels are the lowest level in the hierarchy of categories that contain published items. The My Channels page displays all the categories and channels to which you have subscribed.
Channels are used by MES to distribute content items to users and to classify content in MES repository. An Administrator will have permissions to create new channels. The administrator can also optionally define if permission is needed for subscribing to or publishing content to the channel being created and the group of users who are to be the approvers for those privileges.
Note: While defining a channel, you can optionally define content types, perspectives, item types, authors, and key words. These attributes are used by the matching engine to identify if any published item can implicitly be pushed into this channel by mapping these attribute values with the item attribute values. You can also indicate if an approval process is needed for publishing and subscribing to this channel. If approval is needed, and the user wants to change the default approvers, then the user can select the primary and secondary approvers.
Steps
Log on to a specific application.
Navigate to Administration > MES > Create Channel. Each channel has a parent, which is either a category or a subcategory.
Enter information in the required fields.
You can publish an item type of a file, URL, or a message to various categories or groups.
Navigation:Administration > MES > Publish.
Notes:
Effective Start Date:The content will not be visible through the category hierarchy before the Effective Start Date.
Channels section: You can move a value from the Available table to the Selected table. The item gets published to the selected channels. If publishing to any of those channels requires approval, then the appropriate work flow is started.
Groups section: Move a value from the Available table to the Selected table. The item is published to the selected group(s) and appears on the My Channels page.
You can perform all the administrative tasks associated with Oracle Marketing Encyclopaedia System from this tab.
Navigation: Administration > MES > Administration
Notes
Content Type: Used to create and manage content types for published items.
Category Manager: Used to create and manage new categories.
Hierarchy Manager: Used to establish hierarchical relationship among categories.
Content Perspective: Used to create and manage perspectives for published items.
Create Channel: Used to create and assign properties to new channels.
Users can belong to different territories. Whenever any content item is published, the publisher can optionally specify to which territories the item should be published. For setting up territories, see the Oracle CRM Foundation Implementation Guide.
MES administrators have to set up the Time out Workflow definitions, which direct the workflow engine the time that an item that needs approval has to wait in an approver’s inbox. If the approver does not respond within the configured time, then the workflow engine performs the next action defined in the workflow process.
Use the workflow builder to change the time out value for any node in the work flow time out process.
Steps
Start the workflow builder.
Connect to the application database.
In Show Item Types screen, move MES Approvals from the Hidden section to the visible section.
Under MES Approvals > Processes, you can see the following four processes:
Content Approval Process
Subscription Approval Process
Notify Approver- Publishing
Notify Approver- Subscription
Note: Content Approval Process uses Notify Approver - Publishing and Subscription Approval Process uses Notify Approver - Subscription.
To change the default time out values, select the corresponding process. For example, if you want to change time out duration in Content Approval Process, double click Notify Approver - Publishing. To change time out values in Subscription Approval Process, double click Notify Approver - Subscription. Depending on the selection made, either the Notify Approver - Publishing or Notify Approver - Subscription screen appears.
Select and double click the Notification which has a prefix, Publishing Approval Notification... in its display name. The Navigator Control properties screen appears.
Select the Node tab. The Node tab has a Time out section that you can modify.
Modify the Time out section.
If your application users will publish items of URL type, then you have to make sure that the intermedia indexes are properly generated. Proxy information is needed by Intermedia index for URL type item while regenerating the index to extract meta data information of the URL in the item. If the proxy information is not correctly setup, then MES will not be able to search the repository for URL type items because index regeneration would have failed on these items.
To setup proxy information, run $JTF_TOP/patch/115/sql/jtfiimt.sql using the following command.
sqlplus <apps-user>/<apps-password> @$JTF_ TOP/patch/115/sql/jtfiimt.sql <jtf-user> <jtf-password> <proxy_ server_name:port> <no_proxy_domain_name[,no_proxy_domain_name]>
For Example:
sqlplus apps/apps @$JTF_TOP/patch/115/sql/jtfiimt.sql jtf jtf "www-proxy.us.oracle.com:80" "us.oracle.com"
It will set up the intermedia media preference object. Once the above script is run successfully, run the following command to create the intermedia index.
sqlplus <apps-user>/<apps-password> @$JTF_TOP/patch/115/sql/jtfiaibu.sql <jtf-user> <jtf-password>
For Example:
sqlplus apps/apps @$JTF_TOP/patch/115/sql/jtfiaibut.sql jtf jtf
The MES administrator has to setup the concurrent jobs and the frequency at which they should run. MES provides context search on items stored in the MES repository. For the search functionality to work, there are some concurrent jobs that have to be configured in MES to perform InterMedia index generation for all the published items that are new. MES uses Oracle interMedia search functionality to do content level search. If this concurrent job is not run, then all the published items that are new cannot be searched through the Search user interface.
