Who's Who

Throughout this guide, we provide examples that illustrate some of the ways you can use WebCenter Portal. The tasks in the guide are targeted to one or more personas, assigned specific portal roles. This chapter introduces you to these personas and describes the ways in which they might interact with WebCenter Portal. These example personas are for illustrative purposes to help you identify the different skill sets required to use the range of tools offered by WebCenter Portal.

The personas described here have the default roles provided out-of-the-box with WebCenter Portal. These roles are each given a unique set of permissions appropriate for the work that each persona will typically do. Note that you can modify these default roles or configure new roles to meet the unique needs of your organization.

The people who interact with WebCenter Portal typically work together as a team to coordinate their tasks in one of the following user roles:

• Knowledge Worker

• Application Specialist

• Web Developer

• Developer

• System Administrator

Knowledge Worker

Karen is a knowledge worker who typically uses WebCenter Portal to contribute and review content, participate in social interactions, and leverage the Home portal to manage her own documents and profile.

At the application level, Karen has permissions such as those granted to the default Authenticated-User role, which may be customized for the specific needs of the organization. At the portal level, the portal Moderator will likely assign Karen the Viewer or Participant role, or a custom role that offers a similar set of permissions.

For more information about roles and permissions, see the "About Roles and Permissions for a Portal" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.

Knowledge Worker Tasks in WebCenter Portal

Tasks that are typical of a knowledge worker like Karen include:

• Connecting to and collaborating with other WebCenter Portal users by sharing information, files, and links; and by interacting through instant messaging, mail, message boards, discussions, wikis, and blogs

• Uploading, sharing, and managing documents stored in Content Server

• Joining a team or project portal

• Keeping up with changes in WebCenter Portal by receiving notifications when content is updated, exploring recommendations from other users, viewing the activities of the portals she is a member of and users she's connected to, viewing announcements, taking polls, and monitoring WebCenter Portal RSS feeds

• Staying organized through the use of favorites, notes, calendars, lists, links to portal objects, and tags

• Viewing and responding to worklist items

As Karen becomes more familiar with the functionality available in WebCenter Portal, she may begin to perform more advanced tasks, such as creating portals. As a more advanced knowledge worker, her role may evolve to overlap with application specialist tasks.

Information targeted for knowledge workers like Karen is in Oracle Fusion Middleware Using Oracle WebCenter Portal. Advanced tasks that overlap with those of an application specialist are covered in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.

Application Specialist

Ari is an application specialist who works in Portal Builder to create and administer portals, their structure (hierarchy of pages, navigation, security), and their content (components on a page, layout, behavior, and so on). In a typical project, Ari coordinates the efforts of Karen (knowledge worker), Wendy (web developer), and Dave (developer).

At the application level, Ari has permissions such as those granted to the default Application Specialist role, which may be customized for the specific needs of the organization. In a portal that Ari creates, he performs actions available to the Moderator role to manage the portal.

For more information about roles and permissions, see the "About Roles and Permissions for a Portal" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.

Application Specialist Tasks in WebCenter Portal

Tasks that are typical of an application specialist like Ari include:

• Planning and creating new portals

• Editing and administering the portals he owns

• Creating and building portal pages using the page editor (Composer) and the resource catalog to add and configure page components

• Creating and managing portal assets, tools, and services

• Managing shared assets and portal templates across all portals

Information targeted for application specialists like Ari is in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal. To work with his personal view of the Home portal, Ari will also refer to Oracle Fusion Middleware Using Oracle WebCenter Portal.

Web Developer

Wendy is a web developer who focuses on delivering a consistent, branded look and feel to all portals. Wendy provides graphics designs and HTML markup from which Ari (application specialist in Portal Builder) or Dave (developer in JDeveloper) can create content or page style templates, skins, and so on. Once these assets are created, Ari can leverage them to create portal pages. Wendy typically does not interact with WebCenter Portal directly.

Web Developer Tasks in WebCenter Portal

Tasks that are typical of a web developer like Wendy include:

• Developing a corporate portal look and feel

• Designing new portal page templates

Information targeted for web developers like Wendy is in the "Creating a Look and Feel for Portals" chapter in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.

Developer

Dave is a developer who provides support for both portals and WebCenter Portal Framework applications:

• Portals (Portal Builder)

  Dave is primarily responsible for developing components (such as task flows, page templates, and content templates), which are published and leveraged by Ari (the application specialist). Dave primarily works with JDeveloper and leverages the WebCenter Spaces Extension/WebCenter Portal Service Extension projects.

• Framework Applications

  Dave primarily works with JDeveloper to develop WebCenter Portal Framework applications. Once he has developed the application, he can package it as an EAR file and deploy it on the application server. In a typical environment, Dave would have JDeveloper configured with a SCM system and be working within a team with automated build and deploy processes.

Developer Tasks

Tasks that are typical of a developer like Dave include:

• Building and maintaining WebCenter Portal Framework applications

• Developing custom assets, like page templates and navigation components for portals in WebCenter Portal

• Developing Java portlets

• Developing and deploying task flows, managed beans, and other custom components

• Developing custom personalization components

• Maintaining the source control system

• Maintaining a build system

Information targeted for developers like Dave is in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper.

System Administrator

Syed is a system administrator who fields requests from IT employees and business users to set up new machines; clone or back up existing applications systems and databases; install patches, packages, and applications; and perform other administration-related tasks. As the system administrator, Syed works with other tools such as Fusion Middleware Control and command line tools. He leverages Enterprise Manager to configure portal settings, and also configures integrations such as WebCenter Content and other Fusion Middleware products and Oracle applications.

In WebCenter Portal's Portal Builder, he has permissions such as those granted to the default Administrator role, which provides exclusive access to administer and set global options for all portals (including the Home portal).

For more information about application level roles and permissions, see the "About Application Roles and Permissions" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal.

System Administrator Tasks

Tasks that are typical of a system administrator like Syed include:

• Uses Portal Builder administration to administer all portals (including import and export of portals) and security site-wide

• Uses Portal Builder administration to manage site-wide system pages, business role pages, and personal pages

• Uses Portal Framework application administration console to manage application-wide preferences, manage users and roles, manage assets, configure the content repository, create polls, register producers and external applications

• Leads security, taxonomy, metadata, workflow, governance

• Uses the management console for administrative functions

• Executes command line utilities for administrative functions

• Installs and configures production versions of developers' efforts

• Performs patching of the production versions and the operating system

• Creates clones and backups of the production versions

• Performs restores of production versions

• Monitors the operating system for issues with the production version

• Deploys and redeploys applications

Information targeted for system administrators like Syed is in Oracle Fusion Middleware Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle Fusion Middleware WebLogic Scripting Tool Command Reference.