The following topics introduce the new and changed features of WebCenter Portal and other significant changes that are described in this guide, and provides pointers to additional information. This book is the new edition of the formerly titled Administrator's Guide for Oracle WebCenter Portal: Spaces.
Support for four new page templates that provide efficiency and performance enhancements over the existing page templates. See "New Page Templates."
Support for the FrameworkFolders component that provides a scalable, high-performing folder service from Oracle WebCenter Content as an alternative to Folders_g. See "FrameworkFolders Support."
WebCenter Portal Bundle patch 11.1.1.8.3 introduces support for four new page templates that provide efficiency and performance improvements over the existing page templates. The files included are:
Four page templates: Skyros Side Navigation v2, Skyros Side Navigation (Stretch) v2, Skyros Top Navigation v2, and Skyros Top Navigation (Stretch) v2
One skin: Skyros v2
This is the preferred skin for the new page templates. Do not attempt to use the new Skyros v2 skin with existing page templates. Likewise, do not attempt to use the new page templates with the existing skins.
Two task flows: Portal Side Navigation and Portal Top Navigation
These task flows are used by the page templates to implement the navigation, either in a side pane or as tabs along the top of a portal. The styling of the navigation in these task flows relies on the CSS in the skin file available in this patch. If you want to use these task flows in a page template that uses a different skin, be aware that the navigation may not look as expected due to CSS mismatches in the skin. However, if you copy and paste the navigation sections from the new Skyros v2 skin source code into your skin source code, you can achieve the expected results.
To use the new page templates:
Locate 18085041/NewAssetBP3.zip in WebCenter Portal Bundle patch 11.1.1.8.3 (patch 18085041) and extract the contents to a local directory.
Log in to WebCenter Portal.
Go to the Shared Assets page, which is available if you have the permissions of the Administrator or Application Specialist role.
Select the following assets in the left pane, and upload the corresponding files from the saved location on your local file system:
| Asset Type | File Names |
|---|---|
|
Page Templates |
|
|
Skins |
|
|
Task Flows |
|
After uploading the page templates, skin, and task flows, perform the following steps to use the new page templates:
To set a new default page template for pages in the Home portal and all new portals (when the portal's template does not specify that a particular page template must be used), see Section 43.3.1, "Choosing a Default Page Template."
To change the page template used by an individual portal, see the "Changing the Page Template for a Portal" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
To change the preferred skin used by a page template, see the "Setting the Preferred Skin for a Page Template" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
For more information, see the "Working with Page Templates" chapter in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and the "Developing Page Templates" chapter in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper.
Previously, Oracle WebCenter Portal only supported Folders_g. WebCenter Portal Bundle patch 11.1.1.8.3 enables new installations of Oracle WebCenter Portal to be integrated with FrameworkFolders. Existing installations of Oracle WebCenter Portal patched to release 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.8.3) must continue to use Folders_g.
For information about the criteria that must be met for enabling FrameworkFolders, see the "Preparing Oracle WebCenter Portal for FrameworkFolders Support" section in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle WebCenter Portal. For information about the Folders_g and FrameworkFolders directory structure and the steps for enabling FrameworkFolders, see Section 9.2.3.1, "Enabling Mandatory Components."
WebCenter Portal 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.8.0) included the following new and changed features:
Terminology changes:
| Prior Releases | Current Release |
|---|---|
|
WebCenter Portal: Spaces |
WebCenter Portal |
|
space |
portal |
|
space template |
portal template |
|
resource |
asset |
Updated profile user interface that includes improved organization of profile information, click to edit, and clear profile photo functionality. See the "Managing Your Profile" chapter in Oracle Fusion Middleware Using Oracle WebCenter Portal. Additional documentation for the rich user profile is referenced under Portal Builder, Administration, and Development Environment.
Improved search experience (supported with Oracle SES 11.2.2.2) that includes faceted search and document thumbnails. See the "Searching for Information" chapter in Oracle Fusion Middleware Using Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Simplified portal creation that includes in-place page creation. See the "Creating and Building a New Portal" chapter in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Redesigned portal edit and administration user interface (Portal Builder) that consolidates tasks into fewer steps. See the "Editing a Portal" and "Administering a Portal" chapters in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Simplified page creation and editing: Web (for editing) and Data (for managing) views, inline resource catalog (with support for component drag-and-drop onto a page), and Select view. See the "Working with Portal Pages" part in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Automatic update of portal navigation as new pages are created. See the "Creating a Page or Subpage in an Existing Portal" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
"Lazy provisioning" of tools—WebCenter Portal configures the back-end server at first use of a tool rather than at portal creation to speed the successful creation of a new portal. See the "About Creating a New Portal" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Hierarchical page support (subpages). See the "Creating Pages or Subpages in a Portal" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal.
Updated profile user interface that includes improved organization of profile information, click to edit, and clear profile photo functionality; new component properties for improved control of people connections and activity graph components. See the "Adding Activity Graphs and Recommendations to a Portal," "Adding Connections to a Portal," and "Adding Profiles to a Portal" chapters in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal. Additional documentation for the rich user profile is referenced under End-User Experience, Administration, and Development Environment.
Device Settings that control how your portal pages render on different devices, such as smart phones, tablets, and desktop browsers. Page variants can be created to target and optimally render a portal on specific groups of devices like iOS phones, iOS tablets, and others. See the "Administering Device Settings in a Portal" section, the "Managing Device Groups for a Portal" chapter, and the "Creating a Page Variant for a Device Group" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal. Additional documentation for mobile support is referenced under Administration and Development Environment.
Responsive Content Presenter templates that provide an example of how you can use Content Presenter and CSS3 media queries to produce a responsive layout that adjusts to the width of the browser (for example, on smart phones, tablets, and desktop browsers). See the "Using Responsive Templates" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal. Additional documentation for mobile support is referenced under Development Environment.
Simplified WebCenter Portal administration that includes a power user oriented experience with familiar concepts for legacy WebCenter Portal customers. See Part XI, "Managing Portals in Portal Builder Administration".
New profile configuration settings that include properties to specify whether to show the new or legacy profile user interface and to specify profile synchronization settings. See Chapter 16, "Managing People Connections." Additional documentation for the rich user profile is referenced under End-User Experience, Portal Builder, and Development Environment.
Device Settings that control how your portal pages render on different devices, such as smart phones, tablets, and desktop browsers. Page variants can be created to target and optimally render a portal on specific groups of devices like iOS phones, iOS tablets, and others. See Section 40.4, "Deploying Devices and Device Groups," Section 50.2.2, "Creating a Page Variant of a System Page for Device Groups," and Chapter 53, "Administering Device Settings." Additional documentation for mobile support is referenced under Portal Builder and Development Environment.
Impersonation, which allows a privileged user to impersonate another user for the purposes of verifying the other user's experience in WebCenter Portal and troubleshooting unexpected results. See Chapter 38, "Managing Impersonation."
Improved portal lifecycle tools that enable export/import and backup/recovery of one or more portals with minimal downtime. See Chapter 40, "Deploying Portals, Templates, Assets, and Extensions" and Chapter 41, "Managing WebCenter Portal Backup, Recovery, and Cloning."
Integrated Oracle WebCenter Portal's Pagelet Producer user interface within WebCenter Portal's administrative user interface to make system administrators aware of the existence of Pagelet Producer pagelets and to allow them to make these pagelets available to end users. Integrating the UIs also provides Pagelet Producer developers to easily navigate from WebCenter Portal where they see the pagelets to the Pagelet Producer Administration UI so they can create new or edit existing pagelets. See Chapter 22, "Managing the Pagelet Producer."
New page performance analyzer that shows you how long individual components take to display on a portal page, as well as the overall time taken to display a page. This new tool is useful to developers who are performing first level performance analysis, customers who build their own pages, and any user who customizes pages in WebCenter Portal. See Section G.4.4, "How to Identify Slow Page Components."
Updated profile user interface that includes improved organization of profile information, click to edit, and clear profile photo functionality; new component properties for improved control of people connections and activity graph components. See the "Introducing the People Connections Service," "People Connections Task Flow Binding Parameters," and "Integrating the Activity Graph" chapters in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper. Additional documentation for the rich user profile is referenced under End-User Experience, Portal Builder, and Administration.
Developers can use Expression Language (EL) to retrieve information about Device Settings. Device Settings control exactly how your portal pages render on different devices including smart phones, tablets, and desktop browsers. See the "EL Expressions Related to Device Settings" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper. Additional documentation for mobile support is referenced under Portal Builder and Administration.
Responsive Content Presenter templates provide an example of how you can use Content Presenter and CSS3 media queries to produce a responsive layout that adjusts to the width of the browser (for example, on phones, tablets, or personal computers). See the "Using Responsive Templates" section and the "Extending Responsive Templates" section in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper. Additional documentation for mobile support is referenced under Portal Builder.
Simplified custom shared library development and deployment. WebCenter Portal provides a new JDeveloper template that enables you to build custom components, such as task flows, data controls, and managed beans and deploy them in shared libraries directly to the WebCenter Portal server. See the "Developing Components for WebCenter Portal Using JDeveloper" chapter in Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper.
Restructured documentation library according to personas and their roles in WebCenter Portal:
Oracle Fusion Middleware Using Oracle WebCenter Portal covers information needed by 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.
Oracle Fusion Middleware Building Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal covers information needed by 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).
Oracle Fusion Middleware Administering Oracle WebCenter Portal (this guide) covers information needed by 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.
Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Portals with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle JDeveloper covers information needed by a developer who primarily works with JDeveloper to provide support for both portals and WebCenter Portal Framework applications.
For more information, see "Who's Who."