2 Your Portal Account

This chapter explains how to create your own portal account (if necessary), how to log in to and log out of your portal account, and how to manage your portal account.

Creating Your Own Portal Account

Depending on your portal configuration, you might be able to create your own portal account.

Note:

Access to everything in the portal is controlled by security privileges. Creating your own account does not necessarily give you access to content in the portal. To get additional security privileges, contact your portal administrator.

1. On the Log In page, click Create an Account.

2. In the User name box, type the user name you want to use to log in to the portal.

   Your user name can contain spaces.

3. In the Password box, type the password you want to use to log in to the portal.

   Your password is case-sensitive and must be 7 to 20 characters long.

4. In the Confirm password box, type your password again.

5. To create your personalized portal account, click Create Account.

   When your account is successfully created, a welcome page displays an introduction to the portal.

Logging In to the Portal

Log in to the portal to access everything you have permission to see.

Note:

If you are unsure of your user name, password, or authentication source, ask your portal administrator.

1. If the page you are viewing is not the log in page and does not include a portal login portlet, in the portal banner, click Log In.

2. In the User name box, type your portal user name.

   Your portal administrator might have imported your user account from Windows, Exchange, Notes, Novell, or another system. If so, you probably use the same user name you use to log in to your computer or mail account.

3. In the Password box, type your portal password.

   This might be the same password you use to log in to your computer or mail account.

4. If necessary, in the Authentication Source drop-down list, select the appropriate authentication source.

   • If you are using the same user name and password you use to log in to your computer, look for an authentication source named similarly to the domain you use to log in to your computer.

   • If you created your own portal account, through Create an account, choose WCI User Database.

   • To automatically log in for future sessions, select Remember my password.

     If other people are likely to use your computer, to ensure portal security, do not enable this option.

5. To log in to the portal, click Log In.

Logging Off the Portal

You might want to log off the portal to ensure that any people who have access to your computer cannot use your portal account.

• To log off the portal, in the portal banner, click Log Off.

  Note:

  Clicking Log Off also clears the Remember my password setting.

Managing Your Portal Account

On the My Account page you can manage your user profile, set display options, set your locale, set search preferences and manage saved searches, and manage passwords.

To display the My Account page, in the portal banner, click My Account.

Note:

The My Account link is only visible when you are logged in to the portal.

Editing Your User Profile

You can update your user profile information, such as e-mail address or phone number.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account.

2. On the My Account page, click Edit User Profile.

3. Type the information you want to provide in the appropriate text boxes.

   Note:

   Your portal administrator may have populated some information automatically and may have set some information to read only.

4. If there are multiple user profile pages listed on the left and you want to change information on another page, click the page name and change your information.

5. When you are done, click Finish to save your settings, or click Cancel to revert to your previous settings.

Setting Your Display Options

You can specify the portal interface and greeting to display, how documents open, refresh settings for My Pages, and time out settings for portlets.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account.

2. On the My Account page, click Display Options.

3. Set your display options:

   • Selecting Your Portal Interface

   • Setting Your Portal Greeting

   • Specifying How Portal Documents Open

   • Setting Your My Page Refresh Rate

   • Setting Your Portlet Time Out Limit

4. When you are done specifying all your display settings, click Finish to save your changes and return to the My Account page, or click Cancel to return to the My Account page without saving your changes.

Selecting Your Portal Interface

You can change your portal display to accommodate assistive technologies or slow internet connections.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account.

2. On the My Account page, click Display Options.

3. Under Choose Portal Type, select an interface:

   • Standard Portal Choose this option if want to use all the features of the portal and if you do not use assistive technologies.

   • Assistive Technology Portal (for people with disabilities) Choose this option if you use assistive technology to browse the internet (for example, screen readers, screen magnifiers, speech recognition software). The portal displays only portlets that are designed to work with assistive technologies.

