This guide describes how to set up personalized content to enhance how users interact with your portal application.
Personalized content can include content or images targeted to specific users or audiences. For example, you can create dynamic images or links that are personalized for each user. You could dynamically guide users through a process (such as signing up for employee benefits or shopping online) that takes them to different places based on their personal preferences or characteristics.
You can even record the path users take through your portal to gauge the effectiveness of the portal, its design, or your process flows. This Behavior Tracking provides information that can validate your strategies or help you make improvements.
This chapter includes the following sections:
This section contains the following topics:
Developers use Workshop for WebLogic to set up Personalization features, such as Campaigns, Content Selectors, Placeholders, User Segments, and Rule Sets. Developers can also create rules for Personalization and events for Behavior Tracking. Portal administrators use the WebLogic Portal Administration Console to modify Campaigns, Content Selectors, Placeholders, and User Segments to fit the needs of the portal's audience.
Developing Interaction Management features often involves setting up related pieces. For example, if you want to target users with personalized content in a Campaign, you have to add content to BEA's Virtual Content Repository, create Placeholders that display the content, set up properties (such as User Profile or session properties) that are used to define the conditions under which users will be targeted with Campaign content, and finally, create the Campaign.
This chapter describes the tools you can use to create Interaction Management features and the logic that drives the tools. Each tool uses a rules engine to match users with appropriate content.
You can use the following tools to create and maintain Interaction Management features in the portal life cycle:
<ph:placeholder name="myPlaceholder1"/>
. You can add JSP Placeholder tags (identified by the name attribute) anywhere in your portal's JSPs. For more information on Java classes, see the
JSP Tag Javadoc.Workshop for WebLogic provides the following features to help you deliver personalized content:
See Planning an Interaction Strategy for more details and examples of each type of interaction.
The following terms are used in this guide:
This section contains the following topics:
The tasks in this guide are organized according to the portal life cycle. The portal life cycle contains four phases: Architecture, Development, Staging, and Production. Adding Personalization and user interaction to your portal is an important part of the portal life cycle. For more information about the portal life cycle, see the WebLogic Portal Overview.
Figure 1-1 shows which Interaction Management tasks occur in each phase.
In the Architecture phase, you plan the type of interaction that your portal users will experience. Architects decide who to target, what type of personalized content users will see, how often the content changes, and how to update the content. For more information about the portal life cycle, see the WebLogic Portal Overview.
The following chapters provide guidance on Architecture tasks:
In the Development phase, developers use Workshop for WebLogic to create user property sets and properties, User Segments, Placeholders, Content Selectors, Campaigns, and Behavior Tracking to add Personalization without custom coding. Developers can also work directly with the Java API to add Personalization.
Personalization features allow you to target users with personalized web content, display a single piece of web content retrieved from the BEA Virtual Content Repository, automatically send a user a predefined e-mail, or provide a discount in a commerce application. Discount Actions are part of the Commerce API, which is deprecated with WebLogic Portal 10.0. The API is replaced by AquaLogic Commerce Services, which is available as a product separate from WebLogic Portal.
Developers can also categorize users based on specific characteristics or criteria and then target those User Segments.
Tools: Workshop for WebLogic and the Java API.
The following chapters provide instructions on Development tasks:
In the Staging phase, portal administrators use a browser to test the Content Selectors, Placeholders, Campaigns, and so on that developers created in the Development phase. If any of the functionality needs to change, you can use the Administration Console to make changes, or return to the Development phase and use Workshop for WebLogic and make changes. Developers can also utilize the Java API. Developers must redeploy the portal application to see the changes in the Staging environment. The Development phase and the Staging phase often occur simultaneously.
Tools: Administration Console.
The following chapters provide instructions on Staging tasks:
After developers test the portal application in the Staging phase, portal administrators use the Production phase to fine-tune the live production environment. For example, in the Production phase, administrators could use the Administration Console to modify Placeholders, Content Selectors, or Campaigns. They can change a Campaign's effective dates, update web content, modify the discount offered in a catalog, or add a new User Segment to attract a different audience.
WARNING: | Shopping cart events, discounts, and catalogs are part of the Commerce API, which is deprecated with WebLogic Portal 10.0. The API is replaced by AquaLogic Commerce Services, which is available as a product separate from WebLogic Portal. |
If you need to change any of these features, developers can use Workshop for WebLogic to return to the Development phase and make changes. Developers must redeploy the portal application to see the changes in the Staging and Production environments.
Tools: Administration Console.
See Part IV: Production for guidance on Production tasks.
If you are new to portal development, see the WebLogic Portal Overview for more information about the portal life cycle.
You can also consult the following information: