18 Managing the People Connections Service

This chapter describes backend configuration requirements for the People Connections service. Always use Fusion Middleware Control or WLST command-line tool to review and configure back-end services for WebCenter Portal applications. Any changes that you make to WebCenter Portal applications, post deployment, are stored in MDS metatdata store as customizations.

This chapter includes the following sections:

• Section 18.1, "What You Should Know About the People Connections Service"

• Section 18.2, "People Connections Prerequisites"

• Section 18.3, "Setting Up a Proxy Server for Activity Stream"

• Section 18.4, "Archiving the Activity Stream Schema"

Audience

The content of this chapter is intended for Fusion Middleware administrators (users granted the Admin or Operator role through the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console). See also Section 1.8, "Understanding Administrative Operations, Roles, and Tools."

18.1 What You Should Know About the People Connections Service

The People Connections service provides social networking tools for creating, interacting with, and tracking the activities of one's connections. Its features enable users to manage their personal profiles, access the profiles of other users, provide ad hoc feedback, post messages, track activities, and connect with others.

It does this through a set of features that include:

• Activity Stream for viewing user activities generated through application or social networking actions.

• Connections for connecting to other application users to share information, comment on performance, exchange messages, and track activity

• Feedback for giving ad hoc performance feedback to other users

• Message Board for posting messages to other users

• Profile for entering personal contact information and viewing the contact information of other users

• Publisher for publishing status messages and posting files and links

The features of the People Connections service fall into the above five categories. Each category includes a set of task flows that expose People Connections features to end users.

For information about the People Connections service at runtime, see Part VIII, "Organizing Your Collaborative and Social Networking Environment," in the Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle WebCenter Portal: Spaces.

For additional information about configuring People Connections, refer to “Configuring People Connections Defaults for WebCenter Spaces” in the Oracle Fusion Middleware User's Guide for Oracle WebCenter Portal: Spaces.

18.2 People Connections Prerequisites

To use the People Connections service, you must have the WEBCENTER schema installed in your database.

In a production environment, an enterprise can leverage its back-end identity store as a means of providing People Connections with a population of potential connections. In a development environment, developers can add test-users to the jazn-data.xml file.

For example, Profile takes the bulk of its information from the back-end identity store that provides your WebCenter Portal application with its users. Additionally, Profile may offer opportunities for altering some of this information and for providing additional data not included in the identity store.

For information about connecting to a back-end (LDAP) identity store for the production version of your application, see Chapter 29, "Configuring the Identity Store".

18.3 Setting Up a Proxy Server for Activity Stream

To enable external people connection feeds in your WebCenter Portal applications, you must set up a proxy server.

A proxy server is also required if you want to display external links in Activity Stream task flows. Both the People Connection service and the Activity Stream service share the same proxy server settings.

You can configure a proxy server by using either Fusion Middleware Control or WLST. For information, see Section 9.7, "Setting Up a Proxy Server."

18.4 Archiving the Activity Stream Schema

Application administrators can use WLST commands to archive and restore data in the Activity Stream schema. The following commands are available:

• archiveASByDate—Archive activity stream data that is older than a specified date.

• archiveASByDeletedObjects—Archive activity stream data associated with deleted objects.

• archiveASByClosedSpaces—Archive activity stream data associated with Spaces that are currently closed.

• archiveASByInactiveSpaces—Archive activity stream data associated with Spaces that have been inactive since a specified date.

• restoreASByDate—Restore archived activity stream data from a specified date into production tables.

For more information, see the section, "Activity Stream," in Oracle Fusion Middleware WebLogic Scripting Tool Command Reference.

18.5 Configuring Cache Options for the Profile Service

To configure the Profile service JOC cache, for example, you use the WLST command setProfileCacheTimeToLive to set the idle time for an object to live in a cache after which if the object has not been accessed, it will be removed. Likewise, use the WLST command setProfileCacheNumberOfObjects to set the maximum number of objects that can live in the cache after which older objects or unused objects will be removed.

For command syntax and examples, see the section, "XWLSTX" in Oracle Fusion Middleware WebLogic Scripting Tool Command Reference.

For information on how to run WLST commands, see Section 1.13.3.1, "Running Oracle WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) Commands."