   • Low Bandwidth Portal Choose this option if you have a slow internet connection. The Low Bandwidth Portal loads more quickly than the Standard Portal but does not include images or navigational drop-down menus.

4. When you are done specifying all your display settings, click Finish to save your changes and return to the My Account page, or click Cancel to return to the My Account page without saving your changes.

Portal Interface Types

This table describes the portal interface types.

Interface Type	Description
Standard Portal	The fully-featured user interface for the Oracle WebCenter Interaction software. Use it to provide the richest user interface experience for internal and external users. This version does not support assistive technologies.
Assistive Technology Portal	Designed for people with disabilities. It supports only portlets that meet requirements for use with assistive technologies. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act is a federal statute requiring federal agencies' electronic and information technology to be accessible to people with disabilities, including employees and members of the public. The federal criteria for web-based technology are based on access guidelines developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Designed to adhere to the federal criteria for web-based technology, the Assistive Technology Portal allows end users with visual disabilities to access the portal through assistive browsing technologies, such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, voice recognition and Braille devices. The interface is text-based with a linear presentation of information, and with no embedded client-side JavaScript or Java applets.
Low Bandwidth Portal	Accommodates users with slower internet connections. This version supports all Oracle WebCenter portlets, but does not support assistive technologies. Remote users have two options for viewing portal pages—the standard version and the Low Bandwidth version. Users can switch from one version to the other during a portal session and the change occurs immediately. The Low Bandwidth Portal provides better performance for end users accessing the portal remotely when network performance is slow due to low bandwidth or heavy traffic. This version presents a user interface with far fewer graphics and no embedded JavaScript or Java applets.

Setting Your Portal Greeting

You can set the greeting text that displays in your portal banner.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account.

2. On the My Account page, click Display Options.

3. Under Personalize Your Greeting, in the Your greeting box, type the greeting you want to display.

   Note:

   Your greeting does not change if you change your language display.

4. When you are done specifying all your display settings, click Finish to save your changes and return to the My Account page, or click Cancel to return to the My Account page without saving your changes.

Specifying How Portal Documents Open

You can specify how documents open when you click a document link in the portal.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account.

2. On the My Account page, click Display Options.

3. Under Document Display Options, select an option:

   • To display the document in a new browser window, select Open documents in a new window. Choose this setting if you want to view multiple documents at the same time.

   • To display the document in the current browser window, select Open documents in the main browser window.

4. When you are done specifying all your display settings, click Finish to save your changes and return to the My Account page, or click Cancel to return to the My Account page without saving your changes.

Setting Your My Page Refresh Rate

You can specify how often your My Page is refreshed.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account.

2. On the My Account page, click Display Options.

3. Under Page and Portlet Settings, in the Your My Page will be updated drop-down list, select a frequency.

   If you choose Never, your My Page is updated only when you manually refresh the page. For instructions on manually refreshing your page, refer to your Web browser's online help.

   Note:

   Portlet content might not be refreshed each time you refresh your My Page; portlet refresh depends on the portlet settings implemented by your portal administrator.

4. When you are done specifying all your display settings, click Finish to save your changes and return to the My Account page, or click Cancel to return to the My Account page without saving your changes.

Setting Your Portlet Time Out Limit

You can specify how long to wait for a portlet to load on your My Pages.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account.

2. On the My Account page, click Display Options.

3. Under Page and Portlet Settings, next to Maximum time to wait for a portlet, select a time out option:

   • If you want your portal administrator to determine how long your My Page waits for a portlet to load, select Let the portal administrator set this for me. This is the default setting.

   • If you want to specify how long your My Page waits for a portlet to load, select the option next to the drop-down list, then, in the drop-down list, select the maximum number of seconds you want to wait for a portlet to load before your My Page displays without the portlet.