MES Intermedia Sync and Optimization Operation configures intermedia search on channel name and channel description.
The Rebuild Help Search Index Concurrent Program configures intermedia search on item name, description, URL string, and text message.
There are two types of concurrent programs bundled with MES. To configure InterMedia search, the following concurrent programs have to be run:
MES InterMedia Index Sync Operation/JTF InterMedia Sync Operation
The more frequently you run the Sync Concurrent Program, the faster your newly - reindexed text will be available for your searches. However, the more frequently the indexes are synchronized, slower the query performance due to fragmented indexes.
Note: You should run the concurrent program based on how quickly you want the new or updated information made available to your searchers. This depends on how often your customer publishes an item. If the load is low, you can run the concurrent program as quickly as possible. If the load is heavy, run the concurrent program every two to three hours.
MES InterMedia Index Optimizing Operation/JTF Item Intermedia Optimizing Operation
This concurrent program defragments the intermedia indexes (that were fragmented by the sync operation). Running this concurrent program will take a couple of hours and it should be run once every week, when there is less traffic in the system.
For MES InterMedia Index Optimizing Operation and JTF Item InterMedia Optimizing Operation, there are additional parameters that need to be run:
p_optimize_level: There are two types of optimization levels: fast optimization and full optimization.
Fast Optimization: deals only with fragmented rows. Fast optimization cannot be limited by time and it often takes a long time to complete, if it is being run for the first time on a badly fragmented index.
Full Optimization: glues rows back together in the same manner as fast optimization, but it also removes unrequired information related to deleted rows. It takes longer to run than fast optimization.
p_runtime: While running the optimization at full level, you can specify the time duration. This implies that it can be limited to quite times of the day (or week) for your application and the table can be optimized in stages. Many customers therefore prefer to always use full optimization.
MES Matching Engine
This concurrent program matches newly published content items with the existing channels to which the items are not explicitly published. If newly published items match any of these channels, this concurrent program publishes them to these channels. Also, in a newly created channel, it verifies if any existing published items in the repository can be included. If the items can be included, then it will publish those items in that channel. If an item gets published to a channel implicitly and if that channel needs approvals to publish items, then approval process gets started automatically.
Use this procedure to include a concurrent program as a part of a standard request.
Log on to Self Service Application as:
Username: SYSADMIN
Password: SYSADMIN
Select the System Administrator responsibility.
Click Security > Responsibility > Define. The Responsibilities window appears.
Search the Responsibility Name of System Administration. Check the Request Group section. Write down the Request Group Name and Application. For example, System Administrator Reports, Application Object Library.
Close this window.
Click Responsibility > Request. The Request Groups window appears.
Search for the Request Group that you wrote in Step 3. Example: System Administrator Reports Group.
Add all the Concurrent Programs mentioned in this guide in the Requests table. For example, MES InterMedia Index Optimizing operation, MES Matching Engine, MES InterMedia Index Sync Operation, JTF Item InterMedia, Index Sync Operation, and JTF Item InterMedia Index Optimizing operation.
Note: When you go to Submit a Request, you will see the concurrent programs that you added in the list.
Log on to Self Service Application.
Switch the responsibility to System Administrator.
Click Concurrent > Requests.
Click View. The Find Requests window appears.
Click Submit a New Request button.
Select the name of the concurrent program that you want to submit.
If a schedule is already setup, select the appropriate schedule or create your own schedule based on the information described above.
To create a schedule, click the Schedule button.
Enter information in the mandatory fields.
There is also an index on FND_LOBS table. A script has to be run to alter the index on this table whenever a File is stored. This index should be rebuilt periodically depending on the volatility of the data and after large uploads, otherwise it can get out of date.
Run the following script under $FND_TOP/sql/aflobbld.sql
sqlplus <APPSUSER>/<APPS_USER>@$FND_TOP/SQL/aflobbld.sql
For example:
sqlplus apps/apps@$FND_TOP/sql/aflobbld.sql