   If your My Page displays slowly or displays time-out errors, you might want to change the time out setting. If your My Page takes a long time to finish loading, you might want to decrease the portlet time-out. Your My Page will load faster, but portlets might display time-out errors or out-of-date content. If portlets frequently display time-out errors, you might want to increase your portlet time-out. Some portlets need more time to request information from remote computers or databases. If you increase your portlet time-out, your page will load more slowly, but it will be less likely to display time-out errors (time-out errors can still occur if there are problems with the portlet).

4. When you are done specifying all your display settings, click Finish to save your changes and return to the My Account page, or click Cancel to return to the My Account page without saving your changes.

Enabling Debug Mode

If your portal administrator must troubleshoot your portal, you might be asked to enable debug mode.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account.

2. On the My Account page, click Edit User Profile.

3. Click the Advanced Settings page.

   Note:

   The Advanced Settings page is only visible when the administrator enables debug mode in the Portal Server Settings.

4. Select Enable Experience Rules Debug Mode.

Editing Locale Settings

The locale determines:

• The language displayed in the portal interface (portlet names and content display in the language you choose only if those portlets support your chosen language).

• The format for portal entries (including search requests). For example, if you choose British English, the portal displays and expects dates in the DD/MM/YYYY format, whereas in American English, the portal displays and expects dates in the MM/DD/YYYY format.

Note:

Only the portal interface and localized objects display in the language you choose. Your personal greeting does not change if you change your locale.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account > Edit Locale Settings.

2. In the Your time zone drop-down list, choose your time zone.

3. In the Your locale drop-down list, choose the language in which you want your portal to display content.

Setting Search Preferences

On the Search Preferences page, you can personalize what your search results look like. You can limit your search by object type and language, specify the number of results you want to see on each page, and manage your saved searches.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account, then click Search Preferences.

2. Set your search preferences:

   • Under Result Types, select the types of objects you want to search.

     By default, the portal searches all types of objects.

   • Under Languages, select the languages you want to search:

     • To search for results in all languages, select All languages. This is the default setting.

     • To restrict your search results to just the language you chose on the Locale Settings page, select Just my default portal language.

   • Under Number of Results, in the Results per page drop-down list, select the number of search results you want to display on each page.

   • Under Sorting, in the Sort results by drop-down list, select how you want your search results sorted by default.

     You can select a different sort option from the search results page.

Viewing User Profiles

You can view your information or information for other users.

Your portal administrator controls what information you see in a user profile, but the following categories of information are available by default:

• General Information includes general contact information such as name, position, and phone number.

• Folder Expertise lists the Knowledge Directory folders for which the user is a related expert. Your portal administrator might add a user to a folder as an expert, or, if you have the appropriate permissions, you can add yourself as expert when you are browsing folders in the Knowledge Directory. To open a listed Knowledge Directory folder, click the folder name.

• Managed Communities lists the communities that the user has permission to manage. To view a listed community, click the community name.

Note:

• The Folder Expertise and Managed Communities portlets do not display if your portal uses adaptive layouts.

• If information contained in Folder Expertise or Managed Communities is incorrect, contact your portal administrator.

• To view your user profile, in the portal banner, click My Account > View User Profile.

• To view another user's profile, search for the user and click the user's name.

  Note:

  You can view only those properties to which you have access.

Changing Your Password

You can change your portal account password.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account > Change Password.

   Note:

   In some cases you will not see the change password option. If this is the case, the portal is taking your password from an external source and you must change the password in that system. When you change the password there, it is automatically changed in the portal. If you have questions about where to change your password, contact your portal administrator.

2. In the Old password box, type the password you currently use to log in to the portal.

   If you have forgotten your password, contact your portal administrator.

3. In the New password box, type a new password.

   Passwords are case-sensitive and must be 7 to 20 characters long.

4. In the Confirm new password box, type your new password again.

Setting Login Credentials for External Applications

Your portal administrator might make some external applications available through the portal, such as an employee benefits system. If these external applications require you to log in, you might be able to set your log in and password in the Password Manager.

1. In the portal banner, click My Account > Password Manager.

2. For each system or application listed, enter the user identification and password you use to access that application.